Only a handful of directors have had to cope with the pressure of helming a Star Wars film. George Lucas did it four times, J.J. Abrams twice, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, Gareth Edwards, Ron Howard and Dave Filoni (with the 2008 animated The Clone Wars movie) once and we’ve yet to see what Jon Favreau has crafted for us, but right now the man in the big chair is Shawn Levy and he discussed that pressure – and changes to his third act – on a recent episode of On Film… With Kevin McCarthy.
“On Starfighter it was – we had a whole different idea for something in the third act and then things didn’t align and I was forced to come up with a new idea. And I’m literally right now shooting that section of the movie. And everyday I’m grateful that the way I was supposed to do it didn’t work out, because the new idea that it forced me to explore is so much better than the original idea would have been.”
“The first few weeks of shooting, it felt like this oppressive sort of cloud over me, because every day they would come to me. It’s a hundred questions a day. And especially Starfighter, it’s not a sequel, it’s not a prequel, it’s not legacy characters. And it’s not in a period of time in the galaxy that’s ever been explored…What this means is that we are inventing everything in the movie. And the desire to make design choices, character choices, planet choices, costume choices, droid choices, alien choices, all of it needs to feel Star Wars-y.”