General Hux actor Domhnall Gleeson is defendingStar Wars: The Last Jedi‘sembattled humor. While The Last Jedi won’t come near to the domestic or worldwide grosses of its predecessor The Force Awakens, there’s no denying that the eighth film in the Skywalker family saga is a bona fide hit. So far, the film has earned $612 million at home and another $701 million overseas, thus bringing its total to $1.3 billion. Still, that’s $700 million less than The Force Awakens’ final global tally, leading fans and industry types to ask one simple question: Why?


While the vast majority of critics praised the film, a variety of general audiences (including some die-hard fans) reacted much differently than critics – and that may have impinged Last Jedi‘s global tally. Some fans loved the film, while others took issue with writer-director Rian Johnson’s creative decisions (ranging from Luke and Leia’s newfound Force powers to Luke’s unfortunate fate at the end of the film), so much that a petition was started to remove The Last Jedi’s events from the Star Wars canon altogether. Among the various other grievances fans had with The Last Jedi was the amount of humor found throughout. And since Gleeson is the target of one big comic interlude in the opening scene, he’s feeling free to address Episode VIII‘s humor.


In an interview with MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gleeson defended The Last Jedi‘s humor, which began with Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) annoying General Hux in a radio transmission, pretending that he can’t hear the general on the other end. And while Gleeson was fine with the humor in the film, he says he understands why fans were disappointed with it.

“If you expect it to be a certain way, and it’s not that way, you’re going to be disappointed. You can’t decide not to be disappointed. If you’re disappointed, you are. I just – it’s my opinion that it was better to change things up than remain on the same kind of tramline sort of thing. And I thought Rian [Johnson] had tremendous respect for everything that had [come] before, but he also did his own thing. And I think for a filmmaker like him, it would be foolish not to have him do his own thing.”


Essentially, Gleeson’s sentiments echo previous observations made by Johnson (and the rest of the cast), who felt he needed to do his own thing to advance the new Star Wars trilogy’s narrative without wavering from his decisions. For Gleeson, while he’s part of the lesser-disputed beefs fans have with the film, it’s great that the he’s sticking with Johnson’s overall creative decisions, even though the filmmaker has taken tremendous heat for them.


Hux, while the recipient of a knock-out blow from Kylo Ren in the third act of The Last Jedi (another instance in the film that got laughs), is presumably returning for director J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX – and hopefully in an expanded role. There’s no question he’s a memorable character in his supporting turns in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and he’s rolled with whatever changes for the character that have come his way. Whether Abrams decides to humiliate Hux again is yet to be seen, but it appears that Gleeson is willing to take any and all decisions in his stride.