Rian Johnson Wishes He Could Have Screen Tested Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rian Johnson has revealed that he wishes he could have test screened Star Wars: The Last Jedi before having released the movie.

He revealed this bit of information during an interview with Screen Rant in which he revealed Disney’s policy towards test screening movies.

Here’s what he had to say about wishing he could have test screened The Last Jedi:

[The Knives Out test] was like a party in the theatre, it was really fun. It was like the first time I was like ‘Oh wow, this actually plays. This is good, which is really nice and that’s something on Star Wars, you can’t test Star Wars movies for a lot of different reasons. I’ve always hated test screening, and when we were making Star Wars, at a certain point in the process you’re like ‘God, I would give my left arm to put this in front of 300 people in Burbank and just see how it plays.’

The thing is with test screenings is that they don’t always help all that much.

The movie came out and was really well received by the vast majority of film critics.

However, movie audiences and Star Wars ‘die-hard’ fans felt let down by the film.

Rian Johnson wishes he could have test screened Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rian Johnson on the set of Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Credit: Lucasfilm

Read more: Has The Obi-Wan Kenobi TV Show Been Cancelled? Here’s Everything We Know About The Star Wars Series

As far as I’m concerned, I thought The Last Jedi had its flaws (but so does every Star Wars movie).

Yet, I also thought that it would end up being considered one of the best and bravest Star Wars movies ever made.

I highly doubt it would have been that much better if it had been extensively test screened.

I like the fact that Lucasfilm backed Johnson and his movie.

That said, the huge backlash against the movie probably caused people to lose interest in the franchise as a whole.

That could be seen in the box office takings of movies such as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker which weren’t as record-breaking as Disney had hoped they would be.

What did you think of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and do you think the movie would have been improved by test screenings?

Let us know in the comments below.

What do you make of this story? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook or Instagram pages!

And if you enjoy listening to film podcasts, why not check out Small Screen Radio wherever you get your podcasts!