Only Grand Admiral Thrawn can save the Star Wars franchise
By Ben Wieland
With Solo: A Star Wars Story taking a nose-dive at the Box office, only Grand Admiral Thrawn can save the Star Wars franchise.
It’s an understatement to say that the newest Star Wars installment, Solo: A Star Wars Story, bombed at the Box office. The movie is set to earn 209 million dollars in domestic gross – the same revenue earned by The Empire Strikes Back, a film released thirty-eight years earlier. There are two huge problems that Solo ran into; Star Wars fatigue and overused characters. Grand Admiral Thrawn can solve both problems and make Star Wars great again.
One of the core problems at the heart of Solo’s failure was Star Wars fatigue. Up until the release of Solo, Disney had made the wise decision only to release Star Wars films in December and to release only one film per year. Solo eschewed both of the Mouse’s traditions and paid the price.
The film, an origin story for the already-fleshed-out Han Solo, was released less than six months after The Last Jedi. The origin story was also released in May, rather than the classic December, and the movie also ran into the behemoth that was Avengers: Infinity War.
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Even before the mediocre Han Solo film hit theaters, any objective Star Wars fan would’ve said: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
The second key to Solo’s failure was its inability to bring anything new to an old character. Casual moviegoers don’t feel the need to watch an origin story for an already-established character, and hardcore Star Wars fans who have already read tomes of literature in the Expanded Universe know all there is to know about a straightforward character.
Disney should’ve anticipated that moviegoers would prefer either an original story, like Rogue One, or perhaps another addition to the Skywalker space soap opera.
The one thing nobody asked for was a rehashing of a character from the original trilogy – but Disney refuses to heed this warning, trudging onward on pushing a Boba Fett film into production.
So how can the Mouse prevent Star Wars’ skid?
Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Photo Credit: [Star Wars Rebels] LucasfilmThrawn solves all of Disney’s problems. Disney can simply take two years between December releases for the main trilogy, and start a spinoff trilogy with Grand Admiral Thrawn. This trilogy can take place in the thirty years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Pull some core characters from Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn novels, and adjust the trilogy’s storyline to fit into the broader Star Wars universe.
Not only does Thrawn maintain the newfound tradition of yearly December releases, but he also breaks the general public’s Star Wars fatigue. Thrawn plays the part of a non-Force-sensitive villain, an entirely new character, and also becomes a worthy adversary for our Star Wars heroes. He launches an entirely new line of marketing and merchandise and brings billions into the House of Mouse.
Next: Will the Grand Admiral himself be in Episode IX?
Yet, Disney continues to make origin stories for characters from the original trilogy. The Boba Fett movie, possibly followed by an Obi-Wan film, will bomb. And so will all of these boring recycled characters. Star Wars needs a new story with pep and flair – and Thrawn, as always, awaits.
Mickey, what are you waiting for?