Rise of Skywalker's JJ Abrams isn't "trying to repair" Star Wars after The Last Jedi

Rian Johnson made some bold choices with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and from the footage we've seen so far of The Rise of Skywalker, it looks like JJ Abrams might be undoing some of those choices (Kylo Ren putting his helmet back together, for one).

Unsurprisingly, that's got fans divided.

But JJ is adamant that he won't be spending his film retconning the previous movie's events, telling Empire that:"I never found myself trying to repair anything. If I had done VIII, I would have done things differently, just as Rian would have done things differently if he had done VII.

Related: Ewan McGregor's Star Wars series with Obi-Wan Kenobi makes a huge announcement

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"But having worked on television series, I was accustomed to creating stories and characters that then were run by other people.

"If you’re willing to walk away from the thing that you created and you believe it’s in trustworthy hands, you have to accept that some of the decisions being made are not gonna be the same that you would make. And if you come back into it, you have to honour what’s been done."

Of course, JJ wasn't originally meant to direct the ninth movie, but stepped up to do it after Colin Trevorrow was let go. With so many changes behind the scenes, let's hope the movie can stick the landing.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a release date of Thursday, December 19 in the UK and Friday, December 20 in the US.

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Joe Anderton

Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.