Spider-Man’s Jon Watts Directing Episode IX with Simon Kinberg + Rey’s Return!
Star Wars fans should be excited, as we finally have a clearer idea of what the next Star Wars movie will look like after Star Wars: Starfighter next year. The other day, it was reported that Jon Watts, the director of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy will be directing Star Wars Episode IX with a script from Simon Kinberg. This has caused a lot of discussion on the internet as to whether or not this is a good idea. Here we go!
Jon Watts and Simon Kinberg
To state the obvious, Star Wars has lost so much of the magic and hasn’t been able to unify the fanbase in quite some time. Part of the reason is that so many Star Wars projects were announced and then canceled because Kathleen Kennedy was terrible at running Lucasfilm and wasn’t good at her job. But, we had a Star Wars movie come out this year with The Mandalorian and Grogu, next year we’re getting Star Wars: Starfighter directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling. Just a few days ago, we knew what the Star Wars movie after that is going to be, which is Episode IX, directed by Jon Watts and written by Simon Kinberg. We’ve known a version of this movie was happening because Simon Kinberg was hired to write a new Star Wars trilogy back in 2024 and since then we haven’t had many updates about it, until recently.
What do I think about this movie? Honestly, this isn’t enough as of now to get me full-blown excited. Jon Watts isn’t super interesting for a flashy director, he’s not a bad director but he doesn’t have a unique style. You can swap him out with any other Journey Man director and my excitement for the movie wouldn’t change. But I actually don’t hate the idea of Watts directing Star Wars. I liked Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, it’s not one of the best Star Wars projects but it’s still a fun project and I like that it’s The Goonies in Star Wars and that’s fun. He also directed Tom Holland’s original Spider-Man trilogy which had two $1 billion hits and averaged about 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe he’s not the most interesting director but he’s a solid one that’ll get a Star Wars movie out there. I’ve seen a lot of people reject that Simon Kinberg is writing the script and people think it's bad news. If you don’t know who Kinberg is, he was heavily involved with the Fox X-Men universe. He produced several of the movies and he even directed Dark Phoenix, which was not great. Now, his track record with scriptwriting is very uneven within the Marvel universe, here’s his resume: X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fant4istic, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix. But he was also a producer on X-Men: First Class, Logan, and even The Martian, which was a Best Picture nominee. His resume is all over the place, he has some great movies and some not-so-great movies. Could Lucasfilm have found a better screenwriter for this movie? Probably. But if you look at the movie he’s written, two of them with The Last Stand and Dark Phoenix were victims of studio interference, in particular Dark Phoenix which had multiple delays and reshoots, and in the middle Disney bought Fox so there was so much drama with that movie. I don’t blame that movie on him because what happened is so much beyond him not being talented. He was one of the main writers on X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is one of the best comic book movies of all time, but he also wrote some bad movies but most of the bad movies were victims of studio interference. Kinberg is very hit or miss so I hope this movie is good and I don’t think it’ll be bad, but this isn’t the creative team I’d pick to write it.
Episode X and Rey’s Return
This is another aspect that came out in the report that has a lot of people frustrated and confused is that it was said that Daisy Ridley would return in the trilogy in some capacity, but the extent of her role isn’t revealed. It also sounds like it’ll be a continuation of the Skywalker Saga. I need to know a lot more information about what that means but right now, I’m skeptical about that idea. I don’t mind that Rey is coming back, I like the idea of the character but I hope she’s not the lead. I hope her role is similar to Obi-Wan in A New Hope, where she’s there and has a presence but she’s not the lead and is a mentor. This isn’t new information or insight, but the sequel trilogy was a mess and the face of the trilogy was Rey and Daisy Ridley. I don’t blame either one of them for that trilogy failing but I think putting the star of that trilogy back in another movie is really weird and could alienate the audience from this movie before it comes out. My thoughts on her returning could change once we see a trailer and we know what her role in the movie is going to be. As of right now, with the minimal information we have, I’m skeptical about the idea.
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