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yotsuben
@yotsuben
(also known as "a mild defense rian johnson and a gentle ribbing of jj abrams" OR a collection of random thoughts about star wars, tlj, stories, and a hefty pile of excerpts from a podcast rian johnson was on one time)

i often see folks misconstruing things about how the sequel trilogy was made. some questions asked are fairly reasonable, like "why wasn't the star wars sequel trilogy all planned out in advance?" or "why did rian johnson do things so differently from jj abrams?" and others are more inane like "why did ruin johnson throw away my snoke theory???"

rian johnson is a master of giving PR-friendly answers while also saying something relatively genuine. you can see this in a lot of interviews he does, such as when anyone asks "did it suck to deal with the backlash to TLJ?" and he responds with stuff like "those folks don't get Star Wars and are lame, the majority of the fans I meet are great," etc etc.

a linked quote from rian johnson's new yorker interview

this also means you can usually get real answers out of him, unlike jj abrams, who also often gives real answers but (imo) reveals a lack of substance. that's not quite why i'm here, this is honestly kind of a messy post. i'm kinda getting into the timeline of the disney sequel trilogy production and the goofiness that cropped up along the way.

anyway. long post ahead.


kylo ren
THE FORCE AWAKENS
(SO YOU'RE MAKING A NEW STAR WARS TRILOGY OH GOD WHAT DO YOU DO)

As you probably know, in October 2012, Disney announced the Lucasfilm acquisition. Prior to this announcement they had already been planning a new film trilogy, with Michael Arndt writing the script. He reportedly struggled with completing it, and with six months to go until filming, Lawrence Kasdan and JJ Abrams took over and re-wrote it, publicly stating the script was finished in January 2014. The movie came out December 2015, roughly two years later, but again there were reports of things changing during filming (such as Oscar Isaac's character Poe Dameron originally dying until he expressed concern about this fact).

Regardless of what you think about the final product, the movie was a lot of "laying the tracks as the train is running" type stuff. Then (and once again!) Disney CEO Bob Iger had set strict deadlines for the films to come out, and he wasn't budging (this would rear its head several times over the next few years as films were retooled quickly to meet encroaching deadlines). However, one of the upcoming films wasn't rushed, wasn't retooled, re-cast, or given a new director at the last minute due to Kasdan being weirdly annoyed by seeing too much improv in his goofy Han Solo script:

tlj crait
THE LAST JEDI
(HAHA YUP IT'S THIS ONE, SUCKERS, AND IT RULES)

Ok, it's no secret if you know me that I'm a fan of TLJ. Also, if you've been on the internet for any amount of time, you also know that talking about it is a fucking nightmare because everyone and their little brother comes out of the woodwork to voice an opinion on it. Many of those opinions are bad racist and sexist shitheads. If you dislike the movie for normal reasons like you think Canto Bight is too long or meandering, that's totally fine. Anyway, that's not that important. I wanna talk about the film's production and how that affects perceptions and the final results.

tlj snoke's throne room behind the scenes image

The following audio clips are all from the SlashFilm podcast episode 451 in which they speak to Johnson about The Last Jedi, it's production, and the initial fan reaction to it. Also listen, you're not me. You probably don't want to listen to hours of interviews about the production of space wizard movies. So here, have some excerpts:

/Filmcast Ep. 451 - Writing TLJ while TFA was shooting

Rian Johnson was writing his script during the shooting of TFA. Which isn't insane but isn't super common, I think -- essentially you're going off of dailies and the script for TFA to plan out your entire film. This also means that he hasn't seen: a) the marketing campaign for TFA and b) the fan reaction.

This is critical to my mind, because it reveals why a lot of things are the way they are. One, Rian knows Rey's parentage is an important question, but the reasoning he comes to is almost entirely uninfluenced by the fan speculation about "is she a Kenobi?" or whatever else was going on at the time. This clip also has a fun bit in which he lists all the possible options for Rey's parents, and near the end starts to say "Palpa-" and then cuts himself off.

/Filmcast Ep. 451 - Rey's parentage, toughest things for characters to go through

I apologize for not transcribing all this audio (listen to it if you can, it adds WAY more context), but he touches on the two key takeaways from this storytelling decision: it mirrors Empire in an inverse fashion, and also it's the hardest thing for Rey to hear right now. Recently, I said to a friend that the 11th episode of Andor also made similar storytelling decisions, in that it went out of its way to give all its characters the hardest news they could hear, right before the finale (Mothma, Luthen, and Andor mainly). I'm writing this the day before Andor's final episode, so let's hope it sticks the landing.

/Filmcast Ep. 451 - Subverting expectations, what we know about Poe, and his arc

Another thing is in the early version of TLJ, Poe and Finn went to Canto Bight together, and Rose's character didn't exist. However, Johnson dropped this after realizing that Finn and Poe couldn't challenge each other as characters. As he reworked the script, he created Rose to play off of Finn, and then broached the issue of Poe's arc. Given his relatively simple character archetype in TFA (brash hothead pilot), there wasn't much to go on, but eventually narrowed in on the "learning to be a leader" storyline.

(I also love the aside Johnson adds about the loss Leia has been through with Han and other "hotshot pilots." That maybe after all this, she's "bow[ing] underneath the weight of all of this loss" and her wisdom and leadership style being influenced by that.)

screencap from tlj of leia in her sick-ass cloak looking out over the battlefield

Johnson wrote constantly, and sent his work updates to Lucasfilm every week, keeping them abreast of his thoughts and plans. Nothing was "sprung" on them, including the climax of the film with Luke. Michael Arndt said that while working on TFA it was hard to find a place to fit Luke in, because when he shows up he "sucks all the air out of the room." That led to Abrams and Kasdan placing Luke as the Macguffin at the end of the film, and in some ways tossing the problem to Johnson. "Why the hell did Luke abandon the galaxy, Han, and his sister when they needed him?" It's a tough question to answer, and while fans might've wanted Luke out there swinging his green lightsaber around, I feel like Johnson rose to the task pretty well.

gif from tlj of luke and kylo's final confrontation
/Filmcast Ep. 451 - Planning trilogies, how stories come about, and laying things out

He does address the elephant in the room, which is "why let each director tell their own story, instead of planning the trilogy out in advance?" Whether you find his answer compelling or not is up to you, but I do find that if I was forced to choose between a top-down story outline or letting directors go hog wild and be inventive, I'd prefer the latter. For all the failures of the Disney era of Star Wars films, it did give us one of my favorite films ever, so I can't fault it too much.

This last tidbit isn't fully verified but: scuttlebutt is that Johnson was asked back to direct episode 9 after Colin Trevorrow was fired. Johnson requested (at least) a year delay to complete the film, and Kathleen Kennedy advocated for this too, but Iger insisted on a December 2019 release. As such, Johnson passed on the film and Abrams was asked back instead. And well, the rest is history.

Anyway the real moral of this whole blog post is I love chunky spaceships that look like shit!!

gif from tlj of the speeders going across the salt plains with red dust being kicked up behind them
choster Today

do you think you like star wars too much?

yotsuben Today

oh god probably

choster Today

this blog post didn't really go anywhere tbh

yotsuben Today

yeah i guess so. i've had this conversation about TLJ and Star Wars a lot, and in fact just did again recently, so i kinda just decided to write everything out

choster Today

do you feel better

yotsuben Today

hm i guess? mostly i just have fun laying out the blog post with cool pictures and CSS

choster Today

by which you mean "using photoshop for 30 seconds" and "copying someone else's CSS tricks"

yotsuben Today

absolutely

egg bug! Today

get off my website


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in reply to @yotsuben's post:

there’s a world, i think, where rian johnson ends episode 8 on the proposition between kylo and rey- gives us the cliffhanger and enough space for himself or the next director to play with, and we end up with a slightly worse episode 8 and a more cohesive sequel trilogy… but our guy had The Final Shot of Star Wars in his mind and I don’t blame him shooting his shot when he had the chance. Like you said, better to take the chance and get something interesting than take the safer route.

By the way, love the connection you draw on “the worst news you could hear”. Star Wars!!! Ahh!!

yeah, i think his approach overall is to my preference. so I'm fine with the sequel films just being "seven and eight" in my head. That final shot works as an optimistic open-ended ellipses on the series, imo. One day maybe I should write down my alternate episode nine ideas.

And yes - Andor good! Getting lots of talent into the universe to give new takes on things is vital.

My old opinion was that the sequels were a duology and a gaiden fun ending— oh no, what if the emperor came back from the dead! has big, like, Dragon Ball Z film energy— but my position has corrupted over time to something regrettably far more positive.

Thanks for sharing this, I love the layout of the post! I watched the movies but don't really participate in any of the fandom so I haven't heard any of these details, but the thing I really love about this is that it reinforces the idea that even things that some might consider a failure are still often made with a lot of intentional effort and interesting ideas, and it's really cool to hear the abstract thinking behind specific choices in the movies.

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