Based on the bees-in-the-brain reactions to last night’s premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (or at least the first half of it), the word is that J.J. Abrams hasn’t so much dumbed it down as fanned it down — i.e., “course-corrected” some of Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi inclinations in order to appease old-school loyalists.

“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson said in 12.13 Radio.com interview. “What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with The Empire Strikes Back.

“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized…I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater.”