Rian Johnson’s single biggest inspiration as a director: “A massive influence on me”

Posted On November 11, 2024November 11, 2024

Nothing has ever been certain in the career of Rian Johnson. As the director of the Breaking Bad episodes ‘Fly’ (generally cited as the perfect bottle episode) and ‘Ozymandias’ (widely regarded as the best episode of TV ever), he must have thought he was set for life. Then came Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, an incredibly divisive film that still has the fandom arguing to this day. 

Recently, Johnson has once again become a darling, thanks to his incredibly entertaining ‘Knives Out’ series. The first two movies, starring Daniel Craig as flamboyant detective Benoit Blanc, have both done extremely well, and a third instalment, Wake Up Dead Man, is on its way. That’s quite a rollercoaster of a career for a man who’s only just turned 50. 

With many years of filmmaking ahead of him, seeing what Johnson does next will be fascinating. Perhaps he’ll make something akin to the director that he claims had a massive impact on him when he was a teenager. “I discovered Brazil in college,” Johnson told The Academy. “Terry Gilliam’s filmmaking has been a massive influence on me – the joy of visual invention in his movies and just the endless inventiveness – and Brazil was the one that I really latched onto.” He also name-dropped Gilliam’s film The Fisher King, saying he saw it four times when it first came out. “Time Bandits was a huge movie for me when I was a kid,” he also revealed. “That movie blew my mind.”

Born in America, Terry Gilliam moved to the United Kingdom as a young man, which is where he met the other members of influential comedy troupe, Monty Python. Gilliam was Pyton’s chief animator, responsible for all of the iconic imagery associated with their TV show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The first feature film he made was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he co-directed with Terry Jones. His other works include the sci-fi classic 12 Monkeys, the Hunter S. Thompson adaptation Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which will be forever remembered as the final film to feature the late Heath Ledger.

Elsewhere in the interview, Johnson covered four more of the movies he most admired. One of them was Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, a haunting tale of a shapeshifting alien who abducts men whilst disguised as a beautiful woman. Johnson called it a “modern masterpiece,” saying, “it’s a movie that reveals new layers every time I see it. It’s a movie that can be mistaken for being almost improvisational and loose, then the more you watch it – and I’ve watched it many, many times – the more you realise it’s constructed with the precision of a diamond.”

Another movie that came in for praise was the French comedy Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (‘Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday’ in English). Directed by Jacques Tati, Johnson said that the film was also a favourite of one of his actors. “I love it because Daniel Craig, on his own, very much came to Tati as a reference point for his costume, and his style, and performance as Blanc in Glass Onion.”

Wake Up Dead Man will continue the adventures of skillful sleuth Benoit Blanc following his last outing, 2022’s Glass Onion. Alongside a returning Craig, the movie will also feature an all-star cast including Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Josh O’Connor, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Thomas Haden Church, Josh Brolin, and Glenn Close. It is scheduled for release on Netflix at some point in 2025.

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