On the big screen at least, Star Wars is in desperate need of a reset. The Anthology experiment was abandoned with a whimper after Solo bombed at the box office, while The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker split opinion straight down the middle. The Disney era has relied far too heavily on nostalgia, and the takings dropping by a billion dollars in the four years between Episodes VII and IX just goes to show that audiences won’t eat up anything the studio throws out there simply because it’s slapped with the Star Wars logo.
The beloved franchise need to stop looking towards the past and move into a brand new future, which is hopefully where Patty Jenkins’ Star Wars: Rogue Squadron comes in. Announced for December 2023, it’ll be the first feature film to follow the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga, and the Wonder Woman director has promised the greatest fighter pilot movie ever seen.
“I love to move fast at speed of any kind. I think that’s because I grew up the daughter of a great fighter pilot, and every day I would wake up and go outside and look up, and I would see my father and his squadron take off in their F4s, roaring across the sky. It was the most thrilling thing that still I’ve experienced in my entire life. So when he lost his life in service to this country, it ignited a desire in me to turn all of that tragedy and thrill into one day making the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time. But try as I might, and look as I did, I couldn’t find the right story ever. I kept looking and looking, but I just couldn’t find the right one until now. Now I found a movie about two things I love.”
Star Wars meets Top Gun sounds like a hugely exciting concept to base a project on, and by taking the action to the skies, Rogue Squadron will hopefully distance itself as far as possible from the Skywalker family tree. Lucasfilm has already confirmed that the movie will tell an all-new story not based on the classic video game of the same name, and insider Daniel Richtman now claims that Jenkins wants to recruit her Wonder Woman leads Gal Gadot and Chris Pine for her upcoming adventure in a galaxy far, far away.
The idea of the Kelvin timeline’s Captain Kirk in Star Wars is certainly an interesting one, but Gadot and Pine are big name stars first and foremost, with plenty of experience in effects-heavy blockbusters. As such, they would no doubt be welcome additions to Rogue Squadron if they ultimately end up joining the project.
