LOS ANGELES - Having made one Star Wars film and an enormously successful one at that, you would think director J.J. Abrams had it all figured out for his second go, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker.

But as Han Solo would say, "that's not how the Force works" - and Abrams tells The Straits Times that while he had a rough plan for the film - the third in the trilogy he launched with his 2015 movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens - it was never cut and dried, especially as he had handed over the story to writer-director Rian Johnson for the second instalment, The Last Jedi (2017).