Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has hit back at people who criticised the 2017 film for its diverse cast.
The eighth movie in the franchise starred Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley and Lupita Nyong'o.
“If someone’s responding to diversity negatively, f*** them,” said Johnson during a Wired live Q&A event. “If anyone didn’t like the movie, I’m not saying that’s why they didn’t like it… It wasn’t surprising at all to me, I grew up as a Star Wars fan.
“And I grew up – I was in my twenties when the prequels came out and this whole idea that it’s all been sunshine and roses and suddenly everybody’s yelling at each other is baffling to me.”
He added: “People care deeply about Star Wars, and every single person has a slightly different version of what they think Star Wars is. And so much of the fun of it is arguing about it.”
Defending the majority of the franchise’s fanbase, he said: “95 per cent of my interactions on Twitter are absolutely lovely and constructive and wonderful with Star Wars fans, [they] are the best fans in the world, all of them.
“I think the fandom has to take a stand against getting defined by a very small slice of it, that does not represent the lion’s share.”
Johnson is set to write and direct a new trilogy of films that will fall under the Star Wars brand but will be a completely new story, with original characters, set in a different galaxy His new film, Knives Out, is released on 27 November.
