After ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi,’ Catch Up on Rian Johnson

After writing and directing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a film without controversy since it’s inarguably the best Star Wars movie of the past 40 years, Rian Johnson is back with his new film. Knives Out is a star-studded murder mystery that marries the twisty old-fashioned whodunnit genre with very contemporary concerns and characters, perfect for the writer/director’s own classic yet subversive genre film interests. Plus Daniel Craig sounds like Frank Underwood. Knives Out is great, and we recommend seeing it. But in the meantime why not familiarize yourself with the rest of Johnson’ filmography?

It’s surprisingly tough to be a Star Wars director. Sure, no one is as cool as George Lucas, but the franchise has attracted skilled folks like Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards and The Lego Movie’s Lord & Miller. However, whatever individual talent those artists had has been thoroughly chewed up by the Disney machine whether it’s been through extensive reshoots or just firing the directors outright. How dare someone try to bring humor and vision to a… Han Solo spin-off. It’s how we got the point where J.J. Abrams (ugh) taking over Episode IX instead of Colin Trevorrow (double ugh) is actually a victory.

However, the current exception to this rule is no doubt Rian Johnson, writer-director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and a whole new upcoming Star Wars trilogy. This was the first time since, well, Lucas that the Star Wars #brand has been trusted mostly to a single auteur apparently free from studio meddling. And the result was the single best Star Wars movie in decades, despite what some embarrassing entitled Star Wars fans seem to think.

Rian Johnson made a faith-restoring film that’s as close as we’re going to get to art inside the endless Star Wars product, which can now only be about itself. This movie gets that what’s fundamentally cool about Star Wars is so much bigger than the hyper specific empty nostalgia of “Star Wars.” He balances childlike wonder with populist blockbuster crowd-pleasing with deeply mature meditations on the need to break old cycles all while remembering what made them originally worthwhile.

And that’s just the writing. On a filmmaking level, The Last Jedi is also the most beautiful and visually inventive Star Wars movie in a long time. And the cast members, the sole great thing Abrams brought to the table in The Force Awakens, provide even stronger performances across the board.

So how did something this miraculous manage to happen in the somewhat depressing landscape of modern Star Wars? I’d argue it’s because Rian Johnson, while also being an extremely talented filmmaker, has grown his Hollywood career in a way healthier than most. He steadily moved up from indie movies to smaller studio movies to mid-budget studio moves to now one of the biggest movies on the planet.

Rian Johnson wasn’t plucked off the set of some student film and shoved around to helm a $200 million tentpole just because he was a young and vaguely Spielbergian white dude. It’s a similar path to Ryan Coogler, which is why I have similar hopes Black Panther can resist the machinations of the similarly oppressive Marvel film franchise.

Now that you’ve seen The Last Jedi, and before you see however else Rian Johnson attempts to reshape the Star Wars universe in his own image, why not get caught up with the director’s earlier work? Star Wars fan or not, it’s a good excuse to just watch some great movies.

Brick

A low-budget indie film from 2005, Brick established Johnson as a talent worth paying attention to. It also kicked off his recurring collaborations with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as well as famous PCMag sibling Noah Segan). This murder mystery in the suburbs California stars high school students. But the plot is treated with the gravity of the hardest hardboiled detective novel, and everyone talks like it’s the 1930s. It’s honestly a bit tough to take in, but the film rewards viewers who can handle its density. Think American Vandal but played straight.

The Brothers Bloom

Now with a budget, Johnson was better able to honor his beloved classic movie genres with caper film The Brothers Bloom. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play con-man brothers trying to scam an heiress, who then wants in on their scams. Rinko Kikuchi is their mute helper Bang Bang! How great is that! The Brothers Bloom is essentially a Golden Age Hollywood homage movie that still manages to feel modern instead of cloying or twee, which is what makes Johnson such a great fit for Star Wars.

Looper

Johnson’s most successful movie (until The Last Jedi of course), Looper is kind of a James Cameron riff. Specifically, the time-travelling assassin plot and motherhood hang-ups seem very Terminator 2. And yet the film doesn’t feel like a rip-off because it takes its themes, as well as its surprisingly fleshed-out lore, to places more satisfyingly bittersweet and poetic amidst all the action. Plus it has Jeff Daniels in weird future robes, Bruce Willis with an awful wig, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in weird Bruce Willis makeup, and a dude exploding into a blood cloud.

TV

In-between Looper and The Last Jedi Johnson also directed some episodes of television. He’s behind some of the greatest episodes of Breaking Bad, one of the greatest shows ever. “Fly” turned a budget-saving bottle episode into a paranoid claustrophobic microcosm of the entire show. Meanwhile, the epic, harrowing “Ozymandias” is arguably a better series finale than the actual series finale. Johnson also directed an episode of Terriers and while I haven’t seen that show, I’ve heard nothing but great things about it, that it was unjustly cancelled.

Going back and watching these movies again hammered home for me how much Star Wars: The Last Jedi really is a Rian Johnson movie. The reverence for classic filmmaking, the sheer sense of fun action balanced by a more melancholic nostalgia, self-sacrificing masters, and an ultimate theme of a talented young people needing to break away from toxic control loops. It’s all been there from the start, the message developing more over time and becoming clearer through greater understanding of a unifying… force. With The Last Jedi, the Rian Johnson circle is now complete. Hopefully whatever future Star Wars stories Johnson tells, along with making tons of cash, continue his filmography’s artistic winning streak.

Buy Brick

Buy The Brothers Bloom

Buy Looper