James Mangold Is Right: Star Wars Has a Lore Problem

James Mangold’s long-gestating, as-yet-unnamed Star Wars movie famously takes place a loooong time before the franchise’s earliest-set entry, The Phantom Menace. In a recent interview, Mangold outlined why: he wanted to avoid decades of lore tied to that film and Star Wars‘ wider “Skywalker Saga” narrative.

“[My] Star Wars movie would be taking place 25,000 years before any known Star Wars movie takes place,” Mangold told MovieWeb. “It’s an area and a playground that I’ve always [wanted to explore] and that I was inspired by as a teenager. I’m not that interested in being handcuffed by so much lore at this point that it’s almost immovable, and you can’t please anybody.”

Mangold added that setting up such a massive buffer between his project (unofficially known as “Dawn of the Jedi”) and Skywalker Saga canon is the only way to ensure he has “the freedom to make something new.” And he’s totally right: modern Star Wars does indeed have a lore problem, and unless more folks at Lucasfilm follow Mangold’s lead, the franchise’s future is at risk.

Telling Stories Around the Skywalker Saga CAN Work

Don’t get me wrong: it is possible to tell compelling Skywalker Saga-associated stories. One of the most well-regarded films of the franchise’s current, Disney-owned era, 2016 spinoff Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, fits between the narrative cracks of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Its equally acclaimed small screen offshoot, Andor, likewise unfolds during this window.

And let’s not forget that The Mandalorian – arguably Lucasfilm’s most popular Star Wars project (certainly during its first two seasons) since the studio’s acquisition by Disney – is also an interquel of sorts. The Disney+ series is wedged between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Some of the most beloved animated Star Wars adventures in recent years, the final season of The Clone Wars and all of Rebels and The Bad Batch, go down between Skywalker Saga installments, as well.

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Why did these productions work? Because the people behind them chose their position within the chronology carefully. The Clone Wars and the ramp-up to the first Death Star’s deployment are both action-packed flashpoints in Star Wars‘ history; the lore dictates that stuff went down and it was exciting. Crucially, when the above shows entered production, these periods were also loosely defined enough to allow a certain amount of storytelling latitude regarding lore.

The same goes for stretch immediately following the original Star Wars trilogy era. When The Mandalorian set up shop there, not much else occupied this spot in the post-Disney reset timeline. Equally, in every case, what lore was already present leant itself to telling thematically rich stories. This is especially true of Andor, which uses the canonically enshrined rise of the Rebellion as the jumping off point for a meditation on fascism, revolution, and other weighty ideas.

Star Wars Lore Is Too Middle-Heavy

But now, we’ve reached the Skywalker Saga saturation point. There are barely any untapped narrative seams between the nine episodes left to mine, and what’s in them isn’t exactly gold. Indeed, anything precious is already excavated, which makes telling a story with familiar characters – heck, in a familiar setting – really, really hard. Because, as Mangold rightly points out, you can’t do anything in a Star Wars movie without breaking something else. So, you either fudge existing lore, or play it safe with a super low-stakes story. Neither option is exactly a winner.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is more fun than it gets credit for, however, it’s also underwhelmingly inessential. Skeleton Crew is arguably the same. The Book of Boba Fett fails to convincingly reframe the baddest bounty hunter in the galaxy as a stand-up guy. Obi-Wan Kenobi runs roughshod over the Obi-Wan/Darth Vader rivalry’s previously communicated 20-year hiatus and plays equally loose and fast with the facts of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa’s childhoods.

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True, Star Wars lore has always had its wrinkles; franchise creator George Lucas retconned key details all the time. But these days, the effect of the story versus continuity push/pull feels more egregious, because Star Wars‘ universe isn’t spreading out anymore as it was under Lucas – it’s piling up. The timeline has become too middle-heavy, concentrated far too intensely around the Skywalker Saga. Rich as they are, individually and collectively, they simply can’t sustain many more stories with anything meaningful to impart or fresh to reveal.

Even The Acolyte – a series set roughly 100 years before The Phantom Menace – struggled in part due to its proximity to the Skywalker Saga. Before The Acolyte‘s first episode dropped, social media was abuzz with heated debate over how well (or not) a Sith-oriented show set in this era jibed with established continuity. The show handled this potential pitfall neatly when it eventually premiered, yet the fact it was even in doubt speaks volumes about the current state of affairs. Similarly, bouncing to whole ‘nother galaxy didn’t help Ahsoka. New digs aside, Season 1 ultimately revolves around the return of Rebels baddie Thrawn. It’s not doing something new; it’s setting up a conflict that (thanks to the Star Wars sequel trilogy) we already know the outcome of.

Lucasfilm Needs to Figure Out Star Wars’ Purpose Beyond the Skywalker Family

That’s what it boils down to really: so much of Star Wars‘ immediate past, present, and future is already written that there’s little worthwhile to add. Who cares if Thrawn is coming? We know he’s going to lose, because he’s not the villain of the sequel trilogy (he’s not even mentioned in those flicks). And if Thrawn somehow does pull off an upset win, that won’t fly either, because it undermines the lore as we know it.

So, why even bother building an overarching, multi-show narrative around Thrawn? Why not jump ahead 100 –or even 1,000! – years into Star Wars future and chronicle some other skirmish between good and evil wit an open endgame? It’s simple: Lucasfilm knows there’s still a lot of interest in stories linked to the Skywalker Saga. Filmmakers want to play with all the classic toys from those films – whether its X-Wings and Stormtroopers, or even the likes of Luke Skywalker – and fans will show up to watch them do it. But for Star Wars to have a healthy, long-term future, this needs to stop.

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There’s nothing original left to say with this stretch of the franchise’s continuity; even if there were, there’s no space left in the lore to say it. The only solution is breaking new ground. For any of its missteps, Lucasfilm’s High Republic initiative (of which The Acolyte is part) at least tried to do this. If anything, its safety zone – capped at 500 years pre-Phantom Menace – was too small. Mangold’s right: to really do something worthwhile with this franchise, you need to go thousands of years forwards or backwards on the Star Wars timeline, minimum.

You don’t make movies about Rey Skywalker, a little bit older yet still shackled to the present status quo (as Lucasfilm is in the process of doing). Instead, you construct a whole new Star Wars sandbox that’s true to the spirit of what came before, but not hemmed in by it. Sure, this is much harder than trotting out the old familiar faces and places – but at least the lore isn’t holding you back.

James Mangold’s unnamed Star Wars project does not yet have a release date.