We Have Permission!

Its OK everyone!  Rian Johnson has spoken.  He has said he won’t mind Star Wars Episode IX retconning his decisions in The Last Jedi.  Phew!  So glad he’s cool with it.

Speaking to MTV this week he graciously stated:

“Like I said, man, I want to let go of all my expectations. I want to sit back. I want to be entertained. I want to be surprised. I want to be thrilled. I want him to do stuff I wasn’t expecting him to do and just go along for the ride. I’m also psyched about the things they are going to explore beyond what we’ve seen already. To me, that’s kind of the most exciting stuff is pushing the limits of seeing stuff we haven’t seen before in Star Wars.”

He wants them to subvert his expectations!

I Expected It To Be A Coherent Movie

Instead in The Last Jedi, we got a movie where very little makes sense and people just FedEx themselves around an increasingly tiny feeling Galaxy to deliver exposition to fill holes rather than drive the narrative.

“Would you prefer a dick pic?”

Then when they can’t come up with even a semi-coherent reason to place these characters together, they invent hitherto unseen Force FaceTime to allow them to interact to deliver yet more nonsensical exposition.

Whether it’s an out of place “Yo Mamma” joke, an amateurish and pointless detour to Wokesville via CGI casino, a fight scene choreographed by a high school drama club, previously unseen limitations being invented for plot purposes like hyperspace fuel, or long-established characters behaving in totally inconsistent ways, his movie never fails to disappoint.

Hearing that the groundwork may be getting laid for a retcon and direction switch gives me a tiny glimmer of hope.

Additional Baggage

Of course, the misplaced circus created around The Last Jedi, from Lucasfilm staffers going online and taunting their core audience with mugs of fanboy tears to poorly chosen declarations that “The Force Is Female” didn’t have any desired effect.  It simply made long term fans feel like Lucasfilm was taking a shit in their eyes while yelling at them that this was all their own fault.

The net result is that The Last Jedi performed over $700m down from The Force Awakens, shifted negligible merchandise, sank without a trace on home release and was parked on Netflix in double quick time.  A bigger issue, it caused the (far better than The Last Jedi) anthology entry, Solo, to actually lose money.  Unforgivable for a Star Wars movie.

“Better finish this before my meeting with HR. I wonder what they want to talk to me about?”

So What Is Next?

Johnson claims he is still working on his own Star Wars trilogy.  Given how toxic he is in fandom right now we can’t see this coming to fruition.  Lucasfilm and Disney appear to be waking up to their own folly.  A slow-down in release strategy and a rethink was announced for their Star Wars universe.  Aggravational, negative fan baiters with no common sense and an over developed social media Tourette’s like Chuck Wendig have been fired.

“What do you mean ‘Fired’?”

Episode IX is released December 2019 and we wait to see if JJ can un-screw this pooch.  Here’s hoping!

More on this debacle here.