Lucasfilm claims it is looking to push the Star Wars franchise forward with new ideas and stories. However, canceling Damon Lindelof‘s movie proves that the company is not ready to move on from the past just yet.
Lindelof recently spoke about his firing from Lucasfilm in 2023. His movie would have been about a New Jedi Order, with Daisy Ridley returning as Rey. Lindelof’s initial pitch revolved around a polarizing debate within the Star Wars community that continues today: nostalgia vs. revision.
“I was fired off of a Star Wars movie. They asked me, ‘What do you think a Star Wars movie should be?’ And I said, ‘Here’s what it should be.’ And they said, ‘Great, you’re hired.’ And then two years later, I was fired. And so I was wrong. At least through that prism,” Lindelof told The Ringer-Verse. “But what we were attempting to do — my partners Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon and I — what we were attempting to do was to have this conversation in the movie, which is to say, there is a Force of nostalgia and there is a Force of revision, and they are at odds with one another. And let’s do the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars. And it didn’t work.”
Lindelof added, “You have your cake and eat it too, but the conversation that the fandom is having, without winking and looking at the audience, and that didn’t feel necessarily that risky.”
Why the cancellation of Damon Lindelof’s movie is a huge issue for Star Wars
What Lindelof wanted to do in his movie is one of the major issues that spawned from the sequel trilogy. How do you push the franchise forward while honoring the past? Star Wars Episodes 7, 8, and 9 introduced new characters and set them up as the modern heroes of Star Wars. However, the trilogy also brought back the icons, including Luke, Leia, and Han.
Star Wars wants new heroes, but its refusal to leave the Skywalkers behind is hypocritical. The Last Jedi tried to introduce a world where the Force wasn’t exclusively tied to a specific family or heritage. Anyone could theoretically be a Jedi. These polarizing decisions led to severe backlash from fans, and Lucasfilm retconned these ideas in the much-maligned The Rise of Skywalker.
Lindelof correctly points out that the battle between the past and the future is the same conversation Star Wars fans are currently having. Seeing those issues tackled in a space epic would have been an intriguing bridge between The Rise of Skywalker and the eventual next trilogy. Instead, Lucasfilm went the safer route and transformed its most popular television property into a movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, in theaters May 22, 2026.
