Photo Credit: [Star Wars: The Force Awakens] Lucasfilm
Don’t be fooled, Star Wars problems are one of time and quantity . And if the franchise can’t figure out what they are and where to go–maybe they should slow it down instead.
Nine, count ’em, nine Star Wars movies in development with no end in the foreseeable future. Even a frigid splash of ice water to the face in the form of Solo: A Star Wars Story’s box office receipts can’t derail this heist train’s quest for corporate profits plunder. But, should Star Wars slow down and rethink its overall strategy?
We live in forward-thinking times, only faster is better, only more is more. But time is a fickle thing whether we are talking about its current state or its passage and Star Wars has been navigating its time for over four decades now.
And, don’t be fooled, the Star Wars problem is one that has to do with time. It’s one where we have a franchise that wants to move forward at a bigger, faster speed with an avalanche of content and, at the same time, resistant to let go of what The Last Jedi promised: the past.
“Let the past die.” Famous words of Kylo Ren, a rich villain filled with complexity or a cyberpunk whiny emo brat depending on which fan you’re asking. But, the words are out in the universe; the franchise’s and the audience’s and they come at a particular point in the film where The Last Jedi already establishes that it’s not just another Star Wars movie.
Photo Credit: [Star Wars: The Last Jedi] Lucasfilm
Splitting a galaxy far, far away right down the middle
The Last Jedi promised to move Star Wars away from the past at the peril of splitting the fandom, but, four months later the franchise gave us Solo: A Star Wars Story. There’s a duality at play here that is worse than the conflict of Ben’s struggle with the light and dark.
Lucasfilm wants to bring Star Wars into the future but can’t escape the shadow of its past–nor does it seem prepared to.
Since its inception, Star Wars has always been armed with a fanatical fanbase even if certain sections of fandom wanted to annihilate the prequels and strip any credentials of George Lucas’ hand as the creator of the universe. But, a huge gap exists between The Return of The Jedi and The Phantom Menace—16 years to be exact.
A lesser gap exists between 2005’s Revenge of The Sith and 2015’s (might as well be 2016) The Force Awakens, and there was a question that always remained after the end of the Holy and Prequel Trilogies: Is this the end of Star Wars?
Of course, we knew the series would always live on in animation, comics and through the written word but Lucas always hinted that it was complete in its cinematic form. So when we got wind more motion picture adventures were on the horizon, it always felt like we were getting something that wasn’t supposed to be given to us.
Now, we know Kathleen Kennedy and cohorts want to supersize and Marvel-ize the cinematic landscape, just as much as every other studio prays to every god and rubs every golden lamp to do the same. Two, three Star Wars movies a year until the sun sucks the earth into its atmosphere and even then, Elon Musk might chuck us up to Mars, so we could get more Star Wars films.
Photo Credit: [Star Wars: The Last Jedi] Lucasfilm
Is nostalgia worth the price we’ll pay?
But with Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Rogue One and the possibility of a Lando, Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi films, Lucasfilm shows that Star Wars may be suffering from another issue with time, its history.
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Is there an actual point to seeing Han’s beginnings when we just got finished watching him get run through by a lightsaber and dumped off a bridge by his own son?
Does a Boba Fett movie prove that he’s more than a suit and not the worst bounty hunter in the galaxy? Probably not.
Stuck in the same forty-year loop, alternate Star Wars media has provided a rich template of history for the franchise to rip from. Maybe more than time, Lucasfilm is having a self-identity crisis, shoehorning Vader and Darth Maul into feature films to keep the social media heads quipping.
Nostalgia and nods can grab a few more dollars but eventually, that feeling wanes until the characters are nothing more than the mummified remains of what easy money used to look like.
Next: Solo Easter eggs bind the galaxy together
The point is, Star Wars doesn’t need to stop making films or money–it needs to evolve and, maybe, slow down. A great movie every three years would help the momentum swell and make it what it once was: special.