Fan casting is nothing new in nerd circles; people picking what actors they’d like to play their favorite roles in upcoming adaptations and sequels, or who they would have rather had if what we got was unsatisfactory. I’ve done it myself, a few years ago i posted my thoughts on who would be the young, hot cast of the inevitable Star Trek: The Next Generation reboot. It was a contentious Facebook post, to say the least.
Today i’m hoping to build on that success by taking it a step further, with a more controversial franchise: Star Wars. And instead of fan casting, i’ll be fan directing, and in a few cases, writing. The next few paragraphs are me explaining my relationship to Star Wars. It got longer than i expected, so if you want to skip that and just get to the point, skip down to the next bold headline, Who Should Have Directed Star Wars.
I grew up in the 90s. The original trilogy had wrapped just before i was born and was a staple of my childhood. Whenever my mom needed to get housework done she would put them on for me and that would keep me occupied for six hours. We had them all on one VHS tape so they’d play straight through. In the mid-90s i got heavily into the Star Wars CCG, which was filled with factoids and backstory - it was basically how i learned the details of canon before there was a Wookieepedia. Episode I came out when i was 14, it was one of the first movies i ever went to with friends instead of my parents. I remember coming out of it feeling like i was the only one who was disappointed. It didn’t feel right and i thought it wasn’t very good at all. As my friends went back to see it multiple times that summer, i chose to hang back. I watched it a second time when it first came out on VHS, just to see if maybe i’d been wrong, but no, it still didn’t do anything for me. Public opinion gradually soured over its theatrical run, and the old fans began to turn on it. After seeing Episode II, i thought i was done with Star Wars. When i refused to even bother seeing Episode III, at the age of 20, a whole-ass adult who could make his own choices, my mom bribed me into the theater by paying for my ticket and snacks, because she thought it was important for me to finish the Star Wars saga. I admitted it was better than I and II but still thought it was bad.
My opinions on the prequels are not uncommon. When i rewatched the original trilogy in my mid-20s for the first time in several years, i finally realized that even Return of the Jedi, my favorite as a kid, is deeply flawed. I remained kind of a passive fan of Star Wars.
Until Episode VII came out in 2015.
I hated Force Awakens. To be clear, I thought the new characters were great, the action scenes were a huge improvement over previous entries, and the dialog was smart, and funny where it needed to be. However, i felt personally insulted by the fact that they couldn’t be assed to write a new story. I did not need an Episode IV remake. I already have an Episode IV. It’s called Episode IV. That this movie had nothing new to say and thought it could just make a shinier version of the original and pretend it was better was astoundingly, profoundly asinine. On top of that, this story rendered the conclusion of the original trilogy meaningless. It retroactively makes the originals worse. Rogue One did much the same. At that point, i thought i was done with Star Wars again. Much like Episode III, i planned to skip Episode VIII whenever it came out.
When i saw the Rotten Tomatoes scores for Episode VIII, however, i was intrigued. High 90s from critics and an even 50% from audiences? What? I started hearing that fans were mad about it. So i reversed my stance, and went to see it.
Episode VIII was the Star Wars i had waited my entire life for. It felt fresh, it tried new things, and most importantly it built on and utilized the entire breadth of the Star Wars mythology and expanded on it logically. The story was exactly what it needed to be. The cinematography was gorgeous. And i could not imagine a more heart-rending and perfect end for Luke Skywalker’s arc. While i had a few sticking points at first, namely the grating “bad connection” opening scene between Poe and Hux and the Cantobite stuff, i’ve come around on them and learned to appreciate the film as a whole. For the first time since early 1999, i felt excited to see what would come next, and felt like Star Wars actually had a future.
Then they did Solo. I actually committed and skipped it. The whole idea of explaining Han Solo’s backstory is the definition of a poor choice. We like the character because he’s got an ambiguous past. He’s the mysterious stranger we met in a bar. He starts the first film as a scumbag and grows into a hero by the end. It’s his arc. Your only options for a prequel about him are to either tell a whole story where he’s a jerk, or to undo his development through Episode IV by portraying him as having always been a good guy. I hear they chose the latter.
Episode IX. This is where i started to truly have feelings about who was directing these movies. I had grave concerns about Colin Trevorrow directing Episode IX, since i am of the opinion that Jurassic World is the worst fucking movie ever made. When he was fired, all i could think was, good. This is the best news. Then they went and replaced him with JJ Abrams. My feelings on Episode VII have already been stated. This was a disaster. His first Star Trek movie had been okay, but his second had been a mess. He’s never finished anything in his life except a TV show about a girl going to college. He’s a starter, not a finisher. He creates mysteries he doesn’t know the answers to and expects others to fill in the gaps for him. He’s got great visual instincts but he sucks as a storyteller. And then it came out. At this point i was so invested in the story from Last Jedi that i had to see where it ended up, even knowing it would be bad. I went into the theater expecting to come out mad, but i thought it would be just be unfulfilled nerd rage. I thought it would be a technically proficient movie that just went in directions i didn’t agree with.
That’s not what happened. We were about half an hour in when my connection to the movie just broke. I was expecting not to be satisfied. I was not expecting it to be an objectively bad movie. The whole thing is utter nonsense. It’s two hours of meaningless fetch quests with plot twists that only make sense if you already know how it ends. And as far as Force Awakens ruining Return of the Jedi - woof. Whatever integrity that movie still had left, this one completely obliterated. Not only was the Empire not really defeated in Episode VI, they couldn’t even kill the Emperor properly. I left the theater feeling nothing.
And i started to think about who should have directed it.
Who Should Have Directed Star Wars
It shouldn’t have to be said, but this is the internet, so i’ll put in the boilerplate: These are my personal opinions. You don’t have to agree with them. There’s no sense in going into a blood rage about it. You’re allowed to disagree with me. If you didn’t like Last Jedi, i don’t care.
Alright, finally into the meat of it. In picking out my dream directing team for the entire Star Wars saga, i’ve even gone so far as to consider what else directors were working on in the years these films were made and how it would have impacted the landscape of film if they’d taken on Star Wars. For example, i considered David Fincher for Episode I, but then we wouldn’t have gotten Fight Club, and I don’t want to live in a world without that movie (although, tangent, i could definitely live in a world without the bros who misunderstand Fight Club; that’s a whole other discussion though). I’ve also given some thought to where these directors were in their careers, and how that may have affected their ability to direct a blockbuster space opera.
Here we go.
Episode IV: A New Hope
1977, Directed by George Lucas
We can’t really change the starting point without completely derailing the entire experiment. George Lucas’s original Star Wars is exactly what it needs to be. While there are small things that could have been better, that’s not a can of worms i want to open. I have Harmy’s Despecialized Editions - a high-def recreation of the original theatrical cuts of the original trilogy - and i’ll brook no further meddling with these, thank you.
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
1980, Directed by Irvin Kershner
Again, this one is untouchable. Empire Strikes Back is essentially a perfect sequel to an original film that’s not yet steeped in mythology. It did everything it needed to and was not a rehash of the original, and...why am i even saying this? If you care enough about Star Wars to read this, you already know.
Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
1983, Directed by David Lynch
According to legend, David Lynch was George Lucas’s first choice to direct Episode VI. There’s no denying that would have been flat-out bonkers, probably in all the right ways. Lynch was in his prime in 1983. He ended up turning it down in favor of 1984’s Dune, which has a solid cult following, but is not particularly beloved by the masses, or fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune, or even necessarily fans of David Lynch. Doing Star Wars instead would have been legendary.
Episode I: The Journal of the Whills
1999, Directed by Nicholas Meyer
I never liked the title Phantom Menace, especially since the novelization of A New Hope includes a prologue which purports to be “from the first saga, Journal of the Whills.” So i’m using that. George Lucas absolutely should not have directed this movie. He hadn’t directed anything in 22 years, his last directing credit being the original Star Wars in 1977. He was rusty. But he’d built up his legend to the point where he was now surrounded by Yes Men who let him do whatever he wanted, whereas 1977 was a more collaborative effort among seasoned professionals. So who to get instead? I say Nicholas Meyer. Keep George Lucas’s story, but let Meyer take a pass at the script. Again, according to legend, when they were making Star Trek II, they had a script that wasn’t very good. When Meyer took over, he punched it up to the Wrath of Khan we know and love in NINE DAYS, simply by taking the story and skinning it over the bones of Moby Dick. Meyer also directed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, so you know he can handle galactic politics with grace as well. So with Lucas’s weird trade federation story, maybe pull that over the bones of another classic like...just spitballing here, The Illiad? And make that a Star Wars? And you market it as from the director of Wrath of Khan. Nerds go nuts. Episode I is awesome. Make a billion dollars. Done.
Episode II: Attack of the Clones
2002, Directed by James Cameron, written by Shane Black
When we’re talking about action sequels, especially space action sequels, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a better one than Aliens. James Cameron was already a legend by the turn of the millennium, but he hadn’t directed anything since Titanic in 1997 and wouldn’t release another film until Avatar in 2009. Putting the brains behind Aliens and the first two Terminator movies in the driver’s seat for a film about the escalation of a galactic war should be a solid win. At the core of the story, however, what we really need is a good buddy cop flick, focused on the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin as they unravel Palpatine’s sinister plans. Who has better cred for both sci-fi action and buddy cop stories than Shane Black, of Lethal Weapon fame? Not to mention his long-standing association with the Predator franchise. This would have nestled in nicely between The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in his chronology.
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
2005, Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
This needs to be straight-up the most War Film of all the Star Wars movies, and Kathryn Bigelow has a six-year hole in her resume from 2002-2008 that looks pretty Revenge of the Sith-shaped to me. This would have been her follow-up to 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker, which also provides a nice synergy to having Nicholas Meyer do Episode I since he made Wrath of Khan a success by “thinking of it as a submarine movie.” What i’m saying is the elements are there. Her next two films, 2008’s The Hurt Locker (for which she became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar) and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty, would go on to cement her reputation as a director of great war films. Plus, as an afterthought, there’s just a certain something extra about grabbing the reins of a giant film franchise from your ex-husband and taking it home.
Episode VII: The Force Awakens
2015, Directed by JJ Abrams
Alright, as painful as it is for me to say this...i think we still need JJ Abrams to do Force Awakens. His two Star Trek movies proved that he should have been working on Star Wars instead, they were basically his demo reels for this project. He created a perfect set of characters to carry the franchise forward and cast them impeccably, and as i mentioned in my huge block of text above that you probably skipped, the action, cinematography, and dialog are on point. Now, to address the problem of JJ Abrams. He’s basically a nostalgia factory with no original concepts of his own. He’s directed six films and five of them are franchise pieces for properties that were originally popular in the 60s and 70s. His one original film is a period piece about kids in the 80s, loaded with pop culture references from the time. Force Awakens was weaponized nostalgia. So, how do WE weaponize HIS nostalgia to work for US? Instead of having him just reference and remake everything he loved about Star Wars when he was a kid, point him back at the source. The original Star Wars was already about George Lucas’s nostalgia for the things that he liked when he was a kid - Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa movies. A New Hope is basically a remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, but in space. Instead of having Abrams remake A New Hope, have him crib another Kurosawa film and filter it through Star Wars. Like maybe, i don’t know, Seven Samurai. Seven Samurai would make a killer Star Wars film. And then maybe we wouldn’t have been burdened with that awful Magnificent Seven remake the following year, since Magnificent Seven was already a western retelling of Seven Samurai anyway.
Rogue One
2016, Directed by Sam Mendes
I didn’t like Rogue One. I thought the story was nonsense and it only existed to “patch” a “plot hole” that was only a problem if you didn’t pay attention to or didn’t trust the text of A New Hope. But a lot of people enjoyed this story. So if we’re going to do this, what is it at its core? It’s kind of a spy movie. Let’s get Sam Mendes to direct it. He’s hot off the success of one of the best-received James Bond movies of all time, Skyfall. If we can grab him before he commits to that movie’s follow-up, the troubled production with disastrous final results known as Spectre, we can take advantage of that energy he’s got going and still have him out in time to do 1917.
Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
2017, Directed by Rian Johnson
As i said above, The Last Jedi is exactly what it needs to be. This is also why i was hesitant to replace JJ Abrams on Force Awakens, because if we didn’t get that film, we wouldn’t get this one. I think a lot of the hate this film gets is from Star Wars fans who haven’t been challenged and just like their Star Wars to remain static and unchanged - stagnant, if you will. I think if we’d had the Star Wars i’ve outlined to this point, the fans would have been much more receptive to Last Jedi, and it would have fit right into a glorious canon of amazing films, rather than stuck out among a field of mediocre ones. Plus this already fits in with what i said about Kurosawa before, since Last Jedi already borrows heavily from Rashomon.
2018, Directed by James Mangold
Solo should never have happened. It demystified a character who was only cool because he was mysterious, and was helmed by a dependable but run-of-the-mill director, Ron Howard. Instead, do the Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. I don’t know that we need the gap between Episodes III and IV necessarily filled in, but Kenobi is a character who benefits from a rich backstory and Ewan McGregor both loves playing him, and is approaching old enough to fit into a just-pre-New Hope setting as the character (Alec Guinness was 63 in 1977, Ewan McGregor is currently 49). Straight up make it a western, set on Tatooine. Get James Mangold to direct it. He’s hot off of Logan, it’s a few years since the 3:10 to Yuma remake, he’s perfect. The only hitch i see is that this is just one year after Logan so the timetable might not quite work out and i’m absolutely not going to sacrifice Logan to get this movie. But, if you could make that work without rushing it too badly...
Episode IX: Duel of the Fates
2019, Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, written by Alex Garland
JJ Abrams’ Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker is bad for so many reasons, but you already know that. The title is part of the problem. I wrote years ago about how franchise films with the word “Rise” in the title are always at least disappointing if not bad, and yet Hollywood still hasn’t learned that. Also it’s just a dumb title. I’ve also expressed my misgivings about Colin Trevorrow in my relationship-to-Star Wars text above, but i watched YouTuber Jenny Nicholson read (most of) his script on her vlog and. Well. It’s also bad. It’s maybe worse than the Rise of Skywalker that we got. But it had a great title, since Duel of the Fates is not only an existing Star Wars reference, but a reference to one of the few things people love about Episode I, thus bringing the franchise full circle. It also has some very good ideas in it, such as Finn leading a worker uprising on Coruscant as a major plot point. Take Trevorrow’s script and have Alex Garland do rewrite on it. He’s consistently one of the best sci-fi writers working in the industry today, having written Dredd, Ex Machina, and Annihilation recently, directing the latter two. I had initially thought he’d be the director for the movie also, but looking at where he’s at with his career, his only two directing credits are fairly small-scale, very personal sci-fi films; i’m not sure he’s ready for a $275 million tentpole blockbuster. But you know who is? Alfonso Cuaron, who’s just a few years out from winning an Oscar for Gravity. He also directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, regarded as one of the best among that franchise, so you know he’s good with both nerd shit and space shit. There’s a bit of a conflict with this and Roma, though, which he also won an Oscar for, but i feel like there’s a way to make that work. Maybe Roma gets delayed a few years...or, better yet, delay Episode XI a year. I think one of the things that really hurt the new trilogy as a whole was forcing them to come out two years apart instead of three, like the other two trilogies did. It’s fine, we can wait an extra year for a better Star Wars.
Showrunner
Okay. Here’s another idea. One of the criticisms often levied against current Star Wars is that there isn’t an executive producer in charge of overseeing the development of the whole franchise. The Marvel movies famously have Kevin Feige, who’s been there since the beginning and has assured a level of quality control previously unheard of in a blockbuster franchise. You could argue that Kathleen Kennedy is that for Star Wars, but she’s really not; she’s not dedicated to this single brand and she doesn’t exercise much creative control over the whole thing. At least not until the directors fuck up and she needs to fire them, as has happened so many times in the last five years that i’ve lost track. So we basically need a showrunner for Star Wars.
How about Ronald D. Moore? I realize i’m grabbing more Star Trek people to do Star Wars again but seriously, the showrunner behind Deep Space Nine (the most Star Wars of the Star Treks) and the 2000s Battlestar Galactica? Put that guy in charge of the tone and development of all future Star Wars projects and we’re set. I know he’s been wrapped up with Electric Dreams and, um, Outlander recently, but i feel like he’d go for Star Wars over those, and that those properties will be fine.
Alternate ideas
Episode I - Stanley Kubrick
Hey, you know who’s still alive and making movies in 1999? Stanley Kubrick. This is batshit insane and would never happen, and it would end up being his last film at the expense of Eyes Wide Shut, and would definitely impact the franchise forever, but you know what? This is just the most tantalizing concept and i can’t stop thinking about it.
Episode III - The Wachowskis
My original thought was that the Wachowskis would be the perfect choice to finish off the prequel trilogy, hot off the Matrix sequels and ready to sink their teeth into a meaty sci-fi franchise saturated with philosophy and rich worldbuilding. Then i realized this would effectively torpedo V For Vendetta, which can’t wait a few years and has to come out during the Bush administration to be effective.
Episode III - George Miller
It’s Mad Max: Fury Road in space. What else do i need to say about this? George Miller was working on Happy Feet at the time, which would come out the following year. I don’t think the world loses much if Happy Feet waits a year or two. I’d have kept him in the list proper if i hadn’t suddenly had a better idea.
Episode VII - Joss Whedon
I stuck with JJ Abrams for the sake of what needs to come after Episode VII, but if we replaced him with anybody, Joss Whedon in 2015 is basically perfect. He just made the biggest movie in the world a couple years ago, the first Avengers film, but in actual 2015 he’s struggling to follow it up and giving us a sub-par sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, the movie which famously broke him. Put him on Star Wars instead, have him bring that Avengers flair to it, and put someone else on Avengers. Hell, maybe even JJ Abrams, it fits his MO. It’s better for Avengers. It’s better for Star Wars. It’s definitely better for Joss Whedon.
Episode IX - Guillermo del Toro
I actually have a number of alternate choices for Episode IX but maybe the most interesting one is Guillermo del Toro. Let that monster fucker run rampant with the aliens in Star Wars, just once, please. Pacific Rim is fun. Give me Star Wars: Pacific Rim.
There are other directors you’d think i’d have mentioned in this list, i didn’t even use many of my favorites. Part of that is because i’d rather just have the projects they were actually making at the time. But also i keep this list of directors that i’d love to see do a Star Wars project in the future, but i want to see them do their own Star Wars, rather than work on one of the existing ones. Taika Waititi, for example. I think he’s one of the greatest filmmakers working today. But i don’t think his style is the right fit for any of the existing Star Wars movies. Brad Bird also. Or Ryan Coogler. I’d love to see Christopher McQuarrie do a Star Wars, but he’s wrapped up in the Mission: Impossible franchise for the foreseeable future, and i think that’s a good thing. And i’d still love to see the Wachowskis’ take on a Star Wars.
Plus i didn’t even mention the possibility that George Lucas’s close personal friend, Steven Spielberg, could have waltzed in at literally any point in this series’ history and effortlessly turned out a fantastic entry.
Alright, that’s the end. I don’t have a tidy wrap-up, so i’ll just say, those are my thoughts. Feel free to disagree with me but just remember that i overthought the fuck out of this and i already have a dozen contingencies for any argument.
I should probably start a movie blog.
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