Intro for January 9, 2026

Dear Gossips,

This year will see the return of Star Wars to cinemas, the first time since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, with The Mandalorian and Grogu. But we’re in for back-to-back doses as next summer sees Ryan Gosling headlining Star Wars: Starfighter. Shawn Levy is the director of that film, and as he is also a director and producer on Stranger Things, which just wrapped up its fifth and final season, Levy is in the New York Times talking about Stranger Things and Starfighter. The headline question is “Can Shawn Levy resuscitate Star Wars?”.

Shawn Levy knows how to make movies within the studio system, and I will say this for his tenure on Stranger Things, he directed some of the show’s better episodes, including “Dear Billy” from season four, aka the “Max runs up that hill” episode. If the task is to relaunch Star Wars as a cinematic draw, he’s not the most interesting choice, but he’s also not the worst choice. But what’s really interesting about Levy’s interview is when he talks about Tom Cruise.

Cruise came by the Starfighter set, landing his helicopter on set as the crew reportedly played the Mission: Impossible theme on the PA system, because OF COURSE. How else does Tom Cruise enter space? Not normally, I’m sure. The next tidbit is that they were filming a lightsaber duel that day (we’ve learned nothing from Andor!), and Levy invited Cruise to “jump behind a camera”, which led to Cruise ankle-deep in water, framing a “perfect shot”. Levy says, “Now when you see the movie you'll know that part of it was shot by Tom. I mean, how cool is that?”

Like all things Tom Cruise, it’s not very cool. It’s exactly what I expect Tom Cruise to do when visiting a set and invited to handle a camera. It does make me wonder about why he’s never directed a film—I’m sure Cruise could do it, and probably better than a lot of working directors, Shawn Levy included. He does have one directing credit, an episode of the 1993 TV show Fallen Angels, but it’s like he focused so intensely on being the perfect Movie Star that there wasn’t room for anything else. Still, I’m going to be thinking about the alternate universe in which Tom Cruise became one of the great actor-directors, at least for action movies.

As for Starfighter, it’s set five years after The Rise of Skywalker, which means it will be the first piece of post-Rey storytelling we get in the Star Wars universe. I’m not sure anyone cares anymore, though. The legacy of the sequel trilogy is bad, and it hasn’t been nearly long enough for the kids who grew up with New New Star Wars to develop nostalgia. And as I’ve mentioned before, as popular as he is, Ryan Gosling is not an automatic box office draw.

He has Project Hail Mary this spring to perhaps build some momentum for next year, but he released The Fall Guy hot off Barbie’s billion-dollar success and, well, that movie flopped. There’s a lot riding on Starfighter, to jumpstart a new wave of Star Wars storytelling, to send Kathleen Kennedy off on a high note, to put a box office bounce in Ryan Gosling’s step, but these days, not even Star Wars, not even Star Wars with bonus Tom Cruise, is a sure thing.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah