-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Rian Johnson (Academy Award nominee) compares writing 'Knives Out' and 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'
- Thread starter DiipuSurotu
- Start date
Well....as a tenative defense, I would consider it world building. Good world building is woven into the story, after all, it's not some separate thing that happens irrelevant to the plot or characters. Atleast, not if it's a good movie. So, Obi-wan telling Luke about the Jedi order, yeah, that's worldbuilding, but it's effective storytelling because it's worldbuilding that builds the ideal legacy that Luke is going to strive towards to live up to his father's name, which is a major part of his internal character motivation.
A New Hope is like the textbook example of effective worldbuilding, it's so good you don't even notice it because it's coming through natural character interactions and development.
This isn't surprising. You could tell from TLJ that Rian didn't care much about canon or established characters or world building within the SW franchise. He made his own film with his own characters with his own vision, right smack in the middle of a Star Wars trilogy. Some people liked it and some didn't.
OP
OP
someone must have because they made a movie about Solo's origin.
He cared more than JJ and even worked together with the story group when scripting the movie.
I think he even cares more than GL after ANH/ESB.
A movie that nobody watched because nobody cared about it (and because it was bad).
Whatever makes you feel better about yourself. Everyone I know outside of Era has mixed feelings about TLJ, and many of my friends hate it. It's a divisive film whether you want it to be or not.
OP
OP
Nah, it was one of the least successful Star Wars movies ever made.
It's worth noting that under this framing, Rian's done similarly effective worldbuilding where he recontextualizes the political conflict on Canto Bight, the characterization of the Rebel Culture the big ship, and the nature of the Force on Arch-too.
Knives out was infinitely better than TLJ.
Yer, I liked it most out of all my mates who all were pretty meh about it, tho tbh my sole appreciation comes from the light speed attack, so damn cool, the rest was whatever on part with the other movies in the new trilogy but better than the trash prequels.
Yer, I liked it most out of all my mates who all were pretty meh about it, tho tbh my sole appreciation comes from the light speed attack, so damn cool, the rest was whatever on part with the other movies in the new trilogy but better than the trash prequels.
Honestly, I would almost argue that worldbuilding does Star Wars more harm than good because the fanbase is too obsessed with it.
Lol I missed last Jedi discussions, you people that hated it got the bullshit you wanted With ROS. TLJ critically acclaimed, financially successful, higher audience scores than ROS, the director is succeeding, but people still salty you really love to see it
That's not really due to SW doing worldbuilding so much as it is the fandom obsession with it.
There are plenty of fandoms that have tons of appreciation for the very deep worldbuilding a franchise does that people are 100% fine with if they still tell a good story. It's really wierd that people are acting like worldbuilding is something only amateurs do when so many fantasy and scifi authors make their fandom off making insanely detailed and consistent worlds with tons of history, like ASoIaF or Sanderson's Cosmere.
For me, the issue is....Star War's worldbuilding basically doesn't make sense even from the onset. It's worldbuilding is more to set a certain vibe. Like, the idea of an order of knights in space doesn't really make a lot of logical sense, but hey, you get scifi wizard knights out of it, and that's a pretty cool aesthetic. But then you have nerds coming in and trying to measure SW worldbuilding in far more concrete terms that the world falls apart under that kind of scrutiny and realism. The same thing would happen to the MCU, even though that definitely has a lot of worldbuilding.
I guess the lesson here is that unless the story is built for it, you can't apply the kind of scrutiny that SW fans apply to SW and still have the world be coherent.
Everybody I know liked TLJ.. so its not divisive.
See how that does not work?
Oh there is no denying that Rian is a very talented director. I hate TLJ yet I readily admit it's a damn beautiful looking film. And I don't hate everything about TLJ, I actually loved the Rey + Kylo storyline right up until the heelturn in the throne room where it lost me.
I just think the story was pants, and I think he wrote a terrible Star Wars film even if I do think it looked awesome.
I love most of his other work though, he's usually an awesome director.
It did indeed have better lightsaber fights than Knives Out.
He did introduce new characters in SW didn't he? Or were the non main cast already established somewhere outside of the films? I wasnt a big fan of TLJ but its miles better than ep 9. The whole new series was weak to me and felt rushed, not really Rian's fault.
Knives Out was fantastic and I hope he gets more chances to make unique movies like it.
Knives Out was fantastic and I hope he gets more chances to make unique movies like it.
It seems that most people in this thread think the argument is one way or the other, but to me the best SW movies have always had both. That is to say, building characters and story up while also building up the universe around them. Rian made a fucking awesome character-driven Star Wars movie, but it was also the Star Wars movie where the galaxy felt the smallest. People can't and shouldn't get pissy with fans when they criticize that - there's far more Star Wars content where that's important than content like TLJ, it's what they're used to.
Force Awakens was pretty close to finding that perfect balance (despite worlds like Jakku being ANOTHER fucking desert planet) - it makes one wonder what the hell happened with TROS.
Force Awakens was pretty close to finding that perfect balance (despite worlds like Jakku being ANOTHER fucking desert planet) - it makes one wonder what the hell happened with TROS.
For someone who doesn't care for literally creating worlds the planets introduced in his movie are by far the most interesting in the ST. What did the other movies have? Standard Desert Planet 1 and 2, Jungle Planet the threequal, Rainy Death Star Planet, Poor People Planet. Nothing new or interesting in Star Wars movies from any of those locations. I'll give Sithcult Palp Planet a point for originality even if it's place in the universe/story is kind of dumb and Starkiller base the same criticism but to a far more acceptable degree.
While TLJ had Saltrebelbase Planet which visually is the most interesting Noncity Star Wars planet IMO. It had Lukeexile Planet which while technically introduced in the last movie wasn't expanded upon till TLJ and before TROS is the most "mystical" planet introduced in a Star Wars film. Sithcult Palps Planet is arguably a worse implementation of the mythical aspect of the force so I say Lukeexile Planet isthe best example of one too of the mythic side of the force as well. Then we have CantoCasino Planet which is controversial but again new in that we haven't seen how the rich work outside of Java lording his wealth over a backwater planet. So again for someone who doesn't like building worlds he did the best job of it from all the movies by far
While TLJ had Saltrebelbase Planet which visually is the most interesting Noncity Star Wars planet IMO. It had Lukeexile Planet which while technically introduced in the last movie wasn't expanded upon till TLJ and before TROS is the most "mystical" planet introduced in a Star Wars film. Sithcult Palps Planet is arguably a worse implementation of the mythical aspect of the force so I say Lukeexile Planet isthe best example of one too of the mythic side of the force as well. Then we have CantoCasino Planet which is controversial but again new in that we haven't seen how the rich work outside of Java lording his wealth over a backwater planet. So again for someone who doesn't like building worlds he did the best job of it from all the movies by far
My issue with those two films is that despite all the twists and turns they both end in the most predictable ways
The dude worked with the story group and book authors to help build up the era more than JJ ever would.
The original movies had barely any per film, all of which was in service of the characters aka story.
For someone who didn't care about world world-building, Johnson managed to do more of it in TLJ than both of JJ's movies combined.
OP
OP
I mean you honestly argue JJ cared about world-building even less. Which would honestly be a feasible conclusion considering what TFA is.
Indeed he did. Kennedy and the rest of the team seem content with making the movies as brain dead as possible with constant call backs to OG trilogy.
It's more that audiences fucking threw a fit when they got a film that wasn't that and Kennedy & co. are just giving the people what they said they wanted.
That's what I mean, their incessant need to "please the fanatics" is dumb considering that the majority of the people paying to see their movies are not the hardcore fans.
Yeah, TFA is a pretty shameless remake. JJ never thinks anything through, which is why things like Starkiller Base and the Knights of Ren are paper thin concepts that aren't interesting. JJ will make C-3PO's arm red and consider that a great feat of world building because its something to explain in a supplementary comic book. Johnson put lots of thought into how story elements work, which is why they end up being interesting concepts to discuss and build off of.
TLJ is incoherent in a lot of really crucial ways, which really soured the movie for me, but it's hard to be too critical of it when TROS comes and takes incoherence to a whole other level
I fucking loved TLJ on its own terms, outside of anything Star Wars. Which made Rise of Skywalker hurt so much more. It wasn't just bad, it was incoherent, sloppy, un-engaging and kind of stupid. It looks nicer than the prequels do, but if I were ranking Star Wars movies I'd probably put it dead last.
Everybody I know hated or didn't like TLJ. So who's right? It is a divisive movie.
Most people hate TROS, at least on that we can agree.
Pretty much how I feel about it.
There are parts of TLJ that I think are outstanding, and yet there's even more parts where I'm left wondering wtf RJ was thinking.
That said, I do respect it the most out of all the sequels, if only because it tried something different. TFA is fine, but too safe and sterile feeling. TROS is a complete and utter disaster of a movie.
A lot of writers these days assume world building means narrative or worse.
He's right, and it's what made TLJ so much better than TFA and TRoS. The story matters most, then you adapt the world to work with the story.
The world a story takes place in only works insofar as it services the story of the characters. You can have "worldbuilding" outside of that, but ultimately it all really serves to tell us why the characters are who they are and why and how their story fits into that world.
I strongly dislike TLJ, but I do admit I like it better than TRoS. Hell I like Attack of the Clones more than TRoS.