Jim Jarmusch Vows To Never Watch A “Star Wars” Film & “Resents” Knowing So Much About Them

Chances are you’ve seen a “Star Wars” movie. Still, even if you haven’t, you know such basics things like the tagline, “in a galaxy far, far away…” (which actually has four ellipsis points in it, despite the incorrect grammar), you’ll know who George Lucas is, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and probably Yoda. You’ll likely know about the Force, lightspeed, light sabers, etc. You may know much more than you ever wanted to know.

READ MORE: Jim Jarmusch Says His Next “Quiet, Funny & Sad” Film Will Shoot This Fall & May Have No Music

And if you resent how much you know, how much pop cultural knowledge that takes up in your head, you may find great kinship with indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, known for spearheading the 1980s and 1990s New American indie Cinema and being known for films like “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Down By Law,” “Dead Man,” “Ghost Dog” and docs about musical subjects like Neil Young and The Stooges.

Because Jarmusch has never seen a “Star Wars” film and definitely resents how much he still knows about all the trilogies and all the lore. In fact, Jarmusch seems to resent the Lucasfilm movies so much that he refuses ever to watch them because he feels all of it has been imposed upon him.

“I have particular things I will never see,” he told Believer magazine recently. “I will never see any ‘Star Wars’ films because I resent that I know so much about them and the characters. Why is all that in my head when I’ve never actually seen one, you know? Why do I know about R2-D2 and Darth Vader and all these things when I’ve never even seen any ‘Star Wars’ film? I’ve never seen ‘Gone with the Wind,’ and I never will, just because I feel like it’s forced on me and it’s some kind of corny thing. 

Mental note, never make Jim Jarmusch feel like you are forcing something on him. To note, Jarmusch also says he has seen the “John Wick” movies but has not seen the “Twilight” movies.

“I’m not hierarchical. I have my preferences, but because I really, deeply love the craft of filmmaking,” he explained. “I, of course, like masterful filmmakers’ work. But I watch all kinds of stuff. On a plane recently, I watched ‘Cruella.’ I love the ‘Naked Gun’ movies because they’re so stupid. I’m sort of amazed by the ‘John Wick’ movies, just by how many people he can kill. I haven’t seen the ‘Twilight’ movies.”

“But these are very subjective, just kind of stubborn things on my part,” he continued. “I don’t like mass things being shoved on me, but I will go see them. Like ‘The Terminator’ is a masterpiece of cinema. It’s a big action movie, essentially. So I don’t really differentiate. But I have to tell you one thing I hate—and you can just do a little test yourself: watch any recent action-oriented movie and look for any shot that’s more than three seconds long. I find that really insulting and shit filmmaking: like they have to keep it moving every three seconds. And that’s the longest they’ll leave a shot on! And then cut. One second, cut! Two seconds, cut! Three seconds, cut! Man, I get a headache. I just turn it off. I’m like, Come on, man, go to film school! Watch something! Go read a book! Look at a painting! Look at something. This is nonsense. I can’t stand that.”

OK, too many cuts are bad too.

You might be asking what’s going on with his filmmaking career. Jarmusch’s last film is 2019’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” his take on the zombie genre. Jarmusch recently hinted to us that he may shoot a film this year (undoubtedly, that timetable has been changed because of the writer’s and actor’s strike). In April, he hinted at his next film, which he described as “quiet, funny, and sad,” and also suggested it could be the first one of his films to operate without music or a score. A title, stars? Your guess is as good as ours, but it does potentially sound a little bit like something low-key like 2016’s “Patterson” with Adam Driver.