Star Wars 8 and 9 to be directed by Rian Johnson

Pretty cool. I really like Johnson's stuff; think I even did a Besties on Brothers Bloom a while back. Fun fact: he went to high school with my friend Justin, and Justin apparently inspired the Brain character in Brick. (Which you'd understand if you ever met Justin.) Pretty great choice for the last two Star Wars movies; looking forward to seeing them in 2018 or whenever they start coming out.

So, time travel then?

Alternate headline:

Disney remembers that JJ Abrams is directing the latest Star Wars film, takes appropriate action.

That's way better than JJ Abrams.

I didn't like Brick. At all. But most critics seemed to love it.

I liked Brick and Looper, but the Brothers Bloom is fantastic and my favourite of his films.

The guy who made Brick. Is making Star Wars movies.

Huh.

I want a Coen Brothers Star Wars film :(

Why the JJ hate? :(

Rorie, don't forget he also did some of the best episodes of Breaking Bad. I'm so excited for this news.

I'm pretty sure at this point Star Wars only works as an action movie and this is a somewhat unorthodox pick for that purpose; young director though so who knows.

Seems like another good director for Star Wars 8 and 9. I hope they all turn out to be worthy additions to the SW legacy.

@thehumandove: Because Lost wrote a bunch of narrative cheques, and they mostly bounced.

Rian Johnson has made some great movies so far.

Oh man, I think you just made my day.

@bisonhero: To be fair, Abrams was barely involved with Lost.

@rorie: You're a Star Wars movie...

@dallas_raines: Yeah, but I think it's one of the main reasons that people give him a hard time, even if Lindelof and Cuse are more directly responsible for how that show turned out.

I am a huge fan of Rian Johnson--his episodes of Breaking Bad are some of the best things I've ever seen, Brick is a flat out fantastic noir, Brothers Bloom is a great mediation on storytelling, and Looper was smart enough to not sweat the specifics of its time travel biz too much. Johnson directing Star Wars and replacing Abrams (who I do not like very much--his Star Trek outings were all sound and fury, especially the second one, and Lost was bad, Revolution was bad, and basically everything he's done that I've attempted to watch has been bad. His Star Wars will be okay, and probably have a bunch of obvious call backs to the original trilogy, because that's all Abrams does).

A good and unexpected pick. I really liked Brick and enjoyed Looper up until its second half.

Brick and Looper are two of my favorite movies and I thought Brothers Bloom was really great.

So I'M HELL OF EXCITED ABOUT THIS NEWS. Hell of.

Wonder why JJ isnt directing them. Also, I think it would be cooler if they got a different director for each installment. Would love to see a david fincher directed star wars movie.

ah to hell with it, just do a woody allen directed SW ffs.

I love Rian Johnson! In fact I find this news a little disappointing because I'd rather see him make his own stuff than see him work in other people's universes. I also worry that if there's not a consistent creative lead that a lot of the big decisions for this series will be left to other people. Like suits.

Loved Brick.

Loved Looper.

Loved all of the Breaking Bad episodes he made.

I'm amazed how pumped up I am about Star Wars.

Never heard of him or seen his movies. Good luck to him.

uhhhhh, shouldn't these movies be for kids? Really just sounds silly hiring the indie directors and hope they get Spike Jonez "Where the Wild Things Are", when in reality this series had a teddy bear picnic for an ending in 1983.

Yeah...The first batch of Star Wars movies are kind of boring and cheesy. Of course, it did something different at the time, which is where its legacy comes from.

Hmm... I really enjoy Rian Johnson, I like what they are doing with these new Star Wars movies. I should start preparing to be disappointed now tho... Fingers crossed!

Well that's.... they are still hyping this to be "that" legacy again. Now it's not necessarily going to be the same thing..... harrison ford alone is probably the biggest problem and also the biggest name to a world wide audience. At one point Return of the Jedi was the lowest point of the star wars series, this was the early 90s when Pulp Fiction and Clerks ruled the Gen X audience of film goers, but now we just went through the prequel trilogy and it seems the quality shifted. And yes, it's a goofy film, blue milk and cheesy lines, but still your imagination did just start to make up whatever the tentacle monster looked like underneath the garbage compactor scene.

Now the news on these films seem to just hire indie film makers with no real knowledge of effects work and production design. Personally I felt the Unicef video with the amazing puppet really did a better job selling this film as something for kids to enjoy then any of the news that's been coming out of these films.

If they put time travel in Star Wars I'll be more upset than I was when I saw the prequels.

This "Eww, an indie director" reaction going on in here is pretty weird. George Lucas was an indie filmmaker you guys.

Rian Johnson is a way more interesting choice than JJ. It's kind of weird that JJ's one and done, though.

I don't know who that is, so that's cool.

I find this kind of strange. I thought Abrams was essentially guiding this revival along. So to have him only do the first film and have the others, both of them, handed to someone else feels weird. Maybe he'll somewhat fill the Lucas role like on the original trilogy and be more of a consultant for the story/universe?

What if they use time travel to retcon some of the dumber elements of the prequels?

@kevin_cogneto: Yeah, I'll take the inventive choices Disney has been making with Marvel Studios and Star Wars over more Micheal Bay/Zack Snyder nonsense. Also, it's funny that the directors of Godzilla, Chronicle and the upcoming Fantastic Four are still considered 'indie'.

I think the recent Star Trek movies probably have more to do with it at this point.

I'm very excited by this. Looper was a fantastic movie, so I'm hoping these keep up the same level of quality.

@pyromagnestir said:

Are people really livid about that though? Like, sure, it turned Star Trek into Star Wars basically, but at least it revitalized any interest in Star Trek, given that there hasn't been a TV show in quite some time and the last few movies based around Next Generation weren't so hot.

I imagine there are more people upset over what he's done with Star Trek than people who are still angry at him over Lost (especially since he really had next to nothing to do with Lost after that first episode). He turned Star Trek into actiony popcorn movies. People got super pissed about the changes in DMC. People are strange.

@pyromagnestir said:

When you're a stranger.

Smart move on their part. This still doesn't make up for us losing edgar wright's ant-man, though, karmically speaking (I doubt its the same people deciding that, but you know what I mean).

Couldn't even finish Looper so hopefully it's better than that shit

@kevin_cogneto: Every movie should be directed by Roland Emmerich

I like his stuff, so sure, I wouldn't mind seeing what he does with Star Wars. Don't see how it could be any worse than the last 3(even though I didn't hate those as much as some people).

@metalbaofu: Yeah well I hate you for not hating them as much as I do (not really)

Aside: Revenge of the Sith was a pretty good action movie; also some glorious unintentional humor.

Faces look ugly.