Quicker than a lightsabers’ liquid whoosh, Star Wars fans took to Twitter on Friday to lament and subsequently dissect the title of the franchise’s ninth outing. The Rise Of Skywalker, after all, conjures up more than a few queries, namely as to whether this new film will aim to appease Rian Johnson’s shrill legion of haters by retconning some of the controversial choices he made in The Last Jedi. In a new interview with ET Online, director J.J. Abrams defends the title, saying that, while it’s “provocative and asks a bunch of questions,” it’s nevertheless “the right title for this movie.”
“In the flow of titles, this movie had a very weird responsibility,” he continued. “It had to be the end of not just three movies, but nine movies, and the idea of having to incorporate the stories that have come before strangely is the story of the movie. Which is to say it’s the characters in the film inheriting everything that’s come before in previous generations, whether it’s sins of the father, whether it’s the wisdom that they’ve acquired. And the question is this new generation, are they up to the task, can they stand up to what they have to? And so in a way, I feel like we coming into this movie have inherited a lot, and the question is can we do it? And that question we ask ourselves every day.”