Denis Villeneuve says the Star Wars franchise “derailed” in 1983

The director of the recent Dune movies, Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival revealed in a podcast, why he has no interest directing a Star Wars movie:

“I was the target audience. I was 10 years old. It went to my brain like a silver bullet. I became obsessed with Star Wars. I mean, The Empire Strikes Back is the movie that I anticipated the most in my life. I saw the movie a billion times onscreen. […] I adore Star Wars. The problem is that it all derailed in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. […] I was 15 years old, and my best friend and I wanted to take a cab and go to L.A. and talk to George Lucas — we were so angry! Still today, the Ewoks. It turned out to be a comedy for kids. Star Wars became crystallized in its own mythology, very dogmatic, it seemed like a recipe, no more surprises. So I’m not dreaming to do a Star Wars because it feels like code is very codified.”

Source: https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1885431-denis-villeneueve-star-wars-movie

Mass Effect was my new Star Wars. It even had it’s own version of The Force with biotics. Now it sucks too, but it was great for 2.9 games

I liked The Expanse quite a bit - but maybe that is more like the new Babylon 5.

What I really want…is a a revival of Space: Above and Beyond.

Denis’s movies are always technically very proficient - but very cold. A lot like George Lucas without a good supporting production team!

Rebel Moon is like if you took Battle Beyond the Stars and Dune, put them in a blender, and then made it pretentious and boring.

As for Denis Villeneuve’s (huge fan of his movies by the way) comments, I can sort of see where he’s coming from, even though I love that movie (in fact, it’s my second favorite of the series and I’m even wearing a Return of the Jedi shirt as I type this, lol). It did fall back on formula a bit (another Death Star for example). I don’t mind the Ewoks, but he said he was 15 when he saw the movie and at that age I didn’t really care for them. I mainly love the movie because I love Jabba the Hutt, The Emperor, and the stuff with Luke and Vader. And it’s optimistic, which is nice. It ends on a good note.

Anyway, maybe he’d have liked Return of the Jedi more if David Lynch had directed it.

Omni said:

Anyway it’s such a specific opinion that only really people his age have. Those slightly younger than him love all 3, those much younger love all 3 and the prequels, the kids now love all 9, and it goes on…

Not really. I was 11 when TPM was released; I’ve come to share Villeneuve’s opinion (even if I think he’s a mid filmmaker and his Dune adaptation in particular falls light-years short of what it was hyped up to be). Not everyone’s blinded by rose-tinted nostalgia glasses.

I think the one thing he’s “wrong” about, is that ROTJ codified anything about the setting’s potential.

Years of EU material - engagement from fans as writers just like he was at 15 - have taken the property in the diverse directions he craved throughout books, games, comics, etc. Stuff like the prequels’ commitment to slapstick, and the ST’s derivate nature is definitely symptomatic of ROTJ - but Star Wars as a whole is such a canvas, and in part because of its mythological nature. It has one of the most recognizable pop culture iconographies ever created.

What that does - the value of that, that a new IP doesn’t have - is that “The Galactic Empire” and “The Rebel Alliance” or “The Jedi” are a language unto itself. You can be literate - fluent - in Star Wars, and in broad ways too. Look no further than Tony Gilroy treating Star Wars lore as a history to research for Andor. George Lucas himself is able to make commentary on our assumed institutions by playing on the expectations of the myths he established.

These are the kinds of complex iterations that a blank slate story needs time and goodwill to build up to - not to mention on a meta level, wouldn’t have the cultural cache that the Star Wars iconography brings with it. There is genuine power - in a similar way a Christian could call something “demonic” and that has meaning - to Lucas making an observation about the world, and making it a contributing factor in the fabled, evil Galactic Empire’s rise. That’s allegorical weight that the Hunger Games’ Panem doesn’t have. That Dune needs to explain over two movies or more.

Star Wars is broad and pulpy, and that allows for depth in the margins, in iteration. It more than other sci-fi, is at the point of Sherlock Holmes: make him a doctor for this one, or Watson is Lucy Liu in this one, this one’s about his cousin, and here’s a heady deconstruction of his tropes. But it’s Star Wars, and it’s already a pastiche, ripe for modulation and dissection.

Not to say that narratives more blatantly about, say, the Troubles of Northern Ireland, police corruption in Baltimore, or the Bush administration - can’t also be great, but they have a different type of less palatable baggage; are limited by the scope of reality. Star Wars as a framework can go further off the tip, in those directions, far better than other sci/fantasy settings can. Especially because I think it’s encouraged by the original creator’s work (prequels) itself, more than maybe LOTR in a similar position ever would. Really the property is as dogmatic as its fanbase allows it to be.

I remember thinking that a lot of the TFA behind-the-scenes stuff was Abrams talking about them constantly asking themselves if something was sufficiently Star Wars. Villeneuve is not wrong that a certain codification has sadly set in to most SW productions - and it’s a tricky line to walk. On the one hand, surely that mindset is part of the problem with the Sequels. On the other hand, you can’t tell me the art department for Andor isn’t asking some version of that question.

And besides, ROTJ has been agreed by most everyone to be the weakest of the OT for some time, and the Ewoks is one of the most commonly cited examples of the problems. I didn’t start this reply thinking I’d bring in my own pet project, but it’s relevant; the storyboards for ROTJ that involve Ewoks are often more compelling and exciting than the actual resulting footage, and I think a lot of it comes down to the fairly inexpressive faces of the Ewok costumes. I do not think they lived up to the intentions of the team making the movie, and Harrison Ford’s goofy tone in those scenes doesn’t help.

timdiggerm said:

And besides, ROTJ has been agreed by most everyone to be the weakest of the OT for some time, and the Ewoks is one of the most commonly cited examples of the problems. I didn’t start this reply thinking I’d bring in my own pet project, but it’s relevant; the storyboards for ROTJ that involve Ewoks are often more compelling and exciting than the actual resulting footage, and I think a lot of it comes down to the fairly inexpressive faces of the Ewok costumes. I do not think they lived up to the intentions of the team making the movie, and Harrison Ford’s goofy tone in those scenes doesn’t help.

An observation I’ve made is that you just can’t cast little persons to play agile arboreal creatures. Changing nothing substantial about the costuming, the Ewoks would’ve worked much better if a combination of child actors/average-height adult actors shot through forced perspective had been used to bring them to life.