JJ Abrams Says Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Is About Providing a Cohesive Ending to the Saga

JJ Abrams is looking to bring things to a close with Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, and says that he’s focusing on putting a cohesive close to the saga. Abrams spoke with EW promoting the film and talked about bringing the nine-film saga to an ending. Highlights are below:

On the responsibility of concluding the Saga: “Endings are the thing that scare me the most … This is about bringing this thing to a close in a way that is emotional and meaningful and also satisfying in terms of actually answering [as many] questions as possible. So if years from now, someone’s watching these movies, all nine of them, they’re watching a story that is as cohesive as possible.”

On finding inspiration in the final film: “While there were many things that were planned for and discussed — George Lucas himself said when he created this he saw it as three, three-act plays — that doesn’t mean there isn’t discovery, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that come up that make you realize, ‘Oh, here’s an opportunity.’ It also doesn’t mean that there’s a list of payoffs that we have to do because of setups. But we also were very much aware this is the end of the trilogy and it needs to satisfy. We went into this thing knowing it has to be an ending. We’re not screwing around.”