Star Wars doesn’t need ‘fixing’

Star Wars, like most mega-franchises in the pop culture landscape, has flaws. With dozens of directors, producers, writers, and executives all telling different stories within the same universe, there are always going to be narratives that miss their mark. Characters who don’t resonate with certain audiences. Choices that feel cheap or poorly executed.

But just because Star Wars doesn’t always get it right doesn’t mean someone needs to come in and “fix” it.

Since Star Wars began in the back half of the 1970s, it has evolved from a story about the good guys beating the bad guys in a war to a series of complex, diverse narratives that maintain the heart of Star Wars while paving the way for new perspectives on centuries-old ideas. People who never saw themselves in a Star Wars movie are seeing themselves now. Some of them are even telling official Star Wars stories of their own. What’s so broken about that?

Where did this idea come from, that Star Wars at its beginning was not only the best it’s ever been but can also never be better than it was over 40 years ago? Star Wars shouldn’t just change, it must change. If a franchise’s storytelling does not evolve as it grows, it will die. The majority of fans are tired of the same old stories retold time and again, no matter how persistently the loud minority tries to protest.

Is Star Wars perfect? Absolutely not. Incorporating meaningful representation of marginalized voices into a franchise that’s been around since the 1970s has been a painfully gradual process, but even small progress is still progress. The creators behind these stories are going to make mistakes. People are going to be vocal about them with the hope of seeing more change as new stories are told.

But that’s not the kind of “fixing” so much of the loud minority keeps yelling about. Tweet after tweet tries to point out complaints about “bad storytelling,” about how a fan’s favorite legacy character “isn’t acting like themselves.” To them, Star Wars is broken because “it’s not the way I would have written it.”

There’s nothing so wrong with Star Wars that going back to the same 1977 story framework is the only way to make it better. Progress is about moving forward, only looking backward as a model for what to improve upon, never as a way to showcase how things should be done. THAT is the error in thinking here. It wasn’t better before. It’s just different. It will get better because it will continue to change. If that’s not what you want, then find another universe of stories to occupy your time.

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