The Star Wars universe has been combined lately. Lucasfilm is very interested in telling longer Star Wars stories on television, expanding the mythology with shows like The Acolyte, the sequel to The Mandalorian, and the children’s edition of the upcoming adventure, Star. Wars: Skeleton Crew. It’s been five years since Lucasfilm released a full-fledged Star Wars movie in theaters with Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, a film that wasn’t high on our list of the most productive stars. Wars. Movies. This is due to a complete lack of evidence, as many filmmakers have been looking to play in the Star Wars sandbox for years. . . including Zack Snyder.
There was a time when you couldn’t go a month without hearing that someone new had announced a Star Wars movie. Shawn Levy, hot right now thanks to Deadpool and Wolverine, had a deal to make a Star Wars movie, as did his boss at Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige. Taika Waititi had been linked to the Star Wars universe. The same goes for David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the Game of Thrones guys. Hell, at one point Rian Johnson was flirting with doing a Star Wars trilogy. Nothing of that ever came.
And then there’s Zack Snyder, a self-proclaimed Star Wars geek who once attempted a hugely popular IP (he directed a remake of Dawn of the Dead and adapted Watchmen into a surprising film before fully embracing his exclusive vision for DC Comics). The director is back in the spotlight thanks to the release of his two administrators for Rebel Moon, which will arrive on Netflix on Friday, August 2. And even if we knew that Rebel Moon began a long time ago as a release that Snyder made to Lucasmovie. to make a Star Wars movie, I’m not sure we’ve ever figured out how he sought to make this story compatible with the overall Star Wars epic saga. . . or the reasons why Lucasmovie died. So when Snyder stopped by the official ReelBlend podcast to talk about Rebel Moon and its filmography, we dove into the Star Wars portion of the story of these films, to finally record it all.
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon connection line makes it look a lot like something inspired by Star Wars or a story set in the Star Wars universe. When Veldt’s unblemished agricultural network is threatened by the evil Empire and she is forced to deliver too many crops to feed. The evil army, a former soldier named Kora (Sofia Boutella) gathered a group of insurgent fighters to protect the Harvest Moon and fended off the sadistic Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein). It’s the Star Wars component, the Kurosawa component, and the Bugs component, for all you Pixar fans out there.
But in some other reality, this may have simply been a Star Wars movie, and it may have been the feature that gave Snyder a chance to play in a sandbox that he grew up in and that encouraged him. The concept for Rebel Moon dates back to Snyder’s school days, as he tells ReelBlend:
I’ve been preparing the story for, oh my God, for 20 or 30 years, or something like that. But you know, with suits and beginnings. I wouldn’t say I’ve been working on it for 30 years. That’s crazy. But yeah, I’ve been using it for a while. It’s just interesting. . . It’s very appealing to my mythological view of storytelling and mythology in general. And it fits the Joseph Campbell model.
You can see comparisons between Kora and a classic Star Wars hero, such as Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) or Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). They look like aliens living a quiet life on Veldt (in Rebel Moon) or on the desert planet of Tatooine. But as you peel back Kora’s layers, you realize that she has much deeper connections to the “dark side” of the story, making it difficult for her to complete her mission.
There was possibly a time when Lucasfilm would have been interested in telling this story. But that moment came and went once Lucasfilm sold its assets to Disney. As Snyder explained to ReelBlend, there was a time when his vision of a mature, R-rated Star Wars might have appealed. Then it is no longer there. Snyder told us:
(The meeting) was with Kathleen Kennedy, and it was. . . in the days before the sale, there was a time when Star Wars was in this strange place. And I felt like my story was about. . . it was a fan fiction movie in a lot of ways. And the fact that I was looking for it to be R-rated, and didn’t need canon recurring (Star Wars) characters. There were a lot of things I was looking to do that were very specific, and that, in retrospect, seems to me to, in a way, correspond to what they did in a certain way, but no. It was fun. For me, I’m a big Star Wars fan, so this was a big. . . I thought it was cool.
Zack Snyder grew up in an era where blockbuster movies were surely influenced by everything George Lucas and Steven Spielberg did. Whether intentional or not, films like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien (and its upcoming sequel, Aliens), Blade Runner, E. T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark shaped the minds and imaginations of emerging storytellers. And you can see that DNA in Snyder’s work; he also explores broader themes that tend to cross the boundaries of his content.
Does this mean your task of directing a mature Star Wars film is over? Never say never.
As we’ve talked about, Star Wars projects come and go. Directors and showrunners get involved in Star Wars projects, then the tide turns. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were thinking about doing Solo: A Star Wars Story. James Mangold attached to a Boba Fett movie. Projects are influenced by the tide.
And as Snyder comes into his own, the good fortune of the VERY R-rated Deadpool and Wolverine may eventually have an effect on the types of Star Wars stories Lucasfilm allows to be told. When asked if we will ever see an R-rated Star Wars movie, Snyder responded:
I don’t know. This is an attractive question. If you take a look at what happened to Deadpool, and maybe?I mean, it’s hard to say.
But if a task like that was going to work, it would almost have to come from someone who loves, appreciates, and respects Star Wars enough to take it down. And I’m not sure Star Wars enthusiasts need that. When The Acolyte took some desirable turns, Star Wars enthusiasts took to social media to argue that this was NOT the type of storytelling they were looking for in a galaxy far, far away. But Snyder told ReelBlend that he was only interested in making a Star Wars movie if he could twist and bend the franchise’s boundaries, because that’s what the formula needs. As he explained:
My Star Wars movie would have been just. . . That was the reason why I wanted to do it as something separate. An exclusive universe. I felt that R-rated Star Wars was a puppy concept that it really wasn’t: it was an outlier and, frankly, it didn’t belong in the Star Wars continuity. But I felt like there would be, you know, for other people who grew up with Star Wars and whose aesthetic evolved, there would be a market for that universe.
Watch our full interview with Snyder on ReelBlend:
Want to take a look at what Zack Snyder’s Star Wars movie looked like?Simply subscribe to Netflix, where the theatrical editions of the first and second parts of Rebel Moon will now come together through the Director’s Editions, which promise Snyder’s full take on this epic story. . . . and give you an idea of the direction you may have taken. The legacy of Star Wars, if given the chance.
Sean O’Connell is a journalist and editor-in-chief of CinemaBlend. On the site since 2011, Sean has interviewed a host of directors, actors and makers and created ReelBlend, which he proudly hosts alongside Jake Hamilton and Kevin McCarthy. . And he’s responsible for LAUNCHING SNYDER’S CUT, the POWER-POWERED Spider-Man short story e-book, and an upcoming e-book about Bruce Willis.
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