‘Star Wars’ Announces Another Chapter of the Skywalker Saga. Plus, ‘Lioness’ Season 3 Finale With Van Lathan.

The Watch

The episode covers recent developments in the Star Wars franchise, specifically the news of Jon Watts directing a new Skywalker saga film. T

Key takeaways

• Jon Watts has signed on to direct the next chapter in the Skywalker saga.
• Daisy Ridley is reported to be returning to her role as Rey.

Main topics

• Star Wars Skywalker saga news
• Lanterns Episode 7 review

Notable quotes

The absolute retrenchment to not only a place of... We are just going to go back to making trilogies.

Conclusion

A critical look at the tension between studio-driven safety and creati

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:05) I need supports to have to clear the room. Speaker 1 (0:08) Stand up and walk now. Speaker 2 (0:11) Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me on the other line, he will conclude his hat ceremony at the end of this podcast. It's Andy Greenwald! Dude, Speaker 3 (0:28) I'm having flashbacks. This is how we started the pod. I know. One guy in Speaker 2 (0:31) New York City, another guy in Los Angeles talking about TV. and pop culture and uh you know it's it's another year it's we each got some different mayors but it's okay i'm Speaker 3 (0:46) i'm happy where i am for that have you taken any free buses Speaker 2 (0:49) in new york city yet Speaker 3 (0:52) I haven't, but I did consider buying a I heart NY t-shirt for my daughter, but the heart is Zoran's face. And when I say for my daughter, I mean for myself. So it's, it's in play. It's in play, but no, it's been, it's been quite a, um, what's the opposite of pleasant, uh, rough landing because I moved out of Speaker 2 (1:12) the Speaker 3 (1:12) city 10 years ago. And then I came just in time to get like a sick-ass cold and have a sick-ass Nor'easter, and I'm back, baby. I'm all grim and grumpy. Speaker 2 (1:21) Yeah, and he's doing a little bit of work in New York City, but that doesn't mean that the watch misses a beat, right? Never. His dedication to this podcast, and really his dedication to the larger project of television as a lens through which we view modern life, it's like Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, man. You just got to keep walking the invisible bridge. Speaker 3 (1:41) Wow. Yeah, that's how I felt this weekend when I was looking for a way to cross Flatbush without drenching myself. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:49) I'm going to be joined by Van Lathan later where we talk extensively about the third season of Lions, including the last two episodes, which we hadn't gotten a chance to catch up on. Have you finished your Lions rewatch yet? Speaker 3 (2:02) Try not to look too excited about that segment. Speaker 2 (2:04) We did talk about a lot of stuff, a lot of topics. But I'm more excited than ever to talk to you because we have Star Wars news and we have an episode of Lanterns that I really want to break down. The first thing I wanted to mention with the Star Wars stuff, Andy, is over the weekend it broke that John Watts has signed on to direct the first film in what is rumored to be the next trilogy in the Skywalker saga. So Star Wars is just, they just can't quit those crazy Skywalkers. And Simon Kinberg has been working on this project since I think 2018. It is being reported that Daisy Ridley will return to play Ray. So obviously, John Watts has done work with the larger Disney Corporation before in his Spider-Man efforts. And Simon Kinberg has fingerprints on multiple superhero properties. This is interesting to me. But I was curious whether or not it was surprising to you. I mean, I think for me, like... It's always fascinating to see companies sort of decide, we're not interested in bringing in Denis Villeneuve to do this. We are not interested in having Jeremy Saulnier or Zach Kreger or Klojow or whoever. It is becoming more of a studio system, more now than ever even before. What's your reaction to this news? Speaker 3 (3:33) For a business side of it, there aren't that many safe hands. in which to entrust something that is, let's be frank, quite compromised goods at this point. The larger Star Wars franchise has fallen into such disrepair that we have basically already agreed to memory hole Mandalorian and Grogu that that was the first Star Wars movie in theaters in six years, seven years. Yes. So the absolute retrenchment to not only a place of... We are just going to go back to making trilogies. We are back in the Skywalker business, which I can say as someone who worked on what may have been the next movie at one point with Lanterns writers, producers, Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt Gibson, that was not meant to be episode 10. That was one of the mandates. That was not what was going to be the next thing. So to have gone so far back to just like Skywalker's slop, but also the fact that like they are so worried. And so it is such an existential decision about will we ever get to do this again if we get this wrong? You understand why they went to one of the very few A-list reliable producers of billion-dollar grossing content. And I say that that's intended to be completely agnostic about the artistic and creative abilities of Simon Kinberg and John Watts, who I think are both smart, thoughtful, talented guys. It's more that the... The talent pool they were looking at was clearly a lot smaller than we'd thought. And so this is in some ways where it inevitably was going to end up. Speaker 2 (5:04) I think that the most important thing in terms of the creative storytelling here is that they just don't do the same blueprint as the previous three sequels and the original three films. So the prequels aside, if they tell another tortured young prodigy comes of age, is thrown into a... intergalactic battle between good and evil represented by a rebellion and an evil empire and blows up a big space station in the process. I think people will quit wholesale midway through. Speaker 3 (5:40) I'm excited to tell you, I don't think they're going to do that. Have you ever heard of a storyline that could be referred to as a lone wolf in Cuth? Speaker 3 (5:49) What if I were to tell you that there's kind of a special kid? Speaker 2 (5:52) So Rey finds like a little kid and tutors him in the ways of the force. That would probably be number two in my least interested in Star Wars draft. But yeah, as a Disney story, I think it's notable that Sean Levy, who is the director of the next Star Wars film, Starfighter, which is coming out, I believe, next year with Ryan Gosling, has left Netflix for... an overall at Disney. And they are obviously, whatever they learn from the Kathy Kennedy era of Lord Miller on Solo, then getting fired, and Colin Trevorrow and leaving, and Abrams coming on for Rise of Skywalker, and everything that happened, and even going back to Tony Gilroy taking over Rogue One, that chaos was the sort of norm there. Clearly what they want is a solid floor from which to work from. And yeah, I mean, like, are these films going to be nominated for Best Picture? Highly unlikely. Speaker 3 (6:52) Charitably, I think that is the healthiest way to look at it. That if you, again, this is not my normal position to consider these issues, but if you were going to be sitting in Josh DeMauro's chair, the era in which you, quote unquote, took the meeting. And we know that Kathy Kennedy took a wild, wild assortment of meetings from, some of which... You know, it got closer to the altar than I think we even realized, whether it was the Steven Soderbergh, Ben Solo movie, or the meetings with David Fincher that were, I think, a lot more substantive than had been previously reported. Vince Gilligan. Speaker 2 (7:27) What Speaker 3 (7:27) do you have to show for that? I think you could make the pretty bottom line case that they have very little to show for it and a lot of, you know, a lot of wasted time and probably a lot of wasted development money. So they have decided they aren't going to do that. They have decided to say, like, we can do our best to future-proof this franchise by hiring one guy to make another trilogy, which is what people expect from this, and then here we go. Now, I will say, as someone who once was, who has a recent experience, being someone who's like, you know what we need here is a safe, steady pair of hands just to get us through this next transitional period to prove that we can restore normalcy. That is why I was a big Joe Biden guy in 2020. And we all know how that turned out. So I'm just saying that, you know, what makes sense in the moment might not make sense long-term. And then we can pivot to the fact that like, I find the fact that they're going to make a Skywalker story, like really dispiriting because the inevitable drift back towards Skywalkers has been not only diminishing returns, it's been outright putrid since when, since Luke showed up on Mando, since that awful. end to that next trilogy. You could even say that, you know, the George Lucas's trilogy, which has had a lot of like, you know, after the fact kind of, uh, rose colored glasses on it. Like I, I, it's certainly not inspiring, but how many podcasts are we, are we going to do? Or we're like, we're not sure we're inspired by this latest business decision by the Walt Disney corporation. There is no Speaker 2 (8:55) limit. How many do you want to do? Do you want me to start skipping Star Wars news? Speaker 3 (9:00) Definitely not. Look at us. We're cooking. Speaker 2 (9:02) Do you want to start talking about whether or not like Zoe Kazan has like their safest pair of hands for East of Eden? Like I'm happy to do whatever you want. No, no. Let's talk about lanterns because this is the. Wait, Speaker 3 (9:17) wait, hold on. This is you play into the middle again. I noticed you haven't weighed in on your feelings about. the John Watts Star Wars trilogy that is now in the offing. I Speaker 2 (9:27) did. I mean, I just, whether or not it's Skywalkers, it can't be the same Skywalker story. It can't be about someone being raised to be the prince who was promised and save the galaxy. If it can take anything, anything from the Andor experience of there are so many different ways to skin this cat. with all respect to cats. Like you can look at it from so many different ways and you can bring in so many different aspects of people's real lived experiences in their lives and like start talking about that. It doesn't always have to be the same story over and over again. They've shown in some ways, some discipline and not continually pumping out movies that are like basically Fast and the Furious 11. And you're just like, here's a hologram of Luke. fighting with Yoda against like Palpatine who's died four times. You can, you can make a good Star Wars movie. You can make a good Star Wars story. You just have to have the courage of your convictions, but it's hard to like evaluate it until it, I think the Skywalker stuff is nerve wracking, but it's like, we'll, we'll see the first time we get a log line. We'll know. Do Speaker 3 (10:37) all Star Wars projects have to inevitably be about. Star Wars about either remaking or undoing what just came before? Is it just locked forever in this like almost metatextual relationship with itself? Or as you said, Ken Briggs has been working on this for a number of years already. Did they give him time and space to crack a story that might be interesting in and of itself? that might be a worthwhile rip-roaring space adventure that is just not so completely self-referential that it drowns. I would hope that that's the case. The only other thing that I would note, and you know I like to be rigorous in terms of my internet research, because every time I Google Gemini something, I just know that that is exactly accurate. But I will say... Whoa, I feel a Speaker 2 (11:22) big Gemini shout there from you. One of the... Look. Speaker 3 (11:26) I'm getting alternate funding. Didn't know you were Team Speaker 2 (11:28) Gem. Go ahead. Go Speaker 3 (11:30) ahead. Yeah. Gemini. I'm Speaker 1 (11:33) a Speaker 3 (11:33) Taurus. I could never be Team Gemini. What should I think Speaker 2 (11:35) of this Kinberg trilogy, Gemini? Speaker 3 (11:38) I just want to say that I don't understand where this comes from, and I can't imagine that it's genuine or not bot farming, but John Watts is not loved by the fandom community, which I don't understand where that came from. I Speaker 2 (11:51) do think it's bots. Speaker 3 (11:52) But is that like, I don't think that... Destin Daniel Cretton is funding it. Like, it's just bizarre that like concurrent with Brand New Day, Excitement and like Zendaya, Tom Holland, Mary Jane. I know there will be tweets that are like Speaker 2 (12:04) John Watts should be in in like they should reopen Alcatraz for John Watts for Speaker 3 (12:09) what he did. He should be in cinema jail for the way that he kept us from seeing in the moment. We all love those movies. And so I don't really understand what that's about. I'm very Speaker 2 (12:21) suspicious now of any wave of like, I'm getting so many Slow Horses edits right now. I mean, I just need to not be on any of these platforms, but so many of like, look at River, look at Sid, 18 shots of like, and I'm like, who made this? Why is this on my feed? This person has no posts other than Slow Horses posts. And you're just like, this is somewhere like a lonely PC. Running Gemini is just making slow versus edits. Speaker 3 (12:54) I will say that a worrying amount of my daughter's YouTube consumption is fan edits. That is a major plank of her media platform, the same way that my father read The New Republic and The New Yorker. She's like, here's some Zendaya edits for a good hour of every night just to see how the other side is representing things. So we're clearly on the back foot with that one. Speaker 2 (13:13) Hey, before we go to lanterns, I was just curious, have you been watching, have you been keeping up Slow Horses? Have you been keeping up on youth? Speaker 2 (13:22) avidly watching TV on this trip or just your assigned reading? Speaker 3 (13:27) I've been too busy to do much television watching, but I am going to keep up with those shows because I really like them. Slow Horses, is the third episode up yet? Can we talk about it Thursday? Speaker 2 (13:37) We can talk about it on Thursday. Speaker 3 (13:39) Let's talk about it on Thursday. Youth, I believe I missed the third episode last night, but I know you and Joanna talked about it, so I don't want to be redundant. That Speaker 2 (13:46) was more of a personal check-in than it is a professional. Oh, thank you. I have Speaker 3 (13:51) to say, if you want the truth, I have found that the jet lag in general, like work stress-related insomnia, has been alleviated by the second half of the second season of the paper. So maybe I was a little quick to judge it. Because it's like a very gentle kind of like, I'm enjoying it just enough. that I don't mind if I fall asleep, which is a genre of television that like I, if Sam Esmail still listens to this pod, he just did the, the Mourinho like ripping his headphones off when I said that. But I do think it's an important unrecognized genre. I feel Speaker 2 (14:22) that way about a horror movie set on snow mount, like snowy mountains. Speaker 3 (14:28) Hmm. Speaker 2 (14:28) Like any horror in the snow right now. No, I'm like, that just lulls me right to sleep in a really beautiful way. I can't wait for your Speaker 3 (14:36) visit to the East Coast later. If the weather turns, you're going to be prime picking. Speaker 2 (14:42) Lanterns Episode 7, written by Damon Lindelof and Tom King. I believe this one was called The Jordan Boys Legacy. The Jordan Boys Legacy. And let's get right into it, man. I thought this was a very well done episode of TV. You basically can start with the Howl flashback and the Jordan family being as complicated as the Stewart family. We could talk about Jon Stewart, True Detective. I have a lot to say about Noah's offensive line. As do Speaker 3 (15:14) I. That was my first... I texted you about that. I was so worked up. Speaker 2 (15:17) I was pretty close to breaking the seal and texting Damon and being like, come on, dog. There's no way this kid's going to Michigan with that line. Speaker 3 (15:27) I would just say that he would be... He would spend most of the season in the fencing position if those were the guys who were guarding him. Speaker 2 (15:34) And then this sort of prolonged... what felt like a dream sequence, but was in fact Anton's planet that Sinestro had been trapped on. So where would you like to start? Speaker 3 (15:45) This episode joins episode two for me as being the, in some ways, the best expression of what I think is the best outcome for Lanterns, which is a really, really successful and still surprising marriage between the shoe leather. procedural, good, high elite television bones that exists in that writer's room. And the absolutely holy shit mindfuck of, yes, in this storage locker in Nebraska is a portable hole into another dimensional planet. Like it, it straddled that line so nimbly that it felt like it was working in a genre that has existed for many years when in fact it hasn't. So. For that reason, I didn't feel like it was an episode that, you know, was sometimes at war with itself or with its own conceit as some of the previous ones have been. I don't know if that means this is like, I'm not trying to lay down a marker and say this was the best episode of the season. I just felt like it captured some of that unique magic that to me is the best path forward for a show that I am really enjoying. I Speaker 2 (16:56) think we're getting the payoff from some of the stretching that they do with the narrative and some of the... the pretzels that they bend themselves into in that writer's room to give us multiple timelines to do jumping around different people's POV from their childhoods to show backstories and show flashbacks and give us all these little slices of life. Because now the cumulative effect is it's really cool to have seen this many different Jon Stewart's in just seven hours of television. Speaker 2 (17:30) Now that we have what I think is being affectionately described as the hologram, who's basically a character on the show now, it's cool to see Kyle Chandler get to do... You know, grumpy old man, cocky young pilot, nice version of himself, you know. And the same goes for Kelly MacDonald. You know, this is a show that probably had a extinction level event a little early in its season, you know, with losing Garrett Dillon Hunt, losing Paul Ben Victor, losing a lot of like these kind of counterweights that the show had had. to say nothing of Zoe. And now it's kind of like... Speaker 3 (18:11) You can say Speaker 2 (18:11) Zoe erasure. No, no, and it wasn't even trying to. It's just more, I guess in the aftermath of that, it really cleared out space for these two characters to push into fully developed lead roles rather than just chasing mysteries. Speaker 3 (18:27) I've never seen a show do this with how it uses the time that it has. And we were joking a few weeks ago. about that concept of a surf Dracula and how all modern television shows have to tell the origin story of the thing that you think you're watching the television show for. And that joke, that was just a joke tweet, but it was in reference to the fact that, oh no, this is a