Star Wars Writer Just Promised the 50th Anniversary Relaunch the Franchise Needs
Star Wars has been going through quite a rough patch of late. Just over two years ago, The Acolyte – a TV show intended to open up a whole new part of the Star Wars timeline – ended, only to swiftly wind up canceled after it only further divided the fanbase. There have been moments of success since then (Andor Season 2 serves as a standout), but The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s box office shows how much weaker the franchise has become of late. Still, Lucasfilm hope next year’s 50th anniversary celebrations – which include a re-release of A New Hope‘s original cut and Shawn Levy’s Starfighter film – can turn things round.
Speaking to Playlist, Starfighter writer Jonathan Tropper described the film as an attempt to step away from decades of continuity and create something that feels fresh and new. “The goal from the beginning, when Shawn and I first started talking about it, was to create the feeling in theaters that we had as kids seeing Star Wars back in 1977,” he said. “That sense of a swashbuckling adventure into new worlds. For us, that was really important. There are no barriers to entry. You don’t have to have seen other Star Wars movies to step into this one.”
Recent Star Wars films and TV shows have focused on using nostalgia and deep lore to draw in viewers. Tropper and Levy, however, wanted to build something based purely on “wish fulfillment and adventure.” Tropper stressed that he’s delighted with the result; “I think Shawn has done an incredible job,” he said. ““I think Gosling’s incredible. It’s going to be a really long wait until this comes out because I’m dying for people to see it.”
This Is What Star Wars Needs For Its 50th Anniversary
We know precious little about Star Wars: Starfighter right now, beyond the core cast – which includes Ryan Gosling as a mysterious starfighter pilot who must rescue Flynn Gray’s mystery child from Matt Smith and Mia Goth’s villains. According to rumors, Gosling’s pilot is named Cade, and he’ll take the child to a Jedi sanctuary – only for the villains to attack in force. That seems to be where a lightsaber fight takes place, one where Tom Cruise dropped in to help film it.
Notice the focus on “wish fulfillment” in Tropper’s words. Modern viewers tend to forget this was at the core of the original Star Wars film, which didn’t portray Luke as a generational hero so much as an everyday figure – an ordinary kid on a desert planet who discovered he was far more than he believed, and who found the power to reshape the entire galaxy when he discovered the Force. The central idea wasn’t that only a handful of powerful Jed could rewrite history, but rather that anyone could – a message Star Wars attempted to recover with The Last Jedi‘s “Rey Nobody” twist, but couldn’t make stick.
Recent Star Wars films and TV shows have really doubled down on the legacy concept, and it increasingly feels as though the barriers to entry have become far too high. The Mandalorian and Grogu is a perfect example, because it flows from four seasons of a previous TV show (and, arguably, from a spinoff that incorporated major plot points from that series). The current range of TV shows have largely spun out of The Clone Wars, starring characters you only really know if you’re familiar with the franchise’s animated history.
If Star Wars is to be a success again, it needs to embrace wish fulfillment and reduce those barriers to entry and find a way to reach brand new audiences – not just old-school fans who were always guaranteed to turn up anyway. Nostalgia has proved to have diminishing returns, and Star Wars deserves so much better than that. If Starfighter can fulfill Tropper’s words, then this will be the 50th anniversary celebration the franchise needs, and it will be a delight to see it happen at last.
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