Matthew Vaughn has never been afraid of poking sacred cows. Having come into the movie-making business alongside Guy Ritchie, and then charted his own path with violent, profane action-comedies like Kick-Ass and Kingsman, Vaughn has always had a healthy dose of provocateur in his DNA. Still, there’s “End my big-budget spy comedy with the pay-off to an anal sex gag” provocation, and then there’s “Hey, why don’t you let me reboot Star Wars?”
But those are the choppy waters that Vaughn—who’s currently promoting his new meta-spy comedy Argylle for Apple—waded in to on an episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused this week. When asked whether he’d ever dip a toe into BlasterLand, Vaughn started by trying, almost heroically, to not talk shit about modern Star Wars, despite making it clear that he would not, in fact, want to direct any of the franchise’s present-day movies. But then the Dark Side clearly seizes him, as he remarks that “For me, doing a Star Wars movie is to play with the characters that I loved. So if they said to me, ‘Do you want to reboot Star Wars and actually have Luke Skywalker, Solo, Vader, and you do your version of it… That would excite me.” When Horowitz suggests to Vaughn that he has a “death wish” for suggesting this, the writer-director shot back with “Why not? Why are these characters so hallowed, from ’77, that you can’t re-do it for a new audience?”
Interestingly, Vaughn distinguishes between the franchise’s TV output—which he categorizes as “brilliant”—from its currently moribund theatrical prospects. “Star Wars is the Skywalker family. And that’s where I think they’ve gone wrong, because they’ve forgotten… It needs an epic new film.”
It is, if nothing else, an ear-catching interview: Vaughn also goes pretty in-depth in his history with the James Bond franchise, which kicked off (and then abruptly ended) after he was very nearly offered Casino Royale in the wake of his and Daniel Craig’s collaboration, Layer Cake. (When asked if he ever has a chance of revisiting the franchise, Vaughn is hilariously blunt: “I’ve got more chance of being cast as Bond as directing Bond. They’re not keen on me.”)
