Patty Jenkins feels “pressure to make a great Star Wars film”

Rogue Squadron director Patty Jenkins feels the pressure to make her Star Wars movie as good as possible, while Taika Waititi beats the rush and blasts his own.

Disney unveiled a metric ton of new Star Wars stuff last week at its big Investors Day conference, including a new movie coming from Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins: Rogue Squadron, all about the pilots of the dog-fighting starships we’ve watched dart across screen for the last several decades.

The story hits home for Jenkins, who’s father was an Air Force captain who served in Vietnam and died in a mock dogfight when Jenkins was just 7 years old. “What happened was [Lucasfilm] just approached me and [asked] would I ever be interested and I said it would really depend on what the story was,” Jenkins told Yahoo Entertainment. “I just always want to make sure that I feel I can make an amazing movie. And when they said Rogue Squadron I almost gasped. Because I couldn’t believe that they were so wise to know and somehow intuit that that’s exactly what I’ve been dying to do for so long because of my past and growing up around fighter pilots. It really is a movie I’ve been dying to make. I spent years trying to make a movie about Chuck Yeager. So this is just a huge honor to get to take this on.”

Jenkins will also be the first woman to direct a Star Wars show, just like she was the first woman to direct a major superhero tentpole film since Iron Man kicked off our current superhero obsession in 2008. She’s busting glass ceilings all over the place.

“If I can be in a groundbreaking position to pave the way for other people, that’s amazing. I hope that I get to do that,” Jenkins said. But being the first at anything comes with expectations. “I feel a huge amount of pressure to make a great Star Wars film, of course. The fan base is amazing and massive and that’s no small task. That’s really what I think about.”

"But luckily [Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984] were not no pressure, either. So I’ve gotten pretty used to the fact that there’s really nothing you can do about it. You just have to try to make a great film and really be diligent about keeping your eye on the ball and always making sure you’re thinking about everything. So I will carry forward and try to make a great movie."

And Jenkins isn’t the only superhero movie veteran directing a new Star Wars movie. Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi has one on the way, although we don’t know what it’s about. But we do know he has a great sense of humor about it:

"What?? Ugh, as a longtime fan of Star Wars I’m so angry about what I’m about to do to ruin it."

Jenkins is right that the Star Wars fanbase is amazing, but as the reactions to The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker show, they can also be pretty critical. Best to beat the rush.

We don’t know when either of these movies will come out, but you can see Jenkins’ work on Wonder Woman 1984 come Christmas Day, when it’s released simultaneously on HBO Max and into theaters!

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