How to Make a Star Wars Film Soar

When The Mandalorian and Grogu blasts into cinemas this month, it’ll be the first big-screen trip to the galaxy far, far away in more than six years. Pulpy serial The Mandalorian (2019-2023) reinvigorated a tired fanbase – and welcomed a new generation – across weekly adventures on Disney+, and now series creator Jon Favreau is thinking outside of the box and bringing the taciturn bounty hunter and his precious cargo to the movies. But what are the crucial rules for making a Star Wars movie soar? This is the way.

LEAN INTO CLASSIC STORYTELLING TROPES

Original franchise mastermind George Lucas was unabashed about his reliance on classic storytelling tropes when putting together his 1977 game-changer. Even the now iconic title card – placing the films ‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away’ – is a pretty straightforward translation of ‘Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom’. It doesn’t get more fairy tale than that. Lucas was also inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s adventure epic The Hidden Fortress (1958), and westerns have had a key influence on the saga’s laconic gunslingers and reprobate-packed saloons. Star Wars has always dressed timeless storytelling in sci-fi outerwear.

GO PRACTICAL

One reason for Grogu’s popularity is that he’s largely created via practical puppetry. That his facial features and two-fingered hands don’t move as dexterously as a slick CGI creation would only adds to the charm. Recalling Gremlins cutie Gizmo, he feels physically real in the frame, with a tangibility that computer graphics can’t yet touch. It also makes him feel more vulnerable. JJ Abrams understood this when reinvigorating the movies with The Force Awakens (2015), with spherical droid BB-8 feeling like a distant cousin of R2-D2.

The practical approach has served Star Wars best when it comes to locations too – compare the prequels’ flat green-screen backdrops to the world-building texture of Tunisia for Tatooine in A New Hope (1977), or Rogue One’s Scarif sequences filmed in the Maldives. Star Wars: Starfighter – the upcoming Shawn Levy-directed, Ryan Gosling-starring standalone set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker (2019) – has even more freedom to roam, and shooting locations including Sardinia suggest new galactic geography to discover.

HINT AT A BIGGER UNIVERSE (BUT DON’T EXPLAIN EVERYTHING)

The most joyful thing about early Star Wars was the feeling that the galaxy was truly limitless. Unpacking Boba Fett in a prequel movie and spin-off TV show has stripped him of his mystique. He’ll never be quite as cool as he was in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), a badass with few lines and a face hidden by a scuffed-up helmet. We never found out what species Yoda was. Solo (2018) is arguably the least successful film in the series, and its biggest failing was overexplaining the coolest smuggler on the intergalactic circuit. Not everything in Star Wars needs to have an answer that can be reduced to an encyclopedia entry. Reveal just enough to throw the audience’s imagination into hyperdrive.

LET THE DIRECTOR(S) CUT LOOSE

As extended comic-book franchises have shown, the individual films can become pretty stale if the filmmakers are forced to adhere to a predetermined house style. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were removed from Solo: A Star Wars Story and replaced with safe pair of hands Ron Howard. Their work since – from directing comeback Project Hail Mary (2026) to the Spider-Verse films they write and produce – hints at a tantalising missed opportunity. And the strongest non-film Star Wars project in recent times has been Tony Gilroy’s politically charged Andor (2022-2025), perhaps the best example yet of what’s possible when a singular voice is given the chance to tell a story they care about, within the mythology.

DON’T RUSH IN

The anticipation preceding The Phantom Menace in 1999 and The Force Awakens in 2015 is pretty much unmatched in the history of cinematic hype. Both followed extended breaks in the franchise, making the new movies feel like events. Some of the fervour around Star Wars was inevitably going to fade as the films released more regularly, so Disney needs to consider supply and demand. The Mandalorian and Grogu benefits from following an extended big-screen dry spell, and there will be some younger fans who haven’t had the chance to see a Star Wars movie on the big screen yet. The brand is too lucrative to repeatedly be put on carbonite, but perhaps there’s middle ground with the enforcement of a mandatory gap between sequels while other story strands are cycled through.

USE A-LISTERS SPARINGLY

Starfighter will be a litmus test for whether an A-list star (in this case, Ryan Gosling) is the right fit to carry a Star Wars movie. The series has always been bigger than the actors; Star Wars helped launch Harrison Ford, not the other way round. Instead, bigger names sit best in supporting roles, from Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing in A New Hope, to Sigourney Weaver in The Mandalorian and Grogu. That kind of casting is a shorthand for fleshing out the world. Pedro Pascal is one of the biggest stars in the world right now but, as he’s likely to have his face hidden under a helmet for much of the running time, and the physical role is shared with performers Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder, The Mandalorian and Grogu doesn’t break this rule, strictly speaking.

LEAN INTO THE FEELINGS

When JJ Abrams embarked upon The Force Awakens, his primary concern was, ‘What do we want people to feel?’ Things worked out pretty well for that film, and any filmmaker playing in the Star Wars universe would do well to keep that question in mind. For all the scale and spectacle, Star Wars at its best wrestles with the biggest emotions: father-son dynamics, lost protagonists searching for their place in the universe, disillusioned heroes. Throughout the series, Leia and Han’s relationship was authentic but unsentimental. Against the cosmic backdrop, the best Star Wars movies have always felt human. Channel that energy, and you’ll have a force to be reckoned with.

WATCH STAR WARS: THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU IN CINEMAS