Taika Waititi Promises New Settings and New Characters for His Star Wars Movie

It’s been a while at this point since we’ve checked in with the mainstream Star Wars brand as a blockbuster cinema staple … and rightly so, to be frank. The 2019 release of the woeful Rise of Skywalker put a final nail into the coffin of the sequel trilogy, as a promising beginning was hampered by a complete and utter lack of planning that eventually resulted in a “trilogy” of films that were all completely philosophically opposed to each other. Disney has since responded by seeming to promise new films that will make a break from the existing Star Wars dogma, but it’s hard to know what exactly to expect as the Star Wars brand has more recently centered on more intimate TV series such as The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The one film it is somewhat easy to imagine is the prospect of director Taika Waititi’s first voyage to the Star Wars galaxy, as the Thor: Ragnarok director’s personal deadpan comedy style has become practically its own Hollywood subgenre at this point. Echoing the words of Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, who recently told Total Film that the Star Wars brand needed to “create a whole new saga,” Waititi spoke to the site as well, hinting at a film that will truly take the Star Wars setting in a new direction. The Kiwi filmmaker said the following:

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Look, I think for the Star Wars universe to expand, it has to expand. I don’t think that I’m any use in the Star Wars universe making a film where everyone’s like, ‘Oh great, well that’s the blueprints to the Millennium Falcon, ah that’s Chewbacca’s grandmother.’ That all stands alone, that’s great, though I would like to take something new and create some new characters and just expand the world, otherwise it feels like it’s a very small story.

That’s the kind of quote that we can only imagine the vast majority of Star Wars fans will be perfectly happy to hear at this point. In an era of endlessly recycled IP and stifling repetition, when genuinely new stories and settings are increasingly hard to get onto the big screen, it would at least be nice to see the comfortingly familiar brands branch out into some exotic new territory. We can only hope that Taika genuinely wants to get weird with his Star Wars movies, and we’ll share more on the development of these films as soon as news breaks.