Last week, James Gunn was cut loose by Disney following the resurrection of many of his old tweets which made light of rape and pedophilia. Earlier this week, Rian Johnson deleted more than 20,000 of his old tweets, likely as a response to Disney’s actions. The filmmaker claimed on Twitter that, as opposed to some outlets theorizing he had something to hide, he is actually just trying to clean up the clutter of all of his impromptu statements which could be taken out of context.
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The director of The Last Jedi replied to a tweet about the issue, confirming, “No official directive at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted anything that bad. But it’s nine years of stuff written largely off the cuff as ephemera, if trolls scrutinizing it for ammunition is the new normal, this seems like a ‘why not?’ move.
Johnson’s comments fall in line with our recent hypotheses that it was easier to purge thousands of tweets as to avoid the potential of comments being isolated and taken out of context, given the strategies that alt-right activists have taken against Gunn, comedian Patton Oswalt, and other outspoken celebrities.
Throughout his reported nine years on Twitter, Johnson regularly engaged with fans about all of his projects, though the debut of The Last Jedi saw a rise of insults being hurled at the director due to a minute amount of viewers who were displeased with the final product. Despite the entitlement on display from these former fans who mocked and criticized the film claiming they knew what was best for the franchise, Johnson often ignored the more hateful comments and even addressed many of the detractors who interacted with him in a respectful manner.
When asked by CNN earlier this year if any of the fans have tossed fair criticism at him online, Johnson noted, “The thing is though, ‘no’ in terms of, ‘Oh wow, they’re right, I shouldn’t have done that,’ but ‘fair’ in terms of every single Star Wars thing that comes out, every fan has stuff they love, stuff they hate about it. Every movie has its lovers and its haters. Every single one going back to the originals.”
Regardless of the detractors, Johnson is still moving forward with a trilogy of films that are disconnected from the episodic entries into the saga, which will surely delight all fans of the franchise.
What do you think about Johnson’s remarks? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!
[H/T Twitter, rianjohnson]
