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2019's The Rise of Skywalker might feel like a lifetime ago, but the seven year Star Wars theatrical drought is finally coming to an end with this summer's The Mandalorian and Grogu.
When we sat down with director Jon Favreau in London, we asked him why Mando and his tiny green charge Grogu were the right characters to bring the saga back to the big screen – quite the full circle move, considering they helped launch Disney Plus back in 2019.
"I'm not sure what, exactly, why we were asked to do this," Favreau tells us. "I suspect it was because these are characters that people, even who hadn't seen Star Wars, may be aware of, especially Grogu. Baby Yoda was everywhere. And these are two characters that were used to launch Disney Plus, and we made no assumptions when the Mandalorian TV show came on that anybody had seen any Star Wars before. But we also wanted to make it feel authentic to Star Wars, and so the world that we created as the backdrop and the way the characters present themselves were embraced by Star Wars fans, which I really appreciate. But it also was an inroad for people who may not have ever watched Star Wars on television, and here we are now, seven years after the last film. I think there's an opportunity to present Star Wars to a new audience using these characters as well."
Favreau also kickstarted the MCU with 2008's Iron Man, and now he's the man bringing Star Wars back to theaters. So, did he feel any pressure or a sense of responsibility making the film?
"I felt definitely responsibility, but more so to tell as good of a story as I could," he reflects. "I find that, as a Star Wars fan myself, and across multiple genres that have strong fan bases, they really are invested in the story being good, and they want a great experience. And if you could deliver that to them, they reward you, but they want to make sure that you care as much as they do. And so, we put all of our effort into really anticipating what people would see, what we're implying through – because, especially with a story like this, where you're trying to tell a complete story that plays well to a group that this may be their first Star Wars experience, though Star Wars fans are very perceptive, and so you can be very subtle in the messages that you send.
"And, part of the Star Wars community is that they communicate among one another. There's a lot of speculation. There's a lot of filling in the blanks for one another," he continues. "So, you don't have to lay everything out deliberately in a way that's overly [obvious], you don't have to define everything to the level of specificity that you might in another environment. But here, if you lay the clues, sometimes it's things that relate to the story, sometimes it's references to other things that came before, sometimes it's even techniques that we use in the filmmaking. All of it is a way for us to show the community that we share that same passion, and we're doing the things that we enjoy. And I find when we do things that we enjoy, like engaging with Phil Tippett for stop motion animation or John Goodson for miniature work, we're doing that because we're excited by it, it's fun for us, and I think the story that surrounds the making of it is as much a part of the story as what you see on the screen."
The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives this May 22. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and shows for everything else the galaxy far, far away has in store.
