A franchise that inspires a fandom as rabid as the Star Wars saga has a lot of positive and negative aspects. While many fans are supportive of and open minded about many of the diverse qualities that make up the vast universe, others can prove to be toxic over every minute detail in every movie, game, and book. And even though every movie seems to split the fandom ever since The Empire Strikes Back, it seems like the reaction to Star Wars: The Last Jedi has proven to be most divisive because of comments on social media.
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The Last Jedi writer and director Rian Johnson is fully aware of the hatred he received on websites like Twitter because of his Star Wars movie, and the filmmaker decided to utilize that reaction for his new murder mystery project Knives Out.
“Anyone who’s on Twitter these days, God bless you because it’s rough waters out there, but there’s also wonderful stuff about it,” Johnson explained at Deadline‘s The Contenders event. “That’s why we’re all still on it I guess. That’s one of the things [Knives Out] engages with, the current state of online culture. Whether you made a Star Wars movie or you have a cooking show, whatever you’re doing on there, someone’s going to be screaming at you about it probably. Let’s put it on a screen in a way we can all maybe have a laugh about it.”
In Knives Out, Jaeden Martell plays a character named Jacon Thrombey who creates alt-right hate speech online, which Johnson admitted was influenced by some of the abuse levied at him, the actors, and The Last Jedi itself.
But Johnson’s latest movie is shaping up to be a surprising hit, as the critical reaction tot he film is already overwhelmingly positive after screening at Toronto International Film Festival.
And as for Johnson’s future Star Wars project, that’s still in the works as well. The director also explained that he’s still discussing his future trilogy plans with Lucasfilm.
We’re still engaged with Lucasfilm and we’ll wait and see,” Johnson said. “No updates on it at this moment, but yeah.”
There’s a chance that Johnson’s movie could get an accelerated timeline after the Game of Thrones showrunners left their Star Wars project, leaving a 2022 release date on the schedule without any specific movie attached.
We’ll find out what happens after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premieres later this year.
Johnson’s next movie Knives Out hits theaters on November 27th.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
