Saga The “problem” facing Star Wars

I’d like to see Rey explored more. Will she train more Jedi? If I was her, I’d just take one pupil and avoid the whole school idea. The Rule of Two ought to be co-opted, with no Master slaying. The reason is when the Jedi Order gets to big, troubled ensue.

 

They should make the Expanded Universe canon again. There's so much stuff to tell in live action and animation.

 

The ST was a huge opportunity to expand the story and the lore, but they played it far too safe. However, I believe that Disney will have no choice but to move the franchise on to keep it fresh. It will be a slow progression though!

 

The Star Wars sandbox can never be as expansive and as limitless as the Marvel sandbox.

With Marvel there are an infinite number of hero types, villain types and worlds you can create and explore. When it comes to Star Wars your main hero either has to be a jedi or they're some kind of soldier or mercenary. That's pretty much it. There's nowhere near the same variety.

 

That is completely untrue. Star Wars is as limited or as limitless as the imagination of the storytellers. It can be everything that Marvel is and more, or it can be less.
The only rule that can't be broken is that the stories have to take place in the reality of the GFFA. Any limitations beyond that are imaginary.

 

Star Wars takes place in a galaxy. Galaxies are huge. So many possibilities. I never bought into the idea that Star Wars is limited. That just isn't true.

 

Anything can be aSW sorry—just look at the diversity of storytelling in TCW.

 

The original SW movie laid the foundation for what exists in the SW universe and the types of stories you can tell.

- The world of the jedi, as explored through Luke.
- The world of politics, as explored through Leia.
- The criminal underworld, as explored through Han.

Every single piece of SW media has taken place in one of those corners, albeit with a different character as our tour guide. Either it's a story about one of those things or it's an ensemble cast in which they all intersect. That's pretty much all you can do with Star Wars.

You can't compare that to something like Marvel where each individual hero character is at the center of their own unique world. The world of Iron Man is entirely separate from the world of Doctor Strange. The world of Thor is entirely separate from the world of Spiderman. Each character occupies their own section of the larger universe.

I'm not saying you can't have fun in the SW sandbox, but you can't take the same approach as you would with Marvel.

 

I'm not understanding what you are stating here.

There are Star Wars stories that have not/are not necessarily been limited exclusively to the 3 corners you have dictated. Are they? There is a lot of cross over.

Furthermore, each of the areas you have detailed have huge margins/timeframe/characters that can be explored. Consider the Mortis Arc in Clone Wars. I suppose that would check the you created called "The World of the Jedi", but that's a huge stretch in concept in execution from the foundations laid our by the original film.

Lastly, Star Wars is incredibly character driven. So, while you casually state that each of these corners have "a different character as our tour guide" that makes a huge difference in stories. Each new character opens an entire galaxy of stories, choices, and adventures to be had.

 

Sorry for the swipos. To reiterate,

Anything can be a Star Wars story -- just look at the diversity of storytelling in TCW.

 

Clone Wars opened so many doors to a Galaxy far far away.

 

Sure but how many different ways can you tell the same story over and over? Safe to say that whatever they decide to do with the film franchise moving forward, the hero character will be on some path to becoming a jedi? That they will learn the ways of the force and struggle against the dark side? That it will ultimately culminate in some kind of lightsaber duel against a bad guy in a dark cloak?

Do you have faith that they could possibly do anything different?

 

I'm absolutely certain that they could. It's much less likely that they will, though.

 

At the end of the day Star Wars media is ultimately controlled and distributed by a massive corporation, so unfortunately the primary concern will generally be profit. The safe road is banking on familiar, easy to sell characters and repetitive plots that have worked before. I have faith that some good stories can slip through here and there, but the creative process behind Star Wars is certainly different than it was when Lucas first started working on the original movie. There's a billion-and-one stories you could tell in the SW universe, the problem is that a lot of those stories wouldn't be seen as profitable enough to see the light of day.

 

Isn't Rogue One proof they can do something different and do it very well? Given that it's basically made to be the first half of ANH it's weird to say if felt the most fresh and original - but it really did. All new protagonists, no jedi - just regular people, a war movie - not a hero's journey, no reliance on OT characters outside of cameos (and arguably Tarkin).

I mean there have been 8 movies released since the OT and Rogue One is the only one that doesn't use OT characters in leading roles and one of only 2 that doesn't feature jedi.

Maybe Solo's poor performance scared them off of doing different things, but Rogue One did extremely well financially. It's kind of funny that there's only one actual war movie set in "Star Wars".

 

In some ways, Star Wars is (and has always been) all about telling the same story over and over in different ways. As was said, Rogue One was a departure from the Jedi/Dark side dynamic....yet it still centered heavily on the heroes journey.

All in all, you certainly could certainly stretch the boundaries of Star Wars. No Jedi. No familiar/connected characters. No heroic journey. Is it still Star Wars though? How far is too far? I mean, you could also make a Top Gun movie not centered around Tom Cruise flying jets. ..but, that what people want?

 

Rogue One doesn't feature Vader in a leading role but if you remove him entirely I'm not sure if the movie lands the same. Say what you will about his brief cameo but it's by and large the most talked about and memorable thing from that movie.

It's also an extremely similar movie to ANH. At the end of the day you have a group of rebels banding together and infiltrating an imperial stronghold so that they can stop the death star. There is droid sidekick that is used for comedic effect, there is a Tarkin stand-in as the main villain and it culminates in an epic space battle.

 

I came across this great interview with George that summarizes my thoughts here well.

 

Some of the best TCW episodes were basically genre stories given a Star Wars paint job. For instance Brain Invaders is a mini horror movie with clones and Jedi. Hopefully in the future we get more of this ‘stories set in the Star Wars universe that aren’t necessarily Star Wars stories’ type content.

 

It’s also incredible of you to try and make this “point” by contrasting with the MCU, where some 80% of films are about a smarmy sarcastic man making quips before fighting his equal opposite powers bad guy in front of a giant sky laser beam/CGI train wreck.

 

Disney can do good Star Wars. Rogue One is the proof of it, as well as the last season of The Clone Wars series and The Mandolorian.

However, I think that after The Force Awakens and Rogue One got so successful in 2015 and 2016, the people at Disney and Lucasfilm got so over-confident that things started to derail with The Last Jedi and Solo. Solo was the last spin-off movie we got, and we didn't have any new cinematic movies of Star Wars, or projects, since The Rise of Skywalker. We only got TV series on Disney+ which can also get scrapped after we hear about it, like Rangers of the New Republic or Rogue Squadron... After TFA's box office success in 2015, the ST has been in a downward trend in terms of profit from TFA to TROS. One can argue the same for the PT and OT during their original releases (if we exclude re-releases like the Special Edition in 1997), but for both the PT and OT, after a downward profit at the box-office for both TESB back in 1980 and AOTC in 2002 (especially after the commercial success and profit of ANH and TPM at the box-office), there was an upward trend for both ROTJ in 1983 and ROTS in 2005, since everyone wanted to see the final conclusion of both trilogies. And Disney executives have certainly noticed that, especially after Solo flopped at the box-office. They certainly want to play it really safe, by putting Star Wars only on Disney+ until they can figure out things. But even then, I feel that there are very difficult years ahead for Star Wars, especially after the Kenobi series has been very average, in my opinion, and I felt that they cut a lot of corners and it finally got cheaply made for many aspects...

 

Disney can not do good Star Wars. Lucasfilm can and does, though.

 

Well, not the current Lucasfilm for now...