A/V Rian Johnson helming new Star Wars Trilogy!!

Saw this news item this week. Cool. He made a good movie he can make a good trilogy.

 

We're referring to the same one. It's not during post-production, because Ian's on set in the Exegol laboratory. A year prior is roughly October '17, which is when the Palpatine concept art is dated to. So yes, there is proof.

Edited in the link.

 

You are assuming that the interview took place during the beginning of the filming, which did not start until September 2018. Very generous, but I don't buy it, since we have Daisy Ridley's statement, which clearly stated that they were making changes in the script even up to the day they started production, and specifically referring to the major plot points in the movie and how the saga will end, which is ok since they were on a tight schedule.

Also, LOL Phil Szostak, yeah ok, I don't have as much good faith as you. And since there is no date on that drawing, I highly dispute that it was made any time prior to TLJ being released, especially since Trevorrow did not have Palpatine in his script at all. What you are trying to tell me is that between September 2017 when Trevorrow was fired and December, they had set up the whole story and drawings and everything. I just don't buy it, and that's fine, I know I am going to be labeled as a "hater" or something else so that my doubts are invalidated, but I find the notion that TROS was planned before TLJ was released completely absurd. Especially when accompanied by tweets that "prove" the critics wrong 8 months after TROS was released. Standard procedure it seems with the ST and Disney's PR. They also tried to pass the idea that Luke in TLJ was George Lucas' idea, I've seen it all during these years.

 

Filming started on August 1st, and at Pinewood too, so they started with the interior sets rather than location shoots; it's certainly possible they'd be filming Ian around September/October, especially since filming was done by February. They had a year less production time on TROS than on the other films, so they'd have had to blast through it.

Trevorrow wasn't fired in September 2017; that's just when his departure was announced. And yes, they'd certainly have got most of the story figured out by December, since Abrams handed in his script at the start of February 2018. As always on these films, the art department starts making its concepts while the script's being written, so if Abrams knew he wanted Palpatine back, they'd have started work right away. Same deal on the prequels, as borne out in the Art of books; Lucas would tell the art team he was thinking of having a new villain, or showing the Clone Wars on various planets, and they'd generate a ton of imagery while he worked on the script.

And...okay? "LOL Phil Szostak"? I don't see the need for that sort of attitude.

 

Thus my comment about critics commonly minimizing or ignoring that aspect of Luke's story. It's a lot harder to point at TROS and pretend it's showing us some radically different and better version of Luke than TLJ did (thus reinterpreting the scene as a "jab" directed at that film) when TLJ itself, by the end, has already brought the character to that point.

 

I have to admit that I have yet to find a story that goes the deconstruction route where its at the end reconstruction part sufficiently pays off all the greater, earlier, deconstruction part.

That's why TLJ doesn't work for me when it clearly does for others.

 

Just for the record, misleading click-bait headline notwithstanding, Kennedy actually just said, "This [bringing back Palpatine] has been in the blueprint for a long time. We had not landed on exactly how we might do that, but yes it's always..." Then the interviewer interrupts her and asks "Always to be in Episode IX?" and she says "Yeah." She didn't even answer the initial question about whether it had been planned since TFA. Heck, even Colin Treverrow was going to bring Palps back briefly as a hologram, so bringing Ian McDiarmid back in some capacity has been in the cards since before TLJ's release - the debate seems to have been over how and to what extent. Whether DOTF or TROS, we would have see some version of Palps in IX.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-9-palpatine-return-always-planned/

Likewise, Daisy Ridley said that Rey being a Palpatine had not always been the plan, not that bringing back Palpatine at all was a late decision. I can more easily see the former being a reaction/response to TLJ (as Terrio sort-of said) far more so than the latter.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/daisy-ridley-confirms-rey-almost-131200785.html

I personally would have preferred DOTJ to TROS, as the weird "grey Jedi" perspective from Treverrow doesn't break George's metaphysics of the Force any worse than Palps surviving death, from my point of view. And I don't think ROTJ Luke would ever have even reflexively considered striking down his nephew. But I also don't think one could get any version of a Sequel Trilogy featuring a resurgent Empire run by dark-siders without Luke having radically failed in some significant way. That's probably just part of the buy-in. Better still might have been TROS minus resurrected Palpatine. It still could have ended with Lando going all Avengers: Endgame "Portals" on the First Order, but with Rey (maybe still a Palpatine?) defeating Kylo, healing him, and stranding him on Ach-to for life as penance, showing mercy - per Pablo's pitch.

But whatever would have been best, hopefully Johnson's new films will give him a chance to explore the themes he cares about - the necessity of learning from failure; the Force belonging to everyone, not just the Jedi - without the risk of messing with legacy characters the fans have held dear for decades.

 

I think the original point here, though, isn't about whether individual people like or dislike the reconstruction...it's that it exists to begin with. The complaint was that TROS retcons TLJ by suddenly putting Luke back into his old shoes, but the fact that there is a reconstruction in TLJ (whether liked or disliked) means that TROS isn't retconning something that was already in TLJ to begin with. Luke is reconstructed by the end of TLJ, and that's where TROS picks him up from.

Which, to be honest, is a bit of a surprise, since JJ clearly missed some of TLJ's other ideas -- like Luke's sacrifice becoming a spark of hope for the galaxy, and that the Resistance was on its way to actually rendezvous with its Outer Rim allies at the end. I'm at least glad he noticed where it left Luke himself.

 

@Coherent Axe

Funny, Colin emphasized this in his DOTF script but he didn't get Luke's finalized arc at all.

So JJ got it right on character and missed out on the bigger concept.

Colin went with the bigger concept but failed on character.

 

I did not minimize anything, it's not my job to provide a solid cinematic experience that makes me connect to the characters, relate to them, understand them or at least empathize with them. And in all of that, the movie for me failed. I just disagree with you that Luke is at the point you claim he is. He doesn't show up to Kylo Ren trying to explain that he failed him and perhaps try to bring him back to the light, which he had done with his father with much less history, and which Rey did with a far less important relationship with him. And the justification that Kylo Ren finally succumbed to the dark side partially (if not almost entirely) also because of Luke, which is shown in the movie more or less, does not convince me in a million years, why should I be dishonest with myself and to you, simply because you seem to be convinced.

Different strokes for different folks, and for me nothing in that movie worked, including the so called reconstruction. So you may think I am minimizing it, but I on the other hand think that it just wasn't presented in a good manner. It's easier to dismiss critics' voices as voices of people who didn't "see" or "understand" the movie, but that's just it.... we saw it, understood it (it's really not a deep movie at all), and ultimately rejected it.

Anyway I am done with the off topic, this is exhausting I am sure for other readers. The goal posts have moved to a whole different field when somehow Kennedy's statements about the blueprint to bring back Palpatine in IX is now considered as "something that may or may not have been in the works, possibly in 7 or 8 or 9, if X and Y were to happen, provided that we went with this route that had been thought of in 2013 but also in 2015 and then explored in 2017". And all of that, from ScreenRant, a clickbait website, but I guess better than the other click bait websites which claim the opposite?

 

Nah, and it wasn't premature 3 years ago either. It was never, ever going to happen after the backlash. Purely for financial reasons. I'm speculating a bit here but the response to the TLJ (which despite many trying to deny it was a factor in the financial failure of Solo) showed that the Disney SW-policy of "forget about the old fans, they'll watch anything, we need to focus on almost entirely on getting new fans" wasn't as viable long-term as was first thought. I give lucasfilm credit for this as well, it would have been easy to look at the TLJ's box office and think "this make money . . . if we do more it make more money", but they've showed more common sense than movie studios typically do.

It's no coincidence that Disney SW post 2017 became so fan-servicey, it was an overreaction to the fan backlash. The "disgruntled and loud" segment, as you put it, has a lot more power than you think. The nature and subject matter of current SW projects demonstrate that quite clearly for mine.

NB: I don't have a strong opinion either way of wanting more Rian Johnson SW movies or not. I'm sure they'd be pretty good if they happened. Purely speculating how things seem to be standing and by any common sense measure, it is a fantasy in the near future.

 

I have many questions... If the trilogy was actually canceled three years ago, why did Rian Johnson confirm a handful of days ago it was still happening? Why didn't Lucasfilm correct him? If Solo underperformed due to TLJ backlash, why did TROS - the far more obvious target for the "loud and disgruntled" fandom - not? For that matter, how did TLJ itself not underperform if it was that widely reviled? If "forget the old fans" was the attitude, what were the classic characters even doing in the new trilogy? How does throwing the guy who made the company 1.3 billion dollars overboard because some fans complained about his story and character decisions represent "common sense" to a corporation whose primary goal is making money?

Reading TROS and the Mandalorian finale as "responses" to TLJ cheesing off a segment of the "old fans" is fine, if that's how you want to interpret them. But reading them as evidence of a company-wide effort to distance itself from a successful movie and filmmaker (while simultaneously ignoring other, far clearer evidence that no such effort is taking place) just isn't flying too well for me. As I said before, we'll know more one way or another in time.

 

TROS kinda underperformed too, if not a financial loss altogether. It was the first end-trilogy movie that made less money than the middle one. Also, Solo came out while the TLJ controversy was still all too strong. By the time TROS came out, some tempers at least might have cooled.

And I can only show myself and a few like-minded friends as examples, but I for one only went to see TROS in an "oh, let's get this over with" mood. I had zero confidence in JJ's "talents", and he did not fail to disappoint.

 

I don’t mind a long delay between an initial announcement and the eventual release of the Rian Johnson trilogy. I don’t mind announcing a project and then canceling it. What I don’t like are corporations playing games with me. If Rian Johnson wants a period to work on his own projects, that’s fine, great even. I really enjoyed Knives Out. But it does appear that after the flop of Solo and the end of the sequel trilogy that Lucasfilm has changed tactics with their projects and release schedule. Kathleen Kennedy even said as much at the last movie’s premiere.

So, if Disney/Lucasfilm knows the handwriting on the wall, that more movies written or directed by Rian Johnson are not in the offing, then tell us already. Don’t string me and the public along and definitely don’t string Rian Johnson along. The only people who gain anything from that are the clickbait writers.

 

It really feels like, to me at least, that the only reason Johnson keeps saying that the trilogy is 'still in the works' is because he doesn't want all the fans he called 'manbabies' on twitter to have the last laugh.

Given the choice I imagine he'd rather have the topic not be brought up at all in interviews. But then again those journalists got to get their 'Rian Johnson trilogy is cancelled/ still happening' headline money.

 

Thing is, Bob Iger said Solo's flop was because of its release date and marketing. And yes, fans can debate that all they like, but that's the official party line, so Solo flopping wasn't because of TLJ as far as Disney/Lucasfilm is concerned. So there's no "stringing people along"; Rian's trilogy is still on, but dependant on his schedule.

The writer who interviewed him most recently is a big fan of his, and has been speaking on Twitter about how much she enjoyed the conversation and respects Rian. She didn't do it to squeeze a clickbait headline out of him.

And if you genuinely think a filmmaker would lie about an entire trilogy of films simply because he called out some manbabies on Twitter...then that's your issue to work out.

 

To the degree that a movie that made over a billion dollars worldwide can be said to underperform, yes. It definitely made less money than TLJ. It made a hell of a lot more than Solo did, though. The problem with the theory that TLJ backlash impacted Solo's performance at the box office is that it doesn't explain why neither TROS nor TLJ itself suffered anywhere near the level that Solo did. ("Tempers cooled" doesn't seem too likely given the level of vitriol directed toward TLJ and its creators even today.)

Of course not. You went into the movie assuming you would be disappointed, and turns out you were disappointed. Not a surprising outcome. I refuse to take that kind of negativity into the theater with me - I'm in this to enjoy myself, not be disappointed.

 

Those questions are all pretty easy to answer, and looks like others have already done it for me. I said this 3 years ago as well, they're not going to come out and say the trilogy is cancelled because it wouldn't reflect well on anyone involved. It will fade away and some line about changed plans or busy schedules will be run out as the reason.

 

It's not that difficult a concept. TLJ wasn't affected because people had already seen it before realizing they didn't like it. And even then some went back for seconds just to make sure (I was one of them lol). TROS was 2 years later and things had well and truly cooled, whereas Solo was 6 months later and the hate was still in full swing. Again not really difficult questions to answer.

 

Rian Johnson's film Looper is on now, Looper is awesome. "I'm from the future. Go to China."

 

Just to make clear why I said all that: Unlike the majority(it seems), I disliked TFA greatly from the very beginning. I thought, and still do, it's an awful movie. So the ST began really sourly for me. Then TLJ happened - and it's actually the only ST movie that I partially enjoy! It has some great scenes; and many that I detest. On top of all this, these huge fights and controversies erupted. From my experience with TFA, I knew that Abrams had very little talent(unlike Johnson, ironically). And when it also became apparent suddenly Palpatine would be returning(I don't buy that was in the works from the beginning), I knew that TROS could only be a mess.

In short, I also kinda went to see TROS for the lolz. In that sense, I did have some fun with it. It was like reading Empire's End(the comic), which is also hilariously bad.

And I'm not one of those to really go about saying "I hope the Johnson trilogy doesn't happen". I don't care. If it does happen, which I really doubt, I hope his fans enjoy it. Me, I'll decide if I will see it after I see some reviews. I won't be there on the opening day.

 

I completely agree with this, why is it so hard to understand that Luke changed his mind at the end of the movie and actually tried to make things right? It's shown in the movie, he stops being his depressed self by the third act and he regains hope (not to mention he did apologize to Kylo for what he did). With that logic, if Anakin's force ghost appeared in any sequel movies where he talks about how the Dark Side is bad, one could go "this is a retcon of his character as Darth Vader, they are trying to make us forget about it"

I disagree with your assertion that TROS isn't a retcon of Rey's parents, by all means it is, it's recontextualizing information that was given before to give it a different purpose, thus, a retcon, the main thing in TLJ wasn't that REY'S PARENTS specifically were nobody, but that Rey herself "came from nothing", that was the thematic implication, which gets retconned in TROS.

And it was never implied in any way that Kylo wasn't speaking the truth, if anything it's the opposite, supposedly he saw it in the Force, just as Rey saw Kylo "not bowing to Snoke" they were both insights provided by their Force Bond, Kylo even states that deep down, Rey knew it all along, perhaps subconsciously, but didin't want to admit it.

 

The Rise of Skywalker did pretty bad at the box office, considering expectations. It was supposed to be the last film in a nine part pop culture phenomenon saga that began 42 years prior and has become undoubtedly one of the most successful franchises of all times, and yet it barely broke $1 billion in an age where many blockbusters break that barrier very easily (pre-covid anyway). If you worked for Bob Iger in 2016 right after TFA made $2 billion and told him your analysis shows the last film will make half of that, he would probably fire you on the spot. I can't even imagine how much less it would have brought in without shoehorning Palpatine in it, but that's another topic.

The Last Jedi had the worst legs in Star Wars box office history after opening very strongly. Most of the money it made was from fans who were buying tickets like crazy on pre-order after TFA, like myself and everyone I know. But, anecdotal info is not as important as actual data:

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Star-Wars-Ep-VIII-The-Last-Jedi#tab=box-office

By January 15 2018, The Last Jedi had flatlined. It literally made $594 million within the first 30 days of its release, and $25 million in the next 90 days until it came off the theaters.

Look at the same graph for The Force Awakens :

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Star-Wars-Ep-VII-The-Force-Awakens#tab=box-office

Aside from personal preferences and opinions about the sequels or other movies for that matter, it's pretty clear that the data analysts at Disney wouldn't particularly look forward to all these meetings where they had to report how TLJ and TROS are doing in the theaters.

 

Did anyone claim that it was in the works from the beginning? Of course it clearly wasn't but I was under the impression that JJ and Disney were open and honest about that and the whole "make it up as we go along" blueprint for the sequel trilogy. I would find it morbidly funny if at some stage they actually claimed that Palpatine was in the plans from the start

 

Ok, I'm calling it now - Johnson's trilogy is Star Wars' Final Fantasy XV.