Rian Johnson explains how Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery links to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, including a joke about father and son ruling an empire together that he could not resist.
The latest Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, includes a quick Star Wars joke, as one of the characters — who’s just unironically talked about joining his father to build a vast, powerful empire — compares that choice to being part of the Rebellion.
“I couldn’t resist,” Johnson told Polygon in a Zoom interview ahead of Wake Up Dead Man’s release. “The ultimate joke of that moment, that everyone thinks they’re the Rebels, I think is very apropos today.”
Wake Up Dead Man has a few comedic moments in this vein, but mostly, it’s a remarkably serious movie that uses a richly complicated locked-door murder mystery as a frame for Johnson to consider the nature of religious faith, how hypocrites wield it as a manipulative or destructive weapon, and what true Christianity looks like. How many pop-culture references are too many within that context? Johnson keeps a careful eye on this kind of meta gag in his work, but that doesn’t mean eliminating it entirely.
“You just have to be instinctual about it,” he says. “On the one hand, I like that these movies are unapologetically set in the present moment. That’s a feature and not a bug. On the other hand, you don’t want to get annoying about it, so it’s a little bit of just trusting your ear.”
Jokes aside, Wake Up Dead Man does have some clear resonance with The Last Jedi, in the way both movies touch on how easy it is for a religion’s practitioners to get mired in judging other people, preserving tradition, or following a charismatic leader, while forgetting the principles they’re supposed to be living by. When Yoda (supposedly) burns the Jedi Order’s ancient teaching texts in Last Jedi, he chides Luke Skywalker for focusing on an abstract big picture, instead of “the need in front of your nose.” That closely parallels one of Wake Up Dead Man’s most powerful turning points, when the protagonist, Catholic priest Father Jud (Challengers’ Josh O’Connor), realizes he’s been distracted by recent events and is similarly ignoring the important aspects of being a spiritual leader.
Does Johnson mean for Wake Up Dead Man and Last Jedi to convey similar messages about belief and religious practice? “Absolutely, on a couple of different levels,” he says.
“Anyone who grew up with Star Wars deeply rooted in their childhood — it’s almost a cliché to say it feels like a religion,” Johnson continues. “That can be used to cut both ways. But for me, there is something very fundamental about it. It’s a fundamental myth that we grew up with, from childhood. I grew up very Christian, so when I was a kid, I was parsing Star Wars through my faith and through my Christianity. It’s all tied up in that. Very naturally, if I’m telling that story, it’s going to be filtered through the values I grew up with.”
Read the interview in full at the link below, and stream Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery on Netflix.
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