"When I Was Up At Bat, I Really Swung At The Ball": Rian Johnson Stands By 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi', And His Own Trilogy Is Still Alive!
Nicola Gell. Getty Images.[Empire]
In a major new Empire interview, Rian Johnson looks back on The Last Jedi for its fifth anniversary, reflecting with a few years’ distance on his episode in the Skywalker Saga. "I’m even more proud of it five years on," he says. "When I was up at bat, I really swung at the ball." The film, he says, is not just a Star Wars movie – it’s a movie about Star Wars, and what it means to fans (himself included). "I think it’s impossible for any of us to approach Star Wars without thinking about it as a myth that we were raised with, and how that myth, that story, baked itself into us and affected us," Johnson explains. "The ultimate intent was not to strip away – the intent was to get to the basic, fundamental power of myth. And ultimately I hope the film is an affirmation of the power of the myth of Star Wars in our lives."
Half a decade has passed (!) since writer-director Rian Johnson served up something fresh, new and interesting in a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi, only for a vocal chunk of the fan base to shun him and insist that he ruined their childhoods/general lives. Read that passage above and tell me Rian Johnson "doesn't get" Star Wars.
How did Johnson respond to all the vitriol that came his way, as trolling, small-minded reviewers created one of the largest chasms between critic and audience scores (91% to 42%) in Rotten Tomatoes history? Oh you know, he just fucked around, wrote an Oscar-nominated script and revived the whodunnit genre with Knives Out.
That's why Johnson is doing rounds of press right now. He closed an insane deal with Netflix along with star Daniel Craig for $400 million to do multiple sequels to that breakout hit and is promoting the new one, Glass Onion. Talk about, uh, WINNING. Lucasfilm/Disney thought so highly of Johnson's lone Star Wars entry to date, in fact, that they signed him up for his own trilogy. On that, Johnson had this to say in another Empire article from the same upcoming issue:
"I’ve stayed close to Kathleen [Kennedy] and we get together often and talk about it…It’s just at this point a matter of schedule and when it can happen. It would break my heart if I were finished, if I couldn’t get back in that sandbox at some point."
Man it must suck to suck to be a Rian Johnson hater.
I will now spend the remainder of this post defending The Last Jedi. Buckle up.
Unfounded, common criticisms ranged from "He doesn't get Luke Skywalker as a character" to "the Canto Bight subplot was pointless" and perhaps my favorite one: "Rian Johnson just subverted expectations for the sake of subverting expectations."
First of all, The Force Awakens left Luke in self-imposed exile on an island. Johnson took more than a little inspiration from what many believe to be the best Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, by having Old Man Luke train a fledgling Jedi in Rey, like Yoda did for him once upon a time. Johnson was given the plot thread of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo betraying Luke's new Jedi Order, and had to come up with a reason why Luke would take himself out of the fight against the imperialist First Order.
What would you have rather had, nerds? Luke just saying, "Welp OK!" joining the fight to save the galaxy after five minutes of screen time and going God Mode on Force powers? Where's the dramatic potential/tension in that?
Even Mark Hamill admitted he "fundamentally disagreed" with where Johnson was taking his character at first. Guess what happened, though? Hamill came around, and by the end of the movie, Luke was pulling the most pacifist, light side Jedi badass move in galactic history by projecting himself across the stars to the raging Kylo Ren, helping the Resistance escape to fight another day.
Fun fact: In George Lucas' sequel trilogy story treatments, he conceived Luke Skywalker in late 2012 as a Colonel Kurtz type, per Lucasfilm's Phil Szostak:
So you can't say that Disney ignored Lucas' initial ideas entirely. The spirit of what he intended for Luke was very much maintained in the story Rian Johnson told.
The Canto Bight subplot wasn't pointless. Not only does it tie into the movie's whole thematic center about the concept of failure, but it also gave us a much more ground-level view of what a spark to light a fire that can burn the First Order down looks like, to quote Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron from the end (and Vice-Admiral Holdo earlier on).
We saw a new layer to Finn's character, too, as he struggles with whether to remain with this ragtag group of rebels or to cut his losses and figure out another plan. Even Benicio del Toro's DJ sheds some new light on how arms dealers sell to both sides of the war and implores him, "Live free, don't join." That whole narrative thread touched on some of the gray area between the new rebels and imps.
Finally, if you're gonna tell me that Supreme Leader Snoke getting fucking yeeted, the throne room fight, Kylo taking Snoke's spot, asking Rey to join him, initially revealing Rey's parents were nobody special, and the Holdo Maneuver wasn't the most baller-ass sequence since Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars, I don't know what to tell you. If that's too much of an "expectation undercut" to enjoy then you're straight-up lame.
Perhaps the best/coolest story decision to set up that crazy payoff: We got the ForceTime sessions with Rey and Kylo, which ultimately served as foreshadowing for their dyad reveal in The Rise of Skywalker. And oh by the way, when Luke says to Rey in that sequel, "A Jedi's weapon deserves more respect!" HE IS NOT SHITTING ON THE LAST JEDI. Luke says moments later about his infamous lightsaber toss at the top of TLJ, "I was wrong."
The greatest teacher, failure is.
JJ Abrams was put in an awful spot on an insanely tight deadline to churn out Episode IX in the wake of Carrie Fisher's untimely passing, which still stings to this day. The finale's frenetic pace paralleled its production, and obvious reshoots/ADR/last-minute changes are evident throughout. It's amazing we even got a semi-coherent film out of it all. Why Disney couldn't just be a tad more patient and give three years between films like the prior two George Lucas-led trilogies I will never understand. Oh wait, MONEY. Right.
The main sticking point from Abrams' TFA and TROS was that those movies played things too safe. Lazy, derivative callbacks. Not enough depth. You can't say Johnson's story wasn't strongly conceived and well-executed. Rian did indeed swing the shit out of that bat, and even if you for some reason didn't like The Last Jedi, you gotta respect him for that. I still don't know how you couldn't, however. For all the other praise I've heaped on it, the visuals are stunning. It's the tightest, most original story of the sequel trilogy. Mark Hamill gave the performance of his life. Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver slayed, as usual. It's a flat-out phenomenal film, and made over $1.3 billion with a "B" at the box office. So, haters…
I tend to enjoy Star Wars in all its forms, because you know, I don't hate my life enough to make myself miserable about something so awesome that's meant to make people happy. It's possible to acknowledge flaws in any given movie while also appreciating the hell out of said movie. I know that's hard to hear on the Internet these days.
Like, would I rather have seen Finn do something else in TLJ? Sure. Would I liked to have had Snoke be, say, Darth Plagueis reincarnated/cloned/etc. or have some more definitive origin story? Yup. Could one mere line of dialogue about potential spies in the Resistance further justified Holdo's decision to keep Poe Dameron in the dark about her plan to get to Crait, and feed Finn's motivation to bail? Yeah! Am I still confused as hell about what exactly was going down in that cave scene with Rey on Ahch-To, and was I surprised that she could actually swim when she fell into that pool of water despite growing up on a desert planet her whole life? YAH.
I didn't let those minor qualms — some of them aren't even qualms, just other imagined possibilities with the obvious benefit of hindsight — damper my enjoyment of what we did get.
So instead of trashing Rian Johnson, maybe recognize him as the phenomenal talent he is as a storyteller and filmmaker. Because it looks like he ain't done with Star Wars just yet! Hehehe. And who knows? Maybe Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni will let him play around in the Mandoverse. Given Johnson's prowess at directing episodes of Breaking Bad, not to mention his filmography of impressive full-length features, go ahead and doubt his artistic merits at your own peril.
Twitter @MattFitz_gerald...come at me with all your garbage Last Jedi takes