Wake Up Dead Man has a surprising connection to Star Wars, Rian Johnson reveals

Including a Star Wars joke about father and son ruling an empire together: 'I couldn't resist'

“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.”

At the same time, Johnson says he’s always exploring and interrogating his own beliefs — and bringing that same analysis into the stories he writes.

“That's part and parcel of that process, and that's what happened with this movie as well,” he says. “There is overlap between those two scenes — both are very much about, Get out of your theories, get out of your theology, get out of your head and look at the need right in front of your eyes. Get back to human empathy. Who is hurting right in front of you? Who needs your help? Ultimately, that's what Christ did, that's what Christ taught.”

The Last Jedi was intensely criticized, even reviled in some sectors of the fandom, in part because of the ways it challenges or interrogates some of the franchise’s deification of individual characters, concepts, or the Force itself. Holding up what self-described Christians get wrong about Christ’s teachings in Wake Up Dead Man seems even more fraught and potentially controversial. But Johnson tells Polygon that blowback against The Last Jedi didn’t make him nervous about the potentially incendiary aspects of pushing against people’s real-world religious beliefs.

“I was hoping for that — I wasn't afraid of it per se,” Johnson says. “Having grown up a Star Wars fan, I know that thing where something challenges it, and I know the recoil against that. I know how there can be infighting in the world of Star Wars. But I also know that the worst sin is to handle it with kid gloves. The worst sin is to be afraid of doing anything that shakes it up. Because every Star Wars movie going back to Empire and onward shook the box and rattled fans, and got them angry, and got them fighting, and got them talking about it. And then for a lot of them, got them loving it and coming around on it eventually.

“The same thing goes for religion, for me. People who are raised outside of faith sometimes think it's this touchy thing that you have to handle with kid gloves. I grew up very Christian. It was a very personal thing for me. I'm not a believer anymore. I'm no longer a Christian. But when I was… You're constantly rattling the box for yourself. You’re constantly being offended by things. But then it's not like that just shuts off [the real world and how it challenges your beliefs].”

Johnson compares being a self-questioning Christian to living within a fandom, in that he believes an important part of both is being flexible about taking in new information and perspectives, and being willing to constantly question your own beliefs.

“It’s just like being a Star Wars fan and seeing a twist where you're like, ‘Oh God, that doesn't make me feel great, because that's not what I expected,’” he says. “As a Christian, the world is constantly throwing that at you. It’s just your daily life. Assimilating that is how you grow. That's part of the purpose of both [fandom and religion] — it’s only alive when it's interacting with the world.”

That said, all this dark deep, heavy analysis is just part of the background in Wake Up Dead Man’s plot — like the first two Knives Out movies, it’s still a supremely entertaining thriller, with the characters navigating a knotty murder that keeps getting more and more complicated with every new development. Drawling Southern detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is still a hoot as he draws every new conclusion into a big, messy meal, an excuse for speeches and grandstanding. And O’Connor is terrific in the role. It’s going to be easy enough for viewers to watch it just as a fun time, without getting pulled into any religious debates.

“I thought it would be really fun to ground it and to dig into something very personal for myself,” Johnson says. “Christianity and my faith are a big part of my past, and have echoes all the way into my present. It felt like there was no bigger or more personal thing for me to try and dig into, and see if I could do it in a way that wasn't didactic or finger-wagging, and that was in the context of a big, entertaining Benoit Blanc mystery. [Faith] was the original germ of [the story], and after that, it was, ‘Hoo boy. I don't know if this'll work. Let's give it a try.’”

---

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story is streaming on Netflix now.