ST Rian Johnson (Director Of TLJ) Discussion Thread

KMT’s actually an American of Vietnamese descent; don’t feel bad about making that mistake, I once assumed she was of Korean descent out of my ignorance.

She almost certainly wasn’t cast to try and appeal to Chinese audiences; you want to do that, you hire an actual Chinese star.

As to Kylo and Rey being fan service...

I would agree with that for TROS... but it emphatically wasn’t the case with TLJ, and the stab at fan service treatment there in TROS was in part because it fit the audience narrative LFL told themselves, as it remains likely more of a liability in the long run than an actual fan-pleasing move.

Rey and Kylo did not exit TFA as a fan preferred couple, at all.

They were still clearly that ubiquitous “bad boy ‘ship” that every franchise has, and it wasn’t taken seriously outside of the kind of creative fan-spheres that always gravitate towards that type of highly problematic and dubiously conceived ‘ship. I mean, here on this board, the idea was rejected enough by the vast bulk of the then-healthier and more positive community that it became a discouraged speculative topic - the mods then (not me) decided it was more civil to ban threads focused on it, and some chaos resulted from what was then a vocal but clear minority experiencing the same backlash the board has now towards the idea, but no canonical back-up outside of the toxic and assault-styled interactions in TFA.

The narrative shifted after TLJ, not before it.

Before it, honestly, I think most mainstream fans were far more likely to see any other pairing as likely. Kylo was seen as the villain, and honestly that was about it. Hell, a clear plurality or majority of viewers inferred Rey was a Skywalker, and that speculation got a hell of a lot more attention and energy.

The “fan service” move after TFA would likely have been Rey Skywalker, with Finn the main romantic male lead (regardless of who it was with), and Kylo as just the villain.

But because Johnson and LFL were infatuated with Kylo for shallow reasons that mostly concerned Driver, they went with the kind of shallow, uni-directional “self-service” storyline where Rey becomes a ubiquitous, bland self-insert to crush on Kylo. Because at that point, and in the way they did it, it was never about Rey - it was always just about Kylo.

And after they made that move in TLJ, the fans they wanted and who matched their expectations coalesced into a vocal enough group for fan service in TROS to happen... while about half of TFA’s audience wound up checking out.

 

I was actually hoping Kylo would kill and replace him... but I still thought the best way to do it would be to actually tell the story around him, and do so in a way that increased the appeal of his role in the story.

And as much as we give him crud for “meta-storytelling”... here’s how I was thinking, and it’s following that concept but I think had more substance:

Snoke is a Wizard Of Oz dark sider - he has dark side power, but it’s almost entirely based on illusions and mental attacks that he relies on hyping himself up with. Maybe he was an ex-Inquisitor for Vader, adding an element of ironic revenge on his part for corrupting Vader’s grandson, but he’s only corrupted Ben with a lot of illusions and psychic attacks... so when Ben realizes this, it triggers his actual devotion to the dark side, as the very real rage and wrath powers through Snoke’s illusions, allowing Kylo to emerge as a far more powerful and sharp darkside.

See? Something like that subtly acknowledges that Snoke is a shallow copy of Palpatine... but makes it a storytelling element of substance as well as a meta comment, instead of just being a meta comment.

 

The thing that’s always perplexing to me is that for all that he seemed to want to point to the idea of “We must do something new, and go someplace new!”... it was actually a very conventional film he was making. It was a bit like he was saying: “We need to move beyond the Skywalkers as heroes!... After I’m done with them. We need to explore new facets and philosophies about the Force!... Later, of course because I don’t have time for that in my film.”

It also didn’t help that some of his shifts in the ST and overall franchise really seemed more reductive than not. It was a bit like he was trying to remove some of the space opera in some places, and genuinely thought he was elevating the story to a more mature level, when a cursory examination would show that, in general, his film was more on the juvenile side of the films released at that time - especially those films with scripts penned by Kasdan, who has a startlingly more competent conception of rank and file bad guys.

It kind of feels like a good comparison might be someone making a superhero cartoon poking fun at all the cartoon tropes they believe infect the genre... except they’re doing it in a season of a show produced by Paul Dini or Greg Weismann, where the maturity and intelligence are quite a few steps above the stereotype already.

 

...This actually is great satire. Good job, sir.

Though it is weird for me, because if I remove TLJ from his filmography... I probably would seriously say "he makes the best movies." And he is, in pretty much all those other movies, very, very smart and clever; you don't make Knives Out without being about three steps ahead of the audience (By first giving them what seems like a whodunnit, than a Columbo-style howdoyacathem, but still planting enough clues and facts in front of the audience the whodunnit quietly re-emerges.)

And to be honest... in his other movies, I genuinely do feel he has a respectful appraisal of the audience's intelligence as well... and I feel he had something very close to that when writing Luke's story in TLJ, as that's the most intelligently written part of the story in TLJ.

TLJ is an outlier in comparison to his other work, though. It's more juvenile, less critically-constructed in terms of what the rules are (even much more so than Looper, where the time travel shananigans are simply a necessary convention of the genre), and has VERY strange interpretations and characterizations compared to his other films.

In Knives Out, Ransom is a clever double subversion on the entitled bad boy... but in TLJ, there's not really any attempt to make the initial fake subversion make sense with Kylo. Similarly, the handling of Marta, her mother, and the family's politics is a lot more thought-through, resonant and consistent than it is with TLJ's treatment of Rey, Finn, and the political subtext left over from TFA. And just in terms of structure, there's a logical soundness and dramatic consistency in his other movies (even one that has a somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach to its style, like Brick) that doesn't make it through to the more Saturday Morning Cartoon storytelling of Poe's arc, Finn's arc, and the Space Chase.

Marta, in her story, is a protagonist whose reactions make sense and who commands the central role. Rey, in contrast during TLJ, is a rather characterless tool directed by writer's fiat towards illogical and emotionally void decisions as she cedes territory to Luke and Kylo.

I respect Rian Johnson... but I really don't think he respected the characters and story of TFA, nor necessarily the character and story of the other films; his Luke story is still very easily argued as out-of-character, and I think his compliment to the PT still including the somewhat condescending "for children" line shows what he thinks Star Wars's intelligence status quo is... which was bad when he was trying to be more dramatic and serious, but didn't actually elevate it, but in a lot of ways regressed it.

 

I think it's satire, but honestly, even with my years as an English teacher, the thin line between parody and satire can get blurry; sometimes it depends on how obvious the sarcasm would be in saying it.

But genuinely speaking... I don't think Rian is bad. He's very, very good most of the time. And I watch TLJ thinking it's a kind of duel between the pure talent of Rian Johnson the Director vs the worst script Rian Johnson the Writer has yet written.

Like, we've sometimes heard talk about the "Non-Star-Wars-fans TLJ fans", who supposedly don't like the rest of the franchise but did like TLJ, and while I don't think we can actually figure out anything real about them... I do think some of their speculated viewpoint is worth considering for TLJ's divisive (as opposed to wholly negative) reception.

You do not, by any means, "have" to be someone watching TLJ devoid of context or investment in the previous films and characters to still enjoy it; I'm not that infantile myself to make such an exaggerated accusation. Plenty of genuine Star Wars and and Luke fans like TLJ.

...But it could certainly help a less invested viewer to enjoy TLJ if they weren't paying attention to the previous film or taking the characters seriously, because Johnson is a skilled hand at cinematography and in getting great performances from his actors. He *is* good enough that Hamill's performance accolades deserve some shared credit with him, and unlike some critics, I *do* think the film is a spectacle visually. And *if* you weren't reading deeply into character arcs in the OT or TFA, or had a condescending "it's just blockbuster fodder for the unwashed masses" POV, the story would seem like a genuine upgrade to you.

I just don't think it can ever really get the consensus of quality if it's evaluated within the overall Saga itself in an honest fashion without double standards abounding. Too much of it is negatively impacting the story around it, or dismissing prior achievements for only modest goals for itself.

 

I would still argue that at least half of TLJ’s positive reception comes from genuine die-hard Star Wars fans, at minimum; I’ve been on this board and others long enough to see that there are no “SWFINOs” here whenever they praise the film.

But I would say that the unusual and much less invested critics who liked TLJ more than TFA, and then just kind of moved on to the next blockbuster thing and we’re basically gone within a few months from the debates probably did have a shallow and somewhat snobby view of Star Wars.

...I’d also separate the greater fans of Reylo from that group; I feel that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish... though yeah, I’d say liking it in the actual films requires more shallow, abstract, or double standard-laden views than it did to hypothesize and construct alternate reality fanfiction and art outside of it. I honestly respect Reylo fans who always stuck to their head canons; they’re probably better than what we actually got in TLJ as the foundation for TROS’s take on it.

On a somewhat different note...

We’re not going to be talking about spoilers without spoiler tags here, but I rather strongly feel like 3 out of the last 4 episodes of The Mandalorian rather firmly show that “fan-service” friendly writing *is* the healthier option for franchise construction compared to Johnsons’ disdain for it: the TV board on this forum blows up with new threads about exciting spinoff ideas and speculation for TM and the characters who return in it, the show’s reputation is only growing larger and larger, and it’s clear across social media the moves are successful in a way the ST only wishes it could have been - especially TLJ.

I’m just saying... TM is remaining something special, groundbreaking, and expansive even while doing things that long time fans predicted or hypothesized could happen... while for all TLJ garnering and critical reputation as that kind of special, groundbreaking, and expansive entry... The ST started fading after it, and continues to do so.