With the magnificent Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery topping the Netflix charts and the original Knives Out sitting at number two, Rian Johnson spoke with WIRED about his latest smash hit, and inevitably the conversation took a brief diversion to the galaxy far, far away and the status of his long-mooted trilogy, as well as his thoughts on the recent harrassment received by Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram.
WIRED: I have to ask about Star Wars, is there a status update on the trilogy you were going to make?
RJ: There’s no status. Right now I’m just focused on the mystery movies. That’s kind of taken up my whole creative sphere at the moment.
WIRED: Are they still in the works?
RJ: I still have conversations with the folks at Lucasfilm and with Kathy [Kennedy] and it’s my hope that we can still do ’em.
WIRED: A couple years ago, you brought Knives Out to WIRED25 and we asked about diversity in your casting for Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi, and you’d said, “if someone is responding to diversity negatively, f*** ’em.” Earlier this year, Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram started getting racist messages from fans. I’m wondering if you heard echoes between those two incidents.
RJ: It’s all the same. There was a phase where the common wisdom was Don’t feed the trolls. Ignore it. That’s not true. You gotta shut it down, like a body fighting an infection. It was very heartening to see the huge outpouring of very vocal, This is not who this fan base is. And shoving it out.
It’s just so depressing. But if there’s any kind of hopeful glimmer, it’s the notion that these fan bases are getting wise and realizing, No, we gotta punch these people out.
WIRED: It does feel like a shift. Ewan McGregor issued a statement pretty quick saying that this doesn’t represent the fandom. And like you said at WIRED25, 99 percent of the fandom isn’t trolls.
RJ: Well, and also, that 1 percent tries to do this shell game where they say, “Anyone who doesn’t like the movie is a racist.” That’s a bad faith argument. It’s so clear. We’re not talking about whether you like something or whether you don’t, we’re talking about whether you’re toxic and abusive online and whether you’re an odious sexist racist.
