Current Events > Rian Johnson Is 'Even More Proud' Of Star Wars: The Last Jedi Five Years On

(+) Yeah! (+)

s0nicfan posted...

I don't know how many times I've posted this, but he had drafts for all three movies and actively tried to coordinate with Johnson to thread plot points through the middle movie and Johnson opted to throw it all out.

Ah, sorry about that. So my next question why didn't JJ Abrams direct the 8th movie?

Doom_Art posted...

It doesn't lol

TLJ is a well-crafted movie with some of the best cinematography shots in the series that actually tried to do something different. It's a bad SW movie because any mystery or idea that TFA laid out basically got thrown into the garbage bin in this movie. There was nothing for the 9th movie to build off from, hence why I would've been very interested to see what Rian Johnson would've done or what he was actually trying to build up to.

Prestoff posted...

There was nothing for the 9th movie to build off from

???

It's pretty clear where he was going lol.

Prestoff posted...

Ah, sorry about that. So my next question why didn't JJ Abrams direct the 8th movie?

The plan was originally to have a different director for each movie. Abrams only directed 9 because Trevorrow backed out and Disney decided it was easier to hand it to one of the existing directors. The point of Abrams having a script for all three is he wanted to coordinate with those other directors to make sure there was the kind of narrative cohesion that we ended up not getting because the person in the middle, with full knowledge of what was planned for the third movie, did the opposite of all of that.

This is not going to go the way you think. Writer-director Rian Johnsons middle chapter in the Sequel Trilogy was a rich, adventurous, mythical tale continuing the stories of Rey, Kylo Ren, Finn and Poe Dameron, that also dug deep into the soul of Luke Skywalker himself,"

So they admit it it!

Still the best sequel trilogy than the OG trilogy or prequel trilogy

Theres an absurd overlap between TLJ fans and those who liked season 8 of GOT.

While Im not a massive fan of the film, its probably the best one outside of the OT so the hate it gets strikes me as odd. Especially given that it was followed up by one of the worst films Ive ever seen.

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

Nah, the sequels are better than the prequels in literally every way. It's basically embarrassing to b a prequel movie.

Lmao No

Attack of the Clones completely styles on TLJ where it counts. TLJ has cinematography while AotC has characters, script, worldbuilding, and being a far better movie than TLJ.

Other movies that TLJ vastly improves by making them look better include:
-Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
-Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice
-The Star Wars Holiday Special
-The Last Airbender

Not even a Rifftrax could make TLJ watchable. All of the above could.

Quartermuncher posted...

while AotC has characters, script, worldbuilding, and being a far better movie than TLJ.

...dude, come the fuck on

Half of the stuff what happens in TLJ is because Holdo is acting like there is no plan.

Quartermuncher posted...

Attack of the Clones completely styles on TLJ where it counts. TLJ has cinematography while AotC has characters, script, worldbuilding, and being a far better movie than TLJ.

I'm not going to respond to this as if it's serious, because it isn't. I did have a good chuckle at the part about "worldbuilding" though.

TLJ was a franchise killer. What printed money for four decades is now a lurching corpse of its former self. Kathleen Kennedy is an utter cancer. She also plans to reboot Star Wars making Leia the main character if she can get clearance. She has already pitched this.

The glorified coffee fetcher has such a pathological jealousy of Lucas and Spielberg she has on more than one occasion threatened to burn Star Wars to the ground if she doesnt get her way.

I personally dont care about Star Wars anymore because of TLJ so she can piss on it all she wants now.

Wait until you see what she did to Indiana Jones. Another beloved IP getting ready for the bonfire.

s0nicfan posted...

The plan was originally to have a different director for each movie. Abrams only directed 9 because Trevorrow backed out and Disney decided it was easier to hand it to one of the existing directors. The point of Abrams having a script for all three is he wanted to coordinate with those other directors to make sure there was the kind of narrative cohesion that we ended up not getting because the person in the middle, with full knowledge of what was planned for the third movie, did the opposite of all of that.

No, that wasn't the plan. The plan was to have JJ direct all three. That's how Steven Spielberg approached him and got him to do it.

The thing is that it looked like JJ didn't really want to and wanted to spend that time with his family. Spielberg basically had to ask JJ's wife to convince him.

Which is pretty shitty and why he left after TFA. That's when they had to get RJ and CT. RJ was given the option to follow JJ's outline, but he refused and even had JJ go back and change the ending of TFA (Luke still had the Force in the original and was training when Rey arrived)

I don't know if you can save Star Wars anymore unless you go to wacky different time periods. The TV shows seem to be doing alright but to me when I watch them I can't help but feel a pessimism because the sequel trilogy is where it leads to.

Smashingpmkns posted...

He should be. It's the only good movie in the sequel trilogy

Yes the less smelling piece of shit.

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

I'm not going to respond to this as if it's serious, because it isn't. I did have a good chuckle at the part about "worldbuilding" though.

alright fuck it Ill bite.

please explain any world building whatsoever in TLJ. Just your personal opinion on the world building, what did they include that you wanted to see or were happy seeing?

I dont like the movie at all but honestly at this point it has to be admitted he did something for some people considering people are still fucking arguing about it into infinity

The biggest problem with the ST is the weird divergence between episodes 8 and 9. I liked TLJ quite a bit, but the whiplash swinging back into episode 9 afterwards made both movies worse.

Subverting expectations isn't inherrently a bad thing. But to everyone saying TLJ gets points for at least trying "something" I heartily disagree.

KOTOR 2 is a good Star Wars deconstruction, and it pulls no punches. It goes in on the Jedi, the Sith, the Republic, the Force itself, and it pulls absolutely no punches. The game is downright scathing at times, but you know what it does? It gives solid characters to get behind. It makes arguments to get behind. It's a narrative that you actually want to engage with, one way or another. And while it's a deconstruction, it's a deconstruction that's constantly SAYING something.

TLJ doesn't do that. Everything it deconstructs is done purely to diminish its value, nothing more. Rey's backstory is thrown out, but not because it's actually saying anything about Star Wars' "destined lineage" trope; it's just to say "yeah, it's not important, dummy." Yhroqojg oit Snoke with no explanation of who he and the First Order even ARE isnt clever; it makes us feel like weve wasted our time oj abpointless sidetrack. We went into TLJ with questions, and instead of answerong, RJ just said "fuck your questions" and gave nothing else.

The grand plan of Finn, Poe, and Rose fails almost purely to be mean spirited. People are bad and will betray you, arms dealers are oppprtunistic, and trying to seize your own destiny is stupid. Blindly trust authority. Whoopie. All of the emotional highs that make Star Wars Star Wars are undermined basically just because. And regardless of Johnson's INTENT with Luke, it's obvious that the writing just doesn't pan out - it comes across as a wholesale diminishing of a character a lot of people cherish, and it doesn't do anything to replace or rectify those shattered feelings. The whole movie is a nihilistic treatise on pointlessness and meaninglessness, and whatever "realism" arguments you throw at it, that's fundamentally not what Star Wars is supposed to be.

Tl;Dr - if you're going to throw out a setup and go with the "deconstruction" route, you need to actually replace the thing you're tearing down with something meaningful. Deconstructions aren't just about tearing down the thing that people love.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

TLJ doesn't do that. Everything it deconstruction is done purely to diminish its value, nothing more. Rey's backstory is thrown out, but not because it's actually saying anything about Star Wars' "destined lineage" trope; it's just to say "yeah, it's jot important, dummy." The grand plan of Finn, Poe, and Rose fails almost purely to be mean spirited. All of the emotional highs that make Star Wars Star Wars are undermined basically just because. And regardless of Johnson's INTENT with Luke, it's obvious that the writing just doesn't pan out - it comes across as a wholesale diminishing of a character a lot of people cherish, and it doesn't do anything to replace or rectify those s***tered feelings. The whole movie is a nihilistic treatise on pointlessness and meaninglessness, and whatever "realism" arguments you throw at it, that's fundamentally not what Star Wars is supposed to be.

I feel like some of these are just spinning what happened to be negative. Like TFA copied a lot of A New Hope, but also set it up to go in a different direction, and then people were upset when it did.

They didn't throw out Rey's backstory, they solved it. And Rey's parents not mattering is so much better than her parents actually mattering, especially with the whole movie's point is along the lines of "anyone can make a change". Rey's parents abandoning her is clearly something she has baggage over, so its a good move to make her come face to face with the fact her parents were trash and abandoned her. I wouldn't consider this "subverting expectations" its just a reasonable direction for the build up to go.

Finn and Poe's grand plan was instrumental in both Finn and Poe's character arcs, and its failure is instrumental in Poe learning what it actually takes to be a leader, and Poe deciding the rebellion is worth fighting for.

Though there was nothing Star Wars as a whole could do with Luke that would leave fans happy.

Fuck Rian Johnson

Proto_Spark posted...

Finn and Poe's grand plan was instrumental in both Finn and Poe's character arcs, and its failure is instrumental in Poe learning what it actually takes to be a leader, and Poe deciding the rebellion is worth fighting for.

It was also the same arc that he already had , just done in a worse way. Also POE WAS RIGHT. The idea that you should blindly follow a leader who is a seemingly getting people killed is crazy . Using that logic, Finn was wrong to run on the FO.

Proto_Spark posted...

Though there was nothing Star Wars as a whole could do with Luke that would leave fans happy.

I see this excuse all the time, and I do not accept it as a valid defense. While it true in that various fragments of the base would be upset regardless. that does not give carte blanche approval to openly fly in the face of his entire 3-movie character arc.

The man surrendered himself, unarmed, to the most evil and dangerous people in the galaxy, because he believed so strongly in the tiny fragment of good that remained in just one of them. He conquered his rashness and anger in one moment, where he throws away his lightsaber. "I am a jedi, like my father before me." That is literally putting his darker impulses to rest. And through it all, he never loses his unwavering desire to save EVERYONE. Not just his friends, but everyone he possibly can. After ignoring everyone's warnings in ESB, and after falling for the empire's trap, nearly getting his friends killed, learning that Vader was basically exactly like him, and getting his shit hopelessly kicked in, his response is not to say "well, fuck it. I suck; better give up." He dusts himself off and keeps going.

Saying that some years later, he even CONSIDERS cold-bloodedly executing his teenage nephew in his sleep over bad things he thinks might do is patently absurd. Saying that his response to failure is to straight up leave everyone, friends and family alike, to die or be enslaved, is ridiculous. This isnt character flaw, or regression. It's straight up character assassination, apropos of nothing. And saying "well, people would be upset either way" is not a defense of character assassination.

COVxy posted...

???

It's pretty clear where he was going lol.

For a boring Rey vs. Kylo Ren story? I doubt Rian Johnson would go for something that boring, he always has to subvert something along the way hence why I'm interested what he would've done for the 9th film.

Zeeak4444 posted...

please explain any world building whatsoever in TLJ.

It didn't fuck up the universe like the prequels did, so it's okay by me, whatever it was.

cjsdowg posted...

The idea that you should blindly follow a leader who is a seemingly getting people killed is crazy .

And then Poe gets almost everyone killed.

Saying that some years later, he even CONSIDERS cold-bloodedly executing his teenage nephew in his sleep over bad things he thinks might do is patently absurd.

Luke really wasn't in a position to know he could quite possibly prevent a genocide in the original trilogy. This situation seems like a very reasonable one to have him question his morals. His failures and potential failures in the first movies mainly affected himself. This wasn't true for TLJ.

lderivedx posted...

And then Poe gets almost everyone killed.

With the information that he had, it was the right call. A leader is telling people that the plan for their very survival is hope and something about the Sun. While she let a number of people die and ships blow up already.

Note what she did is very different from saying the plan was Need to know. She acted as if there was no plan.

Ricemills posted...

some people liking TLJ for breaking SW formula. in other words, they like Star Wars that's not being a Star Wars.

are they even a fan of Star Wars if they hated all of other SW movies?

It has an 84 on metacritic. Maybe they just want to watch good movies, rather than bad movies (like the prequels).

Has it really been that long already? Fuck

Poe nearly got everyone killed because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. That's not "the right call."

Last Jedi felt like the Love and Thunder of Star Wars. Not really a movie, just a director punking us.

lderivedx posted...

Luke really wasn't in a position to know he could quite possibly prevent a genocide in the original trilogy. This situation seems like a very reasonable one to have him question his morals.

The Empire had reconstructed a planet destroying superweapon, amd it wa fully operational. The plan to destroy it was in shambles and doomed to fail (so far as he knew at the time), and he was the only person left with any capacity to stand up to the big bad bosses (no, leia doesn't count, because there'd be nobody to train her, and now the empire knew about her and would gun for her). And he threw away his weapon.

How much closer to galactic genocide and total doom do you need to get?

It's the "quick and easy path" lesson that Yoda harped on about for two movies. Luke rejected the quick and easy path, right to the end. That was his whole character arc. Nearly murdering a child over that same "quick and easy path" Is a full on undermining of the entire point of his arc.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

to stand up to the big bad bosses

He didn't blow up the station. Palpatine and Vader were irrelevant to whether the Rebel fleet succeeded.

lderivedx posted...

Poe nearly got everyone killed because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. That's not "the right call."

So that's the message? Blindly and unquestionongly follow unknown, condescending authority figures, even as they lead you into the jaws of doom, calling you a moron all the while? Because there's a nonzero chance they might be right?

Brilliant.

lderivedx posted...

He didn't blow up the station. Palpatine and Vader were irrelevant to whether the Rebel fleet succeeded.

He didn't know that. That is out of character knowledge.

Fr his position in the throne room: the shields were up far later than they were supposed to be. The fleet was getting mowed down by the superlaser. The strike te had been intercepted by the entire 501st. The fight was all but lost.

He wasn't watching what was happening on endor on screen. Lando and the rest didn't get in to blow the thing up until well into Luke getting electrocuted.

That's literally the whole point of the scene. Even with his back totally against the wall, and everything on the line, Luke chooses to do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

Blindly and unquestionongly follow unknown, condescending authority figures, even as they lead you into the jaws of doom, calling you a moron all the while?

I think he did the right thing initially. It's once he knew the plan that he fucked up.

I stg people didn't watch the same movies I did.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

So that's the message? Blindly and unquestionongly follow unknown, condescending authority figures, even as they lead you into the jaws of doom, calling you a moron all the while? Because there's a nonzero chance they might be right?

Brilliant.

that's what soldiers expected to do, yes.

but hey, they're rebels of course they would rebel :v

lderivedx posted...

I stg people didn't watch the same movies I did.

TLJ was such a clusterfuck of plot-threads and confusing motivations it hardly matters

lderivedx posted...

I think he did the right thing initially. It's once he knew the plan that he fucked up.

I stg people didn't watch the same movies I did.

He literally didn't know the plan until they were all on the escape pods.

He managed to get a glimpse of half the plan, before the whole "hope" speech. And the half that he saw was doomed to get them all killed. And when he asked for more info, instead of reassuring him, Holdo tells him to fuck off and follow orders.

Good, he should be proud, it's the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back.

Ricemills posted...

that's what soldiers expected to do, yes.

but hey, they're rebels of course they would rebel :v

And it's ridiculous. That's how soldiers end up guarding Auschwitz, or getting slaughtered with Custer at Little Bighorn.

"Blindly follow immoral or suicidal orders" is ridiculous. Pulling rank is far and away the absolute worst style of leadership in existence.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

And it's ridiculous. That's how soldiers end up guarding Auschwitz, or getting slaughtered with Custer at Little Bighorn.

"Blindly follow immoral or suicidal orders" is ridiculous. Pulling rank is far and away the absolute worst style of leadership in existence.

Finn was wrong to counter Phasma. She out ranked him and you have to do what your leaders say.

its my 2nd favorite star wars movie (fave is empire strikes back)

DarkBuster22904 posted...

He didn't know that. That is out of character knowledge.

I don't know about you, but if I'm in a room with a supercentenarian and a guy that survived polio and there's a war happening outside, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume whatever I do in that room will have no effect on the war.

The fleet was going to do how the fleet was going to do regardless of whether he succeeded in changing Vader's mind or if he chose to kill Palpatine. Palp and Vader weren't participants in the fight. Killing both of them wasn't going to stop the imperial fleet from killing his friends and it wasn't going to destroy the genocide-moon.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

He literally didn't know the plan until they were all on the escape pods.

He managed to get a glimpse of half the plan, before the whole "hope" speech. And the half that he saw was doomed to get them all killed. And when he asked for more info, instead of reassuring him, Holdo tells him to fuck off and follow orders.

he is not in the chain of command

he got demoted earlier that very day for his ignoring orders

cjsdowg posted...

Finn was wrong to counter Phasma. She out ranked him and you have to do what your leaders say.

For real, though.

And yes, the rebels/resistance ARE supposed to "rebel." They are scrappy, creative, tight knit, and value each other.

There's a reason why they're contrasted to the empire. The "blindly follow orders, you're cogs in a bigger, more imporatnt machine" attitude that literally reduces its people to Stormtroopers, whose names are NUMBERS, is uniformly portrayed as, you know, a BAD thing.

AceMos posted...

he is not in the chain of command

he got demoted earlier that very day for his ignoring orders

He was still in the chain of a command, a squad leader and a officer .

cjsdowg posted...

He was still in the chain of a command, a squad leader and a officer .

he got demoted for the fact he ignored orders and got good soldiers killed

cjsdowg posted...

He was still in the chain of a command, a squad leader and a officer .

In fact, given how few of theme there were at the time, he was likely basically 3rd in the line of command, at worst, by then. Even with his demotion.

Most of their fleets were blown up. Other squad leaders all died in the hangar. The entire high command save Holdo was killed in the meeting room (save Leia, who was out of commission). The other two commanders went down with the other two flagship.

Like.... Poe was pretty much it, by then.