'Star Wars: Starfighter Director Shawn Levy Explains How The Film Is The Most Like 'Return Of The Jedi'
Shawn Levy, the director for the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter film recently shared how his film is most like Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
In an interview on the Kevin McCarthy Podcast, Levy was asked what the pivotal movie that he saw at a young age. He answered, “It’s such a cliché answer, but it’s an extra poignant answer because of what I’m doing right now. It was Star Wars. It was 1977. I love Star Wars. I loved Empire, but, boy, I must have been somewhere in my adolescence for Return of the Jedi. Is that ‘84? ‘83 or ‘84?”
“Let me tell you something. I have not said this out loud because everyone’s like, ‘Which Star Wars movie is Starfighter the most like? Which is it the most inspired by?’ If I’m being honest, I know the cool answer would be Empire. And sort of the inarguable answer would be New Hope. But it’s kind of Jedi.
Levy explained, “It’s Jedi because the combination of theme, levity, adventure, heart, spectacle. Somehow that movie just got it right for me. And I saw that movie so many times in a theater. More times in a theater than New Hope and Empire. And it stuck with me. … There’s moments where I’m on set [of Starfighter] and I feel like that kid is with me in the director’s chair. Like I’m there making his dream come true.”
As for what to expect from Starfighter, Levy said, “It’s not a sequel. It’s not a prequel. It’s not legacy characters and it’s not in a period of time in the galaxy that’s ever been explored. [It’s 5 years after] Rise of Skywalker.”
“But what this means it that we are inventing everything in this movie,” he continued. “And the desire to make design choices, character choices, planet choices, costume choices, droid choices, alien choices, all of it needs to feel Star Warsy, but I am freaking determined to not let any of it feel derivative or lazily copycat. And I’ll say so far the encouragement I’ve gotten from Disney and from Kathy Kennedy and Lucasfilm [is] to forge new ground. It’s been the one constant ever since I gave them an outline of this idea that Jonathan Tropper and I cooked up.”
He then shared a call he had from Kennedy, “And I’m like, ‘Hi, Kathleen Kennedy.’ … And she called and she said, ‘I want you to do Star Wars.’ And I said, ‘Which one?’ And she said, ‘Any one you want.’ And I said, ‘Right, but like which character? What' movie is it connecting to?’ She goes, ‘Make it original. You pick the writer. You pick the story. Just make it feel like a Shawn Levy movie. Make it warm-hearted and fun and built for audience delight.’ That was the only mandate.”
Levy would go on to announce that Thomas Newman had been tapped to compose the film. Newman composed 1917, WALL-E, Finding Nemo, Meet Joe Black, The Shawshank Redemption, Road to Perdition, Little Women, and Scent of a Woman among others.
As for why he went with Newman, he explained, “It wants to be sort of classically inspired, but no, it’s not going to be remixes of Williams’ cues. It might be inspired by some of that, but I knew that I need a bighearted movie score from a composer who like John Williams doesn’t shy away from themes. In other words, every movie should have a musical theme. … What John Williams sort of embraces is a movie can have multiple themes. There was Leia’s theme. There was the Force theme known as Binary Sunset. There’s the Imperial March. So not shying away from myriad musical signatures that help tell the narrative alongside and in addition to the words and the images.”
Levy’s comments about the film being closest to Return of the Jedi is cause for some optimism. In his 1984 original review of the film and the entire trilogy Archbishop Lazar Puhalo wrote, “It is one of the only movies I know of from the last two or three decades where we witness an actual triumph of virginity and morality over the dark forces of the passions. The problems one might have with the interpretation of ‘the force’ are minor compared to the positive beauty of the movie.”
In fact, earlier in his review he noted, “In the closing scene of the film, the allies are celebrating their final victory — not entirely aware that the victory was actually won by Luke Skywalker’s defeat of the passions in his own life, and his ultimate choice of co-suffering love over the temptations of power, anger and malice. Luke observes the worldly celebrations from a distance — he is disconnected from all this, dispassionate, already on a higher plane, his moral grandeur and virginity intact, he has become a “Jedi”, a true monk. He has received the Skhema, and the real victories in his galaxy will be won by him, and those who may follow him. He is now the Elder. As he turns his back on the festivities, he sees in an aura a vision of his sainted Elder, Yoda, his spiritual father Kenobi who, after his own self-sacrificing death, became Luke’s patron saint, and Luke’s father, Darth Vader — all smiling benevolently. Darth Vader with the two saints? Of course, for such is the power of repentance, such is that love which grants to him who wrought from the eleventh hour together with those who wrought from the first.”
I'd like to believe that the film will not be a total modern slopfest, but I guess that I'm just too cynical.
He’s lying. They’re all lying.