Twelve O’Clock High and Letter Never Sent: Rian Johnson’s inspiration for Star Wars VIII? And one more look into a mystery box

We’ve heard very little from Star Wars Episode VIII director Rian Johnson about his approach to the creation of the next installment of the saga, but back in August 2014 he did talk with the Filmspotting podcast about two films he and the Episode VIII creative team had screened in thinking about the next episode; Twelve O’Clock High, and Letter Never Sent. In listening to Johnson’s comments in the podcast, it’s hard to tell how much significance to place on these titles as any kind of inspiration for VIII (maybe they were just the movies he’d seen most recently – he tells us the creative team had been watching movies together every night) but since we’ve got nothing but time on our hands until December of 2017, I wanted to take a look at these two films to see if they offer any clues about the direction we might see the story take in VIII.

This essay is speculative. I’ll be interested to see if any of this is borne out in the next installment of the saga. I should also say – this essay contains spoilers for Bloodline and Lost Stars, and is completely spoilery for the two old movies I’m talking about, so consider yourself warned.

That Johnson screened Twelve O’Clock High and Letter Never Sent as he was working on VIII has been were broadly reported, but he may only have talked about this once, in the Filmspotting podcast, so that’s the source I wanted to use in writing this essay. Johnson’s interview begins at about the 35 minute mark.

We were watching just a bunch of different stuff, and talking about it with the whole team. We watched Twelve O’Clock High, which is the great WWII Flying Fortress movie…

Rian Johnson, Filmspotting podcast, 8/1/14

Twelve O’Clock High

Twelve O’Clock High (1949) is a war movie set in Britain during 1942-43, and tells the story of a group of B-17 bomber pilots conducting daylight raids over occupied France and Nazi Germany. There are some amazing action sequences in the film, including combat footage from the RAF and the Luftwaffe incorporated in the story. Early in the film, a real B-17, flown by a single stunt pilot, is filmed making a belly landing without landing gear. I had to put a picture of this at the top of this post, and another here, because it’s a truly amazing bit of film.

Total aside: There are perhaps a dozen of these planes still in airworthy condition, most of them in the United States. I had a chance years ago to see one of these “Flying Fortresses” in the air and to walk through it on the ground, and it was incredible; a beautiful and terrible machine. More recently, I had the honor of interviewing a man who piloted one of these bombers through many combat missions during the Second World War.

Twelve O’Clock High was praised at the time of its release for its emphasis on the human cost of war. Indeed, the central story line of the film concerns leadership challenges exacerbated by “combat fatigue,” a condition called shell shock a hundred years ago, and known as combat stress reaction in today’s nomenclature (it’s not PTSD – as I understand it, it’s generally an immediate response to extreme stress, and may be of shorter duration. Not surprisingly, it can be a precursor to PTSD).

Gregory Peck is the marquee star of the film, sent down from a higher command position to take over the bomber group when it is suffering devastating losses. His harsh, demanding leadership of the group does not endear him to the men he commands (they unsuccessfully request transfer en masse out of the group), but his disciplined approach begins to build morale and reduce casualties. As time passes, Peck’s character, like the man he replaced, grows close to the men in the bomber group and his own psyche unravels as he absorbs the emotional cost of sending young soldiers out to die.

“…we also watched some stuff that was farther afield. What was the weirdest one that we watched? We watched this Russian film called “Letter Never Sent,” for some weird kind of esoteric reasons – …just for different reasons.”

Rian Johnson, Filmspotting podcast, 8/1/14

Letter Never Sent

Letter Never Sent (1959) is a movie about a group of four geologists searching for a site to build a diamond mine in Siberia. The title of the film is explained early on: the expedition leader started a letter to his wife while in transit to their starting-off site, but failed to get it onto the departing plane. He adds to the letter as the story progresses, planning to give it to her when they meet again. It’s a useful plot device that lets the audience know what the protagonist is thinking as the film unfolds.

“I was in a hurry and failed to send you a letter. It’s all because of the overflow of rivers. We nearly landed into the water. In all that confusion I lagged behind and the plane flew away…”

For a long time the explorers search the rugged, remote landscape for a site likely to contain diamond-bearing deposits, and eventually find it; but soon face extreme danger from a forest fire, the loss of their guide, much of their equipment, and the approach of winter. Letter Never Sent is a bleak story, but a beautifully-shot one. The landscape is very wild, and the director, Mikhail Kalatozov, uses elemental imagery invoking ideas of earth, air, fire and water as the forces arrayed against the film’s protagonists.

One scene in particular caught my attention. Late in the story, Andrei, one of the young geologists, abandons his companions in an attempt to save them by sacrificing himself (incapacitated by injuries, he was being carried by the surviving members of his party). Tanya, his lover, wakes to find him gone and rushes out of camp, searching for him. A storm rolls in, and she is plunged into a dark landscape of wet ground, rain, and uneven terrain as she screams his name over and over into the dark.

What, if any speculation can we make about VIII based on these two films?



It seems clear that the two movies suggest two different story threads in VIII, one focused on the struggle of the Resistance to respond militarily to the First Order, the other concerning Luke and Rey (and whomever else shows up!) on Ahch-to.

Letter Never Sent

The scene from Letter Never Sent which I described above includes a shot reminiscent enough of the dark/rain portion of Rey’s Force vision that I sat up straight when I saw it.

Is it possible that this old film influenced the look of that scene in The Force Awakens? Filming for TFA took place between May 16, 2014 and the beginning of November 2014, and began in Abu Dhabi. Johnson’s podcasting comments on August 1 came right around the middle of that time, so…it’s possible? If the parallel is intentional, it’s interesting that the context appears to be so different. We still don’t know what is happening in Rey’s Force vision, but I have theorized that whatever it is we are seeing, it may not be what we assume, or what we’ve been led to believe. In Letter never Sent, the young woman in the rain is searching desperately for her lover, so it’s a completely different scene. Maybe.



Years from now, I look forward to hearing more about the creative process from the creators of the new saga. Did Johnson work with Abrams in developing the look or content of the Force vision scene, or did he use the contents of JJ Abrams’ mystery box as a building block for his portion of the story? Is the Force vision a collaborative scene with elements from both directors?

Johnson was asked in the podcast about the challenges of working within the framework of an existing story:

“…the process of writing is figuring out the box that you’re in, but you’re still in a box, you’re trying to make something work to a specific end, with specific restraints on the story…it just feels like working in a different box – to belabor this already tortured analogy.”

I’ve written about my theory that the Force vision created by JJ Abrams’ in TFA constitutes a “mystery box” in which a lot of information was presented (or withheld) in ways which were intentionally misleading, so it was interesting to hear Johnson use a “box” analogy in talking about creating the story for episode VIII, but this may be nothing but a coincidence.

Having read Bloodline, it’s plausible to draw some kind of connection between the missed message of the protagonist in Letter Never Sent, and Leia’s disastrous decision not to tell her son Ben about his heritage before the secret was revealed in a public and devastating way. Leia did send a “letter” to Ben when the family secret of their connection to Darth Vader was revealed, but we, the audience, don’t know if he ever received it, or what his reaction to it might have been. Given that his fall is probably connected to the revelation of his relationship to Darth Vader, I will guess that Leia’s message may be a “letter never received.”

There’s another message which did not reach its recipient in the way intended, introduced to the saga in Bloodline: The message from Bail Organa telling Leia about her relationship to Vader. A message concealed in a music box, tucked inside a “keepsake box,” it is another example of a “letter” gone astray. And what about the boxes themselves?*

Claudia Gray, in discussing Bloodline in a Jedi Council interview, noted that there was one element in Bloodline about which she was given specific direction from the story group, because it related to Rian Johnson’s core concept of VIII:

Interviewer: What was the extent of his [Rian Johnson’s] involvement in the story [of Bloodline]?

CG: There was no direct interaction with me and Rian Johnson (he’s a little busy!), but that’s sort of why you have story group, that binds these things together, and I know there are elements in the core concept that play into Rian Johnson’s vision for VIII, and I think maybe even a little beyond that. I can’t really identify them because then they become spoilery so much, but I knew that was an element… also there was one visual (emphasis hers) element – I can’t spoil that either, but I had set up this scene this way and I thought, “oh, I am free to imagine this,” and they’re like, “oh, actually this looks a very specific way,” and I had no idea that that was something…so, but again, I can’t tell you what that is! Hopefully when you see episode VIII that will be pretty clear.

There are many, many interesting visual elements in Bloodline which could prove to be part of Rian Johnson’s core concept in VIII, but I’ll posit that the strongest candidate to be the element to which Claudia Gray refers is Leia’s keepsake box, retrieved by the nasty Lady Carise, who discovers it when she is on Birren:

“She sat in one of the gilded chairs and opened the box. Wrinkling her nose, she began to paw through the useless things there: a tiny doll no taller than her hand; a small, soft blanket of fine gillendown; a hexagonal, mirrored music box; a ring sized for a tiny finger; and a lock of dark-brown hair tied at either end with ribbon.” Bloodline, loc 3319.

Leia sees the box for the first time in many years when Ransolm Casterfo displays it as proof of her treachery as he denounces her in the Senate:

“Then Ransolm held up a box— not just any box, a keepsake chest. Every child on Alderaan had one. Parents and grandparents carved the designs, but only the child decided what would be put inside. Placing one of your possessions inside the keepsake chest meant that you had outgrown it but recognized its importance to you. In adulthood you could open the chest, look back, and see how you had chosen to tell your own story. Leia thought that keepsake chest looked like hers. But she hadn’t seen it in at least thirty years, and surely it had been destroyed with Alderaan. Nobody was ever supposed to open a keepsake chest without permission, but Ransolm opened this one now. From within he pulled out a music box, one Leia recognized so instantly that the memory pierced her heart like an arrow.” Bloodline, loc 3951.

Since this essay is speculative and I am already way out on a limb, I’ll throw this idea into the mix: The mysterious box which Rey finds in Maz Kanata’s basement, in which she finds the Skywalker lightsaber, the box which contains Rey’s Force vision and the truth of Ben Solo’s fall to the dark – is Leia’s keepsake box.

When TFA was first released, many of us wondered if the box in Maz’ basement was the same box that Obi Wan had on Tattooine, but it doesn’t appear to be. Size is different, lid shape is different, carving is different.

Obi Wan’s box:

The box in Maz’ basement:

The list of contents Lady Carise sees in Leia’s box: “a tiny doll no taller than her hand; a small, soft blanket of fine gillendown; a hexagonal, mirrored music box; a ring sized for a tiny finger; and a lock of dark-brown hair tied at either end with ribbon,” do notmatch what we can see in the brief glimpse of the box’s contents in Maz’ basement, but the objects we do see beside the lightsaber - an odd bit of metal shaped like a flower, a string or bracelet of non-matching beads, what appears to be a tiny velvet purse, and OK, folded cloth that could be a blanket – these are objects which could have belonged to a child.

What does it all mean?

I have no idea! This is interesting though: In the second TFA trailer, there is an odd moment in which Maz hands Leia the Skywalker saber. As we know, this is not something which happened in the film. Was it filmed as intentional misdirection for the trailer (doubtful, everything else in the trailers appeared in the film), or is it a real fragment of the story which was later withheld from us? If Maz’ box and Leia’s keepsake box are one and the same, there are still questions: How the box came to be in Maz’ basement is at the top of the list, and how Maz ended up with the lightsaber in the first place is another. How the lightsaber got into the box may not be a question at all: Maz gave it to Leia, Leia put it in her keepsake box.

*Seriously. All the damn boxes. Literal, metaphorical. What does it all mean?! As Rian Johnson warned us, things may be happening “for some weird kind of esoteric reasons.” Enough. We’ll all find out in December 2017. Let’s talk war.

Twelve O’Clock High

There are a TON of war movies out there. Is there something special about Twelve O’Clock High which can offer insight into where the storytellers are taking us? Maybe.

Twelve O’Clock High was notable at the time of its release for its comparatively un-heroic depiction of the realities of combat and the toll it takes on soldiers. By the standards of its day, it was fairly graphic. The young pilot who successfully crash lands the disabled B 17 at the beginning of the film staggers from the cockpit and vomits as his co-pilot, brains exposed and raving, is carried off the plane. Moments later a blown-off arm is carried out of the fuselage, wrapped in a blanket. In the movie we see soldiers questioning their superior officers, and we see the officers themselves experiencing physical and emotional breakdowns as a result of combat stress.

Anyone who has read my essays analyzing the character of Kylo Ren knows that I theorize that the new Star Wars trilogy is actually telling a war story – and that this new story is taking the depiction of armed conflict beyond the simplistic light/dark = good/evil popcorn battles of the original trilogy. If Rian Johnson is being influenced by this aspect of Twelve O’Clock High – an exploration of the real effects of combat trauma on the participants – this would be in keeping with what I’ve suggested Adam Driver is doing with his creation of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. In Twelve O’Clock High the obvious corollary are members of the resistance themselves.

That there is even a possibility that this is what the storytellers are doing is profoundly moving to me. There’s additional evidence accumulating to suggest that this might indeed be the case.

Kathleen Kennedy has spoken of Star Wars as a story about hope and optimism, and described the saga as an antidote to the meaningless violence common in contemporary cinema:

“You look at a lot of movies today; especially big blockbuster, “tentpole” movies, there’s a kind of…tendency towards nihilistic violence. There’s a kind of relevant storytelling that edges into something that’s not necessarily aspirational or optimistic. It seems obvious that that [movies about hope or optimism] would be something that people would be attracted to, but it’s not done very often.”



- Kathleen Kennedy, “The Power of Storytelling Panel, December 20, 2015 (comments around the 8-minute mark)

I can’t believe I’m quoting Alan Dean Foster’s execrable poetry from the frontispiece of the novelization once again, but here too we are being told that the world is complex; things are not black and white, there are shades of gray.

First comes the day, then comes the night.

After the darkness shines through the light.

The difference, they say, is only made right

By the resolving of gray through refined Jedi sight.

—Journal of the Whills, 7: 477

Claudia Gray’s two new canon novels, Lost Stars and now Bloodline, give equal time to characters on opposing sides in galactic conflict. Star-crossed lovers imperial Ciena Ree and rebel Thane Kyrell are both sympathetically drawn and act from positions of moral justification when they make their different choices about the powers they serve. They both feel they are doing the right thing. Late in the novel, Ciena Ree, recovering from severe injuries, takes on the work of informing families of the dead of the losses of their loved ones. From within the “dark” side of the Empire, she is doing compassionate work that is not evil at all, and depicts an unusual (for Star Wars) dose of realism about the real cost of war:

“Ciena volunteered for one of the messiest, most complicated tasks facing the Imperial Starfleet in the wake of Endor— and one of the only jobs she didn’t mind doing. Her mission was to confirm which Imperial officers were alive or dead, learn the definite locations of all survivors, and inform family members of the deaths.”

Lost Stars, Loc 4389-4392

“…she buried herself in her work, patiently untangling every bureaucratic knot, locating and rescuing marooned ships and garrisons, and helping families mourn their dead. In that small way she could uphold some measure of law and order amid the chaos; nothing else seemed worth doing.”

Lost Stars, Loc 4416-4417

In Bloodline, Centerist Ransolm Casterfo and Populist Leia Organa have sharp political differences but eventually find common ground and friendship. When Ransolm meets his unhappy fate in Bloodline, we feel a huge amount of sympathy for him. Imperial leanings or no, I badly wanted to see him rescued at the end of the novel.

The tendency of the original trilogy to paint the rebels as purely good, and the villains as card-board cutouts, or “moustache-twirling” bad guys, is subverted by these new texts. Driver himself is playing the character that presents the biggest challenge of all to the conventional good/evil dualism of Star Wars. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is both evil and deeply sympathetic. He is nuanced, and it’s complicated.

All of this leads me to wonder – is Star Wars growing up? The world is a complicated place, and what constitutes good or evil can vary dramatically depending on one’s place in it and the perspective from which one experiences events. We won’t know for a long time if the saga is indeed telling us a more complex and layered story than it did in the past, but the signs of a new maturity are there, and I’m excited to see where the storytellers take us.