Movies should challenge fans not placate them, says Rian Johnson. The Star Wars: The Last Jedi director is enjoying ample box office success with his latest offering, the star-studded murder-mystery, Knives Out.
Prior to becoming widely known for his foray into the Star Wars franchise, Johnson attracted no small amount of attention with his 2005 effort, Brick. While the film made it clear that Johnson was a filmmaker who had a bright future ahead of him, it wasn’t until the arrival of Looper, some 7 years later, that audiences both niche and mainstream could agree on Johnson’s status a director who truly had a handle on his own brand of original filmmaking. Looper starred Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis, in what ending up being a highly unique take on the concept of time-travel. The film brought in over $176 million on an estimated $30 million budget, and set Johnson up as the front-runner to take on the massive responsibility of the then unnamed second film in the new Star Wars trilogy. Though the Last Jedi was divisive in many respects, many also hail it as one of the best Star Wars films of all time.
Far from failing to deliver a Star Wars film that fans could truly sink their teeth into, many expected (and hoped) that Johnson would be the one to direct what we now know to be The Rise of Skywalker. Instead, The Force Awakens director, J.J. Abrams returned, but Johnson certainly isn’t finished with the franchise just yet. A new trilogy is in the works from The Last Jedi director, and in a new interview with Radio.com, Johnson revealed just how he felt about the substantial weight of taking on something as deeply iconic as a Star Wars project. Said the filmmaker:
“I think [it’s] the necessary ingredient for something like this. You have to deeply, deeply, deeply love it and care about it and want to honor it and do right by it.”
The entire interview can be viewed below, but with regards to catering to fandoms and giving the die-hards what they want to see, however, Johnson was clear that fans can’t always get what they want:
“I think approaching any creative process with that or anything with that second thing you said [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result. Even my experience as a fan, you know if I’m coming into something, even if it’s something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it’s like ‘oh, okay,’ it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won’t really think about it afterwards, but that’s not really going to satisfy me...I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater. I think what you want from a movie guides, inevitably, how you go about making them.”
By making a statement such as this, Johnson is undoubtedly opening himself up to criticism by some of the more rigid Star Wars fans out there. That being said, it’s well worth recalling that the man who started it all, George Lucas, had a very similar attitude and viewpoint. While Lucas may have not come out and directly said as much during the time that he was involved with the franchise, a strong case could be made that the Star Wars creator always did exactly what he wanted, regardless of whether or not it was in line with what fans wanted to see and that the franchise has (mostly) been all the better for it.
It will absolutely be interesting to see what occurs with this new trilogy that Johnson is involved with. More than anything, however, it’s important to acknowledge that of all those who have been presented with the honour of creating a Star Wars film, Johnson could very well be the filmmaker most similar to Lucas in attitude, dedication and style. Take from that what you will, but it could mean that the future of Star Wars will be more Rian Johnson influenced that anyone could have predicted.
Source: Radio.com
