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  1. #1
    Ultimate Member ChrisIII's Avatar
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    Default Rian Johnson and Star Wars TV series.

    So this has come up recently, that Rian Johnson is interesting in directing an episode of the Mandalorian, although he might miss season 3 due to his commitments to the Knives Out sequel. But given the many current Star Wars TV series in the pipeline (Not Andor as I think that's mostly wrapped, but Ashoka, Rangers, Lando etc and of course any future Mandalorian season), perhaps maybe another thing down the line?


    His TV work's perhaps best known for his three "Breaking Bad" episodes. While "Fly" was sort of an experimental bottle episode (Something that's actually become fairly common in some recent TV series due to the pandemic) with mixed results, "Fifty One" and "Ozymandias" were pretty huge "turning point" episodes in the series and well received by critics.
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    I'm curious what he would do on his own so I'd have him pitch something new.

  3. #3
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    First off, I’m a guy who despises everything about his writing in TLJ.

    But I’m also a guy who loves his original material, and find his directing of his shitty TLJ script unimpeachable when separated from that.

    They seem to film episodes in a comparatively “light” amount of time, so I could see them just waiting to see when he’s available and slotting him in.

    But I would personally look for a particularly ambitious script and then give it to him.
    Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?

    I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP

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    BANNED Starter Set's Avatar
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    Curious how star wars is mainly a tv thing now.

    Ah well, worked well for Star Trek for decades.

  5. #5
    Brandy and Coke DT Winslow's Avatar
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    I’m all for it! He’s a great director and TLJ is tied as my favorite SW movie. Excited to see what he could with one of Favreaus scripts.

  6. #6
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    I could see him directing a banger and softening the perceptions his haters have.
    "Always listen to the crazy scientist with a weird van or armful of blueprints and diagrams." -- Vibranium

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    Astonishing Member Anthony W's Avatar
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    But shouldn't he just focus on own Star Wars trilogy? BWA-HA HA HA! He needs to get it just right! He doesn't want to spoil the fan's appetite! He doesn't want want to give the perception that Disney is ghosting him and that the trilogy isn't happening and he is getting desperate

    Of course a Rian Johnson episode would be awesome. I can just see it now....

    Mando finally reunites with Baby Yoda. He picks him up, shrugs and tosses him away.

    Awwwww yeahhhh! That's some good Star Wars.
    "The Marvel EIC Chair has a certain curse that goes along with it: it tends to drive people insane, and ultimately, out of the business altogether. It is the notorious last stop for many staffers, as once you've sat in The Big Chair, your pariah status is usually locked in." Christopher Priest

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by BeastieRunner View Post
    I could see him directing a banger and softening the perceptions his haters have.
    That’s what I'm thinking. It would be a comparatively easy and quick “reconciliation” work for LFL to arrange if they could. People sometimes underestimate just how much of TLJ’s divisiveness was wrapped up entirely in the script; remove that variable, and Johnson’s an easy shoe-in for what’s likely a kind of episode that would earn him *some* goodwill with his Star Wars critics, without having to run straight into a mob of still-pissed-off Luke, Rey, and Finn fans.

    I mean, neither party “needs” each other - Johnson is securely bound to his own original Benoit Blanc work, and The Mandalorian is already something akin to a prestige job for most of its directors.

    And I’m never going to think he understood Luke, Rey, Finn, Kylo, or the general story of Star Wars when he wrote TLJ... but I’d still dig a Mando episode from the dude,
    Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?

    I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP

  9. #9
    Astonishing Member Anthony W's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    That’s what I'm thinking. It would be a comparatively easy and quick “reconciliation” work for LFL to arrange if they could. People sometimes underestimate just how much of TLJ’s divisiveness was wrapped up entirely in the script; remove that variable, and Johnson’s an easy shoe-in for what’s likely a kind of episode that would earn him *some* goodwill with his Star Wars critics, without having to run straight into a mob of still-pissed-off Luke, Rey, and Finn fans.

    I mean, neither party “needs” each other - Johnson is securely bound to his own original Benoit Blanc work, and The Mandalorian is already something akin to a prestige job for most of its directors.

    And I’m never going to think he understood Luke, Rey, Finn, Kylo, or the general story of Star Wars when he wrote TLJ... but I’d still dig a Mando episode from the dude,
    Okay, Now that I got my fun post out of the way I can be serious. I think he would be great if he is just there to shoot an episode and someone is there to rap his knuckles when he gets any crazy ideas.

    But the question is...why? At this point in their careers they know that they are no good for each other and can only damage each other.
    "The Marvel EIC Chair has a certain curse that goes along with it: it tends to drive people insane, and ultimately, out of the business altogether. It is the notorious last stop for many staffers, as once you've sat in The Big Chair, your pariah status is usually locked in." Christopher Priest

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by BeastieRunner View Post
    I could see him directing a banger and softening the perceptions his haters have.
    His episode would be directed well, but I can't see anything softening his reputation in the fandumb. They've made hating him part of their identity

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jcogginsa View Post
    His episode would be directed well, but I can't see anything softening his reputation in the fandumb. They've made hating him part of their identity
    I think some softening would happen, just on the basis that at least some of the backlash against him comes partially from LFL overcompensating in their own praise and support of TLJ exacerbating a divisive and flawed movie’s problems. A simple, more successful collaboration where they don’t make the mistake of belittling legitimate criticism with a pre-planned media strategy targeting a smaller group of idiots would help out.

    They *really* wanted TLJ to get a TFA-style positive reaction, at mimimum, because TLJ was supposed to be the “way things were supposed to work:” Johnson was the only director in their first slate of movies to both only use LFL as the production company (Abrams twice brought in Bad Robot to deal with schedule crunches), and without any BTS issues (since both Rogue One and Solo had to be saved with reshoots, and TROS was clearly a collaborative effort between Abrams and LFL executives), and by all the expectations of Hollywood, it should have been a trailblazing blend of “art movie” and “blockbuster.”

    And y’know what? To anyone who was a fan of Kylo Ren, or who could role with the type of creative choices in Luke’s story (clearly the one Johnson did the most critical analysis of and the one LFL was most prepared for a backlash on), it was.

    Of course, if you didn’t go with Luke’s story, didn’t like Rey and Finn being sidelines and demeaned, or had higher standards for Star Wars than the somewhat more juvenile POV Johnson had... well, it was going to be somewhere between a Bayformers-level-turn-off-your-brain blockbuster or an insultingly pretentious film suffering from white male privilege.

    And then LFL came in a with a prepackaged media narrative to attack critics by focusing on the same idiots who’d bitched and moaned about TFA having a woman protagonist and black male lead, and constantly showcasing the somewhat disconnected and faux-intellectual bupkis behind the creative decisions in TLJ that art school says *should” elevate” a genre film... but by no means actually lead to that, and often come from people just as susceptible to idiocy as blockbuster makers.

    And, just for some perspective here, I do know multiple people and Star Wars fans who didn’t like, care for, or remember TLJ... but who loved Knives Out. That changed their POV at least to a more nuanced one. Remove Johnson and Star Wars from the quagmire of TLJ’s issues, and you’re going to heal a few cracks here and there.
    Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?

    I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP

  12. #12
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    Luke's actions were perfectly in character, and neither Rey nor Finn got sidelined in the Last Jedi

  13. #13
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    Real question is why is he even trying again with Star Wars though? Is he that desperate for money that he needs to continue on a job he failed so miserably at?

    He understands Star Wars about as much as Jar Jar Abrams understands Star Trek, move on with your career dude lol.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Starter Set View Post
    Real question is why is he even trying again with Star Wars though? Is he that desperate for money that he needs to continue on a job he failed so miserably at?

    He understands Star Wars about as much as Jar Jar Abrams understands Star Trek, move on with your career dude lol.
    Because
    1. He has more ideas for it
    2. He did a great job on his first attempt
    3. They're paying him

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jcogginsa View Post
    Luke's actions were perfectly in character, and neither Rey nor Finn got sidelined in the Last Jedi
    Luke is the most debatable and easily the most respectable, even if I believe it can still be easily argued was a misfire at best, because Johnson clearly applied some critical thinking there, even if he chose an inherently weak direction for a larger story...

    But Rey got her spine and brain removed, and shoved into a poorly written abusive relationship that made no damn sense, her yearning for her family was replaced with some pathetic Gen-Z style “Where’s my place in all this?” identity crisis, then got shooed off center stage right after being literally told she had no place on the story, so that we could instead have a showdown between two white Skywalker boys.

    Finn got his entire growth from the third act of TFA ignored so he could be punished for caring about Rey, then shoved into an ancillary side-story that tried to limit him to only being a Resistance foot soldier with a boring girlfriend, in a subplot that basically crammed every non-white actor into it so they could all screw up for not blindly obeying the badly written white commander.

    Johnson is a great director, and a very good writer... but his script for TLJ is crap if you’re not utterly enamored with Kylo or convinced of Sad!Luke’s value and consistency with previous stories.

    Okay, no in contrast to that argument...
    Quote Originally Posted by Starter Set View Post
    Real question is why is he even trying again with Star Wars though? Is he that desperate for money that he needs to continue on a job he failed so miserably at?

    He understands Star Wars about as much as Jar Jar Abrams understands Star Trek, move on with your career dude lol.
    He ain’t desperate for money. He doesn’t need Star Wars, and Star Wars doesn’t need him. Johnson has his Benoit Blanc franchise on Netflix and a filmography where only TLJ is a possible black mark, and Star Wars has Favreau and Filoni running the Tv side while they regather for the next phase of movies.

    Chances are, he and they just think it sounds like fun, and there’s pretty much only upsides to him doing an episode on someone else’s show.

    ...Just don’t put him near a script where he’s expected to pull focus away from Pascal and towards some emo white dude, or where an action girl suddenly starts acting dumb and incompetent. Because those were his biggest mistakes in TLJ outside of the Luke story, and we don’t need to make it look like he has an addiction to that.
    Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?

    I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP

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