The Mandalorian Executive Producer and Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni provided some details on what he hopes to accomplish with his recently announced Star Wars theatrical film.
Filoni’s theatrical film was one of three new Star Wars theatrical films announced during Star Wars Celebration back in April.
In a press release, Lucasfilm detailed Filoni’s film “will orchestrate the escalating war between the Imperial Remnant and the fledgling New Republic.”
It also detailed that alongside The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau, the film “will bring together many of the threads of the Star Wars original series, in a cinematic event.”
Filoni spoke to Empire at Star Wars Celebration where he provided some more details about what he hopes to accomplish with the film.
He would be asked if the film would just be another step in the overall story being painted by The Mandalorian and Ahsoka or if it would be a culmination of the whole thing.
He said, “Culmination is an interesting word. The way I look at it, there are [small] stories, and then there’s the big story of the day, too. A New Hope, Empire and Return Of The Jedi tell the important parts of the tale that really define the history of the period. There are all kinds of sub-stories underneath that. We’ve been building all these small stories.”
Speaking specifically to the theatrical film, he said, “To me, a theatrical experience has to have a big idea – a monumental moment in the time period that changes what’s happening.”
“What Tony [Gilroy] has done [in Andor] and what we did in Rebels, everything then changes when Luke blows up the Death Star,” he explained. “You’re looking for those moments that define an era, and that’s what the films really should be about – whether it’s characters coming together, or a defining moment.”
As for what his ideas for this defining or monumental moment could be, Filoni stayed mum, “I have ideas, of course. I will not tell you what they are!”
However, he did add, “There are little things along the way that I’ve built across different mediums, all in preparation for things that come later.”
This falls in line with what Filoni had to say about Thrawn. In an interview with Empire Magazine that was leaked to the Star Wars Leaks subreddit Filoni was asked, ““Do you see Thrawn as the big bad of this New Republic era? Is that how you’re positioning him?”
He replied, ““Definitely, in my eyes. When Timothy Zahn wrote Heir To The Empire, Thrawn became this very iconic villain, because he was different than anything we’d seen before. He wasn’t another helmet-wearing, lightsaber-wielding bad guy, you know?”
There’s a lot of pull to make characters that are like Vader, because it is so iconic,” he continued. “But the boldness that Tim had was to make somebody that wasn’t like that, that didn’t have those abilities, but could fight in a different way.”
Filoni added, “In the words Star Wars, the ‘war’ part of it — him being a Grand Admiral, a leader, a military strategist, a Moriarty archetype, someone that will out-think you, out-strategise you — that really resonated. He’s a critical player in this time period. We’re fortunate to have that character, and fortunate to have Lars [Mikkelsen] playing him.”
It’s hard to imagine that anything could be described as monumental in the time between the Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. The idea of Thrawn coming back in this time period only appears to show just how much weaker his character is in Disney Star Wars compared to the original Expanded Universe where he was an extreme threat that Luke Skywalker and the fledgling New Republic struggled to defeat.
The New Republic has already been shown to be incompetent in The Mandalorian allowing smaller threats like Moff Gideon to escape their custody. They’ve also been seemingly infiltrated by at least one Imperial spy and who knows how many others. Their decadence and arrogance would culminate in the First Order obliterating the entire Hosnian system. That’s the monumental moment. And it’s one Filoni made clear his storytelling leads to.
In an interview with TheWrap back in March, Filoni said, “I tend to think, as we’ve been working on the The Mandalorian and then writing Ahsoka, and then Jon Watts came in with Skeleton Crew, there is an entire time period that is post-Return of the Jedi. And I look at that time period, which before The Force Awakens, is around 30 years of time.”
He continued, “When you look at the original trilogy, it’s a much less significant amount of time that those three movies take place in. And so, what I like is that we’re really building very slowly an ecosystem of characters and politics and events in the post-Return of the Jedi time period. And that may or may not expand in a bigger way as we add more shows to it and add more characters to it.”
Filoni then went on to reveal how he attempts to keep track of everything happening within this Star Wars timeline, “The good thing is that we’re all talking creatively together about where these stories are all going. And I love whiteboards, and I whiteboard everything and have timelines. They always start back with The Phantom Menace and they always go out to The Rise of Skywalker.”
“I have all these slots in between and where everybody’s doing everything, so I can look at it all and commiserate with Kathy on what’s going on here, what’s going on there? It’s very fun,” he said.
What do you make of Filoni’s comments about his theatrical film? Do you think this film will even get made? What kind of monumental moment do you think could be included in the film?