Given Lucasfilm’s hail-mary approach to announcing Star Wars film projects that may or may not ever actually end up hitting theaters over the past few years, it might be surprising to some that one of the big names in cinematic sci-fi of those past few years—Dune director Denis Villeneuve—has zero interest in being a part of all that. But his reasons for that are a surprising mix of reasonable and an almost admirable level of pettiness.
“Star Wars became crystallized in its own mythology, very dogmatic, it seemed like a recipe, no more surprises,” Villeneuve recently said during an appearance on The Town podcast (via THR) about the chances of him ever proverbially jumping from Arrakis to Tatooine. “So I’m not dreaming to do a Star Wars because it feels like code is very codified.”
That, in and of itself, is perhaps the more understanding aspect of Villeneuve’s aversion. As Star Wars has tried to navigate its post-Rise of Skywalker reality—arguably even earlier than that, since it weathered the divisive reaction to The Last Jedi—Star Wars has, with few notable exceptions, turned to less challenging ideas of itself and more inwardly to the familiarity of what’s worked and been explored before. Considering what’s largely shaping the franchise’s future right now is commitments to that familiarity, it’s not hard to see why Villeneuve would think there’s less room for experimentation in Star Wars than in something like what he’s been able to do in adapting Dune.
The slightly less reasonable, and perhaps a little pettier response? Villeneuve is apparently still kind of pissed about Return of the Jedi.
“The Empire Strikes Back is the movie that I anticipated the most in my life. I saw the movie a billion times onscreen. I was traumatized by The Empire Strikes Back. I adore Star Wars,” Villeneuve explained. “The problem is that it all derailed in 1983 with Return of the Jedi… it’s a long story. 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.”
Wow, what did poor Wicket do to you, Denis? You’d think that Star Wars‘ ability to go from the darker traumas of Empire into the lighter tones of Return would, in hindsight, spark Villeneuve’s interest in a franchise that can do new things and inhabit different tones. But alas, Villeneuve still thinks the galaxy far, far away was outgrown by his teenage self, and so he’s staying away. Maybe don’t expect any diminutively fuzzy freedom fighters to appear in his next Dune movie whenever we get it, in the meantime.
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