Please, Let The Sequels Go
Star Wars has been in a creative rut. Recent announcements promise nothing new.
Beating a dead horse, jumping the shark, call it what you want, but the recent Star Wars news has me feeling like the franchise is somehow managing to soar far beyond the fan’s desires while still digging itself deeper into the same, tired, decayed premise. A deep pit that consumes originality like the sarlacc pit consumed and killed Boba Fett. Except, wait, it actually didn’t kill him. Disney needed an iconic character for their first truly creative endeavor in years in The Mandalorian, which itself has become a vacant shell of its former self, its original space-western-samurai identity replaced instead by the content machine Disney leads.
For the uninformed, Star Wars Celebration 2023 brought a slew of releases that have left me beyond tired. It’s hard to expect anything different from what has become such a safe franchise, but announcing Rey’s return in a film supposedly set fifteen years after the sequel trilogy sounds like an abysmal move for the franchise. Again, this article may come off as more of a tirade, but from one Star Wars fan to another, when is it time to start demanding more from the largest media conglomerate in the world?
The sequel trilogy was a feast of great value snacks. Grand, spectacle abound, absolutely delicious in the moment, but hollow and unoriginal to its own detriment. In other words, the sequel trilogy left me feeling queasy. It’s well known by this point the trilogy suffered because of its disorganization leading to a heavy reliance on nostalgia bait and backtracking into the franchises own history. Repetitious story beats, formulaic structures, and nonsensical fan service made for low quality but highly profitable films, which only motivated Disney to double down on the most efficient, and thereby least creative, filmmaking process: steal from the past to avoid addressing the future. While the formula seemed invincible at its inception, some fans have been vocally critical of the franchise’s direction as much as others have gorged on the content. It seems the plights of the vocal minority have been heard by the ones in charge with the miracle of television that is Andor, but the franchise is digging its own grave with these new announcements. Most damning of which: Rey’s follow-up to the sequel trilogy.
A trilogy that, let me remind you, some fans hate with such passion they argue that it should be retconned altogether. That is the basis for Star Wars’ future. The bedrock of what is supposed to continue pleasing the die-hards while bringing in new fans, and convincing those teetering between the two, is a return to a character fans hated. To revisit a story fans hated. Instead of opting for something original, yet again Disney sticks to the same people and plots in a universe that can be literally anything.
Multiple solutions have been raised for how to address the sequel trilogy’s existence as the franchise continues, most bafflingly of all being the fact that making something new isn’t the obvious choice. Some have argued that the sequel trilogy should be retconned to have taken place in an alternate universe. However, this only brushes the issue to the side instead of addressing the root, while simultaneously expanding the universe in ways that will only prove confusing instead of interesting. Will general audiences be able to follow a decades long franchise that tells a story across thousands of years with the addition of shared universes and timelines? I know I wouldn’t have the patience, and I actually like Star Wars.
While I don't think it's smart to completely ditch the trilogy in that fashion, a refresh is certainly overdue. What fans need isn’t a band-aid or a “sorry” note from Disney. They have proven themselves pretty incapable of “fixing” anything, one only needs to look at poorly done CGI, botched character returns like Boba Fett, a lost Mando season 3 for the evidence. Disney Star Wars fails at making returning characters interesting and never opt to make anything new, so all that is left is rehashed ideas and characters limply puppeteering for the audience, all life and passion stripped from the story.
My solution? Just move on. Say goodbye to the Skywalkers, give a salute to the Millenium Falcon, and let go of the past.
What I am proposing is not ignoring the Skywalker saga, but respecting it while moving forward. Create a new saga with new characters. Tell new stories. Show new planets! How are we still seeing the same weapons, alien species, terrain, technology and every other element of worldbuilding in a galaxy with no defined limits in time or space? What I am offering is to use what Lucas created as a base instead of a crutch. It would be a waste and disservice to ignore decades of storytelling history. But it would just as much of a missed opportunity - no - a detriment to the franchise’s existence to rehash that history into meaninglessness. Die-hards claim it would be disrespectful to make a “non-Star Wars Star Wars movie?” I argue that it’s just as cruel to Lucas’ original vision to never advance, build upon, and evolve the creative work he established. Star Wars doesn’t need to be the same every time. In fact, Andor, The Mandalorian season one, and Star Wars Visions have all been successful because they veered from the formula. They proved Star Wars can change, that it can be more than the fun and exciting sci-fi romps of the mainline trilogy. There will always be space for that type of film, but once again, in a universe with no defined limits and a streaming service specifically built for facilitating the growth of that franchise, it is simply a waste to not experiment. What about a Star Wars show set 250,000 years in the future that follows the noir style? Or a truly engaging political drama like the prequels, but now in a star system we’ve never even seen before? I know it feels like the Skywalkers are synonymous with Star Wars, but the only recent successes for the franchise have been those that deviate from that lineage and its tangential elements. Star Wars can be anything, and yet, it chooses to be boring.
This is where, at my own behest, I still find a sparkle of hope in the burning building that is the Star Wars franchise. Alongside the Rey movie, an ancient jedi film helmed by James Mangold set 25,000 years in the past and a television series set 200 years before the prequels were both announced. Now, this seems like a step in the right direction, but I’m cautiously optimistic. No one believed the Disney era of franchise could be truly great until Andor and early The Mandalorian, and these new announcements seem to be exactly what I am asking for, but like I said, Disney doesn’t have the strongest track record. Just because a story is set in the past doesn’t mean Disney won’t reinsert some legacy characters like…Palpatine.
Hm.
We saw how that played out.