Rian Johnson will live, but sadly, if he can’t make his Star Wars trilogy
Despite confusion on the Star Wars theatrical slate, Rian Johnson is still hopeful about making more stories in that world
Aux News Rian Johnson
Rian Johnson is riding high on the acclaim of his Knives Out series (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery just racked up a handful of Critics Choice Awards nominations). Benoit Blanc looms so large now that it almost makes one forget the director’s previous pop culture claim to fame, being the guy who made one of the most controversial Star Wars installments, The Last Jedi. But Johnson hasn’t forgotten, and he’s still thinking about that potential standalone trilogy he’s supposed to make.
“It wouldn’t be the end of the world for anyone” if the trilogy didn’t come to pass, Johnson tells Insider, “But I would be sad. I love the world. I love the people. I love Star Wars fans. I love the passion of how they engage in it, there’s nothing like telling a story in this world and then experiencing people truly connecting to it and letting you know that. It’s extraordinary.”
“So I’m hoping I get to do it again, but nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world actually happens,” he adds, “which, what day of the week is it?”
Given Johnson’s Knives Out hot streak—and, for better or worse, TLJ’s enduring legacy—it seems a no-brainer to hand him the reigns once again. Yet he’s one of many filmmakers (like Taika Waititi and Patty Jenkins) who has been announced on a Star Wars project, and many of those projects have since fallen to the wayside. Nothing seems guaranteed on the franchise’s theatrical side. (The television side, meanwhile, is thriving.)
Luckily, Johnson has Knives Out to keep him busy. “I want it to be in America,” he teases of the next installment. “There’s a lot of tempting things of going to—Paris or the Alps—but I feel it’s really important that these are American movies. Even with Glass Onion, it’s set overseas but it’s a group of Americans who are trapped on an island together, so bringing it back to somewhere a little closer to home I think could be a good thing for the next one.” As opposed to a galaxy far, far away.
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Last Jedi was my favorite thing from the Disney era of Star Wars, until Andor came along. I think we’ll see a Johnson trilogy, but not until the 30s.
Last Jedi was my favorite thing from the Disney era of Star Wars, until
Andor came along. I think we’ll see a Johnson trilogy, but not until the 30s.Last Jedi showed me that I was out of step with majority of today’s Star Wars fans. His was the only one of that trilogy I liked and the only other modern Star Wars I’ve liked besides that was Rogue One and Andor. For the context, I saw the first Star Wars when it came out when I was 6 years old, so I’ve been a fan for a minute.
I recognize that it’s hard to think otherwise due to the vitriol of the haters, but I think a lot more people liked Lost Jedi than is advertised. The problem is that the discourse became a poisoned well almost instantly. I’m just a bit younger than you but among my earliest memories are watching ROTJ. I watched the trilogy over and over as a kid on VHS, got the THX, read all the EU novels, etc. Last Jedi was the most joy I’ve felt with star wars since probably the New Hope theatrical re-release.
I grew up watching the original trilogy, and I thought The Last Jedi was fantastic. The concept of the hero’s moral compass swinging so far away from evil that he was making a different kind of wrong choice was such a great choice. I also really appreciated the negation of the “chosen one” as a trope. I did wish confrontation between Finn and Captain Phasma had carried a little more weight, but whatever. I get that everybody likes what they like and dislikes what they dislike, but the amount of cry-masturbating and anger directed at people who liked the movie tainted the enjoyment of Star Wars for me.
cry-masturbatingIsn’t that redundant?
We don’t all cry…
There were certainly things in TLJ that I wanted more or less of, but I loved how they played with the concept of there being some chosen one, that little kid in the broom was a quick yet impactful moment.
I totally get that! I enjoyed Force Awakens too honestly, even if I recognize the complete retread of A New Hope. Still, having that reignite the passion and take us back to the spirit of the OT, followed by how incredible Last Jedi was, really could have led to an incredible conclusion. Rise of Skywalker truly blew the entire thing up and I’m still mad about it.
Rise of Skywalker is genuinely terrible, the only SW film I watched once and will never watch again. Jedi and Awakens I enjoyed well enough, but I’m not super excited for another trilogy.
Yes ROS took a giant shit on the other 2, it was just soo bad. And a complete cop out with the Palpatine being back and everything else. It’s like Abrahms had NO idea where to go after TLJ.
But they explained exactly how Palpatine returned: somehow!
I would argue both of them took steaming dumps all over Star Wars.
I think it only showed you that you were out of step with the really loud Star Wars fans. Not the majority.
I consider(ed) myself a big Star Wars nerd, and I think most the movies, even the ones like Solo, had something going for them.
It’s not that I feel out of touch with people liking or disliking a movie, it was the toxicity that came with it.
Yeah I think I was 8, and I agree with you completely. I realized halfway through that he was deliberately destroying tropes left, right and center…but I still enjoyed it and I was excited to see next how someone could pick up the pieces of the franchise and move it forward. Then we got The Reversal of Skywalker…….. 🙁
You gotta realize they’re vocal but a minority. Most fans like TLJ. It’s plainly on IMDb reviews.
TLJ was great and fun and understood SW. Andor was boring and had nothing that makes SW appealing in it.
“Signing long-term deals with the competition is just my way of getting closer to Star Wars”
I mean, making a slew of highly successful (commercially and critically) movies is a pretty solid way of convincing a studio you can make commercially and critically successful movies for them. Disney obviously got really squirrelly because of Last Jedi’s reception and in Hollywood you’re only as good as the last movie you made; a post-Knives Out Johnson is way more appealing than a post-Jedi Johnson.
He’s only made 6 movies. Not a slew.
Jerry: Six is a pretty big number, for movies. It’s a slew.George: Not a slew.Jerry: How’s that not a slew? What consists of a slew?George: Eh…ten. You need double digits.(Kramer enters, audience goes wild)Jerry: Kramer, is six a slew?Kramer: You need double digits for a slew. Anything up til that’s a grip.George: Thank you!Jerry (goes to the cabinet for cereal): Still think it’s a slew.
Presumably the idea is to have made a slew of successful movies by the time Disney hires him back.
Everyone needs a dream to follow.
He loves Star Wars fans?! Ok, now we know he’s BS-ing!
Nah, he is pretty calm about proving haters wrong lol
“For G_d’s sake . . . LET HIM MAKE A STAR WAR!!!”
Fuck Andor, Star Wars desperately needs Rian’s trademark cringeworthy humour and moronic social commentary!
He’s a pretty great director and I’ve got a lot of faith in him making a good star wars movie, assuming he doesn’t have to play in existing continuity. Rian clearly doesn’t do well when forced to iterate on existing characters, but shines when he makes something new.
I hope that the critical success of Andor season 1, and hopefully the economic success of Andor season 2 paves the way back for RJ. Andor shows you can successfully carve out new storytelling niches in a storied IP franchise. Its not a zero sum game. Star Wars with both Mando and Ando is better than Star Wars with either one.
If not for Knives Out and Netflix subsequently giving him, Ram Bergman and Daniel Craig a fat sack of cash, he might be working on these movies already. I said it on io9 but the movie was a clear financial and creative success and if you want to point at a bigger inflection point for the franchise, there’s TROS and Solo.He and Filoni are still close. I think Johnson had an open invitation to direct an episode of Mando between Glass Onion and the next Knives Out film if his schedule allowed. So I have no reason to doubt Johnson when he says he still talks to Kathleen Kennedy and all of that.
As evidenced by the sacking of Trevorrow (feel how one may about him), I think Disney got squirrelly enough despite the general success of Last Jedi. The anti contingent was just vocal enough to spike the well. I think Johnson was better off doing his own thing and letting both the fans and the studio cool down.
People really want to hone in on the directors of these movies when it comes to blame, but studio interference/interaction was clearly a larger contributing factor.
Not delaying tRoS after the death of Fisher was just… What was the hurry?
Rise of Skywalker was so very rushed. Such a tonedeaf move; I think most fans and non-fans were exhausted by yearly Star Wars movies, and delaying Skywalker a year or two to “get it right” might’ve been a really welcome move.
Solo didn’t make much money at all, but even Episodes 7-9 had declining box office returns with rising budgets – they all made a lot of money, but they were way less profitable than the original trilogy or even the prequels (also the prequels were Lucas’ pet project, so he could lose whatever he wanted on them). I’m sure the folks at Disney and LucasFilm are anxious about the box office potential of Star Wars, especially when the streaming series are popular and well regarded .If the new Indiana Jones doesn’t set the world on fire I wouldn’t be surprised if LucasFilm went to an all-streaming model.
I mean, it might help if some of them looked a little bit at the product they put out. Of the five theatrical movies Disney put out, we could argue if TLJ or Rogue One is the best of them*, but only R1 is anywhere close to universally respected- not even loved.The sequels were just a string of lazy and/or bizarre decisions on the story front- that’s why the box office declined. They kept making movies people just didn’t like that much.*For the record, I’d go with R1. I don’t care much for TLJ, because while I find it ambitious, most of its swings don’t connect for me.
I doubt the shortcomings of the sequel trilogy had much to do with a lack of corporate oversight or quality control – the movies were carefully designed to be repetitive and play the hits. George Lucas didn’t necessarily make good Star Wars movies, but he was a rich weirdo who would have made an entire trilogy about midichlorians. It’s a silly idea, but that’s exactly the kind of oddball sensibility that Disney avoided in the sequels. But really the quality of the movies is a secondary thing – Star Wars is part of the tentpole economy that runs Hollywood, and it’s possible that someone looked at the books and said, “Do we really want to sink another billion dollars into this franchise?”
Sorry, but there is no one on earth that can convince me the sequel trilogy was carefully planned when each subsequent movie does absolutely everything it can to invalidate the movie that precedes it (and that includes TFA, which bends over backwards to undo all the gains our heroes achieve in Return of the Jedi).An outline scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin would have had more coherence than those three films ended up with.
I should have clarified – narrative coherence and originality weren’t the point of the sequel trilogy. Those movies were corporate product, so the executives responsible for them absolutely fussed over the results. But there absolutely wasn’t an overarching artistic or narrative vision – that isn’t how these things work. (Even the narrative coherence of the MCU is just a matter of fine-tuning the character lists in movies with identical structures.)
The funny thing is of the new triology of Star Wars movies, the one I remember least is The Last Jedi lol. I really really like TFA, YES I know it’s a rehash of A New Hope, but compared to the prequeals, I am 42 so I was old enough for the OT to be childhood movies, TFA FELT like a Star Wars movie more so than the prequels. Yes it rehashes ANH, but leaning heavily into practical effects as much as possible really scratched that OT Star Wars itch for me. And frankly the last of them The Rise of Skywalker SHIT on the other 2, like a hot runny shit. Rey being Palpatines daughter, Palpatine being back, Snoke being a failed clone, was such a huge cop out.
If the new Indiana Jones doesn’t set the world on fireAs much as I love Mangold and PWB, this feels more like a “when” than an “if.”
Lol no. 7-9 domestically did better than 1-6 and we’re as profitable as the same.
In non-adjusted dollars.
When you correct for inflation, A New Hope is the second-biggest film of all time. It’s sold nearly twice as many tickets as TFA.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross_adjusted/?adjust_gross_to=2019
If the new Indiana Jones doesn’t set the world on fire I wouldn’t be surprised if LucasFilm went to an all-streaming model
But the returns on streaming series are significantly lower to non-existent compared to films. It makes no sense that they would turn their nose up at “only” a few hundred million dollars at the box office, while making next to nothing on the TV shows.
Viewed on its own merits, TLJ was a huge financial success, making over $1.3 billion worldwide. The problem is, it still looks like a significant disappointment compared to TFA, which raked in more than $2 billion globally. It’s entirely understandable that Disney’s powers that be would see a sequel that dropped a massive 35% relative to its predecessor and said “let’s not make any more like that.” Solo’s box office flop immediately after TLJ’s run helped make the case that fans were turned off from the franchise by Johnson’s entry (whether a legitimate factor or not, it could certainly be viewed that way), so I suspect Disney still isn’t sure whether it actually wants more Rian Johnson Star Wars or not.
At the time TFA came out, there hadn’t been a real Star Wars film since 2005. By the time The Last Jedi came out, both TFA and Rogue One had come out, with Solo hot on its heels.
TFA’s only real competition was Mockingjay Part II and Spectre, with a whole bunch of adult fare not necessarily competing for the same dollar. Instead of The Good Dinosaur, TLJ had to contend with Coco, Wonder, Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League and the surprise hits The Greatest Showman and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.Its second weekend included Christmas Eve, when nobody is going to the movies.
Sure, I understand all that, but I don’t know that Disney’s shareholders are that inclined to see much beyond the bottom line, and primarily noting that ‘Johnson made us $700 million less than Abrams did.” If the Disney brass were genuinely interested in looking past TLJ’s box office result, we likely wouldn’t be reading a Johnson interview from a Knives Out 2 release.
They have zero interest in looking past the bottom line, but it’s also important not to think that the executives are hung up on which director should do the next theatrical Star Wars movie. Star Wars movies are ungodly expensive, and generating a billion dollars on a half-billion dollar budget isn’t that great of an investment, especially when the franchise is doing well on Disney+. It would be a pleasant surprise if they announce another theatrical release, but I’m not holding my breath.
First movies of a Star War trilogy (which in TPM and TFA’s cases, were after a long gap of no movies) always do better than the sequels. TLJ’s drop-off was normal in SW terms.
“Its second weekend included Christmas Eve, when nobody is going to the movies.”You don’t hang out with Jews much, do you? 😛
I said Christmas Eve.
“Solo’s box office flop immediately after TLJ’s run helped make the case that fans were turned off from the franchise by Johnson’s entry (whether a legitimate factor or not, it could certainly be viewed that way)…”I mean, I guess it can be viewed that way, assuming your trying to convince yourself of something after the fact. But what’s more likely:1) Solo failed because TLJ was so bad that it irrevocably tainted the franchise, or…2) Solo failed because it was a prequel side story whose production was famously troubled, featuring a popular character but not the actor who made the role so iconic in the first place?
I think Solo looks worse because of the success Rogue One had. It also had a troubled production (not as bad, but still needing another director to step in and save the project) and it didn’t even have familiar characters like Han, Chewie or Lando as a hook. It managed more than a billion dollars in ticket sales despite that, which probably had to be viewed as the low water mark for the Solo flick prior to release. Since Rogue One thrived as a stand-alone film with a challenging production, some looked for excuses elsewhere to explain Solo’s demise (personally, I think the date was the biggest factor – coming out between Infinity War and Incredibles 2/Jurassic World was a massive risk.)
Lol there was a massive drop-off from ANH with ESB, and with AOTC after TPM. Disney should understand how the trilogy BO formula works for Star Wars.
Tbf it’s the same story for both previous trilogies
Hopefully he will make his mobie and then we can win the star war.
There is not a snowballs chance in hell he ever makes another SW movie, no matter what bs words may escape his lips. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world for anyone” if the trilogy didn’t come to pass, Johnson tells Insider, “But I would be sad. I love the world. I love the people. I love Star Wars fans. I love the passion of how they engage in it, there’s nothing like telling a story in this world and then experiencing people truly connecting to it and letting you know that. It’s extraordinary.” If you cannot read between the lines of what he is saying here then I feel really bad for you.
Rian Johnson will live, but sadly, if he can’t make his Star Wars trilogyEnglish is my second language: Can somebody explain that title to me? It’s sad that Rian Johnson will live only if he can make a movie trilogy?
Rian Johnson will live if he can’t make his Star Wars trilogy. But he’ll be sad.
Ah thank you!
It is a very awkwardly constructed sentence. Even a native English speaker might trip over it, especially because the words “but sadly” coming after a comma would often suggest a new clause. (“Rian Johnson will live, but sadly has decided to stop making movies.”)
Another near-phrasing would be “Rian Johnson will live, sadly, if he can’t make his Star Wars trilogy,” which wishes more death on the man than I think is justified.Or it could just be “butt sadly”.
I don’t understand his take on Star Wars. I don’t think he gets it. I understand the need to mov star Wars beyond its typical convention, but I think there are people already doing that. Dave Filloni, Tony Gilory, have proven their ability to grow the franchise beyond what is has been (a corporate cash cow for product licensing and nerd culture)The sequel trilogy was a mess. The Last Jedi being the least bad of the sequel trilogy is a low bar to clear and by no means a reason to spin out yet another take on the larger ethos of the franchise narrative, let alone one that takes into consideration Rian Johnson’s storytelling style. Same goes for Tarantino, or any other director with a well-established aesthetic. As limiting as I understand it is, when you’re dealing with a sprawling universe of well defined characters and interconnecting, broad arcs, the idea of being a ‘director’ on these types of films (this relates to the MCU as well, and is also why the DCU is such a mess) is limiting in the traditional sense. Directors need limitations that they’ll have to accept and depend on the nuance of their craft and vision showing up in less broadly defined ways. Its scene work, not production design. Pacing, less spectacle. Exploration not, “lets make another death star, but this time bigger” 🙄 (who said “yes” to that?)Gilroy gets, that Filoni gets that. I don’t know if Johnsons style is small enough to show up within the context of the broader, consistent ethos of the current Start Wars universe. I think it may be the same reason Jenkins may have run into conflict with Rogue Squadron. There are so many other individuals that have to necessarily ‘touch’ the work of a star wars film in order to keep things consistent that if you’re the sort of director that wants to “put their stamp on the Star Wars universe” its likely not going to go well.
I will be sad if he does make his trilogy
Maybe a typo but a pro writer should know the “taking the reins” as in controlling the horse is a different word than a monarch who “reigns”.Here, I made this up to help you remember:The King did reign, the reins of his horse clasped sovereignly in his hand, in the rain.