How James Mangold Decided To Take Star Wars Back To The Beginning
While the big headline coming out of Star Wars Celebration 2023 was the return of Rey Skywalker, the project that I am most looking forward to is James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi.
Mangold will take the Star Wars franchise back to the first people to feel the Force, an event that would eventually lead to the creation of the Jedi Order.
Image: Star Wars
For a franchise that has largely been set within the same 100-year era, going back to the origins of the force is a giant step.
Going Back To The Beginning
As it turns out, the idea of exploring the genesis of Jedi Order came not from Lucasfilm, but from James Mangold himself.
“Well, I’ve talked to [Lucasfilm] before and even worked a bit before on other projects,” Mangold told io9. “And I’m always interested in what’s going on there and have friends who work on other Star Wars projects. But I understood that much of what they were doing was kind of continuing the saga forward,” he recalled.
Free Of Constraints
The Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director wanted to tell his own Star Wars story, unencumbered by the other narratives that the franchise was telling. The solution to the problem was both simple and extraordinary — go back to the beginning.
Photo: Disney
“So when I mentioned to Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] the idea that I had about going backward—really far backward—I was surprised that it excited her and the other wonderful people she works with at Lucasfilm,” he continued.
“For me, it’s about, I want to be part of the saga. But I also don’t want to be holding so much lore in the air that you can hardly tell a story. And what I really wanted to do, what I told her, was just can we make a kind of the Ten Commandments of the Force, you know? A kind of origin story of how the Force came to be known, understood, wielded, and harnessed.”
Photo: Lucasfilm
By going to back to the beginning, Mangold will not only be able to tell his own story, but he also will fundamentally change how we understand the Star Wars franchise.
Photo: Lucasfilm
While we don’t have a release date yet for “Dawn of the Jedi”, I for one can’t wait.
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