Easily the biggest news out of Star Wars Celebration this year was the reveal that Lucasfilm planned three new films that would span the entire length of the mythical timeline to which every Star Wars movie is attached. James Mangold will go deep into the past to explore the origin of The Force. Dave Filoni will tell a story in the Star Wars present (according to Star Wars movies in order) that will connect plot threads of The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and more. And then Daisy Ridley will return to the role of Rey for a movie set 15 years after Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker. It’s a welcome return to the realm of making movies, and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy explained to CinemaBlend the core idea that got them excited about moviemaking again.
Katheen Kennedy is attending Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London, and attended a press line on behalf of Ahsoka, the new Disney+ show starring Rosario Dawson. But she was open about all things Star Wars, including the new movies that had been revealed. When explaining how Lucasfilm balances fan expectations against the types of stories that the company wants to tell now, Kennedy went on to reveal:
The interesting thing about Star Wars is, it is a continual story. It's not books we're pulling off a shelf, or characters. We're actually telling a continual story. So what interested us with the movies was the Jedi. We started talking about, and looking at, how do we want to treat those stories? How do we want to look at this history of Star Wars now, and eras, that we start to look at, where are the pockets of storytelling?
Looking back on the eras that were revealed as part of the presentation, you saw that Lucasfilm wants to delve into periods such as The Dawn of the Jedi, the Fall of the Jedi, the Age of Rebellion, the Rise of the First Order, and more. These are distinct periods that can be explored through different stories told on film. The placeholders for Star Wars used to be the existing trilogies. But now, in television shows like The Acolyte, we will visit a time when the Jedi were in power… and there were Wookie Jedi. That’s crazy.
As Kathleen Kennedy went on to explain:
We knew that we were already doing this and exploring it in television and streaming. And realizing that that is now a reality. You know, five years ago, streaming didn't even really exist. Now we're deeply into that. How does that connect to what we're doing in the future? It's an evolving process.
The evolution appears to be connected the running theme of The Jedi. Which is encouraging to me because through the run of the Sequel trilogy, Luke was in hiding and Ben Solo was embracing the Dark Side of The Force. The Mandalorian has been the hot new show in the Star Wars universe, but by focusing on Mandalorians, the Jedi have taken a back seat. The new movies announced appear ready to put the Jedi back at the forefront, whether it’s Mangold exploring the first person to call themselves a Jedi, or Rey returning as a new Jedi Master, ready to lead Star Wars into the future.
