Recently, James Mangold (the director of hit films like Logan) signed a major deal to create multiple feature films for Paramount. This led to widespread speculation that the deal will prevent him from creating Dawn of the Jedi, his Star Wars origin film, for Disney. Should it be canceled (which really seems inevitable), the Star Wars franchise will be stronger because the last thing we need is another movie ruining the Force.
The Jedi’s Origin, Revealed?
For some context, Dawn of the Jedi is supposed to be set 25,000 years before The Phantom Menace and is meant to focus on where the Force comes from, how it was discovered, and how people learned to use it. Mangold also wanted to explore how this developed into religious legends that span the galaxy. While that sounds neat on paper, the blunt truth is that this movie was already doomed because fans of this franchise always hate prequels that mess with pre-existing lore.
The greatest example of this is the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which threw out the mysticism of the Force in favor of a bland explanation involving midi-chlorians. This served a narrative purpose by explaining how Jedi can scan and detect someone’s Force potential (the more midi-chlorians, the greater the ability), but it really ruined much of this franchise’s magic. It turns out that it was much cooler for us fans to speculate about a mystical energy field than it was to have everything explained in terms of in-universe pseudo-science.
Repeating the Failure of The Phantom Menace
This is the chief reason I think James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi would be a disaster: it is intended, from the ground up, to explain how the Force works. Remember how mad everyone got at a single scene in The Phantom Menace that tried to explain how the Force works? Just imagine how angry everyone would be at an entire movie meant to provide explanations for something previously left largely up to our imagination.
Plus, Mangold has created a kind of no-win scenario here: if he changes the Force up too much, it will upset fans because it will retroactively change our understanding of characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. But if he doesn’t change anything, there’s no real point in having a Jedi origin movie in the first place. Therefore, the director can either deliver a controversial movie or a superfluous one; either way, the result is a bunch of annoyed fans, and Star Wars really can’t afford to drive many more of them away at this point.
This Will Be The Acolyte All Over Again
Finally, Mangold previously expressed excitement at setting a movie so far in the franchise’s past because it meant he didn’t have to worry about disrupting canon. But aside from the fact that changing up the Force would be arguably the biggest change you could make to this canon, The Acolyte is proof that setting a Star Wars project in the distant past is no guarantee that it will be good or that fans will care about it. And that show also tried to explore other aspects of the Jedi (including just how Sith-like they can be) in ways that ultimately upset the fandom just as much as the series’ erratic storytelling.
The shows that have been a success (like Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka) show that fans are more eager to watch legacy characters and familiar settings; therefore, Dawn of the Jedi would be a hard sell even without its inevitably clumsy handling of the Force. The movie hasn’t been officially canceled yet, meaning that we may eventually see James Mangold’s vision for this famous galaxy far, far away. But unless he wants to trigger a disturbance in the fandom (as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror), it’s best if this Star Wars movie never sees the light of day.
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