Rian Johnson Jokes About How His New Star Wars Films End
on September 10, 2019 at 8:53 pmVia Comicbook.com:
Fans have a long wait ahead of them before they see the first of Rian Johnson’s new Star Wars films, though the filmmaker recently joked that his trilogy will end using an iconic editing technique from the franchise. It’s been less than two years since Lucasfilm announced that Johnson would develop a trilogy of films that aren’t connected to the Skywalker Saga, with neither the studio nor the filmmaker giving fans a good idea of when we can expect them. Now that his most recent film, Knives Out, has premiered and with its official release on the horizon, hopefully fans can learn more concrete details about the productions in the near future.
“I’ll tell you exactly how they end! An iris shot to a blue credit,” Johnson joked with Uproxx about the conclusion of his trilogy.
While the narrative beats of each entry in the Skywalker Saga differ from one another, they all employ similar cinematic devices, including signature wipes that transition from one scene to the next. Much like each film opened with the title card “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….” that leads into its famous opening crawl, the films also conclude with an iris wipe coinciding with John Williams’ iconic score.
The departures from that opening and closing structure have been Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story, so with Johnson’s new films serving as a departure from the Skywalker Saga, we can assume it will also stand out from the rest of the franchise with its filmmaking techniques.
In addition to what Johnson accomplished with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, what makes the upcoming projects so exciting for fans is how he will embrace the spirit of the franchise without utilizing familiar characters or settings. While both Rogue One and Solo deviated from the narrative that launched in 1977, it explored ancillary characters and events from the franchise to help expand the world of the episodic films.
“I think that the fun and challenging part of it is to dive in, figure out what’s exciting and then figure out what it’s going to be,” Johnson shared with Observer of his approach to the new films. “We’re doing something that steps beyond the legacy characters. What does that look like? To me, the blue sky element of it is what was most striking about it. I know the way that I’m coming at it and what’s fun about it for everyone in George Lucas’ films is figuring out, ‘What’s the next step?’ It really makes you think and figure out what the essence of Star Wars is for me and what that will look like moving forward.”
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