Jon Favreau Shares The Advice George Lucas Gave Him About His ‘Star Wars’ Show

The Mandalorian is the first live-action Star Wars television (“television”) show. So no wonder Lucasfilm entrusted Iron Man filmmaker Jon Favreau, who helped kick off the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with guiding the series. But even he needed a little help… from none other than George Lucas himself.

“We had a long talk with each other,” Favreau told GQ Middle East. “One thing he said to me was, ‘Remember, Jon, the real audience for all stories and all myths is the kids that are coming of age,’ because he’s really a Joseph Campbell adherent.” (Lucas used Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, specifically the “hero’s journey,” as a guideline of sorts while plotting Star Wars.)

Favreau continued, “We enjoy the stories as adults, but really, storytelling is about imparting the wisdom of the previous generations on to the children who are becoming adults, and giving them a context for how to behave and how to learn the lessons of the past without making the mistakes on their own. That’s the hope, that you can teach them how to avoid all the hardship but garner all the wisdom.” You might even call it some sort of circle, maybe of life.

Anyway, The Mandalorian takes place after the Ewoks-toppling-the-Empire events Return of the Jedi, “so the Empire is gone and all hell is breaking loose in the Outer Rim,” Favreau recently said on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “And it’s about the scum and villainy, that once you take out the rule of law, what happens Chaos takes over and you have all of these unseemly characters.” I expect at least one scene of random weird aliens drinking in a bar every episode.

The Mandalorian premieres on Disney+ on November 12.