On the promotional trail for the Oscar-tipped third entry in his Knives Out series, diector Rian Johnson pondered on whether or not Wake Up Dead Man is indeed the conclusion to a trilogy – in other words, is this his Return of the Jedi? While Johnson displays a long-held love of all things Ewok, it would seem that ‘no’ is the answer.
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Return of the Jedi is Rian Johnson’s all-time favorite trilogy-capper. “I was the prime age when that movie came out,” the writer-director of the third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, remarked at a post-screening Q&A at New York’s Paris Theater moderated by Gold Derby’s Ethan Alter. “I was the exact right age for it. There were a lot of old grumpy people complaining about Ewoks, and I was like, ‘F–k all of you, I love this!'”
That F-bomb-dropping kid grew up to direct his own Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi — the middle chapter of the recent sequel trilogy. And now he’s completed his own three-movie cycle with Knives Out, Glass Onion and Wake Up Dead Man — although he hesitates to label those movies a trilogy despite them sharing the same protagonist, Daniel Craig’s delightfully idiosyncratic detective, Benoit Blanc. “It’s a trilogy in that there are three of them,” the filmmaker says with a wry smile, acknowledging that each installment offers a very different viewing experience.
Wake Up Dead Man lands in select theaters on 26th November before arriving on Netflix on 12th December.
