‘Wake Up Dead Man’: Rian Johnson Wrestles with the Evangelical Church He Grew Up In

In the first “Knives Out,” it was the hypocrisy and entitlement of the wealthy; “Glass Onion” satirized the superficial wisdom of a tech billionaire and his “disruptors”; and now the third installment, “Wake Up Dead Man” takes dead aim at how the religious right has moved away from Christian teachings and into our embittered politics. “Having grown up very specifically in that evangelical moment of the rise of Christianity in the political Right in America, and being very much a part of that when I was a kid, and still having family members, I care about who has those beliefs. “There’s the notion of team sports playing out, the notion of ‘us against them,’ the notion of being under siege, which for me, growing up in the church that I did, that was a big, big part of what was drilled in, is the notion this is war,” said Johnson.

Author: Alisa Sultan

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