Star Wars: The Force Awakens is all over (save for the home video release), and everybody has now moved on to Star Wars: Episode VIII. While most things are the same, the director has changed, as J.J. Abrams has given up his chair to make way for Rian Johnson. Adam Driver says there’s one other major thing that has also changed. People are a lot more relaxed this time around.
Adam Driver stars in the new film Midnight Special and during a special screening the actor was asked by Entertainment Weekly about his experience working with Rian Johnson on the new Star Wars film as compared to J.J. Abrams. Driver says that the temperament between the two directors is quite different, although that may be in part because the general feeling on set is noticeably different. Everybody has done this once before, so everybody has a better understanding of what they need to do.
I feel like there was so many moving pieces in the first one – just trying to solve it, and set the vocabulary for what it was. There’s a lot of that anxiety is gone, because people have developed a language.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens was one of the most anticipated movies ever made. That's not hyperbole. Disney and Lucasfilm had a lot riding on it, as it was set to be the first of an entire new franchise of films. Fans were looking forward to something as good as they remember the original trilogy to be. A major production, Force was trying to capture how the the movies were made in the 1970’s, while also being something modern. So it’s not surprising that it left the cast and crew with many questions they weren’t quite sure how to answer. As the film currently sits with a box office total of over $2 billion and a Rotten Tomato score of 90% among both critics and fans, everybody likely now has a bit more confidence that they made the right calls and they know what they’re doing.
This hasn’t meant that everything regarding Star Wars: Episode VIII has been entirely smooth sailing. The film was delayed from a Summer 2017 release to Christmas of the same year following a decision that the script wasn’t quite ready yet. In addition to the returning cast of Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver, we will also new characters played by Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro.
The Star Wars franchise is getting ready for another first later this year when Star Wars: Rogue One, the first spinoff film in the series hits theaters in December.
