TMW #48: A new hope for Star Wars, fanboy filmmakers and star-rating trouble
A triptych of filmy thinkpieces & a punctuation quiz!!
G’day, film fans,
And welcome to the first newsletter of the week. For this edition, the team have been thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know), and you can read a smorgasbord of our thoughts below.
Our resident Star Wars expert Matthew is looking at a series that finds itself back in rude health, Alien aficionado Jordan is musing on the danger of franchises directed by fans, while Matt ponders one peculiar problem with star ratings. Asterisking this week’s newsletter is a fiendish quiz about movie-title punctuation…
To access the full lot this week, you’ll need to be a paying member. At £6 a month (or £60 per year), it costs less than a buzzcut at your cheapest local barber, and provides a better level of chat, too. Free subscribers should also be able to redeem their single-use unlock of this post, too.
If you’ve got any thoughts on any of the topics discussed today, drop us a line in the comments section, or have an irl conversation about it with a likeminded pal. As ever, we’re always massively grateful for your likes, restacks, subscribes and general good vibes.
We’ll return on Friday with a new-release review round-up, including our verdict on Marvel’s mercs-on-a-mission adventure Thunderbolts* and glitzy comedy crime caper Another Simple Favour. See you then!
Matt (Jordan and Matthew)
Jedi Rocks
Everybody loves Andor. Revenge of the Sith is a Ben Affleck-beating hit. And Yoda’s in the news. Clearly, Star Wars is having a moment - but how should it build on this? Matthew investigates…
ROTS TRIUMPHS
The Empire Strikes Back! The re-release of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith grossed a whopping $25.2m at the weekend US box office - enough to put it just ahead of the week’s biggest new release, The Accountant 2. Not too shabby for a 20-year-old film you could just as easily watch in your bed, bath or Bacta tank. Though the tally didn’t beat the franchise re-release record set by the Star Wars Special Edition in 1997 ($35.9m), it easily beat the recent anniversary revivals of Return of the Jedi ($5.1m in 2023) and The Phantom Menace ($8.7m in 2024).
A New Hope? More Star Wars big-screen re-releases, please - they’re lapped up by fans old and new and give cinema owners a near-guaranteed win in these uncertain times. Upcoming is the 50th anniversary of Episode IV in 2025, but am I the only one remembering that it’s the big 4-0 this year for 1985’s Ewoks: The Battle for Endor? Might look a bit raw blown up to IMAX size, true, but just pretend it’s like a student-film Lord of the Rings and you’ll have a blast.
AND-AWE
The Empire Strikes Back! Last week’s three-episode premiere of Andor S2 cemented the show as the coolest, grittiest, most OK-for-adults-to-admit-binging Star Wars offering since at least the first season of The Mandalorian. Which isn’t bad for a show that was met with a fair amount of skepticism and apathy when first announced. Which one was he in Rogue One again?
A New Hope? Keep Tony Gilroy on the Lucasfilm payroll, obvs, and give him another secondary character to enrich and embellish (we’ve always been Bistan fans at The Movie Wingman, just saying). Also, S2 currently holds an S1-equalling score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes - and there’s still time for it to climb higher. Given the 100% held by at least two Lego Star Wars projects, would it be too late for a sneaky re-edit shifting the dastardly Director Krennic’s focus from rare minerals to cute plastic bricks?
POINT OF TALKING, HMM
The Empire Strikes Back! Perhaps the biggest proof of how Star Wars is still embedded in the popular psyche was the widespread reporting of a brief comment about why a wrinkly puppet speaks the way he does. Not quite as widespread as the reporting of Ryan Gosling joining the saga - which made it on to the evening news - but still. “If you speak regular English, people won’t listen that much,” George Lucas said of Yoda at a 45th anniversary screening of Episode V. “But if he had an accent, or it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying, they focus on what he’s saying.” The GOAT added that because the reclusive Jedi master was the ‘philosopher’ of the movie - ie a bit talky and uncool - he “had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen - especially 12-year-olds.”
A New Hope? Getting 12-year-olds to listen has been key to Star Wars’ longevity; look how the generation that grew up with the then-maligned prequels has helped rehabilitate them. In mind keep this, franchise custodians should, particularly when it comes to the more action-y end of the spectrum. Not that we’re petitioning for The Mandalorian and Grogu to feature a Chicken Jockey cameo, you understand. (Matthew Leyland)
Acts of Service
With the first Predator: Badlands teaser hinting at a future Alien crossover, Jordan questions whether filmmaker fans helming legendary franchises is a good thing.
After a tough few years/decades it suddenly feels like a good time to be an Alien fan again. Romulus was a big hit last year, and Noah Hawley’s series Alien: Earth could be something special if the Fargo showrunner’s track record is any indication. That’s not all: last week’s teaser for Predator: Badlands, director Dan Trachtenberg’s follow-up to 2022’s tremendous Pred prequel Prey, reveals that Elle Fanning is playing a Weyland-Yutani Synthetic in the film, making another Alien Vs Predator movie a distinct possibility. Great news, right? I’m not so sure…
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