A divided fanbase, a disappointing box office performance and a retreat from spinoff movies: all signs that the once impenetrable armor of the Star Wars franchise has started to show some cracks. Now a new campaign from a group of producers aims to save the franchise and unite the fans by remaking Rian Johnson's divisive film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The producers are even offering to cover the budget to get the movie remade. So how does Rian Johnson feel about this plan to get his film remade? It turns out that he's all for it. Check out his response to the producers trying to remake his film below:
Rian Johnson seems as eager for this remake to happen as the people behind it, although I suspect not for the same reasons. His response is quite amusing and you can almost hear his laughter coming through the tweet. The producers who want to remake Star Wars: The Last Jedi say that it isn't a joke, but I'm not sure that Rian Johnson is convinced, and he's still eager to see the punchline. He seems to basically be saying, "If you think you can do it better, go ahead and try." There is definitely something of a morbid curiosity to his response, wondering what such a remake would look like. After the backlash to The Last Jedi and the death threats he's received, a campaign to remake his movie probably seems relatively tame by comparison.
As for the campaign itself, it echoes many of the complaints that some fans had with The Last Jedi and the path Lucasfilm is on, believing that a remake of Episode VIII will provide the necessary course correction. Where things get interesting is the actual plan. The aim is to remake the film, somehow still incorporating Carrie Fisher and crowdsourcing ideas from across the fandom with the goal of hiring these fans to script a film that will be as universally accepted as possible. The unnamed producers have offered to cover the entire budget for a remake of The Last Jedi for Disneyl and yet are allowing supporters to pledge their own amount to get their voices heard. The Last Jedi likely cost upwards of $200 million so that's the amount you would think would be necessary for a budget on a remake. As the time of this writing, the site claims that fans have pledged over $30 million.
The chances of Disney and Lucasfilm remaking The Last Jedi are about as likely as the prequels getting remade and lightsabers becoming a real thing tomorrow. Yet the impetus is understandable because since the release of that film, all of the warm fuzzy feelings we had for this franchise since it returned in 2015 have dissipated, replaced by bitterness and infighting. So I can see why some people might think that changing that film would fix everything, and I'm sure most of us have things we would change about it if we could. Of course, if fans want the true vision of Star Wars, I suppose Disney could just make George Lucas's force-wielding Osmosis Jones-like trilogy as he intended.
Rian Johnson is currently hard at work developing his new Star Wars trilogy. If, as reported, Lucasfilm is pumping the brakes on the Star Wars spinoff films to focus on the main films, it would seem that Episode IX will be followed by either the David Benioff and D.B. Weiss series of films or Rian Johnson's trilogy. Where The Last Jedi remake will fit in on the release calendar remains to be seen. You can see all of the upcoming Star Wars films, announced, rumored and otherwise, in our guide. For all the latest in uncontroversial topics stay tuned to CinemaBlend.
