Denis Villeneuve blames the Ewoks

Denis Villeneuve is an interesting guy to consider when contemplating the tension between Hollywood art and commerce. He’s clearly a dude who can get along with the studios: His Dune movies might be unlikely blockbusters, but they still busted some blocks, and his embrace of films like Blade Runner 2049 shows a willingness to color within the big-budget IP lines. At the same time, the movies he makes from these corporate building blocks are clearly shot through with a strain of powerful individualism that defies easy classification. All of which has led people to ask—inevitably, as with any director of sufficient money-making power who operates in the sci-fi space—whether he might not like to take a crack at Star Wars one of these days, potentially putting his own stamp on the galaxy wot’s so long and far away. To which Villeneuve has offered up a quick and pretty firm “No thanks,” and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s all the Ewoks’ fault.

This is per an appearance Villeneuve put in on The Town podcast this week, as he continues to drum up support for the Oscars campaigns surrounding Dune: Part Two. During the chat, Villeneuve makes it clear he was deep in the pocket for the original Star Wars, noting that, “I was the target audience. I was 10 years old. It went to my brain like a silver bullet. I became obsessed with Star Wars. I mean, The Empire Strikes Back is the movie that I anticipated the most in my life. I saw the movie a billion times onscreen. I was traumatized by The Empire Strikes Back. I adore Star Wars.”

But then, he says, “It all derailed in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. It’s a long story. I was 15 years old, and my best friend and I wanted to take a cab and go to L.A. and talk to George Lucas—we were so angry!.” (Denis Villeneuve and his unnamed friend: Inventing modern online fan culture in 1983.) “Still today, the Ewoks. It turned out to be a comedy for kids.” All this has shades of comments Villeneuve lobbed way back in 2018, when he told reporters his Dune films would be “Star Wars for adults.”

Villeneuve does have deeper reasons for not wanting to tackle the franchise, though, which feel like they pull as much from the prequel films as Jedi: “Star Wars became crystallized in its own mythology, very dogmatic, it seemed like a recipe, no more surprises. So I’m not dreaming to do a Star Wars because it feels like code is very codified.” (We’d argue that there are creators doing genuinely revolutionary stuff in Star Wars, most notably Tony Gilroy, who’s managed to smuggle things like actual rebelliousness into its universe with Andor. But we also can’t argue that trying to force a Villeneuve peg into a Star Wars hole feels like it’d be an exercise in frustration.)

[via THR]