The script promises ‘an all-new standalone adventure’
LOOKING moody and all adrift at sea, this first- look photo of an “entirely original” new Star Wars film is almost symbolic of the franchise’s decline.
From a billion-dollar universally adored trilogy, things had got somewhat darker since Disney took over.
But this new picture from Star Wars: Starfighter, released yesterday, brings New Hope to long-suffering fans, with Ryan Gosling at the helm.
Standing aboard a watercraft, the Hollywood hunk is clad in leathers that hark back to Han Solo — suggesting a scoundrel, not a Skywalker, is leading the charge.
The script promises “an all-new standalone adventure” set in “a period of time never before explored” — believed to be five years after final film The Rise Of Skywalker.
It is taking Star Wars to a galaxy far, far away and is only the third original film in the franchise since its inception. Could it finally be the movie that puts the series’ “Wookie errors” of the past to bed?
There have been more of them than Sith Lord uprisings.
Binned off
Long-term fans have suffered “franchise fatigue” after a deluge of spin-off TV series on Disney+ and accompanying films.
They had already been disappointed by the most recent Star Wars trilogy, which plummeted in popularity and takings with each instalment release since 2015.
At the box office, 2015 flick The Force Awakens brought in $2billion, but 2017’s The Last Jedi dropped to $1.3billion.
Then The Rise Of Skywalker in 2019 fell further to $1.07billion. More disappointingly for US firms Lucasfilm and Disney, North American takings nearly halved from $937million to $515million.
Now, six years have passed and production is under way for Starfighter, interestingly with a Doctor Who, an Inbetweener and the actor behind the most buffoonish character in Netflix’s The Gentlemen hoping to save the much-loved franchise.
Propping up Gosling is former Time Lord Matt Smith; Simon Bird, who played Will in The Inbetweeners; and Daniel Ings of The Gentlemen.
Bringing some added star power is American actress Amy Adams.
They are joined by other relatively unknown home-grown stars Aaron Pierre from Netflix’s Rebel Ridge; West End star Jamael Westman; and Mia Goth, who starred in erotic drama Nymphomaniac.
Then there’s Dublin-born Flynn Gray, 14, who features on the behind-the-scenes shots with Gosling clutching a gun holster and in another black-and-white snap that came to light weeks earlier.
These may not be big names in Hollywood right now, but they soon could be giant stars.
That is what happened to Brit Daisy Ridley, protagonist of the recent Star Wars trilogy, who had previously only had occasional episodes of TV’s Casualty, Silent Witness and Mr Selfridge to her name.
Besides the two first-look photos and its release date of May 2027, not much is known about Starfighter.
Penned by Jonathan Tropper, best known for 2022 sci-fi film The Adam Project, at the helm is director Shawn Levy, who headed runaway successes Deadpool & Wolverine, the Night At The Museum films and several episodes of smash hit series Stranger Things.
It suggests he could bring a blend of comedy and sensational sci-fi action scenes.
This would likely complement the light, cheeky-chappy style typical of Gosling and the darkness Smith can bring, as we’ve seen in House Of The Dragon.
The behind- the-scenes shots don’t give much away either.
The first, released in late August, is black and white and appears to show Gosling and Gray sitting against a landspeeder.
The second, posted on Wednesday to Instagram by Levy, seems to show the same pair destitute in open water, and had the caption “somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea”, while the location tagged Sardinia, Italy.
But reawakening the Force, as any Jedi would know, has never been an easy task.
There is a lot of promise and even more pressure.
‘Still upsetting’
Previous films have been gutted in the final edit time and again before their release, all while Star Wars TV spin-offs explode in overabundance.
There has been a disturbance in the Force since 2019.
Just a year after Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss were named to create the next movie trilogy, they quit to focus on an exclusive deal with Netflix.
It followed them offering up a film called The First Jedi, about how the Force-empowered order came about and the development of the light-saber. But it wasn’t liked.
Weiss revealed they were “relatively far, story-wise” with a “basic roadmap” for two other flicks and called it “a shame” that their collaboration had ended because the project was “the thrill of a lifetime” to work on.
Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm President, seemed to have binned them, having already canned three other Star Wars directors in the three years up to 2019.
But by their own admission, after leaving Star Wars, Weiss said their “Hollywood ratio, or batting average” for concepts that made it to our screens had “never been tremendously high”.
Explaining their “very specific story idea” wasn’t what Kathleen and her team wanted, he added: “We totally get it. It’s their company and their IP, but we weren’t the droids they were looking for.”
Similarly, a breakout film for Daisy Ridley, who starred as the newest lightsaber wielder Rey in the most recent revival, was delayed and may well be jettisoned, too.
Just a year after the film about her journey “as she builds a new Jedi Order” was announced in 2023, it was taken off Disney’s 2026 releases roster.
Nothing more has been revealed.
It seems Ridley is unsure about Rey’s return, too.
She recalled a kiss between her character and Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver, in their final flick.
“That whole scene felt so emotional and I felt I was saying goodbye to the job, too,” she said.
Ridley has also spoken of how chronic stress due to the pressure of filming the franchise led her to develop “holes in her gut” that left her body “just f***ed up”.
Detailing her health decline, she added: “I was just like a little skeleton and I was so tired. I was becoming a ghost.”
Last year, Ridley complained it was “still upsetting” how little viewers liked her trilogy and labelled two of the films “super-divisive”.
Brooding darkness
“You don’t want people to feel like you’ve not served the thing they’re a fan of,” she added.
This suggests Disney, who acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05billion in 2012, are pinning all their hopes on Starfighter.
Since founder George Lucas’s first Star Wars trilogy in 1977, 1980 and 1983, no cinema release from the franchise has fully measured up.
Nine films and numerous TV series, including animated abominations, have followed and been met with a mixture of mediocre acclaim and stern disapproval.
The most successful of the TV releases, The Mandalorian, has had three seasons since 2020, while a film, titled The Mandalorian And Grogu, is scheduled for next year.
The series is set five years after the second Death Star’s destruction courtesy of Luke Skywalker and the gang, and Darth Vader sacrificing himself to kill Darth Sidious in Return Of The Jedi.
Star Wars shaped my sense of what story can do, how characters and cinematic moments can live with us forever.
Director Shawn Levy
Part of The Mandalorian’s success is due to having Pedro Pascal as the Bounty Hunter protagonist and the surprising, whirlwind popularity of character “Baby Yoda”.
For Starfighter, it seems they have learned from that formula by bringing in equally lovable Gosling.
That, combined with Matt Smith’s brooding darkness, Simon Bird’s comedic timing plus Amy Adams’s powerhouse performances, means there could finally be balance in the Force once more.
Director Levy, should he survive until the 2027 release date, certainly seems determined and described it as “a dream come true, creatively and personally” to work on the project.
He added: “Star Wars shaped my sense of what story can do, how characters and cinematic moments can live with us forever.
“To join this storytelling galaxy with such brilliant collaborators, onscreen and off, is the thrill of a lifetime.”
And Star Wars fans across the galaxy will be hoping whatever he conjures up is finally something that is truly out of this world.
