Ryan Gosling's first Star Wars film arrives with a claim that cuts through the usual franchise noise: Star Wars: Starfighter is introducing a ship that the trailer says is the fastest starfighter ever built. In the closed-door preview at D23 Expo in August, Kade Auberon was tied to a decommissioned G17 Imperial Reaper, and the film framed that machine as the kind of weapon that can outrun everything Star Wars has put on screen for 49 years.
That is why the trailer is already drawing attention. Star Wars has long measured speed in megalight per hour, or MGLT, a unit that dates back to an Industrial Light & Magic reference chart built for Return of the Jedi. Under that yardstick, the new claim is not just colorful dialogue. It is a franchise record, and one that asks fans to compare a fresh ship against the TIE/vn space superiority fighter, also known as the TIE silencer, at 155 MGLT, the TIE dagger at 150 MGLT, and Major Vonreg's TIE Baron at 145 MGLT.
Ryan Gosling helped sell the promise onstage, describing Kade as a guy from the wrong side of the galaxy whose fate is intertwined with the fastest starfighter ever built. The trailer also had Kade say there was a reason for that, which hints that the speed claim is meant to do more than add a number to the franchise ledger. It is a story device, one that turns the ship into the center of the film rather than just another piece of hardware in the background.
Still, the footage itself remains in a gray zone. The trailer was shown to attendees at D23 Expo in August, but it has not been officially released online, even after fan-filmed recordings briefly circulated before Lucasfilm pulled them down. That leaves the record-setting claim hanging on a handful of words and the reactions of people who were there, with no public cut available for viewers to inspect frame by frame.
Star Wars: Starfighter is scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 28, 2027, and the speed claim gives the film an immediate hook long before release. Lucasfilm and Disney have spent seven years telling Star Wars stories almost exclusively on streaming, and this one is shaping up to be among the most unusual theatrical entries of the Disney era. The unanswered question now is not whether the film will use speed as its selling point. It is how the G17 Imperial Reaper earns a record that, at least for now, exists only in a trailer that most of the public still has not seen.
