Speaking with Polygon ahead of the release of the third Knives Out film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story, creator Rian Johnson touched on some links between this trilogy ending adventure and The Last Jedi, his 2017 prequel to The Rise of Skywalker that premiered 8 years ago this evening at the Royal Albert Hall.
“I couldn’t resist. The ultimate joke of that moment, that everyone thinks they’re the Rebels, I think is very apropos today.”
“You just have to be instinctual about it,” he says. “On the one hand, I like that these movies are unapologetically set in the present moment. That’s a feature and not a bug. On the other hand, you don’t want to get annoying about it, so it’s a little bit of just trusting your ear.”
“Anyone who grew up with Star Wars deeply rooted in their childhood — it’s almost a cliché to say it feels like a religion,” Johnson continues. “That can be used to cut both ways. But for me, there is something very fundamental about it. It’s a fundamental myth that we grew up with, from childhood. I grew up very Christian, so when I was a kid, I was parsing Star Wars through my faith and through my Christianity. It’s all tied up in that. Very naturally, if I’m telling that story, it’s going to be filtered through the values I grew up with.”
