Star Wars: Starfighter Follows ‘Marginalized Outsiders' From the ‘Wrong Side of the Galaxy’

Director Shawn Levy has revealed that Star Wars: Starfighter follows characters “from the wrong side of the galaxy” in a story that drew inspiration from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film, The Outsiders.

Coppola’s The Outsiders adapted S.E. Hinton’s classic young adult novel about clashing teens in 1960s Oklahoma. Hinton’s tale depicts the increasingly violent and tragic antagonism between the working class “Greasers” and the upper-middle-class "Socs".

Speaking with Fandango over the weekend at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, Levy said he and star Ryan Gosling sparked to that idea that the protagonists of Starfighter could, like the Greasers, come from “the wrong side of the tracks.”

“They’re not the privileged ones. They’re from the wrong side of the tracks,” Levy said. “Our characters in Starfighter are from the wrong side of the galaxy. And it’s about these sort of marginalized outsiders who find each other and have a shot at discovering heroism through their connections.”

Starfighter follows Gosling’s pilot Kade Auberon who teams up with a kid (newcomer Flynn Gray) on an adventure that, although only set about five years after the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will not feature any "legacy characters" nor any “remixes” of John Williams’ iconic themes in its score.

Levy told Fandango “there was just something kind of blue-collar, working class, grounded and textured and real to The Outsiders that we tried to bring to Star Wars and to Starfighter. Yes, it’s set in space. It’s high tech. There’s lots of visual effects, but it’s very much grounded in characters and grounded in the stuff of these characters doing the best they can in a chaotic galaxy that hasn’t yet been explored.”

The Outsiders featured a murderer’s row of then-upcoming talent, including Tom Cruise, who visited the set of Starfighter where he helped Levy and Gosling film a lightsaber duel.

In addition to Levy and Gray, Starfighter’s cast also includes Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams.

Star Wars: Starfighter opens in theaters on May 28, 2027.