November 2019 – Page 67

Rian Johnson Is Fine With You Not Liking Star Wars: The Last Jedi, But Not With Complaints About Diversity

Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has opened up about some of the bad faith backlash against his film, while also praising the Star Wars fan community at large and encouraging debate among them.

Johnson’s comments were made during WIRED live Q&A event to promote his upcoming movie, Knives Out. Parts of the Q&A were recorded by one fan and uploaded to Twitter, who caught an interesting moment during the event. One audience member asked Johnson about the negative reaction to The Last Jedi from certain viewers, and his thoughts on people who complain about the film’s cast diversity. Johnson did not mince words in his reply, which was met with immediate applause: “if someone’s responding to diversity negatively, f*** ’em.”

As the applause died down, Johnson immediately clarified that not everyone who dislikes his film is a bigot: “if anyone didn’t like the movie, I’m not saying that’s why they didn’t like it.” Talking about the backlash, Johnson admits that he expected that the film would not appeal to everyone. “It wasn’t surprising at all to me. I grew up as a Star Wars fan. I was in my 20s when the prequels came out. This whole idea that it’s been sunshine and roses, and then everyone’s yelling at each other, is baffling to me.”

Johnson believes that the passionate debates that fans have about Star Wars is all part of the series’ appeal. “People care deeply about Star Wars, and every single person has a slightly different version of what they think Star Wars is. And so much of the fun of it is arguing about it.” He believes that the negativity around the film has been covered extensively because it “is fun to write about, and it gets clicks,” but he also says that the majority of folks who reach out to him about Star Wars are actually very pleasant.

“95% of my interactions on Twitter are absolutely lovely and constructive and wonderful with Star Wars fans,” he says. “Star Wars fans are the best fans in the world, all of them.” He also believes that the rest of the fandom needs to push back against the folks who are angry at the diversity of his film’s cast. “I think the fandom has to take a stand against getting defined by a very small slice of it, that does not represent the lion’s share.”

Johnson is set to direct his own original Star Wars trilogy in the future, although what it’s going to be, exactly, is seemingly still being decided upon. The next film in the series, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will wrap up the Skywalker saga. It’s directed by J.J. Abrams, and will release on December 20. After that, the series is going on a hiatus, at least in cinemas, with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss having recently stepped away from their own planned trilogy.

Hideo Kojima Has Been Awarded Two Guinness World Records, But Not For What You Might Expect

Hideo Kojima’s latest game, Death Stranding, released last week. Reviews have been mixed, but our critic loved it, and the game has inspired a lot of discussion. Over the weekend, director Hideo Kojima was awarded two Guinness World Records, but curiously neither of them directly relate to the new game–he’s yet to collect an award for “first strand game”, or “most babies in jars in a game”.

Instead, Kojima has been awarded for his follower counts on Twitter and Instagram, claiming two separate awards: “most followers on Twitter for a video game director” and “most followers on Instagram for a video game director”.

Kojima, who has 811,600 followers on his Japanese Twitter account and a further 2,813,385 million on his English language account, tweeted out a picture of both awards after receiving them. A close up of the award shows that it specifically focuses on his English account rather than combining the two. The award is specific to his role as a director, too–Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has 3.7 million followers.

Kojima’s Instagram has 888,539 followers, according to his award, but that appears to have gone up considerably: his page now shows 918,000 followers. This is all particularly serendipitous when you consider that the “like” is a major form of currency in Death Stranding–Kojima seems to put real stock in the power of social media.

Before this, Hideo Kojima could reasonably claim some responsibility for one other Guinness World Record: the very specific “first interactive digital graphic novel for the PlayStation Portable” award, held by Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, which launched June 13, 2006.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Marvel Boss Responds To Martin Scorsese’s Negative Comments About Superhero Movies

Martin Scorsese has had a lot to say about Marvel movies recently. In short, he hasn’t seen them and he doesn’t like them. He thinks they are “not cinema” and that they pose a threat to the movie-going experience by not leaving much room for movies that aren’t sequels.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige said Scorsese is free to share his opinions on films, but nothing Scorsese says will stop Marvel from making superhero movies.

“Everybody has a different definition of cinema. Everybody has a different definition of art. Everybody has a different definition of risk, I guess” says Feige. “All I know is, I’m surrounded by people 24 hours a day who live and breathe and love cinema. Some people don’t think it’s cinema. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Everyone is entitled to repeat that opinion.

“Everyone is entitled to write op-eds about that opinion, and I look forward to what will happen next. But in the meantime, we’re going to keep making movies,” he added.

One of Scorsese’s criticisms of Marvel movies is that they do not contain any serious “revelation, mystery, or genuine emotional danger,” adding that “nothing is at risk” for Marvel movies.

Feige responded by saying Marvel does in fact take risks and try new things. One example he mentioned of risk-taking is that Marvel stopped making the bankable standalone Iron Man movies in 2013. Another example of risk-taking and innovative storytelling was the “serious theological and physical altercation” that Iron Man and Captain America had in Captain America: Civil War.

Feige also pointed out how Marvel, temporarily at least, killed half of its characters during Infinity War as an example of risk-taking. “I think it’s fun for us to take our success and use it to take risks and go in different places,” Feiege said.

Finally, Feige said the upcoming Marvel movie The Eternals is a big risk in that it features a group of characters almost no one has heard about, and it’s very expensive.

“[Director Chloe Zhao] is on the Canary Islands with 10 amazing actors shooting The Eternals, a group of characters that nobody has ever heard of outside of a very small group of people. It is a very big movie; it is a very expensive movie. We are making it because we believe in her vision and we believe in what those characters can do, and we believe that we need to continue to grow and evolve and change and push our genre forward. That’s a risk, if I’ve ever heard one.

Scorsese’s original comments inspired other directors to speak out as well. The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola took things further, saying Marvel movies are “despicable.”

“I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema,” Coppola said. “He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”

Find All of RDR2’s Treasure Maps With This Guide

Get a bunch of rewards quickly by completing treasure map quests in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Obsidian Dev Says They Need to “Re-Examine Entire Format” Before Making a Pillars of Eternity 3

The director of the Pillars of Eternity games said that the team at Obsidian would need to “re-examine the entire format of the game” if they go forward with a third title.

In a Tumblr post published on Friday, series director Josh Sawyer wrote that Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire didn’t sell as well as the studio hoped, and that it’s not up to him whether another game gets to be made. He did say that fans can expect some changes if another sequel comes out.

“…I do think that the relatively low sales of Deadfire mean that if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game,” Sawyer wrote.

The Top 10 Rick and Morty Episodes (So Far)

With Season 4 almost here, we pick our favorite Rick and Morty episodes from the first three seasons.

Star Wars: Early Art Shows Kylo Ren Looking More Like Darth Vader

With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker coming December 20, and Kylo Ren’s full repaired mask returning, Lucasfilm concept designer Christian Alzmann posted some early art ideas for Kylo’s helmet on Instagram.

As you can see, the original take on Kylo’s top seemed like an attempt to emulate, in some regard, Darth Vader. There’s the breathing-mask element plus the peaked dome top that comes down over the ears. Character-wise, it would have fit with Kylo’s admiration of his grandfather, but the choice was made to go a different route.