James Mangold Offers More Insight Into his “Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi” Movie

Writer/director James Mangold currently has a major movie in theaters, his Timothée Chalamet-led Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown. Mangold’s evocative look at Dylan’s early years in New York paints a vivid picture of one of the most iconic artists in American history as he finds his footing, voice, and singularly chameleonic approach to stardom. Mangold’s got another huge project on the horizon that, while not completely unknown, certainly classifies as intriguingly mysterious and is far, far away from Greenwich Village in the early 60s—a Star Wars film that will take viewers to a time never before captured in any film or TV series in franchise history.

Mangold is working on the script with co-writer Beau Willimon, and they’ve set themselves a massive challenge—they’re going to eschew the Skywalker Saga entirely. Mangold and Willimon plan to take viewers back millennia before Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala—and their kids, Luke and Leia—and explore the galaxy’s deep past. This offers them a lot of narrative flexibility and a Death Star’s worth of risks.

Speaking with MovieWeb, Mangold revealed a bit about how he’s approaching the challenge. While he and Willimon aren’t ignoring the Star Wars canon, the film is currently titled Dawn of the Jedi, after all, they are attempting to tell a completely new story, which means taking the risk of relying far less on the well-known mythos and narratives of the franchise. Here’s how Mangold put it to MovieWeb:

“The Star Wars movie would be taking place 25,000 years before any known Star Wars movies takes place. It’s an area and a playground that I’ve always [wanted to explore] and that I was inspired by as a teenager. I’m not that interested in being handcuffed by so much lore at this point that it’s almost immovable, and you can’t please anybody.”

This is, of course, a bold move given the history of Star Wars mega-fans finding fault when a story veers from the canon or what they feel are the unbreakable tenets of the franchise as it was first conceived by George Lucas. Rian Johnson and his cast faced backlash from vocal fans for his narrative choices—and casting choices, sadly—in The Last Jedi, and that was despite continuing the Skywalker Saga and including iconic characters like Luke and Yoda.

“Success is never guaranteed, but the reality is that the way to get most people to agree is to move them; to somehow find the humanity in a situation,” Mangold said. “Whether it’s a mega-franchise or a smaller dramatic movie, whatever they are, usually the movies you remember are the ones that move you.”

At the Star Wars Celebration last year, Mangold said his approach to the film was thinking of it as a “biblical epic,” name-checking Cecil B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments as inspiration. There’s no doubt that as he and Willimon have been working on the script, they’ve made changes and found new areas of intrigue, so there’s no telling if the movie they end up writing takes the same approach. Yet what certainly hasn’t changed is Mangold’s desire to bring something new to the galaxy. As he told MovieWeb, twhat he and Willimon are after, most of all, is emotional impact. 

“The ones that leave you cold, even if they’re clever, even if they’re spectacular, even if they’re dazzling, somehow just become replaced by the next dazzling object a year later. It’s the feelings, it’s ‘the feels,’ right? That truly defines how we feel about these movies and whether we care to visit them again.”

Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 10: James Mangold attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Searchlight Pictures “A Complete Unknown” at Dolby Theatre on December 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)