Star Wars: The Last Jedi shunned obscure franchise tradition

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was unlike any other Star Wars movie before it. Director Rian Johnson wanted to establish new traditions in the franchise, and many of those have been chronicled, except one that stealthily escaped our attention until now.

Prior to The Last Jedi, every Star Wars movie (excluding Rogue One) featured at least one inclusion of the “Wilhelm scream.” If you are unfamiliar with the Wilhelm scream, it is a stock audio scream first used in the 1951 western Distant Drums, and was subsequently included in hundreds of movies across six decades. It’s been used in films like Indiana Jones, Toy Story and Reservoir Dogs. Chances are if you’ve seen a movie, you’ve heard the Wilhelm scream.

George Lucas included the stock audio in all six Star Wars movies he directed and J.J. Abrams continued the tradition by including it in The Force Awakens. But Johnson broke the tradition in The Last Jedi.

The change isn’t as polarizing as the Leia space scene or Luke’s astral projection, but it was an extra step Johnson took to start fresh with the Star Wars franchise. Some people are okay with that while others aren’t, and those people will likely be upset that this little Easter egg was removed from the Star Wars movies.