J.J. Abrams Teases Going "Elsewhere" With 'Star Wars: Episode 9'

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With “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story” still on the horizon, that won’t stop fans from speculating about how it will all (temporarily) end with the main saga in “Star Wars: Episode 9.” With J.J. Abrams in the pilot’s seat again following “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” replacing Colin Trevorrow who exited the project, he carries the weight on his shoulders of not just concluding a new trilogy, but nine films in the series so far.

Speaking with BBC Radio 4‘s “Today” alongside composer Michael Giacchino, Abrams discusses the balance of bringing audiences something fresh, while also tapping into the elements that made “Star Wars” so special in the first place.

READ MORE: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Trailer: Rey Becomes The Last New Hope

“I feel like we need to approach this with the same excitement that we had when we were kids, loving what these movies were,” he said. “And at the same time, we have to take them places that they haven’t gone, and that’s sort of our responsibility. It’s a strange thing – Michael’s worked on things like ‘Planet of the Apes‘, ‘Star Trek‘ and ‘Star Wars,’ and these are the things of dreams. Yet we can’t just revel in that; we have to go elsewhere.”

By now, the director is likely firmly aware of the criticism from some quarters that ‘The Force Awakens’ hewed far too closely to the original trilogy. Last year, he shared that part of that was intentional, as ‘The Force Awakens’ was tasked not just with pleasing longtime fans, but welcoming a new generation into the galaxy far, far away.

[‘The Force Awakens’] was a bridge and a kind of reminder; the audience needed to be reminded what ‘Star Wars’ is, but it needed to be established with something familiar, with a sense of where we are going to new lands, which is very much what 8 and 9 do,” Abrams said in April 2016. “The weird thing about that movie is that it had been so long since the last one. Obviously the prequels had existed in between and we wanted to, sort of, reclaim the story. So we very consciously — and I know it is derided for this — we very consciously tried to borrow familiar beats so the rest of the movie could hang on something that we knew was ‘Star Wars.’ ”

Keeping all that in mind, someone on Reddit (I know, I know, don’t @ me), claims to have spoken to Abrams and ‘Episode 9’ screenwriter Chris Terrio, who shared that the movie will nod to the prequels, perhaps even significantly.

“They said that they’re going to be brave and there will be big surprises,” the anonymous user claimed. “I got the impression that J.J. felt like he had to refresh previous ‘Star Wars’ moments for a modern audience in TFA, and now it feels like they have free reign to do what they want. Apparently they’ve had no interference from Kathleen [Kennedy] or Pablo [Hidalgo] or the Lucasfilm Story Group. 9 is also the film which unites all three trilogies and brings everything together. That’s all they would tell me.”

“I asked about elements of the [prequel trilogy] coming into ‘9’ and Chris said about how ‘9’ unites all of it. He said ‘9’ definitely makes it feel like they’re all happening in the same universe, and there would be [prequel trilogy] elements in ‘9.’ They could be visual or thematic – he didn’t overtly say that there would be returning planets or characters from the [prequel trilogy] or anything,” the Redditor added.

Frankly, it sounds like the standard soundbite anyone involved with the movie might roll out (indeed, Colin Trevorrow told ET nearly two years ago, “By the time we get to ‘Episode 9,’ I look at that movie as one movie, as three movies, as six movies, and as nine movies”) so don’t freak out about Jar Jar Binks showing up or something. Also, note:

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” opens on December 15th. [via Star Wars News Net]