Johnson Trilogy Wish List

I think TFA and TLJ gained a lot by shooting on film. They look better compared to Rogue One and Solo which are digital. I know the difference is barely noticeable for the majority of people, but I really like the look of film.

 

I am not denying that - TFA and TLJ feel a lot... warmer than RO and Solo, but in hands of a knowledgeable DP the same thing can be achieved with digital cameras. It's just a matter of putting the effort into making the neccessary changes and doing a proper colour correction/postprocessing. Sadly, many blockbuster directors seem to just leave the image as it was recorded, which means that it looks grey and unsaturated. It works for realistic dramas, sure, but Star Wars is not realistic by any mean.

 

I think Rogue One is as close to film as digital can be, because they were going for a bit of ANH look. I like the result, the film looks beautiful, but there's still something digital can't replicate. I see it, but it's hard for me to put my finger on what I mean. It's like digital looks more 3D and has more space while film feels more 2D, like a painting. It's a kind of warmth you can get with colour correction alone (at least that's what I feel). Meh, I don't know if I'm making any sense here, sorry.

I recently rewatched Blade Runner 2049 and even in this masterfully shot film I can see that digital "flavour." And I'll always put the "film flavour" over it.

 

Which is the point I've been trying to make regarding miniatures and models - they have a certain feel about them that really cannot be replicated with CG.

 

Oh, yeah, that's for sure. I'm all for miniatures.

 

I've only seen TLJ once so far, but I'm chomping at the bit to see it again when I can. So while I'm not the best person to speak on what I'd like to see from his new trilogy, I broke it down into two categories: What to Keep and What to Improve.

What to Keep:
The themes - TLJ had a lot of cool themes that were interesting to explore and really helped expand the philosophies of Star Wars and the characters within them.

The writing - I found that TLJ had really sharp writing for the most part. It was funny, quirky, honest, and most importantly fitting for the main characters (Luke, Leia, Rey, Kylo, Poe and Finn)

New Characters - I liked the additions of Rose, Holdo, and DJ. They helped flesh out the characters and world within the Star Wars universe. What I mean is that Rose showed that not everyone is an action hero, but any can be a hero. To me, she's truest incarnation of ANH Luke in the ST (someone from a humble past who does something heroic. Her scale is a lot smaller and more controversial, but that's just how I see it). Holdo was fine. I don't really have much to add there. DJ is a standout in his concept. Most of the underbelly of Star Wars are rogues with hearts of gold (Han, Lando, Maz, Hondo), antagonistic bounty hunters (Jango Fett, Boba Fett, etc), or just plain evil. DJ is our first True Neutral, and that's FASCINATING.

The beauty - TLJ is a BEAUTIFUL movie. And I really hope that his personal trilogy keeps that aspect. There were so many moments in TLJ that just worked as art. @Jayson said it best when he compared RJ (and Kubrick) to their films being like moving paintings. Those are what stick out to me more than the movie or the plot or anything else.

The subversive nature - It's fun to not know what's going to come next, and that's what I want. Hearing about leaks and making theories that are later proven correct is indeed fun, but it's even more fun to be surprised by the story. TLJ is the only story so far to do that so far.

What to Improve:
The themes - While I did like the themes in TLJ, I feel like a lot of people took the wrong message from it. The message wasn't to kill that past, as Kylo and Luke (originally) wanted. The theme wasn't failure for failure's sake. Deconstruction wasn't the endgame. The theme was that failure shouldn't put us down. Yoda spells it out for us IN THE MOVIE.
Deconstruction's purpose should be to eventually reconstruct, which is what the final scenes of TLJ did, with RJ handing off the baton to JJ (originally CT) to bring that reconstruction to a close.

But all of that got lost in the echoes of the arguments that occurred after the release.

So what I think RJ should do is improve the themes within the movie and make them develop throughout the movie, not just mirror each other within the movie.

The writing - Star Wars has ALWAYS had love in its DNA. The love between parents, lovers, friends. Heck, even a bit of puppy love/infatuation in ANH (as weird as it is looking back on it now). TLJ...didn't really have that. We have NO IDEA what is up with Finn and Rose's story; and while I heard that the deleted scenes and book have expanded on their relationship somewhat, THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO. Yes, yes we have "Reylo" there too, but that path leads to places this thread isn't meant for. Long story short, better romance than what we got.

New characters - While I liked the new characters, a bunch of people didn't for a bunch of different reasons...some valid, some not... Regardless, the new characters for this trilogy - especially the ones introduced in the second and third movies - need to stand on their own. Rose doesn't stand out as much if her optimism doesn't inspire Finn. Holdo's mysterious plan wouldn't have been as grating/conflicting if Poe wasn't as impulsive. This links to what one of my main gripes was in TLJ. RJ created new characters to parallel the "New Three" instead of having them reflect off each other. For example:

Kylo could have served as a great foil to Finn, considering their paths were more or less the same (raised one way, always feeling like outsiders due to their pull towards a path not open to them, and then eventually (when they're around the same age actually) taking that path and becoming infamous among their past alliances).

Poe and Phasma - one character who is almost a fanatic for his cause, the other who will do anything just to survive.

Or even Poe and Kylo could have been a Cain and Abel dynamic.

All of these could still happen, and I'm not saying what RJ did with his characters is wrong. But I do believe it was limiting. The new characters in TLJ felt like they existed to prop up the main characters. They never grew themselves, and as such feel much weaker. Like shadows in a way.

The beauty - TLJ was a beautiful movie, but it wasn't perfect. I put this on "Things to Improve" because I want to see RJ challenge himself. I want to see his improvement from movie to movie, making each more beautiful than the last. While Blade Runner 2049 was the most beautiful movie I saw last year, I refuse to compare the two. Star Wars is a much different beast.

The subversive nature - In TLJ, RJ's goal was to make the characters go through the most challenging thing they could and hear the most painful things they could. This was evident in Rey's story. But what is good for the characters isn't always good for the story. There's a fine line that RJ straddles, and I don't want him to fall on the wrong side.


tl;dr - RJ should improve on every aspect praised in TLJ, if only to challenge himself and create amazing stories within the Star Wars universe. But more doesn't always mean better...AND FOR THE LOVE OF YODA STOP MIRRORING STUFF MAN!

 

This won't likely occur outside of the primary "Skywalker saga" as only that saga has the requirement of mirroring.
Any saga or trilogy outside of that doesn't inherently require it, and I'm fairly sure that everyone who has had experience with writing for the Skywalker saga will likely be very careful with the employment of chiasmus structuring if they want to use it because at this point, 8 films deep - going on 9, the requirement has presented incredible logistical challenges and obstacles to the writing freedom and if they were to continue it for yet another 3 films after 9 (i.e. continue the Skywalker saga beyond 9), then it would be incredibly crowded and hard to move...figuratively, it's already about on par with standing in a subway car (a.k.a. tube) in Japan and attempting to juggle with one hand.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see influences of the chiasmus idea in those who participate in the Skywalker saga as writers and directors, but I would also expect that we'll see some lessons learned about making sure to leave a lot more room than Lucas did with the method in the Skywalker saga...i.e. not making the structure pedantically noted down to the camera blocking of every scene. That...I would cry over, and I'm amazed at Abrams, Kasdan, and (especially...because he had probably the worst of the challenges set in front of him for obligations in this regard) Johnson were able to tell any kind of forward moving story in the mix of these requirements.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

The chiasmus within the saga films I don't mind overall. It's how RJ used it within the characters in this movie that I now realize bugs me.

What I meant came from two places:

First, the role of the new characters to only reflect the main characters in a capacity that reduces their own agency or potential.

Secondly, a Reddit post that took to analyzing RJ's other movies in order to predict TLJ.



While using a random Reddit post isn't the best idea, I internalized this one because it was seemingly a good analysis of RJ's other movies. The only other film I've seen of RJ's is Looper and I wasn't impressed at the time. So yeah, I'm taking the word of someone more involved in the subject, but isn't that what we do here on occasions? . And reading it after watching TLJ I found its character analysis to be true to form. It's a pattern I hope RJ either breaks free of or modifies because it really didn't work for me in TLJ (because the characters are subject to the first point).

Thanks for pointing this out though. My bad for not making it clearer.

As for subway cars in Japan...are we talking normal subways/JRs, Bullet Trains, or "Shibuya Crossing at Prime Time"? (I'm currently in Japan so your reference made me super happy).

 

That was actually a pretty good prediction, especially since it was made at the time people were mostly obsessing about Rey's parents and Snoke's origin. If it took into account the fact, the Rey, Finn and Poe need to stay "good" till the end (to appeal to kids), than it would have pretty much predicted the entire movie.
Rian's approach is obviously not how the fans are used to SW stories being told, but's a unique one to him and I am genuinly interested at what RJ can come up with without the baggage of pre-existing characters.

 

I was referring to the normal subways

Ahhh.

I think I see things a tad differently with regards to Rian Johnson from the reddit reviewer.
For example, with Looper; that film wasn't about mediation or mirroring the protagonist and the antagonist in the way they are discussing.
It's a film that materializes a situation that is otherwise only encountered by lots of people metaphorically: "What would your younger self think of your older (now) self?"
Another way of putting that is what Rian Johnson does in that film is make the protagonist and the antagonist the same person, effectively obliterating the division between those traditional roles.

And that's what I see Rian Johnson doing most of the time; looking at the traditional protagonist and antagonist relationships and considering what else there is to explore with those relationships beyond the straight forward approach.

With Rian Johnson, it is harder to claim that there is a good guy and a bad guy, because he writes emphatically from both perspectives.
I don't get the sense that he does this to be shocking, but instead because he seems to write to explore and examine ideas philosophically.

This makes Rian Johnson a stylist and not a generalist.
A generalist is like Spielberg, or Abrams, while a stylist is like Burton or Tarantino.
Even Woody Allen is a stylist; so is Hitchcock.

Rian Johnson shares a similarity to Tarantino in that both are consumed with exploring deviations from the normal protagonist/antagonist relationship, however Tarantino does this by effectively making everyone a "bad guy" so that what constitutes the protagonist is more just about who do we follow the most - even if they do really screwed up stuff along the way.

Rian Johnson, on the other hand, prefers juxtaposing the two roles in different ways to see how they play out under different philosophical questions.

Again, with Looper, we therefore have a question of what does a protagonist do when he is himself his own antagonist? What choices are made? How do you fight yourself? etc...
And basically the entire movie takes every metaphorical struggle of self-identity between a person's youth and older age and brings it into a literal translation as a symbol of that exploration.

As a result, across all of his films, the relations between these two roles is far more explored than other directors would typically examine - the relationship between the two tends, for Johnson, to become the focus and the plot is more a supporting role to that relationship examination.

Therefore, with TLJ being in the hands of Rian Johnson we got a far more developed relationship between Kylo and Rey than if it were done by, say, Abrams.

Abrams leans more traditionally; biased towards the protagonist in casting the light of good and positioning the antagonist squarely as the protagonist's obstacle and developing the antagonist mostly for the purposes of antagonizing the protagonist.
He does develop the antagonist into a well rounded character, but they will never be sympathized with. They will be in error, wrong, and most often aggressive and unsympathetic. They may be curious, but in a twisted way; not sympathetically.
Meanwhile his protagonists will be sympathetic, right, correct, and not aggressive - often pleading, or attempting mediation before violence; only resorting to brutal violence out of deep emotional or physical harm. Contrarily, the antagonists he writes will much more quickly leap to brutality - at times as an already assumed aspect of their personality without requiring a plotted justification for their ease of doing so (except for perhaps a couple of lines of rationalization).

As we saw in TLJ, Johnson completely ignored this approach and Kylo wasn't a straight forward brutal tormentor only defined by his own demons which fueled his power thirst. Instead, he had compassion and sympathy expressed, and showed actual deep relational interest in Rey.
Johnson explored their relationship more deeply, and let Kylo develop on-screen more fully independent of an assumed antagonistic role; at times being cast as much a victim as others in his plight, and pained by it. His reasons for his views and objectives were philosophically examined, rather than simply rationalized through a handful of lines.

From Johnson, again, then, we ended up with a much deeper relationship connection between Kylo and Rey than otherwise would have been accomplished.
We'll see how Abrams handles it, but I think that at the very least he has far more ammunition to draw off of than he would have otherwise had if Johnson hadn't applied his method onto the two.

I think Disney wanted that. They aren't idiots. They have one of the most outstanding and unheard of success streaks in cinema history going on right now, so I'd wager they know how to understand a writer or director and what they will bring to the table.

When I heard that Johnson was who Disney selected for the second film, I knew two things: 1) It was going to be darkness in the Sunlight, and 2) it was going to reshape the orientation of assumed relationships within the story.

Because there's two things Johnson's really good at doing: 1) making the bright mid-day Sunshine seem horribly dim and depressingly empty, and 2) taking assumed relationships and saying, "Well...what happens if these people's relationships are interrupted and forced to relate differently than usual? What do we learn about the people?"

Sometimes that's a "mirror"-like device, but other times it's not as much.
It's mostly, however, about neither the protagonist nor the antagonist being developed more than the other - both on equal footing, and more up to the viewer on interpretation. He's a relativist; context means everything to his stories, so that is heavily explored and the dichotomy of the two leads is usually how that context is explored, rather than the other way around.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

1. John Williams

Um, yeah. Kinda a short list, to be honest, but John Williams.

 

John Williams already said that EPIX will be his last Star Wars movie to score. Furthermore this man is 86 years old and Johnson's trilogy might be several years away.

 

True! So, umm, who should Rian get to compose?

 

Depends on the "style" and "tone" of the film.

Michael Giacchino
Alexandre Desplat
Alan Silvestri
Jonny Greenwood
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow
Mark Mothersbaugh

Are all guys working now who could lend unique incredible scores to the films depending on the tone.

 

i'd love to see what these two could come up with. very intriguing!

 

If Johnson goes with a gritty intimate setting, then they would crush it.
Giacchino, Silvestri, Mothersbaugh would be great if it's more adventure fun.
Salisbury and Barrow if it's a more sci-fi approach.
Greenwood and Desplat if it is gonna be more...artsy

Not that I don't think they all could do any of these, but just personal preference.

 

i'm down for gritty, intimate and fun. Nick Cave and Giacchino! XD

 

How-ard Shore! How-ard Shore! How-ard Shore! ...

 

I eagerly await his track "Concerning Ewoks"

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 14, 2018, Original Post Date: Apr 14, 2018 ---

That'd be a very unique pairing. Im game

 

I know they are typically relegated to backdrops and only on screen for seconds at a time, because ultimately it looks weird to the average moviegoer, but there needs to be more of a focus on other alien species. Center-stage, as main characters with full character arcs. Can Bothans work on the big screen? Can a casual conversation between a Calamari and a devaronian not make people smirk? If Rian can make a movie like Last Jedi with all the problems with the character writing, and storyboard still look absolutely stunning visually, I think he can make other alien species work in his trilogy.