James Mangold Talks About His STAR WARS Film and Why He Wanted to Set It in the Distant Past

James Mangold (Logan, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) is in the middle of developing a wild new Star Wars film project for Lucasfilm. His project is definitely one of the more interesting ones as it will take us back to the dawn of the Jedi.

The story is said to take place 25,000 years before the events of the original trilogy, and it will focus on the birth of The Force. There’s an awesome story here to be told and I’m pretty excited to see what Mangold has planned!

During a recent interview with io9, Mangold talked a little bit more about his project and how the film came to be. He also explained why it's set in the distant past. He said:

"I've talked to [Lucasfilm] before and even worked a bit before on other projects, and I'm always interested in what's going on there and have friends who work on other Star Wars projects. But I understood that much of what they were doing was kind of continuing the saga forward."

Mangold then went on to talk about the pitch he made to Lucasfilm saying:

"So when I mentioned to Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] the idea that I had about going backward – really far backward – I was surprised that it excited her and the other wonderful people she works with at Lucasfilm. For me, it’s about, I want to be part of the saga, but I also don’t want to be holding so much lore in the air that you can hardly tell a story. And what I really wanted to do, what I told her, was just can we make a kind of the Ten Commandments of the Force, you know? A kind of origin story of how the Force came to be known, understood, wielded, and harnessed."

This is a part of the Star Wars lore that has always fascinated me because not much is known about it. So, the fact that it’s actually going to be explored in a movie is so cool! When previously talking about his project, he described it as a Ben-Hur or The 10 Commandments film about The Force:

“It’s a chance to tell the entire story of its own, the birth of the force. When I first talked to Kathy Kennedy about it, I just said, ‘I just see this opening to make kind of a Ben-Hur or The 10 Commandments about the birth of the Force.’ The Force has become a kind of religious legend that spans through all these movies. But where did it come from? How is it found? Who found it? Who was the first Jedi? And that’s what I’m writing right now.”

In another interview, when talking about how the movie would center on the discovery of The Force, Mangold said:

"It just came from me thinking about if I were doing one, it seemed to me that most of what they were thinking about doing with movies were either in the present of Star Wars or the future, and what attracted me most was the distant past and how this galaxy formed and how, more specifically, the Force was discovered."

What we do know about the early history of The Force was that in “36,453 BBY, philosophers and scientists from several Star systems gathered on Tython to share mystical knowledge. The Force was ‘discovered.’ Unfortunately, in 25,793 BBY, several Tythan scholars began using their knowledge of the Force to pursue power, leading to the beginning of the Force Wars. Peace-minded monks that survived the destruction on Tython established the Jedi Order in 25,783 BBY.”

Are you excited about what James Mangold is planning for his Star Wars movie?