Rian Johnson weighs in on Taika Waititi directing a Star Wars movie

Earlier this week, we learned that Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi would be directing and co-writing a new Star Wars movie. He’ll be writing the movie alongside Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who won awards for her work on 1917. It wasn’t that long ago that Disney said that the Star Wars movies were going on “hiatus,” but clearly that didn’t last long.

Waititi got a lot critical acclaim for breathing new life into the Thor franchise, and he hasn’t looked back since. He’s currently working on the next Thor movie, Love and Thunder, and won an Oscar for writing Jojo Rabbit, a World War 2 movie about a boy who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend.

And now Waititi is switching from Marvel to Star Wars, although he’s not a complete newcomer to that galaxy far far away, having directed the season finale of the hugely successful Disney+ series The Mandalorian, which tied off the fantastic first season really well. Still, directing a whole Star Wars movie is another matter. Fellow Star Wars director Rian Johnson, the guy behind The Last Jedi, weighed in on Twitter:

Johnson has “NO idea” what kind of Star Wars movie Waititi and Wilson-Cairns will produce. “If I tried to guess I’d be wrong, and that is the most exciting thing I can imagine.” Indeed, Waititi has developed a reputation for being unpredictable. After what Waititi did for Thor, the possibilities for a Star Wars movie are pretty much endless.

I’m extremely curious to see what Waititi’s Star Wars will look like. The hope for me is that he can achieve something similar to what he did with Ragnarok. Star Wars has found itself at a point where it’s become very samey, with new movies either being met with disinterest or anger. We can hope that his movie will offer something new to help to revive the Star Wars universe and bring a lot of fans back.

At the moment, it’s the Star Wars TV shows that are really showing the movies how it’s done. The animated The Clone Wars has been consistently terrific, and The Mandalorian has gone a long way towards rejuvenating the franchise. We’ll see more Baby Yoda action when it returns for a second season later this year.

They’re not slowing down with new TV shows, either. We’ve got Cassian Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi shows in development. There’s also another one coming from Emmy-nominated writer Leslie Headland (Russian Doll, Bachelorette).

Will Waititi make a Star Wars movie everyone will like? That remains to be seen. But there aren’t many directors in Hollywood who can make fans as collectively excited as him.

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