Related: Emma Heming Willis and Bruce Willis’ Marriage Is ‘Stronger Than Ever’
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Oscar-nominated actor Ryan Gosling delivers a knockout, career-best performance in the modern sci-fi masterpiece, Project Hail Mary. What’s equally exciting about Project Hail Mary is that the movie serves as the perfect precursor and appetizer for Gosling’s next performance, as he stars in a new live-action theatrical Star Wars movie. Based on Gosling’s work in an imaginative, yet very scientifically grounded sci-fi feature, we can’t wait to see what he does in next year’s Star Wars: Starfighter, as Gosling’s performance as Ryland Grace proves that he’s more than up to the task of playing a compelling interstellar adventurer!
A sizable chunk of Project Hail Mary focuses on the relationship between Ryland Grace (Gosling) and his fellow scientist and explorer, an Eridian alien whom Grace nicknames Rocky (James Ortiz). Despite their differing backgrounds, Grace and Rocky form a tear-jerking, heartfelt, and emotional relationship, where they literally risk life and limb for one another. It’s the true heart and emotional core of the movie, and it’s directly inspired by relationships typically found in beloved Star Wars media. A movie like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back captured moviegoers’ collective imaginations through its depiction of the relationship between Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the elderly Jedi master, Yoda (Frank Oz). It’s irrelevant that Yoda is a puppet. Oz brings that character to life onscreen, and Hamill sells the relationship between Luke and Yoda, making the characters and their relationship into something tangible and “real” for the audience.
Gosling and Ortiz do the same thing with Grace and Rocky. They bring those characters and their relationship to vivid life onscreen, and the audience believes it. Their chemistry enthralls viewers’ collective imaginations just like Luke and Yoda. Project Hail Mary, through the dynamic bond that Grace and Rocky form over the course of the story, restores a childlike innocence and imagination to cinema that Star Wars similarly inspired in moviegoers for decades.
Although Grace starts the movie as a molecular biologist-turned-science-teacher, he’s forced to become a reluctant astronaut with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. That unique take on the hero’s journey comes right out of the Star Wars playbook. A mild-mannered and unassuming individual must reluctantly follow the path of heroism and save a literal planet. Technically, it’s not just Earth’s civilization at stake in Project Hail Mary, but Rocky’s home planet, Erid, as well. Through Gosling’s Grace, taking on the role of a reluctant would-be hero, viewers can find parallels to a character like the scoundrel pilot Han Solo in Star Wars, whose swagger hides a genuine heart of gold. Although Grace doesn’t have the persona of a dashing rogue, he finds himself in a position where he must become an unwitting hero, much like Solo.
Project Hail Mary once again proves Gosling’s versatility as an actor. He consistently delivers amazing work in more intimate, lower-budget thriller dramas like Drive, or he can portray a more comedic performance like Ken in the Barbie movie. However, based on Gosling’s performance as Grace, a character who finds himself isolated and alone on a high-risk mission in outer space, he must become the mission’s unwitting engineer and pilot to save planet Earth. Grace taking the pilot’s chair in Project Hail Mary provides some amazing moments, so we can’t wait to see what Gosling does as his pilot character in Starfighter.
Project Hail Mary also features some nail-biting and riveting action-packed moments set in space that certainly whet the appetite for Star Wars: Starfighter. There’s an incredibly suspenseful sequence where Grace must go on a daring space walk that puts us on the very edge of our seats. It felt reminiscent of some of the best and most suspenseful moments in movies like Star Wars, such as when characters have to race out of an exploding space station in Return of the Jedi or The Phantom Menace. Gosling always makes sure to bring an emotional connection to all of these scenes, so the audience is always dialed in to the fate and peril the characters experience.
That’s something that good scenes should always bring to the table, and the action in Project Hail Mary came off like a throwback to the Lucasfilm and Amblin Entertainment movies of yore. Gosling consistently imbues the action beats with his movie star presence, charm, and charisma, but he never loses sight of the plot’s stakes or his character’s emotional arc. Based on how well he performs in the big action and space moments in Project Hail Mary, he will undoubtedly portray a cool, compelling, and believable pilot character in Star Wars: Starfighter.
Gosling is currently one of the best actors working today. He’s been the hunky male romantic lead who makes women swoon in The Notebook and Crazy, Stupid, Love. He’s done the high-octane action hero thing with The Fall Guy, and he led an epic sci-fi drama in Project Hail Mary. Now, he will embark on an epic space fantasy with Star Wars: Starfighter. Once audiences glimpse Gosling’s work in Project Hail Mary, their excitement level for Starfighter will go up exponentially, just as it did for us. We can’t wait to see what he delivers when Starfighter zooms into theaters at lightspeed on May 28, 2027.
Project Hail Mary is now playing in theaters.
March 20, 2026
156 Minutes
Christopher Miller, Phil Lord
Drew Goddard, Andy Weir
Ryan Gosling, Amy Pascal, Andy Weir, Aditya Sood, Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, Rachel O’Connor
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Two of “Barker’s Beauties,” Kathleen Bradley and Claudia Jordan, allege that host Bob Barker and producers were wildly racist on the game show’s set.
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“We miss our mom with every breath, and we cannot be in peace until she is home,” she and her family wrote in a statement.
Bruce Willis’ wife, Emma Heming Willis, is celebrating the pair’s 17th year of marriage amid the actor’s frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
“I was made to love him,” Emma, 47, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, March 21, alongside a throwback photo of the happy couple on a beach. “17 years,” she added, with a ring and a white heart emoji.
The accompanying photo was snapped during the pair’s 2009 wedding in Turks and Caicos, showing Bruce, now 71, holding Emma in both arms as they smile at each other.
Emma and Bruce met in 2007, tying the knot two years later. The pair share two children together: daughter Mabel Ray, born in 2012, and daughter Evelyn Penn, born in 2014.
Bruce is also the proud dad to three other daughters — Rumer Willis, Scout Willis and Tallulah Willis — whom he shares with his ex-wife Demi Moore.
The Die Hard star was diagnosed with aphasia in 2022, after which he retired from acting. His initial diagnosis has since progressed to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which the Mayo Clinic describes as an “umbrella term” for a number of brain diseases that typically affect the frontal and temporal lobes.

Bruce Willis and wife Emma Heming Willis Getty Images
Since his diagnosis, Emma has been candid about what life is like as both a wife, mother and caregiver.
“It was one of the hardest decisions that I’ve had to make so far,” Emma said in a 2025 interview with Diane Sawyer, revealing that she had decided to move Bruce to a second home and hire full-time care. “But I knew, first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters. You know, he would want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs.”
Emma later opened up about the “benefit to getting help” in her memoir The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path.
“One benefit to getting help, whether you bring it into your home or have your person move to a community-based setting, is the ability to get back to your original role in your person’s life,” she wrote. “The other day Bruce and I sat on the patio of our second home, watching the girls swim and giggle in the pool. As we held hands, Bruce hummed along to the Frank Sinatra song that was playing in the background. For a moment, it was a teeny bit of normalcy that we really needed.”
Emma shared that she takes their daughters to visit Willis regularly, where they enjoy meals together, play with their toys and simply spend time with their famous father.
In the days leading up to the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash, both the first and second installments of the franchise — Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water — witnessed major viewership spikes on Disney+. They remained among the streamer’s most-watched titles for around a month, while Avatar: Fire and Ash dominated the box office. This tends to happen whenever a major new franchise film shows up in theaters; audiences flock to its predecessors to psych themselves up. But it seems as if the Spider-Man series is operating on a whole different level. The franchise’s most recent films saw major viewership bumps this week, all thanks to the record-breaking trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
The fourth solo film to feature Tom Holland as the fan-favorite superhero will be released theatrically in July. There’s a lot riding on it; some would say that the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is at stake with Phase Four of the franchise leaving even die-hard fans underwhelmed. Disney is leaving no stone unturned to win back devotees with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, which will star the returning Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. The verdict is still out on Doomsday, but if the Brand New Day trailer is attracting greater numbers online, there’s reason enough for Disney to be concerned. Brand New Day clocked 718 million views across platforms in the first 24 hours of its release, breaking the previous record of 365 million views set by Deadpool & Wolverine. Brand New Day is the first film of Holland’s Spider-Man series to be directed by Destin Daniel Cretton; the previous three installments were all directed by Jon Watts.
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Things peaked in 2021 with the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which united Holland with his two predecessors in the role, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. The movie grossed nearly $2 billion worldwide, and that, too, without major markets such as China and Russia in play. A direct sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home, No Way Home earned excellent reviews. It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 93% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 97% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. According to FlixPatrol, No Way Home was among the most-watched movies on the domestic iTunes chart this week, while Homecoming and Far From Home found spots on the domestic Disney+ chart. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
July 31, 2026
Destin Daniel Cretton
Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Steve Ditko, Stan Lee
Few action brands have been as successful this century as the John Wick franchise. Starring Keanu Reeves as the titular retired hitman who is lured back into the criminal world, the franchise began with the 2014 first installment, which earned a modest $86 million at the global box office. However, it received such a strong audience reaction that a sequel was announced in May 2015. With the sequel doubling the box office haul, it was clear an exciting franchise was on our hands, with John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Chapter 4 cementing the action IP’s place in cinematic history with incredible critics’ response and huge box office hauls.
In 2025, the choice to move the franchise into a new era manifested in the form of the first feature film spin-off, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Reeves is now in his sixties, and being a fast-paced action star is not going to get any easier. So, instead of risking the end of the franchise coming before its time, the ever-brilliant Ana de Armas was chosen to take over the mantle as Eve Macarro, a ballerina-assassin. Taking place between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, Ballerina follows De Armas’ Macarra, “who is beginning her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma.”
Sadly, Ballerina was unable to capitalize on the previous theatrical success of the franchise, becoming one of 2025’s more disappointing box office flops. Against a reported budget of $90 million, Ballerina grossed only $137.2 million worldwide and put a dent in de Armas’ potential to take over the franchise full-time. However, the film has redeemed itself on streaming ever since, officially becoming one of the ten most-streamed movies on Starz in the U.S., at the time of writing.
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Directed by Len Wiseman and written by Shay Hatten, this John Wick spin-off didn’t just feature the starring talent of de Armas and a notable cameo appearance from Reeves, but it also boasted an eye-catching ensemble, including Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, Gabriel Byrne, Anjelica Huston, and Lance Reddick in his final screen appearance. The film scored 75% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus on the site reading, “Equipping a steely Ana de Armas with creatively brutal action choreography and a pleasingly kooky origin story, Ballerina pirouettes gracefully onto the Wickverse’s centerstage.”
Ballerina is streaming now on Starz. Stay tuned to Collider for more streaming stories.
June 6, 2025
125 minutes
Len Wiseman
Shay Hatten, Derek Kolstad
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By now, most of Us are done pretending uncomfortable outfits are worth it. Between coffee runs, weekend plans and travel days, you need pieces that actually move with you on busy days. That’s exactly why the dress-and-sneaker combo keeps coming back every year.
These 17 easy-going floral dresses make it easy to pull off the look. Think: Flowy wrap midis that elongate your frame, smocked-waist styles that define your shape and casual T-shirt styles that you can throw on with sneakers and be out the door in minutes. You’ll also find breezy, pocket-friendly picks and tiered silhouettes that work just as well for brunch as they do for long, on-your-feet days. Even better? Prices start at just $17.
1. Our Favorite: If stiff, uncomfortable dresses sit unworn in your closet, try this green floral sundress instead. The stretchy fabric actually moves with you, and the wrap style is universally flattering.
2. Loose and Slimming: Want a floral dress that skims your body? This bohemian-style maxi dress has a loose silhouette that flatters and pockets to keep your essentials close.
3. Has Pockets: Tired of carrying a bag for just your phone and keys? This floral midi dress has pockets deep enough to actually use to store your phone or lip gloss. Plus, the comfortable short sleeve cut means you can wear it all day.
4. Figure-Flattering: If you love your curves but want a dress that drapes just right, this flowy floral wrap dress nails it. The A-line cut falls beautifully and the V-neck elongates your frame.
5. Quite the Charmer: Struggling to find a floral dress that looks put together without feeling overdone? This charming wrap midi hits that sweet spot with its belted waist and delicate ruffle sleeves.
6. Cute and Comfy: This polka dot midi dress has a V-neck wrap style, short sleeves and functional pockets. The stretchy, loose fabric makes it feel more like loungewear than a real dress.
7. Playful Prints: Bored by typical floral dresses? This wearable V-neck midi dress shakes things up with a marble print and pretty petal sleeves.
8. Must-Have Mini: Heading to a weekend cookout? Throw on this floral-print mini dress and a clean pair of sneakers, and you’ll instantly see how these pieces are made for each other.
9. Tummy-Slimming: Walk into any room wearing this tummy-slimming wrap dress and low-profile sneakers, and you’re bound to feel so confident.
10. Waist-Defining: If shapeless dresses make you feel frumpy, this smocked-waist midi dress creates definition right at your middle. The belted waist and tiered skirt add structure without stiffness.
11. Dressy and Darling: Need a floral dress that works for slightly fancy occasions (yet still pairs well with sneakers)? This tiered floral midi bridges that gap with ruffle details and a flowy silhouette.
12. Easy Breezy: Some days you just want to get dressed without thinking. This relaxed midi dress is that kind of piece, thanks to the flirty ruffle sleeves, pretty floral print and comfy fit — zero effort required.
13. Throw-On-and-Go: Sneakers and this casual T-shirt dress are basically a uniform for busy weekends. Cinch the drawstring waist, toss your phone in the pocket and you’re gone in 30 seconds.
14. Vacation-Ready: Packing for a trip is easier when one dress handles everything. This vacation-ready midi looks great with sneakers for walking tours and sandals for evening dinners.
15. Cue the Color: Walk into brunch wearing this vibrant floral maxi dress with chunky sneakers — and watch heads turn. The long sleeves make it a rare floral dress that pairs nicely with sneakers year-round.
16. Dreamy Print: Wear this flowy floral midi dress with simple sneakers for a weekend art fair or garden party. The cap sleeves and boho-inspired silhouette look effortlessly pretty without overdoing it.
17. Floral Find: If you want a floral dress that reads a little more polished, this popular chiffon mini does the trick. The sheer fabric and peasant sleeves elevate it beyond a basic sundress.
Amanda Peet has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“For many years, I’ve been told that I have ‘dense’ and ‘busy’ breasts — not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring,” Peet wrote in a New Yorker essay published Saturday, March 21, revealing she was diagnosed “last fall.”
“I had been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups,” she continued. “The Friday before Labor Day, I went for what I thought would be a routine scan.”
According to Peet, her physician “didn’t like the way something looked on the ultrasound” and, as a result, wanted the actress to undergo a biopsy.
“After the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. That’s when I knew,” Peet said, noting that her doctor shared the results the next day. “The tumor ‘appeared’ to be small, but I would need an MRI after the holiday weekend to determine ‘the extent of disease.’”
As Peet waited to discover the type of cancer she had, her parents were both on hospice care.
“Our parents, long divorced, were both in hospice, on opposite coasts,” she wrote, referring to her sister. “Our mother’s had started in June, but our father’s was only a week in, so we hadn’t expected him to go first. I flew to New York. I didn’t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment.”
Peet returned home to Los Angeles to consider caring for her mom, when she learned that her stage I cancer was “hormone-receptor-positive” and “HER2-negative.”
“I was happier than I’d been pre-diagnosis, when I was just a regular person who didn’t have cancer,” Peet said. “But after about 10 minutes, I remembered that I still needed the MRI and regressed to baseline terror. [My doctor,] Dr. K., said that the radiologist would check my lymph nodes, as well as ‘the left side for any surprise findings’ and call with the results within a week. It was dawning on me that cancer diagnoses come in a slow drip.”
Doctors soon discovered a second benign mass in Peet’s breast, requiring a lumpectomy and radiation as treatment.
Peet’s mother died in January shortly after her own “first clear scan.”
“The morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision,” Peet said of her final moments with her mom. “We locked eyes and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes.”
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Grab your watermelons and check in on the cast of “Dirty Dancing.”
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When it comes to effortless, off-duty style, Nicole Kidman rarely misses — and her latest sunglasses moment proves that sometimes one simple accessory can make an entire outfit feel instantly put together. While her look gives major “it-girl” energy, recreating the vibe doesn’t require a designer budget. In fact, the Wemootants Cat Eye Reading Sunglasses on Amazon look eerily similar, and ring in at just $22.
Kidman was spotted wearing the stylish sunnies while at the Sydney airport. The oversized silhouette instantly frames the face and adds that “put-together without trying too hard” vibe that makes sunglasses feel less like an afterthought and more like the centerpiece of a look. The cat-eye shape brings a little lift and glamour, so they feel equally at home with a slick bun, minimal makeup or an effortless off-duty outfit like Kidman’s.
Get the Wemootants Cat Eye Reading Sunglasses for $22 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.
As a bonus, the full-reader lens design means you don’t have to swap between sunglasses and reading glasses when you’re outside. Whether you’re scrolling your phone at brunch, reading by the pool or answering emails from a patio table, they blend practicality with style.
One Amazon shopper with sensitive eyes called them “super cute” and “comfortable,” adding that they’re “full reading glasses so [they] can actually see in the sun with sensitive blue eyes.”
If you’ve been looking for a simple way to elevate your everyday outfits, consider this your sign. At just $22, this cat-eye style makes it easy to channel a little Kidman–level polish without overthinking it. Shop the Wemootants Cat Eye Reading Sunglasses on Amazon before they inevitably sell out.
Get the Wemootants Cat Eye Reading Sunglasses for $22 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.
Looking for something else? Explore more cat eye sunglasses here and don’t forget to check out all of Amazon’s Daily Deals for more great finds!
Everyone loves a good hallway fight scene, and, in recent years, they’ve become a sort of staple of well-made action movies. There are countless great examples in cinema and TV, but one franchise has particularly mastered the art of the hallway fight scene: Star Wars.
Everyone remembers that incredible Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) brawl in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but, since then, there have been another five such sequences set in the galaxy far, far away, and many people forget that there is already a crazy one in the original movie. So, here are all seven hallway action sequences in Star Wars, ranked.
Yes, this counts. It’s the very first in the franchise, in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, and an extremely quirky one at that. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) goes after a group of Stormtroopers, screaming at the top of his lungs, only to reach a hangar full of them and retreat the way he came. There’s barely any action, as it plays more on the comedic side, but it still works as a perfect Han moment: shoot first, think later.
This scene is also one of the many changes made by George Lucas in the Special Edition released in 1997. In the original, the hallway leads to a dead end with only five Stormtroopers. The odds are still against Han, but the hangar works much better, let’s face it.
A hallway scene that isn’t top-of-mind, but made quite a stir when it aired is Baylan Skoll‘s (Ray Stevenson) in the series premiere of Ahsoka. He and his apprentice, Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), storm a New Republic cruiser to free former Imperial warlord Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto). When Skoll reaches the brig hallway, he cuts through every single officer on the way, casually strutting to Elbeth’s cell when it’s done.
Although very brief, this scene is elevated by the late and great Ray Stevenson. He portrays Baylan making full use of his stature, turning him into the kind of opponent no one would want to confront directly. His deadpan expression and mechanical movements also emphasize how powerful Baylan is, while also hinting that there is a lot more to know about this former Jedi than being only a powerful warrior.
The funniest (yes, more than Han) entry on this list is also the most brutal (yes, more than Number 1), and takes place in the final two episodes of Star Wars‘ most serious property, Andor. When Cassian (Diego Luna), Melshi (Duncan Pow), and Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) find themselves cornered by the ISB in the old rebel safehouse apartment on Coruscant, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) rescues them by violently killing every agent on the way. After the slaughter, he proudly announces: “Cassian! I’ve cleared a path!”
This sequence has incredibly high stakes, given the importance of Kleya’s message, Luthen’s (Stellan Skarsgård) recent sacrifice, and Supervisor Heert (Jacob James Beswick) determination to catch Kleya after Director Krennic’s (Ben Mendelsohn) ultimatum. The dark hallway feels like a horror movie slaughter setting, but K-2SO’s attitude balances the weight by replying ironically to ISB agents and even using Heert as a human shield, despite his own blaster-proof coating.
Say what you will about the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries, it does feature some incredible action sequences. The hallway action scene in “Part IV” is among them, where Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) protects young Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) from Imperial forces at Fortress Inquisitorius. Trapped from both sides inside an underwater corridor, Obi-Wan finally comes onto himself again after years of letting his connection to the Force wane because of the grief and regret he’s been carrying since the ending of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.
There are many great aspects to this scene, from fighting choreography to visual storytelling. First, Obi-Wan is doing what the Jedi are supposed to do, protecting an innocent person from harm, and that person being Leia significantly raises the stakes, too. More important, however, is how he does it. Obi-Wan directly strikes a Stormtrooper only once, because they were already at close range; all the others he defeats only by cleverly deflecting their blaster shots — a staple of his preferred lightsaber combat form, Soresu — and using the incoming flood to his favor. That’s the Jedi way: avoid striking at all costs and protect the innocent.
The final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has no shortage of great action scenes, but Maul’s (Sam Witwer) hallway fight against a squad of Clone Troopers could very well pass as the definition of “rampage.” Even without a lightsaber, the former Darth makes quick work of the clones by using sheets of the walls as shields and blades with the Force. He never touches anything or anyone, and barely breaks his stride. There’s even room for a final display of gratuitous cruelty when he traps a clone’s arm on a closing blast door after he’s already gotten the poor bastard’s blaster.
The whole sequence happens in the animated series’ penultimate episode, in the context of Order 66, which forced Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) to free Maul from his confinement after taking the whole Siege of Mandalore — a 4-episode story arc — to capture him. Once the clones turn on her, she decides to use Maul as a distraction, setting him free so she could make her own escape. Maul actually asks her for “a fighting chance” in the form of a lightsaber, but that was clearly an attempt to deceive her, as he then proceeds to demonstrate how he actually doesn’t need a weapon to defeat his enemies.
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is the undeniable greatest hero of Star Wars, but we never really got to see him in his prime; in Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, he is still barely a Jedi Knight, despite his amazing feats. So, when Luke defeats a whole Imperial cruiser filled with Dark Troopers in The Mandalorian, seeing it was a dream come true for most fans. In the Season 2 finale, he rescues Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), young Grogu and their friends from Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), displaying his mastery of lightsaber combat for the first time and taking out an entire hallway of Dark Troopers up close.
When this scene initially aired in 2020, it felt like a direct nod to Darth Vader’s (James Earl Jones) own hallway scene in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, with Luke getting his own iteration of that moment. The Mandalorian‘s version, however, has no deaths, as all of Luke’s opponents are mechanical. Still, the fact that they are essentially overpowered droids in great numbers raises the stakes of his rescue mission, requiring him to actually defeat them. This moment also connects the movie and television corners of the Star Wars universe for the first time, making it a huge deal for the franchise.
Finally, the ultimate Star Wars hallway scene and one of the best in cinema altogether. Whenever someone thinks about a hallway fight or about Rogue One, it’s Darth Vader’s scene in a corridor filled with rebel soldiers that comes to mind. It has everything: it’s aligned with his character, a powerful soundtrack, franchise-defining high stakes… Rogue One already has an incredibly dramatic outcome for its story and characters, but Vader’s hallway scene manages to elevate it even more, highlighting just how close the rebels came to losing the war before it even started.
The scene takes place at the end of the Battle of Scarif. The entire Rogue One crew is dead, and the rebels are hurrying to get the Death Star plans to Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) aboard the Tantive IV. Before the ship can depart, however, there’s Vader. The scene perfectly captures one of the Sith Lord’s key traits: he’s a huge drama queen. He creates a whole atmosphere for his entrance — the lights go out, his mechanical breathing fills the room, and his lightsaber is ignited with perfect timing to allow everyone to make out just his dark silhouette. In a little over 10 seconds, he makes an impression that lasts way longer than the following carnage.
Vader’s moment in Rogue One is what started the trend of epic hallway fight scenes in Star Wars, making it a staple of the franchise under Disney. It also influenced many other artists and pretty much consolidated this as more than a trope; now, a well-made hallway fight works almost as a quality certificate for an action film or series. There have been many such scenes before in other movies, of course, but it was Vader who made everyone want one after Rogue One.
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