David Bridges
Highlights
- Talent: Rian Johnson effectively combines his skills in Star Wars and murder mysteries.
- Cameo: Daniel Craig’s surprise role as a Stormtrooper in The Force Awakens is well-known.
- Discovery: Johnson recognized Craig’s performance due to his unique walk.
- Panel: Johnson and Abrams discussed Star Wars but shared limited details about their experiences.
We know Rian Johnson has a keen eye for Star Wars (and wanting to get back to it, the long, long way round), and we know he has a keen eye for murder mysteries with all his work on the Knives Out movies. But he is also apparently good at blending those skills for a secret third talent: being able to figure out someone special is hidden under layers of Stormtrooper armor… especially when it came to his future Knives Out star.
At this point we all know that Daniel Craig had a special cameo in the first entry of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, playing the First Order Stormtrooper that Rey manages to successfully use a Jedi mind trick on to free herself from Kylo Ren’s captivity. But in a recent Q&A session for the latest Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man (alongside Craig himself and moderated by Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker director JJ Abrams), Johnson shared how he managed to figure it out early… well, mostly.
“When I was writing episode eight, we were watching dailies, because [Abrams was] shooting seven,” Johnson said. “One day… it was a scene with Daisy [Ridley] where she does the Force mind control on a Stormtrooper and gets him to unlock her things. The daily came up, the Stormtrooper came up, she said it, the Stormtrooper didn’t say anything—just walked across the room to her.
“And I did this,” Johnson continued, adjusting himself to sit straight in his seat. “‘Who’s that actor?’ And Pablo [Hidalgo] at Lucasfilm was like, ‘I think it’s just a stunt dude in a Stormtrooper thing,’ and I go, ‘No—that’s a real actor, just from the way they walked across the stage.’”
Johnson got the confirmation a day later that he was right—and that it was none other than the future Benoit Blanc—and of course, the rest is history.
Although the idea of putting the two directors of the Star Wars sequel trilogy together on a panel (alongside a notable and easily identified Stormtrooper) might get Star Wars fans on tenterhooks seeing what tidbits about making The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker might emerge, that was pretty much all Johnson and Abrams had to say about the galaxy far, far away and their part in it. You’ll simply have to make do with two very talented directors and a Hollywood megastar talking shop about making movies and Knives Out in the full Q&A session below, instead.
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Daniel Mercer
