Discussion Should future Anthology films be event-based or character-based?

When comparing Rogue One and Solo and thinking of the reasons why the former did much better than the latter at the box office, one thing that came to mind was that while one was based off an event (the stealing of the Death Star plans), the other was based around a pre-established character (Han Solo). To keep things brief, my theory is that general audiences respond better to event-based films than character-based ones, and I wanted to ask you guys whether you think that had to do with R1's success and Solo's failure (box-office wise). And should Lucasfilm make more character-based films in the future, perhaps learning from Solo's mistakes, or do these kinds of movies fundamentally not have the kind of mass-appeal that an event-based film like R1 has been shown to have?

 

If they are going to have a Kenobi movie and a Solo movie and a Fett movie, then they need to be character based and with budgets about half their current size. Focus on a few characters and then have the backdrop for these character driven smaller films be epic. It would also open them up to play with the formula a bit and take more risks. As it is now with these massive budgets, they will only be Saga-lite films lacking any real connectivity aside from....the characters. Might as well focus on that.

 

I would prefer for them to be character based, but looking at the reception of Rogue One vs. Solo I think general audiences profer event based. Frankly, I think Lucasfilm would be better off focusing entirely on Johnson’s trilogy and Beioff & Weiss’ series, having two running storylines with their own cast of characters and timelines for audiences to invest in and alternating them every other year.

 

I agree. I think the Anthologies might be better suited as smaller one off tv mini series or event productions. Give each one GOT size budgets and hire the new and up and coming directors to cut their teeth on.

 

I like this idea A LOT. In fact since Disney is creating its own streaming service, they could make “A Star Wars Story” a seasonal anthology series, with each season focusing on either one character (Solo, Kenobi, Fett, Yoda, etc.) or an event (the obtaining of the Death Star plans, the Battle of Tanaab, the bounty hunter on Ord Mantell, etc.). Or, have character driven stories for the streaming series but event driven stories for theatrical films. I would think either one could work.


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A tv mini-series was always something I thought made sense as well. A 10-parter like Band of Brothers - not in style but in production-values and overall quality - would be a great way to tell a story without getting bogged down in too many scripts or losing the focus.

Come to think of it, it would be a perfect fit for something like KOTOR. One or two movies would have a tough time covering that storyline in detail, but a mini-series would give you all the time that is needed to deal with all the planets without just glossing them over. Also giving more time for character development and bonding of the team.

 

To echo what someone said in another thread: If the Obi-wan movie is basically just about a middle aged/old man in a desert who does stuff while stalking a young boy to make sure hes safe... I think itd be a receipe for a similar scenario to Solo. And that scenario would be general audiences being apathetic towards seeing it (even if its what fans consider to be 'a good film'). And the film needs the general audience interest to hit it off, unless they seriously deflate the budget.

With that said, I do fantastise about a "Young Leia adventures" character driven anthology series. I think the character of Leia (highly dependent on casting) could pull it off better than a char-driven ObiWan film. But it might be too soon for audiences to accept.

 

I think after Kenobi and Fett, the spinoffs should revert back to event-based ideas. The premise for Rogue One was ingenious, and that's the kind of fleshing-out-the-universe stuff I'd like to see more of.

 

Exactly, and I think that really got missed in all of this recent silliness in SW fandom- R1 had a plot that was much more engaging to the GA then Solo, and that really needs to be the standard for expensive Anthology movies. Solo is the kind of thing that is exciting to fans, but not so much to (far more numerous) GA members. They were like, "Solo, ummm... isn't that the guy that just died? What do we care about a movie with him?"

I think it has to do with what the movie offers in terms of a hook. In a back story, the character IS the hook, and the GA aren't necessarily into SW characters alone. As I've said before, SW is different than other franchises in that there isn't a central character that represents the movies all alone- Batman is all about Batman, Bond is all about Bond, but SW is not that way- it presents a multitude of characters that share the spotlight. That makes it harder to make big movies out of one character. You need another hook in SW movies.

 

I half agree. The problem is that I believe character-based films like Solo can also work wonderfully in fleshing our characters. I loved that movie, almost as much as I loved Rogue One. They both work in different ways. Rogue One fleshes out a piece of the Rebellion's history, and Solo fleshes out a piece of a famous Rebel's history.

But where I agree with you is that the character-based stories, like Solo, MUST cost less to make than the event-based ones. Because IMO, they are likely to make less money overall.

So make tighter character-based stories and go a little more epic with the event-based ones. That's a solid strategy.

 

Yeah, less expensive movies or put them on TV for the characters. Those are both feasible.

I agree that they are enjoyable; I like all of the movies. I was just talking about making the franchise work with the GA when you spend a lot of money.

 

how about both?

 

I agree and it is likely we will get both anyways.

 

Event-based. The stories themselves should have compelling characters and strong character arcs - that's just basic storytelling, but the marketing hook or the premise should be an event - the seemingly impossible dilemma that the protagonists must overcome or a promise to unveil a startling mystery about the GFFA.

I have two objections to the character-based positioning that the anthologies (and even worse, the comics) have been doing:

- Inevitably, they're going to center on the already established characters. Which usually means prequels. Which means the prospect is already a walking corpse from the start since we know where that character ends up. Most of the really popular characters have already been well developed in their formative stories. There's not much room to expand our knowledge of that character or develop him in new ways (I am strongly, strongly against an Obi-Wan standalone for that very reason.) Or worse, plenty of room to mishandle that character. Established character come with a lot of fan expectations and head canon attached to it.

- It foster a "prima donna" atmosphere where fans of the "elite" characters keep getting more and more of the goodies while fans of less well known characters just get more resentful. It further fuels fan division at a time when the fandom needs it the least.

Events are more inclusive in terms of audience appeal. Better so if it's an event whose outcome we don't already know, unless it's to tell it from a completely different perspective (I don't mean just from another set of rebels, but a completely different emotional perspective, like that of an Imperial. The novel Lost Stars did that winningly.) I'm not particularly a big fan of Rogue One but at least, I found its premise compelling enough to see it once in the theater while Solo simultaneously left me apathetic with its prequel-lock and repelled by how nakedly calculated and corporate the decision was to make a Han Solo movie at all. It was the most depressingly lazy and predictable exploitation move they could make. I don't see how you get out of that pit when character-based hooks are used - no one's going to build a hook around an unknown. With event-based hooks, there's much less center of gravity pulling you towards a limited (and dwindling) selection of prima donnas. You have much more freedom to tell a story that's compelling its own right with fresh new characters that have fully realized arcs of their own.

 

Good article on the subject. I agree with a lot in this article. Solo was good, but not much of a hook in it for the GA.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-spinoffs-canceled-reason-lucasfilm-mistake/

Rogue One is still, by nearly all metrics, a good film.

Crucially, though, it's also a story immediately worth telling. The Rebels' first victory against the Empire, the band who stole the Death Star plans, and how Princess Leia escaped with them has been on Star Wars fans' minds since the first movie's opening crawl, and indeed was retold many times in the pre-Disney Legends. Rogue One was a key piece of Star Wars history that connected directly to the main episodes yet had characters and themes that existed in isolation from them.

Contrast to Solo, which told us that the word "solo" means "solo". The film's goal is abstract and self-explanatory - how did Han become who he is - and so lacks the same information hook. There's plenty of things that must have happened in his past, yet do any of them warrant genuine curiosity? That question has double the weight given how Disney were never quite sure where to go with it; the biggest "reveal" that got the project green-lit was how where the Solo name came from, and behind-the-scenes concept art reveal an ever-changing story. That the Kasdans and Ron Howard delivered a worthy story in the end - Alden Ehrenreich's battle with idealism is a worthy precursor to Harrison Ford's stoic entrance in the original trilogy - is certainly impressive, but did little to redeem the pitch to many audiences.

If you look at the projects that were often rumored, they're very much in the Solo camp: films where the sell is simply seeing more of a character. Fans may have been clamoring for Millie Bobby Brown, but a Young Leia film would be more of Solo, as would the long-desired Obi-Wan Kenobi. One of the most advanced projects was Boba Fett, a character with a strong legacy thanks to merchandise that leaves minimal interest of what lies behind the mask; something the prequels did to mixed results. The same goes for oft-rumored Yoda and Jabba the Hutt: a crime movie could work but the question of why start with a character who's done after the opening act of an otherwise unrelated film is strange. All of these movies fit a clear brand desire, but none instinctively have a quality hook.

However, a film about the early Rebellion struggling with peaceful resistance (that includes Leia)? A Tatooine crime western that sees Obi-Wan brush up with Jabba? Or an amoral bounty hunter cabal involving Boba Fett? Immediately, they all have a purpose before even trying to connect them into any greater narrative. The focus on character over placement may come from the fact we tend to hear about these projects in the early stage when they're little more than a handful of ideas, but the fact that what could have been an ensemble movie about a gang of criminals attempting to break from the underworld during the Empire's height was neglected for the linear character focus of Solo suggests not. The dominant thinking seemed to be "make a movie about someone people like and we'll fill in the blanks later", rather than "make a movie audiences actually will want to see, then figure out which brand ambassador to feature".

 

Event based.

I can tell you that for me personally, if all the Anthologies become "Insert Previously Established Character (most likely from the OT) Here: A Star Wars Story", they will lose my interest as a fan and audience member.

 

^ Good article. I agree if they're going to go with character based stories then they need to have either a stronger narrative hook than something like Solo has or they need to loop the character into events that allow them to showcase the sort of high spectacle action pieces that can sell a movie as "must see theater experience" for broader general audience appeal. I think that is ultimately what gave Rogue One an edge over Solo in that regard (GA appeal).

Though I'm not fully on board with what it is calling stronger narrative appeal. They seem to be just taking multiple individual characters and mashing them together into individual movies. I don't think that by itself will solve the problem when you're still playing inside of these little narrative gaps in the established canon that don't seem to be strongly relevant to the franchise's main storyline (currently the ST). They can still make those sorts of movies of course just with smaller budgets and the willingness to accept smaller BO totals as the norm with an occasional break out smash.

 

That depends, I go for both just as long as they do them right and not mediocre.

 

I would like more event movies, specifically battles/skirmishes we've heard but never seen on screen like Rogue One was.

Imagine a movie about the battle of Jakku, or some battle in the clone wars. Or some early engagements between the first order and resistance.

Let's face it, one of the bigger draws to star wars (and there are many draws), are the big action set pieces, especially epic battle scenes. This is something Solo was kind of lacking, as well as TLJ considering how long it was.

 

A miniseries or a American Horror Story like thing but with new cast each season.I would like one about the force wars or some new take on it with a Xendor and Ardyn with the Legions of Lettow.

Star Wars,The Forgotten History or Tales of Star Wars,some thing like that.

 

Split the difference - event-based stories with some established characters. I'm being a little facetious, but Rogue One did have a good dose of Vader and Tarkin.

I like the idea of saving the specific character stories as a TV movie or a mini-series/limited-run series on the Disney streaming service.

 

Event based. Rogue One worked because it revolved around a singular event. It felt confined and intimate. Solo was incredibly disjointed at times, plot wise and tone wise, because it covered far too many things in its 2 hour runtime.

 

I think LFL had been planning for a mix for the Anthology movies; event-based for movies like Rogue One, and character-based for movies like Solo, Kenobi, or Boba Fett. However, after the results of Solo, I don't think they'll be very likely to continue that character-based model. Even though Solo's main problems were probably lack of marketing and its release timeframe, I think they might have drawn conclusions about what they think general audiences might want to see.

Having said that, though, I wouldn't even be surprised if the Anthology category as a whole might have been reassessed going forward, and that movies like the Benioff Weiss movies might take its place, in effect.

 

I've been wondering what exactly could the next event film be and I think I have a cool idea. What about the Battle of Taanab? It's something Lando just mentions briefly and as far as I know hasn't really been covered at all in the new canon.

It's something they could build up to with the Anthology films. In Solo we're introduced to the Crimson Dawn syndicate which clearly wields massive power and influence in the galaxy if Drydan is able to kill an Imperial governor without any repercussions. So we already have something that could serve as the big threatening institution that our underworld heroes would have to overcome. We even have the perfect big bad as their ultimate leader. Maul!

So they could continue to build them up in movies like Boba Fett, Lando, the Han Solo sequel and even Kenobi and then do the big cross over film where they have to unite to defeat Crimson Dawn at the Battle of Taanab. They could even bring back Enfys Nest and the Cloud Riders to help them out. And since none of the regular heroes are going to be able to defeat Maul on their own (unless Qi'ra is Force sensitive and is trained by Maul which I think could be possible) have Obi-Wan be the one to defeat him without interacting with the other characters. Then that could be why Maul is stranded on Malachor in Rebels.

So basically it would be the underworld version of Rogue One.