KNIGHT VISIONS

IF DISNEY+ EVER spins off Marvel’s What If…? series into other areas of Disney’s vast entertainment empire, here’s a story pitch they can have for free: what if George Lucas had never fallen in love with the films of Akira Kurosawa when he was a USC film student in the ’60s? We’ll never know for sure, of course, but the legendary Japanese director’s movies – The Hidden Fortress, in particular – were such a big influence on the original Star Wars that there’s a good chance Lucas would never have created his famous galaxy far, far away without them.

Now another new show on Disney+, , is bringing things full circle by giving Japanese anime studios the chance to reimagine Jedi, droids and talking rabbits (more on the latter shortly) from a new perspective. The series of nine shorts has invited top animation talent to tell entirely new outer-space stories – and from what we’ve seen so far, it promises to show a side of we’ve never seen before. Think with added starships.