ST Rian Johnson (Director Of TLJ) Discussion Thread

Now, I love both his Benoit Blanc movies, but I think there’s something that sort of explains the “anti-mystery” thing and why he might have been sort of “compelled” to apply a similar “avoid the audience predicting the ending at all costs” approach to TLJ.

Crime fiction has been dominated by juking and jiving on the audience since the early 20th century, at least; while the early generation of detective characters and procedural investigators were preoccupied by the initially straight-forward nature of deduction, the second generation naturally turned to plot twists, unreliable narrators, and high concept subversions of the formula in efforts to stand out from the old masters. Agatha Christie and Columbo are both the epitome of the “fair play whodunnit” beginning to contort itself into arguably dishonesty shapes for that effect, while one could argue that noir fiction was developed strictly for the drama of the reveal and subversions, “fair play” be damned.

Johnson is a follower of this second generation of crime fiction writers, and Knives Out and Glass Onion reflect that, though in different ways - KO mixes a Columbo “howdoyoucathem” with the whodunnit, while GO is really a satire disguising itself as a whodunnit, even to the extent of trying to convince the audience one actually clever murder within it should be classified as stupid for the sake of the satire. His other, non-mystery films are pretty much straight noirs - the mystery is gone, but the twists and reveals still remains, and are now the main attraction.

So… Johnson is someone who made his name (and now, post-TLJ, still primarily makes his name) by treating the audience as an opponent to be outfoxed.

Again, that works in crime fiction, but can only work in romantic escapism if accompanied by a desire to surprise the audience with something even more substantial than what they initially assumed - like how “Vader killed you father” becoming “Vader *is* your father” adds a lot to the story rather than just surprising people.

 

I think that holds especially true for mysteries, thrillers, and other tension-and-suspense-defined genres of fiction... though I think it also gets modified in importance, style and priorities for different genres, and can tilt more one way or another.

Comedy, for instance, works best with an ending that is surprising, but in a "punch-line" type of way, and can afford to simply have an inevitable ending. Similarly, tragedy can be defined by inevitability and avoid surprise if its doom-ful enough.

I think Johnson's shift from true mystery thriller in Knives Out to satirical comedy in Glass Onion changed the rules a bit; he could afford more inevitability and risk losing much of the surprise in GO that he'd had to compensate and conceal more in KO (thus the joke Honest Trailers made about a strong similarity between KO and GO's denouments).

...Of course, by the same token, I think he misjudged and botched TLJ by that rule; his story *does* mix inevitability and surprise, but in a purely meta-textual way that make sit non-workable. It's a meta-textual surprise that Rey's a nobody, Luke's a self-centered coward, Kylo is now the center of the film, but none of that actually flows form TFA, and the textual story frequently forsakes inevitability for surprise in a non-senseical manner.

 

Yeah, Luke’s death seems to be the only thing that naturally flows from what came before… mostly; while it’s not as obnoxiously “treacherous” as the rest of the film’s surprises, it still comes off more like it’s “inevitable” strictly because we’re in a film desperate to argue a particular style of heroic drama should be exalted over the previous type the series had.

I mean, it’s not the Space Chase, where the “rules” and characterizations are changed from scene to scene so as to create expectations the film wants to then reject and mock the audience for having. It’s not Rey and Kylo’s confusingly contradictory story where she fro some reason suddenly becomes his enabling fangirl just so he can prove her wrong, become the main villain, but still be treated as though he’s tragic and someone we should still care about, to the extent fans of TLJ can’t agree whether he was being set up for damnation or redemption, or whether he was manipulating her or if they were genuinely both mistaken. And it’s not like the Finn story, overtly trying to tar and feather the character’s “Big Deal With the Resistance” evolution from TFA and punish people for liking him by making him a lazily-written liability to the heroes.

Luke’s story isn’t deceptive to the audience like that.

…But it does still pretend that this *particular* magic trick of his must kill him, even as Snoke is doing something very similar (nigh-identical) with no ill effects to himself, Rey, or Snoke, and when we’ve never seen a Force trick kill soemone before…

…Which is why even when I watched the movie the first time, and heard John Williams cue up an obviously bittersweet, mournful tune, I knew they were killing off Luke more because they didn’t want him to be conventionally heroic or mentoring to Rey, for fear it would overshadow TLJ’s insistence on a more “restrained”/pretentious type of “inspirational and mildly mythically dishonest” heroism.

Here, I’d have to disagree; if anything, I think true penultimate works have to be urgent and accelerate the story’s race up a clear escalation and rising action for the protagonists both internally and externally… and I think that TLJ is almost singularly useless or worse when it comes to doing so for Rey and Finn, and that it’s too confused and contradictory for Kylo as well… not to mention the way it doomed the Skywalker story as well, for which TLJ’s nature as a penultimate entry is even more magnified.

People can whine about the MCU, but Infinity War undoubtedly escalated things into a clear arc for the next film, much like The Two Towers, Back To The Future II, and of course The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones did. TLJ does nothing like that, and instead decelerates and even disengages the protagonists from central roles in personal arcs to define the story (Rey and Finn) or simply sets characters up to fail no matter where they go afterwards due to circumstance (Kylo.)

I don’t think there was a way to “synthesize” follow-up to TFA and TLJ that would be a satisfying follow-up; TLJ sabotaged the heroes and villains from TFA, doomed the family from the Lucas films to an ignominious, unimpressive end, and effectively eliminated compelling internal character arcs from the story.

Whether we want to call a “Saga film” corporate or cooperative, the idea is to build on what came before, to dig deeper, and strengthen everything - not to interrupt, mock, and leave adrift the story.

Now this? I 100% agree on.

Michael Bay has made a lot of crap movies… but he also directed The Rock, arguably a must watch for fans of action films, complicated villains, and Sean Connery.

Ridely Scott is usually a guarantee of quality… but has several misses under his belt as well.

I was lucky to watch Johnson’s film Brick before I saw TLJ - I knew what Johnson was capable of at his best and worst then. And now that I’ve seen his Benoit Blanc films, I’ve seen even greater peaks… even if when I watched Looper, I couldn’t avoid seeing some familiar weak spots to TLJ.

 

I'm too cheap to do so yet and don't have Peacock, but I will.

 

This is what I mean by how I could kind of tell he was going to die more for creative philosophy reasons than narrative or character-based reasons; because the film was trying to argue that its style of drama was inherently superior to "conventional" Star Wars heroism, it was going to try and prove it/embrace its insecurity and protect it by having Luke taken off the board to reinforce it's point... but also prevent it from being overshadowed by the next film.

TLJ is deeply, fanatically convinced that Luke will be more "realistically inspiring" if the audience knows he doesn't exactly match the "legend" of his character, if he's more self-centered, and if his moment of "greatness" in TLJ is a more metaphorical one- combined, of course, with the film vehemently decrying romanticism and the idea of epic heroism, the traditional creative philosophy of Star Wars...The problem, of course, is that this is Luke Skywalker, who WAS an epically heroic character with both real substantial heroic acts and more emotionally charged metaphorical victories that are probably too idealistic for Johnson to stand.

You can tell that while Johnson wants to treat *his* Luke more seriously and consistently than the other characters, but it *his* Luke, not the already recognized one - Johnson clearly views the OT Luke as a juvenile construction that can't be believed in, as being too "flawless" and too accomplished in traditionally heroic actions for too traditionally heroic reasons. At the same time, though, Johnson knows that audiences around the world find Luke a 3-dimensional character and an awesome escapist character in spite of how he sees that's a weakness.

So TLJ has this very passionate but highly insecure drive to "prove" that a more self-centered Luke, with more banal motivations, and with less impressive victories, is more valuable to culture and art... and you can't do that if he shows up in the next film as Rey's teacher, training her to be the hero, and then leading her and others against Kylo, being a selfless hero all the way, because it would "disprove" Johnson (or maybe more accurately, the school of creative thought he's representing here) point.

So Luke dies so that Johnson can try to cement his more self-centered heroism over a more idealized version. It has nothing to do with narrative, and everything to do with style and philosophy.

The cynical, self-centered type of heroism Johnson is pushing cannot abide it's opposite's existence.

 

Yeah, I think that’s sort of what Johnson is thinking - albeit while also going out of his way to reject a more substantial redemption accomplished in a more material fashion as well, and then exalting his more “restrained” idea of a redemptive death as well.

The way his film poo-poos more overtly successful heroic acts in the narrative plays a part in why it can seem like it doesn’t fit the narrative to have Luke die here as his redemption - Han being killed while successfully compromising Starkiller Base after his own “failure” gets ignored, and any positive ramifications of that even arguably get “cancelled” by TLJ, which seems to make “death” too anemic for metaphorical redemption.

…But with Luke, doing infinitely less after a greater failure is supposed to be held up as the beacon the Galaxy needs.

I think Johnson sort of confused the issue by shifting between a rejection of romanticism with most of the cast and conflict (“rejection” here meaning something more determined and opposed than a deconstruction) while still, with Kylo and Luke, openly embracing mythic storytelling in his own style.

The narrative and thematic rules for most of the film don’t align with the narrative and the stoic rules applied to Kylo and Luke.

Case in point…

…yes, this is foreshadowing, but it’s foreshadowing the film ignores when it reveals Snoke is behind the phenomena Kylo is observing and diagnosing as fatal, making the “cost” of such powers and their associated derivations patently arbitrary.

Luke will die from the move because Johnson wants him to die, but Snoke will not because Johnson doesn’t want him to.

You can tell it’s an after-the-fact foreshadowing to the script Johnson made when he’d decided Luke should die already, and a “rule” he feels no particular reason to honor when it doesn’t connect to that decision… much like the rest of TLJ’s conflict and dialogue.