There are various things about “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” that those who hate it are happy to complain about, one of them being the film’s attempts at comedy.
From the behavior of the Porgs to the cast members cracking the odd joke, there have been complaints about how goofy or silly the attempts at comedy are and how, tonally, they’re not appropriate for a franchise that gave us campy droids and Jar-Jar Binks.
One key scene in the film sees General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) threatening Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) over an intercom to which Poe, in an attempt to stall for time, jokes that he can’t hear Hux.
The film’s director Rian Johnson, as part of a career retrospective interview for GQ, has defended the film’s attempts at comedy, saying that “slightly goofy humor” has always been an element of the franchise from the beginning:
“For me, everything in the movie is ‘Star Wars,’ and everything in the movie I can trace back to deeply, in a deep way, what ‘Star Wars’ is for me. Everyone has a different take…
Anyone who thinks that slightly goofy humor does not have a place in the Star Wars universe, I don’t know if they’ve seen ‘Return of The Jedi’. There’s literally a scene where Han Solo is like a cartoon… tied up to a pole and a torch goes by him and he [tries to blow it out repeatedly].
The slightly self-aware element of gleeful humor is something that is part and parcel to ‘Star Wars’. We get very serious as well. That kind of brazen balance of the two things is also something that is very ‘Star Wars.’”
Johnson also cited another scene in the original “Star Wars” when Chewbacca comes across a droid on the Death Star and scares it. The droid screeches in a high pitch and wheels away.
You can see Johnson’s comments for yourself over at GQ’s YouTube Channel. Johnson’s newest feature, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” is now available on Netflix.
