Why James Mangold is Confident in the Success of ‘Star Wars’ Film
James Mangold’s career has been shaped by his daring gambles and defiance of public expectations. Mangold has demonstrated his capacity to surprise and reinvent, from directing the Johnny Cash film ‘Walk the Line’ to turning Hugh Jackman’s character Wolverine into a tragic hero in ‘Logan’. He is currently working on ‘Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi’, one of his most ambitious projects to date. Mangold is exploring new ground with a story set 25,000 years before the events of the ‘Skywalker Saga’, which is very different from the franchise’s well-established canon. He is working with ‘House of Cards’ showrunner and co-writer Beau Willimon on this project.
Mangold told MovieWeb that one of the main reasons he decided to take on the project was the chance to produce something unique. “The freedom to create something new and different is the most important thing to me,” he said.
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They have been working on a script with Beau Willimon, figuring out how to tell a unique story that is unique in the ‘Star Wars’ universe. Mangold underlined that the goal is to figure out how to present novel concepts on television.
For a property with as much mythology as ‘Star Wars’, this strategy might sound hazardous, but Mangold loves to experiment. His work on ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ brought a cherished character back to life with a new angle, and his critically acclaimed ‘Logan’ reinvented the superhero genre. Mangold intends to apply that same inventive spirit to the ‘Star Wars’ universe’s far past, when Jedi and Sith had not yet been created, with ‘Dawn of the Jedi’.
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“Whether it’s a mega-franchise or a smaller dramatic movie, the films you remember are the ones that move you,” Mangold said, underscoring the significance of emotional resonance in his narrative. How we relate to these films is determined by our emotions. Mangold thinks that ‘Dawn of the Jedi’ will be genuinely memorable because of its emphasis on character and emotional depth, even though the movie promises enormous fights and breathtaking vistas.
–Farheen Ali
