ST Rian Johnson (Director Of TLJ) Discussion Thread

For my first post in this particular thread, let me start by saying that I don’t have any problem with Rian Johnson the Director for TLJ. He did a great job there, and to be honest, I trust the man overall enough that I still want to see his own Star Wars Trilogy.

But I do feel like Rian Johnson the writer had a very bad day and maybe showed a huge weakness he has when working outside his comfort zone and has too much on his own plate - he tried hammering the characters and storyline elements of TFA into his usual formula, which wound up working or very badly, because he was aligning Kylo Ren with his preferred “angsty Byronic anti-hero” lead archetype, and thus misplaced Finn *and* Rey while trying to pound that square peg into the wrong round hole.

Make no mistake: there were major vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the setup left by TFA by Abrams and Kasdan... But there were also some very significant strengths that Johnson undercut and damaged, and several weaknesses he didn’t actually address, and in fact exacerbated as a writer.

Rey had *limited* options for what her parentage could be and still fit into the story, and the Skywalkers were kind of screwed with Kylo as the only grandkid of Anakin, and everyone could tell what the conventional story for TFA’s sequel would have likely been. Johnson reacted against that... but provided very little to compensate for the clear strength of those maneuvers, and redirected the series from being “The Adventures of Rey and Finn” into “The Adventures of The Guy Who Could Be Ben Solo! and also his waifu, and maybe that ex-Stormtrooper dude....”

“...But right after I pause this trilogy at its most critical point for the overwrought and melodramatic epilogue to Luke Skywalker’s story first, then kill him off, too.”

As a writer, he wasted Luke’s screentime with Rey, wasted Finn’s final confrontation with Phasma, stalled Kylo’s “Villain's Journey,” and created the poisonous Reylo story that wound up derailing Rey’s character, even if he was trying to reject itbat the end, because he had to say it was possible first. He also managed to so defang the First Order that Hux became a joke and they were pathetic Saturday Morning cartoon villains who’s incompetence was only matched by a Resistance so stupid that Johnson had them acting like the fictional lemming even as he tried to emphasize them as Rebels with a literal renaming.

The best moves he made for the overall Sequel Trilogy was in killing off Snoke, and in casting KMT... but he also sabotaged his own efforts because Kylo didn’t become a more imposing villain and Rose wound up being wasted by a bad storyline.

Having said all that... TROS screwing up even more at times is its own dang fault. It ignored the setup for Kylo as the overall villain, totally ignored Rose, and wound up codifying the worst parts of Reylo and ignoring Johnson’s ending to it.

But some of TROS’s issues were created by seeing nothing but salted earth in every direction because of TFA limiting the farmable land and TLJ picking the most infertile spot for planting, and because Johnson planted a poison fruit called Reylo in the garden.

 

Rian Johnson had to go directly against the grain and contradict the events and intuitive emotional payoff of TFA to establish the possibility for Reylo as something LFL would actually look at for his story, when TFA most emphatically *did not* tell that kind of story; if anything TFA salted the earth for the possibility with the things Kylo did to Rey, and the only moment that could be seen as even vaguely pro-reylo for Rey (her reaction to seeing Kylo's face) is both highly dubious in that regard,a nd takes place before he does all the things that make her rightly declare him a monster. TLJ was the first film to actually try and crowbar in a pro-Kylo view for Rey. TFA also, coincidentally, plays much more as a setup for a FinnRey story, if we're using "shipper" designations here.

He also ensured that the type of Reylo that the ST went with was the poisonous and abusive subplot that it became because of his lax perusal of how Rey would view Kylo from his pro-Kylo perspective, and the flaws and issues that plague the relationship in TROS are entirely the result of *his* ideas about Rey, Kylo, and how he thought they would naturally interact. Reylo didn't have to be abusive, or dependent on shallow writing for both characters... but Johnson so ignored what had happened to Rey and how she would likely to react, and based her attraction to "Ben" on so little, and expanded so little on what Kylo/Ben's character was, that there was no basis for why she would be attracted to this violent and vile monster, but he made it happen anyway. Whether he wanted to eventually have it rejected by Rey or not doesn't forestall the fact he created it in the first place, largely from whole cloth.

Reylo shippers existed since TFA because all that shippers need to get started is an attractive pair of actors and enough like-minded individuals to speculate for fun in that direction. there's nothing wrong with that aspect of fandom when its under control. But there's also nothing wrong with noting that they had no "canon" foundation for their ship until TLJ introduced it, and introduced it in a cancerous form.

 

Let me be clear about this: I do not intend to be passive aggressive about Reylo fans. I want to be actively aggressive against what the ST’s Reylo storyline became, which is trash, but not towards the first fans to postulate about the idea for fun, or those who joined them as time went on. I was identifying what I believed was the most common denominator for *all* ‘shipping before it becomes canon, the process shared not just by Reylo and FinnRey, but also by those fans who ship Kylo and Hux or who even ship characters in Star Wars with characters from other franchises. I do not intend to be sexist, and in fact am a guy who would argue that TLJ wound up being sexist (and leaning in a misogynist sense rather than a misandrist sense, for the record)... but I will confess that since I am a *guy,* I can’t claim authority there, and can only offer up my arguments.

Having said all that...

I believe we both have seen the argument of “bridal carry” vs “monster carry,” so we both know what the counterargument against bridal carry is and how that argument plays out. I’m glad that we both know when Abrams called the character Driver was playing a “prince”... and thus the scene it took place in

But we also both know that Rey was unconscious and an unwilling object of the carry, and we also both know that the scene that Abrams dropped the “prince” line on in commentary is followed by a torture scene and a series of further crimes which ends with Rey declaring Kylo “a monster!” and crying over the loss of one friend and the near certain death of another friend.

The characters *do* have a dynamic on screen in TFA. It’s an antagonistic and violent one of conflict, with 100% well earned and righteous hostility alone on Rey’s side. And Rey’s side of the dynamic is what matters here. Kylo is a villain; villains naturally experience base desires and lusts, so him being interested in Rey means nothing forthe Reylo ideas purpose, because it takes two characters to form a romantic relationship. Without it, it’s just stalker behavior... and it’s no coincidence that the best verb for Kylo following after Rey and Finn with nefarious intentions at the end of TFA is... “stalk.”

TFA was simply not a Reylo film when it was made... and trying to configure it as such in hindsight is driving the ‘ship right into a tsunami of the very unfortunate implications that it can’t really address int he other two films.

I’ll restate that I was identifying what I usually see as the most common denominator in ‘shipping pre-canonization. I could be wrong there... but I need to see a more convincing argument that the more beneficial and fruitful ‘shipping catalysts of chemistry and foreshadowing were in TFA. As long as the only real beneficial ‘shipping catalyst, outside of looks, was “because enemy to lover stories are a thing and that would be cool,” I’m still going to point out that it was an outlier interpretation after TFA... and was born far more from TLJ.

Arguing that there is nothing in TLJ that showed there “had” to be a romance between Rey and Kylo is missing the point of my argument: TLJ’s mistake and cancerous addition to the ST, and the fatal flaw it inserted that wound up sabotaging the Reylo story of the ST into trash, was arguing that Reylo could happen - while *these* were the facts, and with nothing else to counteract them:

- Everything Kylo does or has done towards Rey is dangerous, violent, manipulative, or callous towards her safety.
- The severity of Kylo’s crimes against Rey needs to be restated, because they’re extraordinarily invasive, painful, and traumatizing; to ignore the psychological impact of them is a mistake all it’s own.
- Everything Rey *knows* about Kylo is evil or vile; she’s not even privy to the scenes the audience witnesses of Kylo at his most conflicted.
- Even everything Rey learns about Kylo in TLJ is a net liability towards her being sympathetic towards him; for all the sympathy points his sense of betrayal at Luke thinking about killing him brings... its countered by the way the films seem to have him confirm he murdered the other students right afterwards. (Yes, we now have the white washing in the comics to identify... but Rey never learned any of that.)
- Neither Rey nor Kylo know each other well enough to tell that Kylo wants to stay in the dark side and embrace tyranny, while Rey.. doesn’t. That is a pathetically low bar to clear for characters’ understanding each other... and TLJ has them both fail to clear it.

...And yet TLJ is the film arguing that, even with all that and only that, Rey could *definitely* be susceptible to whatever pathetic equivalent Kylo has to “charms.”

TFA *did not * create this hypothesis that Rey could be attracted to Kylo. If anything it acted against it...

Abrams is totally at fault for allowing it to take over TROS is totally his fault.

But the idea it could happen lays at Johnson’s feet.

Oh no, I totally thought they planned to redeem Kylo, even when I was a Rey Skywalker theorist... in fact, especially, since a “two point swing” was the best way I saw to have the Skywalker legacy swing away from the damage Kylo’s fall had caused.

The fact it was a cruddy redemption that assumed far more audience sympathy for Kylo/Ben and refused to actually developed or explain either side of the character to a credible extent? That’s on both Abrams and Johnson. Abrams basically painted Kylo into the most loathsome corner he could and only barely hinted that Ben could exist... then Johnson chose to portray that loathsome scum as being sympathetic to Rey and didn’t expand on his motivations and acted as though Kylo/Ben didn’t need any such expansion... then Abrams came in, recognized he wasn’t sympathetic enough, but put a mere bandaid on the gaping wound, exposing the flaws in the entire setup.

Again... please note that “I feel it too” is during a torture scene. Someone can want to read romanctin overtures into that, but it’s a bad, bad place to go looking for it, like the rest of TFA. Seeing it a story a fruitful foundation was a bad decision on Johnson’s part and exacerbated the weaknesses in his writing.

Though also again, Abrams could have left the door shut, especially since the door seemed to have been built only so it could be shut.

But I’d argue TLJ probably damaged Rey enough thanks to its teasing of Reylo and rejection of Rey Related that LFL thought they needed it to make her story worthwhile. Rian Johnson sabotaged the main heroine in the second film, and no one at LFL had the will to really fix her.