5 Reasons To Get Excited for James Mangold’s Star Wars Movie

Star Wars Celebration always creates a buzz within the franchise’s fanbase, bringing together sci-fi nerds from across the globe to hear the latest news, meet their big screen heroes, and dress up as scarily realistic wookiees.

Yet the slightly unexpected announcement that three new films will hit the big screen in the next few years took things to a whole other level – especially because of the topics they’re set to cover.

One of these will see the return of Daisy Ridley to the franchise, in a story set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker – and will hopefully offer some form of redemption for her character, Rey, after J.J. Abrams’ 2019 release failed to make the most of her potential. Another will see Star Wars’ animation mastermind Dave Filoni take the helm for an exciting live-action story that will combine threads from Disney+ series like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Both are, without doubt, interesting prospects, offering fans the chance to see beloved (and slightly less beloved) characters on the big screen – some for the very first time.

Yet the proposed release that is arguably most exciting is the one that we know the least about: James Mangold’s ‘Ten Commandments of Star Wars’, which will be set in an entirely new era, before anything we’ve seen. While there are currently very few details about the film out in the world, there’s still plenty to suggest that this could be the best of the bunch. Here are the five reasons why.

 

1. There’s Quality Behind the Camera

Okay, it’s a little obvious to focus on the director – but the idea of James Mangold taking on a Star Wars project is truly exciting. For those who are unaware, this is the man behind 2014’s Logan, one of the most gripping superhero movies of all time – a layered character study of a once powerful man feeling powerless in his battle against age. He’s the guy that steered Ford v Ferrari to box office success, taking what could have been a schmaltzy, by-the-numbers biopic and turning it into one of 2019’s most exhilarating releases, underpinning edge-of-the-seat action with genuine heart and humour. And he’s the brains behind 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma, which dared to take one of the big screen’s finest Westerns and bring it into the 21st century, demonstrating how to perfect a reboot in an era of not-so-perfect reboots.

Put simply, Mangold knows how to handle a blockbuster, managing to walk the line (as it were) between high-stakes action and real feels. Logan offers crunching fight scenes and stunning set pieces, but it also delivers crushing emotional blows; Ford v Ferrari boasts phenomenally-choreographed racing sequences, but its most engaging moments come when its two leads sit down for a heart-to-heart. If Mangold can find that magic formula once again here, he should be able to deliver all of the Force duels and punch-the-air moments Star Wars fans have come to expect, but without sacrificing storytelling quality.

 

2. It dives head-first into the Force

Speaking of the Force, Mangold’s Star Wars debut will centre around the discovery of the iconic metaphysical power, taking things back 25,000 years before A New Hope. George Lucas notoriously flirted with the idea of tackling the concept of the Force on a microscopic level, even planning an entire trilogy around the science behind midi-chlorians, tiny “intelligent life forms” that allow the Force to flow through individuals.

While pretty much everyone, bar Lucas, is relieved that the idea never came to pass, the basic principle of interrogating what the Force is and how it works could be an interesting one, if done right. These are questions that have been posed countless times since 1977, and this film could finally provide some answers – without requiring audiences to read a textbook beforehand. Mangold’s exploration of the ‘Ten Commandments Of Star Wars’ could dive into themes covered in the likes of The Last Jedi and The Phantom Menace, which began to explore why some characters are more Force-sensitive than others and, more importantly, why some use their powers for good, while others use it for evil.

 

3. It takes us into a new era

As well as examining an interesting area of Star Wars lore, the fact that Mangold’s movie will be set in a completely unseen era of the franchise will provide a breath of fresh air that feels long overdue. Sure, the likes of The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch are undoubtedly entertaining, and Andor has offered something different tonally, but Star Wars – at least in the world of film and television – has largely focused on the same century-long period since its inception.

Though this has led to countless great characters and exciting stories, it does run the risk of audiences getting ‘Tatooine fatigue’. That is, time and again, we see similar landscapes, and have well-established characters conveniently bump into each other in this galaxy of trillions. It can get a little tiring.

Taking things back by dozens of millennia will help to freshen things up, introducing entirely new concepts, characters, and conundra to this supposedly vast and varied universe. This galaxy far, far away has far, far more to offer than desert planets and the Skywalker family – it’s time for us to see more of it.

 

4. It takes things back to basics

Within the aforementioned overdone era of Star Wars, there has also been an almost overwhelming expansion of powers and skills. By the end of the sequel trilogy, characters were using the Force to bring people back from the dead, force-project themselves onto entirely different planets, and drag their unconscious body through space while looking like a backup dancer in the Thriller music video. Simply put, things got too easy for certain characters. There were too many cheat codes, too many ways to get out of danger, undermining the stakes to the point where things were not only disinteresting, but even … a little silly.

Here, though, with Mangold taking the story back to the very discovery of the Force, there’s a chance to hit refresh, to strip back these cheat codes and bring everything back to basics. Without the ability to stop a blaster shot in mid-air or heal a gaping wound with the flick of the wrist, the characters in this story will be far less well-equipped to deal with danger, raising tension levels and creating a proper sense of peril. Every character will be new to us, we don’t know the rules or lore of this era, and as a result everything is to play for. Throw that together with a director who’s never afraid to kill the cat, so to speak, and no one is safe. As dark as it sounds, a bit of brutality is exactly what Star Wars needs.

 

5. It’s A Standalone Story

While very few plot details for this project have come to light so far, Mangold has already made one thing clear: This film is very much its own thing. Speaking to Empire at Star Wars Celebration, he said: “It’s a movie that both connects to the worlds we know, but is also far enough away from it that I think there’s a lot of opportunities to tell a story freely, and not be so incredibly tied in by the knots and different story strands that are already in place.”

Following the narrative mess that was the sequel trilogy, which jumped from a nostalgia-filled feel-good tone to more bleak, pessimistic themes from film-to-film, and after the likes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett became slightly hampered by their need to set up new storylines, getting a film that doesn’t have to worry about sequels or spin-offs is undoubtedly a relief.

With Mangold’s greatest hits so far, there is a clarity of storytelling that is made possible by the fact that they are their own, standalone projects. Logan, for example, brings Wolverine’s arc to a close, paying little mind to where it sits within the wider X-Men universe. 3:10 to Yuma is a one-off, classic tale that was never intended to spawn an entire franchise. This allowed the filmmaker to focus on nothing else besides telling the best story he could – and he made the most of it.

Perhaps the greatest flaw in Disney’s run of Star Wars projects thus far has been a lack of storytelling precision; their work has been undone by poor planning, which has led to everything from illogical plot points to pure tonal whiplash, sometimes between different acts of the same movie. By removing any external pressure for anything besides one great film, we should get exactly that – a great film. Your move, Mangold.

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