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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is on Netflix from Friday. By all accounts, it is rather good. The audience reviews have it pegged as the best of the franchise to date. Will this cap the series as a trilogy, or will director Rian Johnson go for more?
It has been his primary work since The Last Jedi was released, and even after all these years, that movie remains a Star Wars flashpoint among fans. You can’t mention The Last Jedi without a passionate venting erupting across the fanbase.
The movie remains a massive success in the eyes of a lot of professional critics. Metacritic lists it as the highest-rated of all the movies other than Star Wars, or A New Hope, depending on your mileage. We know of one contributor to a certain, long irrelevant website that really would choose this hill to die on.
It is clear that the director tried to do something different. In a recent interview with Polygon, Johnson says it was a risk, and Star Wars needs to take more of them to keep fans engaged:
“Having grown up a Star Wars fan, I know that thing where something challenges it, and I know the recoil against that. I know how there can be infighting in the world of Star Wars. But I also know that the worst sin is to handle it with kid gloves.
The worst sin is to be afraid of doing anything that shakes it up. Because every Star Wars movie going back to Empire and onward shook the box and rattled fans, and got them angry, and got them fighting, and got them talking about it. And then for a lot of them, got them loving it and coming around on it eventually.”
He may have a point. Andor went way off the usual Star Wars reservation and pushed boundaries, to great success and acclaim, so why couldn’t the main franchise? Or did The Last Jedi just make a mess of it?
Being arrogant enough to think I could do a better job, I actually wrote a treatment for what I thought was an improved version of The Last Jedi once, fixing what I perceived as the flaws while delivering what I thought fans would have wanted to see. The original article is lost to the mists of time among the wreckage of our destroyed old website (thanks, sub-optimal internet host!).
However, praise Yoda! Because he made a video from the article, which you can still find on our YouTube channel, and you can judge if I am just full of nonsense.
So, is Johnson right? Does Star Wars need shaking up? Can you only do it on sidequests like Andor? Can we charitably admit that, at least, The Last Jedi tried something different, or is it irredeemable? And should we write more treatments to salvage movies, or create fantasy sequels, or just stick to laughing at awards shows?
The post Johnson: STAR WARS Needs Shaking appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
