J.J. Abrams on George Lucas' Involvement with The Rise of the Skywalker

George Lucas may have handed over the reins of Star Wars to Disney, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been involved when it comes to making the new films. With The Rise of Skywalker set to come out later this year, J.J. Abrams talks a bit about how Lucas was involved with the process.

Talking to MTV News, Abrams explained:

"I feel that the story we told, the goal for this movie, the job was to end not just this trilogy – and just to make a stand-alone film, of course it needs to work in that way too – but to end nine films, three trilogies. And so the job was to look at all of them, including [The Last Jedi], and ask ourselves, ‘What is the inevitability? Where is this going?' There have been a lot of ideas since the beginning, since George [Lucas] first came up with this, of where things could go [in the last film]. We had a meeting with him before we even wrote the script about [The Rise of Skywalker]."

Even since the time of the original trilogy, Lucas has been saying that he had planned for Star Wars to be 3 separate trilogies, even going so far as to describe them as "three, 3-act plays." Though Disney did scrap his original idea for the sequel trilogy, it's great that his input was still valued by the incoming filmmakers.

I was happy that The Last Jedi had decided to subvert all expectations and ‘let the past die,' and I'm admittedly worried that The Rise of Skywalker will just end up as another rehash to keep the TLJ fans happy. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that, and Abrams will try out something completely new with the end to the Skywalker Saga.

Catch Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in theaters Dec. 20.

See Also: Star Wars: Episode IX's Skywalker Title May Actually Refer To Grey Jedi