USC alumnus Johnson to helm Star Wars: Episode VIII

The last few weeks have been rough for Star Wars fans. First the Expanded Universe novels, comics and video games were unceremoniously dropped from the official canon, then a barrage of leaked set photos threatened to pollute the air of mystery surrounding J.J. Abrams’ Episode VII and finally, as if to add injury to insult, Harrison Ford broke his leg when the Millennium Falcon’s door accidentally closed on him during filming at Pinewood Studios, forcing Abrams and company to adjust their shooting schedule without bumping the movie from its Dec. 18, 2015 release date.

 

Then, like an asthmatic cyborg hurling a senior citizen down an elevator shaft, a single action restored balance to the Force. In perhaps the most inspired industry move since Warner Bros. handed Christopher Nolan the keys to the Batmobile, Disney has tapped USC School of Cinematic Arts alumnus Rian Johnson, the acclaimed auteur behind Brick and Looper, to write and direct Star Wars Episode VIII, the second and reportedly darkest installment of the planned sequel trilogy. The 40-year-old filmmaker, B.A. Production ‘96, will also develop a treatment for Episode IX, which he might end up directing as well.

So what exactly does Johnson bring to the holochess table? Like Gareth Edwards and Josh Trank, the two directors Disney recently hired to lens a series of stand-alone Star Wars movies (each rumored to center on either Boba Fett, Han Solo or Yoda), Johnson is an artist whose projects tend to be clever without being cutesy, stylish without being shallow and self-aware without being self-absorbed. All three directors have had previous dalliances with blockbusters: Johnson hit critical and commercial pay dirt with Looper while Edwards followed up his micro-budgeted creature feature Monsters with this spring’s mostly well-received Godzilla and Trank used his Akira-in-suburbia superhero flick Chronicle as a springboard for tackling Fox’s forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot.

Johnson first made waves at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival with Brick, which transplanted the hardboiled affectations and contused worldview of Dashiell Hammett crime novels and the genre-splicing anime Cowboy Bebop into the mouths and minds of twenty-first century high school kids. The movie, a remarkably assured debut that followed a marble-mouthed teenage gumshoe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) investigating the murder of his estranged ex-girlfriend, quickly became a cult sensation, establishing Johnson as an out-of-the-box talent. His follow-up The Brothers Bloom, a middling caper comedy starring Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as a pair of fraternal con artists, represented a bit of a sophomore slump, but he regained his mojo just in time to make 2012’s thrilling, refreshingly cerebral Looper.

Yet as impressive as Johnson’s film credits are, the true measure of his gifts can be taken by his contributions to the small screen, specifically AMC’s Breaking Bad. He directed three of the best episodes of the series, including the claustrophobic two-man show “Fly” — which found Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) butting heads and coming to grips with their increasingly Kafkaesque existence while searching their meth super-lab for an elusive contaminant — and the gut-wrenching, apocalyptic series climax “Ozymandias,” now universally regarded as one of the greatest episodes of television ever aired.

If Disney allows Johnson the same amount of creative leeway it’s shown Pixar and Marvel in the past, we could easily be looking at the most emotionally deep, character-driven Star Wars movie since 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, which itself was directed by USC alumnus and former faculty member Irvin Kershner. Our university has always shared an inexorable bond with George Lucas’ beloved space opera, so it seems only fitting for another Trojan to help set the course of its future.

 

Landon McDonald is a graduate student studying public relations. His column, “The Reel Deal,” ran Wednesdays.