{"id":396778,"date":"2026-01-08T19:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/396778\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T19:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:56:07","slug":"tom-cruise-apparently-helped-shoot-lightsaber-battle-in-star-wars-starfighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/396778\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise apparently helped shoot lightsaber battle in Star Wars: Starfighter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shawn Levy has been busy for the last few years. This fact is a main crux of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/08\/movies\/shawn-levy-star-wars-stranger-things.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">new New York Times profile<\/a> on the director, published today, which follows him on the set of the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter. Levy has been in the industry for decades, but he\u2019s coming off directing one of the highest-grossing films of all time and producing one of the most popular shows of the moment. And now that he\u2019s making his Star Wars, a ton of people are interested in what he\u2019s going to do, including, apparently, Tom Cruise.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The set of Starfighter has seen a number of high-profile celebrities stop by. \u201cLast week Steven Spielberg was here. And now Tom Cruise is wielding a camera, ruining his very nice shoes,\u201d Levy says in the story. (Starfighter tapped <a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/star-wars-starfighter-claudio-miranda-shawn-levy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Top Gun: Maverick cinematographer Claudio Miranda<\/a> back in August, which may be part of the connection.) Apparently the actor landed his helicopter on the set because he wanted to watch the cast film a lightsaber scene. Levy joked that Cruise could film it if he wanted, and, of course, Cruise is the kind of guy who commits. \u201cTom Cruise was up to his ankles in mud and pond water,\u201d writes Times reporter Calum Marsh, \u201c\u2026holding the camera like a pro.\u201d Adds Levy, \u201cNow when you see the movie you\u2019ll know that part of it was shot by Tom. I mean, how cool is that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There isn\u2019t too much else we know yet about Starfighter, other than its cast includes Ryan Gosling, Mia Goth, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/matt-smith-star-wars-starfighter-casting\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Smith<\/a>, Aaron Pierre, and newcomer Flynn Gray and that it\u2019s set five years after The Rise Of Skywalker. The Times story does confirm that Starfighter will be a sort of father-son story (it is a Star War, after all) via an unexpectedly emotional exchange wherein Levy apparently realized in the moment that most of his filmography is rooted in running away from his depressive and alcoholic mother as a 13-year-old. \u201c\u2026I could never figure out why I kept coming back to these stories of a 13-year-old boy being saved by a man. There was something defining about that moment for me,\u201d says Levy. \u201cAnd with Star Wars, I\u2019m doing so again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Star Wars: Starfighter is scheduled for a 2027 release. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shawn Levy has been busy for the last few years. This fact is a main crux of a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-396778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}