Writer/director Rian Johnson, who recently directed the critically acclaimed Knives Out, along with Star Wars: The Last Jedi made it quite clear with that film that he would rather surprise fans than give them exactly what they are expecting. In a recent interview, Johnson spoke about catering to fans.
“I think approaching any creative process with [making fans happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson shared during an interview with Radio.com [per IndieWire]. “Even my experience as a fan, you know if I’m coming into something, even if it’s something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it’s like ‘Oh, okay,’ it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won’t really think about it afterwards, but that’s not really going to satisfy me.”
“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater…What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with Empire Strikes Back, something that’s emotionally resonant and feels like it connects up and makes sense and really gets to the heart of what this thing is and in a way that I never could have seen coming.”
As a fan of all of Johnson’s films, I agree that catering to a fanbase isn’t always the best strategy as it can hurt the overall arc of any story/narrative of a film.
