New Star Wars movie with Marvel's Kevin Feige explained – here's why they had to bring him on board

There's no getting away from it, Star Wars is in trouble. If you're a casual cinema-goer, you might not be aware of the constant stream of YouTube videos still being published criticising the brand, but hate has led to suffering for many die-hard fans.

The Last Jedi led to a boycott of Solo, which became the first Star Wars movie to flop at the box office.

Now, we're not sure if that was as a result of the boycott, if audiences were just suffering from Star Wars fatigue (as Disney CEO Bob Iger claimed), or if the release date went against the film. Star Wars has turned into a winter-event franchise. Solo was released in the old May slot, potentially to tap into nostalgia, but it didn't work.

The fanboy rumour-mill is currently targeting its blaster canons on The Rise of Skywalker, reporting (accurately or not) that the final episode in the Skywalker Saga is in trouble, discussing dodgy plot leaks as potential fact and claims of multiple endings being tested.

Enter Kevin Feige.

As with the situation with Spider-Man at Sony (before Feige worked his magic), Disney's Star Wars has backed itself into a creative corner. Before the Marvel/Sony deal was struck, the negativity towards Sony's handling of Spider-Man was palpable, with the idea of another reboot (following the most recent failed reboot) being a running online joke.

Literally all it could do was turn to Marvel, to tap into some of the infinite goodwill the MCU generated under Feige, and now Disney seems to be doing the same.

Announcing Feige as a co-producer of a new Star Wars project, alongside Kathy Kennedy (a genius producer in her own right, who sections of the fanbase now despise) is pretty much the only choice Disney had for a franchise which should be its flagship.

Of course, this is a very different challenge. When Feige created the MCU, he did so using a bunch of characters no-one else wanted. It might seem hard to imagine now, but Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the rest were considered B-tier heroes outside of their (comparatively small) fanbase.

It's why Marvel Studios still had the rights to them, because no other studio had considered them valuable enough to buy. Believe it or not, Star Wars is in even worse shape.

Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are dead, we've tragically lost Carrie Fisher, and Solo: A Star Wars Story proved well-made prequels aren't a draw for the characters we know and love.

As for the villains, Darth Vader is a melted helmet on a pile of ashes, and the Emperor's force-lighting must surely sputter out by the end of Rise of Skywalker, if that series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.

So, Feige is going into this one without any known characters, outside of recognisable aliens and droids, which means he'll have to create an entire new cinematic universe – without the untapped potential of underused icons.

That is, unless there's another reason the Marvel man's being blasted into a galaxy far, far away. Marvel actually has a bunch of canon characters that have appeared in comics and cartoons that are yet to make the force-leap to the big screen.

There's Doctor Aphra – an antihero Indiana Jones, who works for Darth Vader, has evil droids and is a woman of colour, who her creator describes as lesbian). Plus Ahsoka Tano – Anakin's pre-Vader padawan, who also happens to be one of the most popular Star Wars characters of all time. Meaning there's enough in the Marvel source material to work with.

And it helps that Feige is a passionate Star Wars nerd.

When critics noticed a recurring limb-losing reference to George Lucas' films in Phase 2 of the MCU, Feige was happy to own up to it.

"So I'm obsessed with Star Wars – and it didn't start out as intentional, but it became intentional," Feige told Cinemablend.

"It sort of happens in every Star Wars movie, but I was sort of looking at it, 'Okay, is Phase Two our Empire Strikes Back?' Not really, but tonally things are a little different. Somebody gets their arm cut off in every Phase 2 movie. Every single one."

And Feige doesn't just use Star Wars to confirm interviewers' questions, he uses it to dodge them, too.

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"That's a good question, for another time..." he laughed when asked about a potential Endgame plot hole. "Who says that? Maz Kanata in The Force Awakens in regards to, 'How did Luke Skywalker's lightsaber get in your castle?' Ever since I heard that line I said, 'I'm gonna use that – a lot!'"

Speaking at Empire's live podcast event to mark the release of Avengers: Endgame on Blu-ray, and Star Wars came up again when discussing deleted scenes from his own franchise.

"There's stuff that still pops up from the Star Wars trilogy occasionally – Tosche Station for instance," he explained.

"That is not great, it certainly shouldn't be in the movie, but I love seeing it. I love that they shot it and it exists and we get to see it. So usually we love putting that stuff out there. There's some things that we've been too humiliated to show, but I think we'll bring out soon enough."

Millions of voices are currently crying out in terror at what's happening to a franchise they feel ownership of. Will Feige's presence silence them?

It appears Star Wars is in passionate hands, at least. Let's hope that Feige is more like Luke Skywalker beginning this adventure and not Anakin.

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Sam Ashurst

Freelancer writer

Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist. 

Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets. 

He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more. 

Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions. 

Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time. 

His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others. 

In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them. 

Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best. 

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