Actor settles with Disney over firing from Mandalorian
The specific terms of the agreement were not made available.
"Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect," Lucasfilm said in a statement.
"With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms Carano in the near future."
The two sides stipulated in a federal court filing on Thursday that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. A judge still needs to formally dismiss it. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles in February 2026.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California last year, alleged Carano was wrongfully terminated from the "Star Wars" galaxy Disney+ series in 2021 after two seasons due to a post likening the treatment of American conservatives to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Her posts were widely criticised online and spurred a trending #FireGinaCarano hashtag.
"I'd like to thank you all for your unrelenting support throughout my life and career, you've been the heartbeat that has kept my story alive. I hope to make you proud," Carano wrote in a statement on Thursday.
"I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me."
Carano thanked Elon Musk for helping fund the lawsuit "and asking for nothing in return". The suit had alleged that the 43-year-old actor was fired because she "dared voice her own opinions" against an "online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology".
Carano is a former mixed martial artist who played the recurring character Cara Dune on the show, which launched in 2019 and ran for three seasons. A feature film starring Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is set for release next northen summer.
Carano had previously been criticised for mocking mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic and making false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Actor Gina Carano has settled her federal lawsuit against Lucasfilm and its parent company Walt Disney over her claim she was fired from The Mandalorian for expressing right-wing views on social media.
The specific terms of the agreement were not made available.
"Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect," Lucasfilm said in a statement.
"With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms Carano in the near future."
The two sides stipulated in a federal court filing on Thursday that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. A judge still needs to formally dismiss it. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles in February 2026.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California last year, alleged Carano was wrongfully terminated from the "Star Wars" galaxy Disney+ series in 2021 after two seasons due to a post likening the treatment of American conservatives to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Her posts were widely criticised online and spurred a trending #FireGinaCarano hashtag.
"I'd like to thank you all for your unrelenting support throughout my life and career, you've been the heartbeat that has kept my story alive. I hope to make you proud," Carano wrote in a statement on Thursday.
"I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me."
Carano thanked Elon Musk for helping fund the lawsuit "and asking for nothing in return". The suit had alleged that the 43-year-old actor was fired because she "dared voice her own opinions" against an "online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology".
Carano is a former mixed martial artist who played the recurring character Cara Dune on the show, which launched in 2019 and ran for three seasons. A feature film starring Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is set for release next northen summer.
Carano had previously been criticised for mocking mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic and making false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Actor Gina Carano has settled her federal lawsuit against Lucasfilm and its parent company Walt Disney over her claim she was fired from The Mandalorian for expressing right-wing views on social media.
The specific terms of the agreement were not made available.
"Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect," Lucasfilm said in a statement.
"With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms Carano in the near future."
The two sides stipulated in a federal court filing on Thursday that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. A judge still needs to formally dismiss it. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles in February 2026.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California last year, alleged Carano was wrongfully terminated from the "Star Wars" galaxy Disney+ series in 2021 after two seasons due to a post likening the treatment of American conservatives to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Her posts were widely criticised online and spurred a trending #FireGinaCarano hashtag.
"I'd like to thank you all for your unrelenting support throughout my life and career, you've been the heartbeat that has kept my story alive. I hope to make you proud," Carano wrote in a statement on Thursday.
"I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me."
Carano thanked Elon Musk for helping fund the lawsuit "and asking for nothing in return". The suit had alleged that the 43-year-old actor was fired because she "dared voice her own opinions" against an "online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology".
Carano is a former mixed martial artist who played the recurring character Cara Dune on the show, which launched in 2019 and ran for three seasons. A feature film starring Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is set for release next northen summer.
Carano had previously been criticised for mocking mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic and making false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Actor Gina Carano has settled her federal lawsuit against Lucasfilm and its parent company Walt Disney over her claim she was fired from The Mandalorian for expressing right-wing views on social media.
The specific terms of the agreement were not made available.
"Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect," Lucasfilm said in a statement.
"With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms Carano in the near future."
The two sides stipulated in a federal court filing on Thursday that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. A judge still needs to formally dismiss it. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles in February 2026.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California last year, alleged Carano was wrongfully terminated from the "Star Wars" galaxy Disney+ series in 2021 after two seasons due to a post likening the treatment of American conservatives to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Her posts were widely criticised online and spurred a trending #FireGinaCarano hashtag.
"I'd like to thank you all for your unrelenting support throughout my life and career, you've been the heartbeat that has kept my story alive. I hope to make you proud," Carano wrote in a statement on Thursday.
"I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me."
Carano thanked Elon Musk for helping fund the lawsuit "and asking for nothing in return". The suit had alleged that the 43-year-old actor was fired because she "dared voice her own opinions" against an "online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology".
Carano is a former mixed martial artist who played the recurring character Cara Dune on the show, which launched in 2019 and ran for three seasons. A feature film starring Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is set for release next northen summer.
Carano had previously been criticised for mocking mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic and making false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
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an hour ago
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A post-it note sat near Ari Aster while he wrote Eddington: "Remember the phones." Eddington may be set during the pandemic but the onset of COVID-19 isn't its inciting incident. Outside the fictional New Mexico town, a data centre is being built. Inside Eddington, its residents - their brains increasingly addled by the internet, social media, smartphones and whatever is ominously emanating from that data centre - are growing increasingly detached from one another, and from each other's sense of reality. "We're living in such a weird time and we forget how weird it is," Aster says. "Things have been weird ever since we were able to carry the internet on our person. Ever since we began living in the internet, things have gotten weirder and weirder. "It's important to keep reminding ourselves: This is weird." Moviegoers have grown accustomed to expecting a lack of normalcy in Aster's movies. 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For The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote: "Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he's saying something about America, the joke is on him." Aster was expecting a divisive reaction. But he disputes some of the discourse around Eddington. "I heard one person say it was harder on the left than the right, and I think that's pretty disingenuous," he says. "In the film, one side is kind of annoying and frustrating and hypocritical, and the other side is killing people and destroying lives." For Aster, satirising the left doesn't mean he doesn't share their beliefs. "If there's no self-reflection," he says, "how are we ever going to get out of this?" Aster began writing Eddington in June 2020. He set it in New Mexico, where his family moved when he was 10. Aster wanted to try to capture the disconnect that didn't start with the pandemic but then reached a surreal crescendo. He styled Eddington as a Western with smartphones in place of guns - though there are definitely guns, too. "The dread I was living with suddenly intensified. And to be honest, I've been living with that level of dread ever since," Aster says. "I just wanted to see if I could capture what was in the air." Scripts that dive headlong into politics are far from regular in today's corporate Hollywood. Most studios would be unlikely to distribute a film like Eddington, though A24, the indie powerhouse, has stood behind Aster even after 2023's $35 million Beau Is Afraid struggled at the box office. A24 has shown a willingness to engage with political discord, backing last year's speculative war drama, Civil War. And Aster's screenplay resonated with Phoenix, who had starred in Beau Is Afraid, and with Pascal. In Cannes, Pascal noted that "it's very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this". For Phoenix, Eddington offered clarity and empathy for the pandemic experience. "We were all terrified and we didn't fully understand it. And instead of reaching out to each other in those moments, we kind of became antagonistic toward each other and self-righteous and certain of our position," Phoenix said. "And in some ways it's so obvious: Well, that's not going to be helpful." Since Aster made Eddington - it was shot in 2024 - the second administration of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new political reality that Aster acknowledges would have reshaped his film. "I would have made the movie more obscene," he says. "And I would have made it angrier. I think the film is angry. But I think we're living in a time of total obscenity, beyond anything I've seen." Eddington is designed to be argued over. Even those who find its first half well-observed may recoil at the violent absurdism of its second half. The movie, Aster says, pivots midway and, itself, becomes paranoid and gripped by differing world views. You can almost feel Aster struggling to bring any coherence to his, and our, modern-day Western. But whatever you make of Eddington, you might grant it's vitally important that we have more films like it - movies that don't tiptoe around today in period-film metaphor or avoid it like the plague. Aster, at least, doesn't sound finished with what he started. "I'm feeling very heartbroken about where we are, and totally lost, so I'm looking for ways to go into those feelings but also to challenge them. What can be done?" Aster asks. "Because this is a movie about people who are unreachable to each other and completely siloed off ... a question that kept coming to me was: What would an olive branch look like? How do we find a way to re-engage with each other?" A post-it note sat near Ari Aster while he wrote Eddington: "Remember the phones." Eddington may be set during the pandemic but the onset of COVID-19 isn't its inciting incident. Outside the fictional New Mexico town, a data centre is being built. Inside Eddington, its residents - their brains increasingly addled by the internet, social media, smartphones and whatever is ominously emanating from that data centre - are growing increasingly detached from one another, and from each other's sense of reality. "We're living in such a weird time and we forget how weird it is," Aster says. "Things have been weird ever since we were able to carry the internet on our person. Ever since we began living in the internet, things have gotten weirder and weirder. "It's important to keep reminding ourselves: This is weird." Moviegoers have grown accustomed to expecting a lack of normalcy in Aster's movies. His first three films - Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid - have vividly charted strange new pathways of dread and deep-rooted anxiety. Those fixations make Aster, a master of nightmare and farce, uniquely suited to capturing the current American moment. Eddington, which A24 is opening in selected Australian cinemas on August 21, may be the most prominent American movie yet to explicitly wrestle with social and political division in the United States. In a showdown between Joaquin Phoenix's bumbling right-wing sheriff and Pedro Pascal's elitist liberal mayor, arguments over mask mandates, Black Lives Matter protests and elections spiral into a demented Western fever dream. At a time when our movie screens are filled with escapism and nostalgia, Eddington dares to diagnose something frightfully contemporary. Aster, in a recent interview at an East Village coffee shop he frequents, said he couldn't imagine avoiding it. "To not be talking about it is insane," he said. "I'm desperate for work that's wrestling with this moment because I don't know where we are. I've never been here before," says Aster. "I have projects that I've been planning for a long time. They make less sense to me right now. I don't know why I would make those right now." Eddington, appropriately enough, has been divisive. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Aster's film has had one of the most polarising receptions of the year among critics. Even in Cannes, Aster seemed to grasp its mixed response. "I don't know what you think," he told the crowd. Some critics have suggested Aster's film is too satirical of the left. "Despite a pose of satirical neutrality, he mainly seems to want to score points off mask-wearers, young progressives, anti-racists and other targets beloved of reactionaries," The New Yorker's Justin Chang wrote. For The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote: "Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he's saying something about America, the joke is on him." Aster was expecting a divisive reaction. But he disputes some of the discourse around Eddington. "I heard one person say it was harder on the left than the right, and I think that's pretty disingenuous," he says. "In the film, one side is kind of annoying and frustrating and hypocritical, and the other side is killing people and destroying lives." For Aster, satirising the left doesn't mean he doesn't share their beliefs. "If there's no self-reflection," he says, "how are we ever going to get out of this?" Aster began writing Eddington in June 2020. He set it in New Mexico, where his family moved when he was 10. Aster wanted to try to capture the disconnect that didn't start with the pandemic but then reached a surreal crescendo. He styled Eddington as a Western with smartphones in place of guns - though there are definitely guns, too. "The dread I was living with suddenly intensified. And to be honest, I've been living with that level of dread ever since," Aster says. "I just wanted to see if I could capture what was in the air." Scripts that dive headlong into politics are far from regular in today's corporate Hollywood. Most studios would be unlikely to distribute a film like Eddington, though A24, the indie powerhouse, has stood behind Aster even after 2023's $35 million Beau Is Afraid struggled at the box office. A24 has shown a willingness to engage with political discord, backing last year's speculative war drama, Civil War. And Aster's screenplay resonated with Phoenix, who had starred in Beau Is Afraid, and with Pascal. In Cannes, Pascal noted that "it's very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this". For Phoenix, Eddington offered clarity and empathy for the pandemic experience. "We were all terrified and we didn't fully understand it. And instead of reaching out to each other in those moments, we kind of became antagonistic toward each other and self-righteous and certain of our position," Phoenix said. "And in some ways it's so obvious: Well, that's not going to be helpful." Since Aster made Eddington - it was shot in 2024 - the second administration of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new political reality that Aster acknowledges would have reshaped his film. "I would have made the movie more obscene," he says. "And I would have made it angrier. I think the film is angry. But I think we're living in a time of total obscenity, beyond anything I've seen." Eddington is designed to be argued over. Even those who find its first half well-observed may recoil at the violent absurdism of its second half. The movie, Aster says, pivots midway and, itself, becomes paranoid and gripped by differing world views. You can almost feel Aster struggling to bring any coherence to his, and our, modern-day Western. But whatever you make of Eddington, you might grant it's vitally important that we have more films like it - movies that don't tiptoe around today in period-film metaphor or avoid it like the plague. Aster, at least, doesn't sound finished with what he started. "I'm feeling very heartbroken about where we are, and totally lost, so I'm looking for ways to go into those feelings but also to challenge them. What can be done?" Aster asks. "Because this is a movie about people who are unreachable to each other and completely siloed off ... a question that kept coming to me was: What would an olive branch look like? How do we find a way to re-engage with each other?" A post-it note sat near Ari Aster while he wrote Eddington: "Remember the phones." Eddington may be set during the pandemic but the onset of COVID-19 isn't its inciting incident. Outside the fictional New Mexico town, a data centre is being built. Inside Eddington, its residents - their brains increasingly addled by the internet, social media, smartphones and whatever is ominously emanating from that data centre - are growing increasingly detached from one another, and from each other's sense of reality. "We're living in such a weird time and we forget how weird it is," Aster says. "Things have been weird ever since we were able to carry the internet on our person. Ever since we began living in the internet, things have gotten weirder and weirder. "It's important to keep reminding ourselves: This is weird." Moviegoers have grown accustomed to expecting a lack of normalcy in Aster's movies. His first three films - Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid - have vividly charted strange new pathways of dread and deep-rooted anxiety. Those fixations make Aster, a master of nightmare and farce, uniquely suited to capturing the current American moment. Eddington, which A24 is opening in selected Australian cinemas on August 21, may be the most prominent American movie yet to explicitly wrestle with social and political division in the United States. In a showdown between Joaquin Phoenix's bumbling right-wing sheriff and Pedro Pascal's elitist liberal mayor, arguments over mask mandates, Black Lives Matter protests and elections spiral into a demented Western fever dream. At a time when our movie screens are filled with escapism and nostalgia, Eddington dares to diagnose something frightfully contemporary. Aster, in a recent interview at an East Village coffee shop he frequents, said he couldn't imagine avoiding it. "To not be talking about it is insane," he said. "I'm desperate for work that's wrestling with this moment because I don't know where we are. I've never been here before," says Aster. "I have projects that I've been planning for a long time. They make less sense to me right now. I don't know why I would make those right now." Eddington, appropriately enough, has been divisive. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Aster's film has had one of the most polarising receptions of the year among critics. Even in Cannes, Aster seemed to grasp its mixed response. "I don't know what you think," he told the crowd. Some critics have suggested Aster's film is too satirical of the left. "Despite a pose of satirical neutrality, he mainly seems to want to score points off mask-wearers, young progressives, anti-racists and other targets beloved of reactionaries," The New Yorker's Justin Chang wrote. For The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote: "Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he's saying something about America, the joke is on him." Aster was expecting a divisive reaction. But he disputes some of the discourse around Eddington. "I heard one person say it was harder on the left than the right, and I think that's pretty disingenuous," he says. "In the film, one side is kind of annoying and frustrating and hypocritical, and the other side is killing people and destroying lives." For Aster, satirising the left doesn't mean he doesn't share their beliefs. "If there's no self-reflection," he says, "how are we ever going to get out of this?" Aster began writing Eddington in June 2020. He set it in New Mexico, where his family moved when he was 10. Aster wanted to try to capture the disconnect that didn't start with the pandemic but then reached a surreal crescendo. He styled Eddington as a Western with smartphones in place of guns - though there are definitely guns, too. "The dread I was living with suddenly intensified. And to be honest, I've been living with that level of dread ever since," Aster says. "I just wanted to see if I could capture what was in the air." Scripts that dive headlong into politics are far from regular in today's corporate Hollywood. Most studios would be unlikely to distribute a film like Eddington, though A24, the indie powerhouse, has stood behind Aster even after 2023's $35 million Beau Is Afraid struggled at the box office. A24 has shown a willingness to engage with political discord, backing last year's speculative war drama, Civil War. And Aster's screenplay resonated with Phoenix, who had starred in Beau Is Afraid, and with Pascal. In Cannes, Pascal noted that "it's very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this". For Phoenix, Eddington offered clarity and empathy for the pandemic experience. "We were all terrified and we didn't fully understand it. And instead of reaching out to each other in those moments, we kind of became antagonistic toward each other and self-righteous and certain of our position," Phoenix said. "And in some ways it's so obvious: Well, that's not going to be helpful." Since Aster made Eddington - it was shot in 2024 - the second administration of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new political reality that Aster acknowledges would have reshaped his film. "I would have made the movie more obscene," he says. "And I would have made it angrier. I think the film is angry. But I think we're living in a time of total obscenity, beyond anything I've seen." Eddington is designed to be argued over. Even those who find its first half well-observed may recoil at the violent absurdism of its second half. The movie, Aster says, pivots midway and, itself, becomes paranoid and gripped by differing world views. You can almost feel Aster struggling to bring any coherence to his, and our, modern-day Western. But whatever you make of Eddington, you might grant it's vitally important that we have more films like it - movies that don't tiptoe around today in period-film metaphor or avoid it like the plague. Aster, at least, doesn't sound finished with what he started. "I'm feeling very heartbroken about where we are, and totally lost, so I'm looking for ways to go into those feelings but also to challenge them. What can be done?" Aster asks. "Because this is a movie about people who are unreachable to each other and completely siloed off ... a question that kept coming to me was: What would an olive branch look like? How do we find a way to re-engage with each other?" A post-it note sat near Ari Aster while he wrote Eddington: "Remember the phones." Eddington may be set during the pandemic but the onset of COVID-19 isn't its inciting incident. Outside the fictional New Mexico town, a data centre is being built. Inside Eddington, its residents - their brains increasingly addled by the internet, social media, smartphones and whatever is ominously emanating from that data centre - are growing increasingly detached from one another, and from each other's sense of reality. "We're living in such a weird time and we forget how weird it is," Aster says. "Things have been weird ever since we were able to carry the internet on our person. Ever since we began living in the internet, things have gotten weirder and weirder. "It's important to keep reminding ourselves: This is weird." Moviegoers have grown accustomed to expecting a lack of normalcy in Aster's movies. His first three films - Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid - have vividly charted strange new pathways of dread and deep-rooted anxiety. Those fixations make Aster, a master of nightmare and farce, uniquely suited to capturing the current American moment. Eddington, which A24 is opening in selected Australian cinemas on August 21, may be the most prominent American movie yet to explicitly wrestle with social and political division in the United States. In a showdown between Joaquin Phoenix's bumbling right-wing sheriff and Pedro Pascal's elitist liberal mayor, arguments over mask mandates, Black Lives Matter protests and elections spiral into a demented Western fever dream. At a time when our movie screens are filled with escapism and nostalgia, Eddington dares to diagnose something frightfully contemporary. Aster, in a recent interview at an East Village coffee shop he frequents, said he couldn't imagine avoiding it. "To not be talking about it is insane," he said. "I'm desperate for work that's wrestling with this moment because I don't know where we are. I've never been here before," says Aster. "I have projects that I've been planning for a long time. They make less sense to me right now. I don't know why I would make those right now." Eddington, appropriately enough, has been divisive. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Aster's film has had one of the most polarising receptions of the year among critics. Even in Cannes, Aster seemed to grasp its mixed response. "I don't know what you think," he told the crowd. Some critics have suggested Aster's film is too satirical of the left. "Despite a pose of satirical neutrality, he mainly seems to want to score points off mask-wearers, young progressives, anti-racists and other targets beloved of reactionaries," The New Yorker's Justin Chang wrote. For The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote: "Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he's saying something about America, the joke is on him." Aster was expecting a divisive reaction. But he disputes some of the discourse around Eddington. "I heard one person say it was harder on the left than the right, and I think that's pretty disingenuous," he says. "In the film, one side is kind of annoying and frustrating and hypocritical, and the other side is killing people and destroying lives." For Aster, satirising the left doesn't mean he doesn't share their beliefs. "If there's no self-reflection," he says, "how are we ever going to get out of this?" Aster began writing Eddington in June 2020. He set it in New Mexico, where his family moved when he was 10. Aster wanted to try to capture the disconnect that didn't start with the pandemic but then reached a surreal crescendo. He styled Eddington as a Western with smartphones in place of guns - though there are definitely guns, too. "The dread I was living with suddenly intensified. And to be honest, I've been living with that level of dread ever since," Aster says. "I just wanted to see if I could capture what was in the air." Scripts that dive headlong into politics are far from regular in today's corporate Hollywood. Most studios would be unlikely to distribute a film like Eddington, though A24, the indie powerhouse, has stood behind Aster even after 2023's $35 million Beau Is Afraid struggled at the box office. A24 has shown a willingness to engage with political discord, backing last year's speculative war drama, Civil War. And Aster's screenplay resonated with Phoenix, who had starred in Beau Is Afraid, and with Pascal. In Cannes, Pascal noted that "it's very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this". For Phoenix, Eddington offered clarity and empathy for the pandemic experience. "We were all terrified and we didn't fully understand it. And instead of reaching out to each other in those moments, we kind of became antagonistic toward each other and self-righteous and certain of our position," Phoenix said. "And in some ways it's so obvious: Well, that's not going to be helpful." Since Aster made Eddington - it was shot in 2024 - the second administration of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new political reality that Aster acknowledges would have reshaped his film. "I would have made the movie more obscene," he says. "And I would have made it angrier. I think the film is angry. But I think we're living in a time of total obscenity, beyond anything I've seen." Eddington is designed to be argued over. Even those who find its first half well-observed may recoil at the violent absurdism of its second half. The movie, Aster says, pivots midway and, itself, becomes paranoid and gripped by differing world views. You can almost feel Aster struggling to bring any coherence to his, and our, modern-day Western. But whatever you make of Eddington, you might grant it's vitally important that we have more films like it - movies that don't tiptoe around today in period-film metaphor or avoid it like the plague. Aster, at least, doesn't sound finished with what he started. "I'm feeling very heartbroken about where we are, and totally lost, so I'm looking for ways to go into those feelings but also to challenge them. What can be done?" Aster asks. "Because this is a movie about people who are unreachable to each other and completely siloed off ... a question that kept coming to me was: What would an olive branch look like? How do we find a way to re-engage with each other?"
