Next era of Star Wars movies to be connected in more ways than may seem obvious at first

We learned at Star Wars Celebration Europe earlier this summer that Star Wars movies were finally back on the menu at Disney/Lucasfilm with three new movies reportedly in development.

While the news that Clone Wars and The Mandalorian’s Dave Filoni was getting his own movie had me excited, the two movies that grabbed my attention most were the return of Daisy Ridley’s Rey and James MAngold’s movie set to explore the early days of the Force, well, actually the first days of the Force.

While he previously developed a Boba Fett movie touted as an R-rated spaghetti Western [it later became The Book of Boba Fett series], Mangold was was approached by Star Wars boss Kathleen Kennedy who asked if he was still keen to explore the Star Wars universe and, as any sane person would, he said absolutely: “I said, ‘Yes, but it seems like everything you’re developing is continuing forward,'” the writer recalls, before pitching “a ‘Ten Commandments’ about the dawning of the Force. It is basically, for fans, a kind of religion. What is it to have found this power and not even understand what it is?”

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Wisely, Kennedy saw a real potential in this story and an opportunity to explore a part of the Star Wars story that has been untouched so far.

“I want to be part of the saga,” Mangold said, “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.”

But while Magold’s movie will chart the beginning of the mysticism of Star Wars, the Rey movie will head closer to the end, telling a story set long after the sequel trilogy; Kennedy discussed this and how the movies will complement each other: “I think what’s always great about Star Wars is it’s a big galaxy, and we’re coming off what was a major war with the First Order and now Rey has made a promise to Luke and that’s really the core of where we’re going and what this story will be. And I think it offers just tremendous opportunity to introduce new characters and start with something fresh, because we culminated with what George [Lucas] was creating, and now we take all of that and move it to the next chapter.”

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Speaking on the origin start, Kennedy says that this was something Lucas himself wanted to develop more and they’re going to do just that: “It was something that Jim [Mangold] immediately sparked to, and I think it’s a really nice compliment to what we’re doing with moving into the future with Rey, and then understanding a bit more of where this all came from because it will be at the heart of creating the new Jedi Order, so to get a real sense of where that might have began with the dawn of the Jedi could be pretty cool.”

So, what do you think? Would you be excited to see two movies that are connected in this way through the Force? Telling the beginning and ending of a bigger story? Do you think Kennedy and Mangold can navigate such a task? Are you excited to see Rey return? Personally, as much as I didn’t like the sequels, I do like Rey – and Ridley – and would love to see what a good movie could do with her… but that might be just me.

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Source: Games Radar, Gizmodo