What’s ‘The Worst Sin’ To Commit With Star Wars? Rian Johnson Made A Good Point

When it comes to upcoming Star Wars movies and shows, the horizon is certainly more bare than one might have expected a decade ago, when The Force Horizons first hit theaters, or even six years ago when Disney+’s franchise TV shows debuted. The only projects with footage filmed are Jon Favreau’s Mandalorian & Grogu and Shawn Levy’s standalone Star Wars: Starfighter, with others in various stages of development, and I’m bummed that Rian Johnson isn’t directing any of them.

Johnson is, of course, the filmmaker who helmed 2017’s polarizing The Last Jedi, and one who previously voiced plans to craft a whole trilogy, even if later updates watered down those initial reports. Currently promoting his latest Knives Out mystery with Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, the series-best Wake Up Dead Man, the director talked with Polygon about how he thinks telling a purposefully simplistic story is a cardinal Star Wars sin, and that his new film intentionally follows Last Jedi in challenging religious and ideological norms. As he put it:

One of the most acclaimed and celebrated Star Wars projects of any era is Rogue One, which managed to give fans something extremely familiar while also telling a completely new story. And one that then spawned the further-prequelized and even more beloved series Andor, which also struck out to tell a story that avoided feeding into the Skywalker Saga just for the sake of it.

While he's not directly taking a swipe at the third feature of the latter-day trilogy, J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker, the points made can certainly be applied. That movie essentially pretended as if The Last Jedi's story-expansions and unique ideas were suggestions rather than canon, resulting in some low-hanging plot fruit that felt far too beholden to everything that came before.

Johnson continued, pointing to the franchise's history of bucking expectations and sparking debates:

The Force Awakens sparked a wave of fan hate for killing off Harrison Ford's Han Solo, and it was somewhat reminiscent (in a far less vitriolic sense) of the backlash that followed The Empire Strikes Back's cliffhanger conclusion that saw Han being trapped in carbonite and sent to Jabba the Hutt. All these years later, though, that kind of ending can be appreciated as a genius narrative move that went against the grain. Han's death in Episode VII felt more like Ford backing out of the role than a decision meant to challenge viewers.

The Mandalorian initially seemed like it was there to buck trends and subvert expectations, but it quickly gave up its standalone value to become enmeshed with bigger-picture Star Wars storytelling, bringing in an aged-down Luke Skywalker, an age-appropriate Boba Fett, and more recognition-guaranteed characters. Favreau's big-screen adventure will likely go even harder on those connections, for better or worse, which means Starfighter is the best shot we have at seeing something totally new from this gargantuan universe. (On the big screen, I mean, since Star Wars Visions consistently brings the unexpected goods.)

I know I'm not the only fan out here hoping for Rian Johnson to dip his toes back into The Force for another crack at it, although I'd possibly be even more enthused for him to lend his talents to a new Muppets movie, which he is 100% down for. Can we go ahead and just count Yoda as a Muppet now? And can we get Frank Oz to have a conversation with himself as both Yoda and Fozzie?