Why David Cronenberg will never regret his ‘Star Wars’ rejection
While David Cronenberg has contributed so much to the world of science fiction cinema, it’s fair to say that his body horror-centric films serve as a significant departure from the kind of sci-fi issued in some of the genre’s biggest moments, most notably the space-faring epicness of Star Wars.
However, Cronenberg had actually once been contacted to take on a Star Wars movie in the early 1980s. The Canadian director was asked by Lucasfilm if he wanted to direct 1983’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jed, but he had passed up the opportunity out of hand due to his lack of interest in working with other people’s creative material.
Return of the Jedi is the third piece of the original Star Wars trilogy and the sixth in the overall franchise in chronological terms. It charts the continuing battle between the Galactic Empire and the freedom fighters of the Rebel Alliance and focuses on Luke Skywalker’s hopes to bring his father, Darth Vader, back from the Force’s dark side.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cronenberg once explained how the call with Lucasfilm had gone down and how he immediately knew that he would not be interested in taking on a Star Wars movie. “Somebody said that they were from, I guess it was Lucasfilm and asked me if I was interested in — at that point, it was called Revenge of the Jedi,” the director noted.
In fact, Cronenberg had been pointed out by a colleague that Revenge of the Jedi would have been a poor name for the film because “it was against Jedi philosophy to think in terms of revenge”. Regardless, in the “arrogance of youth”, Cronenberg told the producers at Lucasfilm, “Well, I’m not used to doing other people’s material”.
A “stunned silence” was followed by the “click of the phone call ending”, and that was as close as Cronenberg ever got to taking on a Star Wars movie. Richard Marquand ended up taking on Return of the Jedi, and even though it went on to become one of the better Star Wars movies, Cronenberg refused to harbour any regrets about his turning it down.
The reason was that he felt that even if he had taken on the film, the work would not be his own. “The casting is fixed of the main characters — the look of it, the tone of it, people’s expectations for it, are all fixed,” he explained. “You are not involved in the creating of that.”
The result, for Cronenberg, is that a franchise movie director becomes “more like a traffic cop than what a creative director can be.” He continued by referring to the Harry Potter movies, of which the third was directed by Alfonso Cuaron. However, according to Cronenberg, The Prisoner of Azkaban is only a Cuaron film by name, with the director pointing out, “He did his best to try to make it stand out from the others, but basically, it’s a Harry Potter episode. And if you didn’t know that Alfonso directed it, you wouldn’t be able to tell.”
Cronenberg signed off by admitting that he’s never really been drawn to taking on a franchise movie. “I mean, there’s the lure of money, and having a big budget, and having excitement around the film you’re making — but on the deep creative level, it would for me be frustrating, I think,” he said. “Just frustrating”.
