The Disney Star Wars trilogy has proven to be one divisive series, with the first installment, The Force Awakens, being the only movie of the three to be acclaimed by both critics and audiences alike. It is near-impossible to talk about the recently released The Rise of Skywalker without mentioning Rian Johnson's fan-dividing The Last Jedi, with the latter movie seemingly retconning most of the creative decisions made in the former. This might lead you to believe that Abrams went it alone, with no input from Johnson, but rather surprisingly this was far from the case.

"We had conversations with Rian at the beginning. It's been nothing but collaborative. The perspective that, at least personally, I got from stepping away from it and seeing what Rian did, strangely gave us opportunities that would never have been there, because of course he made choices no one else would have made.

In a way it felt kind of like a gift, though of course there were challenges in every direction. It was actually weirdly more helpful than not, having that other energy to the story. There was an alchemy because of the things that he did."

Now that we have all seen The Rise of Skywalker, this is pretty hard to believe. Nonetheless Abrams seems to put to bed the idea that Johnson's movie was either ignored or undone. With a very vocal section of the fanbase taking aim at Rian Johnson's subversions, it has been noted by many that Abrams' finale seems to systematically going through all of these and reversing them one-by-one, so the idea that the two of them actually sat down and discussed this is very intriguing indeed.

After The Force Awakens Abrams had no plans to come back to a galaxy far, far away and says that he enjoyed sitting back and just enjoying what came next, but upon returning he found Johnson's input helpful, as opposed to hindering.

"The truth is when I was getting [The Force Awakens] up and running, I was nothing but grateful that a director and writer I admire as much as Rian was coming in to do [the next one.] Not expecting to come back to this, it was just fun to watch what was happening and get to respond to it."

Despite all this, it should be noted that Rian Johnson's name is not on the script for The Rise of Skywalker, and that ultimately the movie does back-track on a lot of The Last Jedi's story beats, so how much he was really listened to is open to debate.

Picking up a year after the events of The Last Jedi, the last remnants of the Resistance face off against the First Order once again - while reckoning with the past and their own inner turmoil. Meanwhile, the ancient conflict between the Jedi and the Sith reaches its epic climax, as The Rise of Skywalker brings the saga to a definitive end. The Rise of Skywalker is out now. This comes from Vanity Fair