With all this free time in quarantine, I’ve been thinking a lot about Star Wars. I recently ran into a “video essay” – I guess these are a thing now – about what was wrong with the new Star Wars trilogy. One of the easiest things in this world is to do, by the way, is tear something down. And if there’s a list that ranks “takedownable things,” from easiest to hardest, Star Wars sequels and prequels would be near the top. It takes no brain power to say, “Rose was dumb.” “Rey was a Mary Sue.” “Luke was too cranky.” (all things I’ve said by the way – oops!)
Where you catch all these “video essayists” is when they start offering their own solutions to the Star Wars universe. When they’re forced to create instead of destroy, the Emperor has no clothes. One of this guy’s suggestions for fixing The Force Awakens was to evolve Han Solo instead of making him so similar to Young Han Solo. For example, he said, instead of going into Maz Kanata’s bar with Rey, Han should’ve said he was too tired to walk that far. Yes, because we all saw how well, “I’m getting too old for this” lines worked for Indiana Jones in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Star Wars is in no different of a position than any other idea. IT’S HARDER TO TELL GOOD STORIES THAN IT LOOKS. We all know that. That’s what this site is about. It’s about dissecting storytelling in a way that gives us the best possibility of writing something good. It’s not that Star Wars is out of ideas. Gimme a break. Star Wars is still one of the coolest most expansive properties out there. But you’re not going to come up with six good hours of Star Wars movies writing a script on the fly for three months. Which is what happened when JJ and and Lawrence Kasdan ditched the originally planned sequel scripts and wrote their own.
In that respect, a failed trilogy may be the best thing that could’ve happened to Star Wars. Throw in a pandemic and, all of a sudden, we don’t have a Star Wars movie on the schedule until 2023. That means you have a good year to write a great Star Wars movie and a proper outline for the second and third films in a new trilogy.
Where this story is going to come from, however, is still a mystery. Star Wars has put a lot of time and money into something called Project Luminous, which revealed itself, this year, to be “The High Republic.” The High Republic is a time period 200-400 years before the prequels when the Jedi were at their strongest. The era is supposed to focus on something called “The Great Disaster,” which threw the galaxy into disarray, forcing the Jedis to go out on a bunch of missions to get things back in order.
The High Republic plan is to start all stories out in written and comic-book form. Head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, has been on record saying the problem with trying to make a bunch of Star Wars movies is that Star Wars doesn’t have well-known superheroes who have had 80 years worth of written work behind them, like Marvel. This is her solution to remedy that. Write a bunch of High Republic novels and comic books and see what people gravitate to. The big winners and story ideas will get movie treatments.
There are a couple of things wrong with this approach. First, you’re still going to run into prequel-itis problems. Prequel-itis problems are when you have to limit your creative options due to already established canon. Lucas had to engage in a years-long mental gymnastic obstacle course trying to figure out how to keep Obi-Wan Kenobi away from R2-D2 and C-3PO since, in the original Star Wars movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi has no idea who R2-D2 and C-3PO are.
Going back 400 years keeps you away from plot problems like that. But it doesn’t keep you away from other limitations, such as the fact that there can never be anything during that time that’s more dangerous than the Death Star. And if every threat is smaller than something we’ve already experienced, how big are the stakes going to feel? Also, you can’t introduce any cool new Jedi things because then, why wouldn’t those things still be in play in the later films?
As much as I dislike Rian Johnson’s Star Wars movie, he had the right idea. For his canceled Star Wars trilogy, he wanted to go to some other part of the galaxy or maybe even another galaxy entirely so that he wasn’t beholden to any of this stuff. To truly get the most out of Star Wars, you need to take the handcuffs off. And whatever you do in the past is going to be restricted by the big looming chunks of story in the later Star Wars films.
The other problem is that people don’t care about Star Wars novels and comic books. I know there’s a hardcore sliver of superfans who do. But even major Star Wars fans like myself don’t read those things. They’re all clumsy and goofy and feel like fan fiction. So I don’t know how you’re going to judge whether a novel is “good enough” to make a movie out of. Is the criteria going to be whether the Bantha Lube Podcast gives it five out of five parcec tokens?
Complicating this is that Kennedy has given people like Kevin Feige and Taika Waititi, and even J.D. Dillard if you believe the rumors, Star Wars movies, with no indication of whether they’re going to be directing movies in this new “High Republic” era or they’re going to be doing their own things. Logic would imply they’re one-offs. Or one-offs with trilogy potential. Cause when you want the big names in the business, the price you pay is releasing creative freedom over to them. They get to do their own movie. And if you allow these guys to make whatever movies they want, aren’t you right back where you started? JJ Abrams telling you he doesn’t want to direct the George Lucas conceived idea for Episode 7 and he’s going to do his own thing, thank you very much?
Ever since Disney acquired Lucasfilm, there have been two legit good choices. The first was Rogue One. Saw Gerrera’s mysterious changing hairstyles or not, that idea is still one of the best Star Wars ideas they’ve had. And then The Mandalorian. I can pontificate all evening on the things in that show that drive me bonkers, but Baby Yoda was a genius move. And maybe, just maybe, bringing back Boba Fett in the second season will get me watching again.
So what does this teach us?
Funny enough, it teaches us the same thing screenwriting books have been telling us for years. Give us something familiar, but make it different enough that it feels fresh. Rogue One gave us taking down the Death Star, but with all new characters. The Mandalorian gave us someone who looked like beloved Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett, but he’s a completely different character. It gave us one of the best movie characters in history, but in baby form.
In addition to giving us the same but different, Star Wars needs to reintroduce something that’s been forgotten over the years. They need to make Star Wars mysterious again. That’s the one ingredient I never hear anyone talk about and it was one of the most important ingredients in making the original so beloved. Everything from the Force to lightsabers to the Death Star to someone named Jabba the Hut Han Solo owed money to. There was this mystery behind them that made us want to learn more.
To that end, Star Wars should bring in George Lucas’s idea of the Whills – this idea that there’s something bigger than the Force out there. That there are beings more powerful than Jedi. This is a great starting point to reintroduce mystery into the series again.
I admit it’s not going to solve every problem. You still need to create great characters. And as we’ve seen with all the new Star Wars movies, this remains their Achilles heel. It just goes to show how much of a genius George Lucas was in that he somehow created a dozen iconic characters in a single movie when most writers are lucky to create a single iconic character in their entire career.
These next few years are going to be interesting. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to officially announce a movie because these movies take time and 2023 comes at you a lot faster when you’re a Star Wars production. But I personally can’t wait. I’ve learned to love the drama behind this franchise almost as much as I enjoy the franchise itself. And at least it sounds like I’m getting a Taika Waititi Star Wars movie. JoJo Rabbit is one of the best movies of the decade for me. So that alone will put a smile on my face. As for everything else, we’ll just have to wait and see. :)
