‘The Last Jedi’ Created A Scene Unlike Any Other In ‘Star Wars,’ Now Theaters Are Warning Moviegoers

*Spoilers for The Last Jedi underneath this warning*

Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi is so divisive that when introduced, it almost needs the name “Rian Johnson” ahead of the movie’s title just so people know that this movie truly shows the vision of a singular creator. This is Johnson’s film, make no mistake, and people have takes on everything he’s put into Episode VIII. Some are questioning the story’s direction (like Mark Hamill) and others are wondering how the franchise continues after what seems like a kick in the pants sideways reboot.

Now it seems that The Last Jedi is so different that artistic choices have led to AMC’s theaters putting up a warning for moviegoers due to the sudden silence that hits when Laura Dern’s character, Vice-Admiral Holdo, crashes a resistance ship at light-speed directly into a First Order destroyer. According to AMC, fans thought the dead quiet for the roughly 10-15 second scene was a technical issue.

VFX supervisor Ben Morris told Collider that it was absolutely a choice and one that’s resonating with fans.

“That’s never really happened in <em>Star Wars</em> before. We had always hoped that would resonate, both as a story beat and as a striking visual, and when I heard all of the cries and gasps in the silence, it was just fantastic. We realized that it worked.

On a creative and slightly technical level, it was based on physics photography of cloud chambers and high speed particles colliding with each other,” Morris said of creating the shot. “We always talked about how this look would happen, where we’d drain all of the color out of the image. I think it shows strength, if you invert your normal concept of what space shots in ‘Star Wars’ look like, with a white ship on a black background. For that sequence, you turn it on its head and you’ve got a black ship with white space.”

Judging by the never-ending onslaught of opinions on social media, it seems that as time passes, the tough choices Johnson executed in The Last Jedi are being embraced slowly but surely by fans. Not all fans, but some of them. And others just need a warning letting them know that the movie isn’t going to be a traditional experience before they head into the theater to soften the blow.

(Via IndieWire/Collider)

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