Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: a new direction

The Rise of Skywalker was released in December of 2019, a little over six months ago, bringing to a close the first Star Wars trilogy under the patronage of Disney.  Since then, the Star Wars franchise has been relatively silent, while the undercurrent of disappointed fans has continued to churn and shows no sign of abating.  It's time to look at the current state of Star Wars and see where we can go from here.

Disney's financial reality

Two things have happened in the last six months to the Star Wars franchise under Disney management.  The Mandalorian was a modest success with all fans back in November/December of 2019, and the limited final season of Clone Wars was released earlier this year, without controversy but also without particular acclaim.  Neither of these are situated in the Sequel Era, and in fact, nothing of note has come out of Star Wars in the Sequel Trilogy era at all.  No movies on the horizon, no TV shows in production, one book, few toys or collectables.  It's been basically silence.

The second thing is that rumors have begun to circulate that Disney is thinking about stepping back from the Sequel Trilogy because it is too divisive.  Disney is not about being edgy and divisive, and Star Wars is not about being edgy and divisive. For another franchise, this tension might have been a marketing boon, but not for the family-oriented, feel-good Star Wars saga.   And Disney, an entertainment company that requires the audience to fill theaters and amusement parks, has been especially hard hit over the past four months with the covid social distancing rules.  They need to start generating money and do it quickly.

Disney's new streaming service has a whole channel dedicated to Star Wars and the Sequels are featured prominently but, again, there's been nothing new there since a handful of Clone Wars episodes dropped.  Season 2 of Mandalorian is set for the  late Fall and a confirmed Obi-wan Kenobi series is supposed to be filming this summer, but with the current public health situation there is the possibility of a delay in the release until at least early 2021.  What this means is that Disney has very little to generate interest, and therefore revenue, on one of the cornerstones of its streaming service.

The bottom line is that the Sequel Trilogy has effectively killed the Star Wars franchise and Disney needs to bring it back to life.  Disney didn't acquire Star Wars to break even or to make a modest profit from a few films and then move on.  They needed the franchise to be another major pillar of their licensed properties, reliably delivering one or two tentpole films every year for the next several decades in much the same way that Marvel has done for them.  They were investing in another consistent revenue stream that would throw off not just movies, but merchandise, theme park tie-ins, video games, and all manner of income generating activities including content for its fledgling streaming service.

Star Wars as Creative Content

The reality is that Lucasfilm has not lived up to the expectations of their corporate overlords.  The Sequels are at present generating nothing; neither revenue, nor, and perhaps more importantly, the intellectual creativity that will carry the stories forward.  And this last is perhaps more damaging to the property as a whole.

The Sequels needed to generate intellectual property.  The Original Trilogy was overflowing with creative content including strong characters like R2-D2,  Princess Leia and even Anakin Skywalker, and iconic images such as the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon, and the AT-AT walkers.  It is this intellectual property that not only produces revenue but also drives the next round of storytelling.  So, while RoS has distinct characters in the form of Rey and Fin, most of the visual content is derived from previous trilogies, and all of the storylines are narrative dead ends. Side characters are particularly weak and few in number.  Lucasfilm finds itself in a narrative wasteland having generated no content that any of its fans were interested in, including broom boy.

What's more,  the current round of movies effectively crushed the existing intellectual property of the franchise by tarnishing the images of Luke, Han, and Leia. By foreclosing on Luke's story and leaving his final memory of a green-milk recluse, these films have limited the marketability of his character.  By making Han a deadbeat dad who left his wife and son and in his senility lost his car in the Walmart parking lot, Lucasfilm has diminished his status as a hyper-competent hero.  Our last images of Princess Leia are as a failed general who was unable to hold together the rebellion she started and ultimately let down all those who followed her.

Disney can't use the young, heroic Luke on posters or future content of any kind without also calling to mind his ignoble ending.  The same is true for Han and Leia, but also by extension every other Original era character.  All the intellectual property that Disney paid $4 billion for has been tossed onto the trash.  And this makes sense from a certain point of view.  Disney/Lucasfilm didn't want to be forever tied to the past, and possibly felt they needed to clean the slate so they could move on.  The problem is that the Sequels didn't seem to move on to any thing new.  They didn't generate the numerous potential plot arcs and concepts that could, themselves, spawn new stories.  This is the real disappointment of the new trilogy - the creative bankruptcy that both killed the old concepts and failed to replace them with story elements of equal potential.

 We aren't, for example, putting together a story with Rose Tico and Poe Dameron, or tracking the revenge/redemption arc of Cpt. Phasma.  I'd be interested to find out what Maz Kanata was up to (one of the few new and innovative characters of Force Awakens) but Zori Bliss or Jannah were given little more than flashes of screen time, not nearly enough to create intrigue or even recognition of any kind. 

This brings Lucasfilm to the predicament they are in now;  instead of launching a new era of Star Wars movies under Disney, the drive to "end the Skywalker saga" has actually killed the Disney era just as it was beginning. Disney is in a financial crisis where they need to draw on their properties to sustain them.  Lucasfilm has only a very few active revenue streams (ex. their streaming service) and the have little new creative content in the pipeline.  What they do have in development builds on George Lucas era material.  Their own trilogy did not fill the creative air with possibilities.


Speculation has it that one-third of the fanbase enjoyed the Sequels, one-third hated them, and one-third were ambivalent.  This cannot be true, however, based on Disney's response to the sequels, which has been to ignore them, and go with Original Trilogy content.  If 2/3rds of their audience either strongly or moderately approved of the Sequels, they would be doubling down on that content and they simply aren't.  If the haters were merely a small vocal minority, Disney would be ignoring the haters instead of ignoring the Sequels as they are actually doing.

Instead, we have creative silence from the story factory, and rumors of finding a way to rewind the Sequels.   Disney must make changes that will re-gain the fans without losing the ones they have retained.  But more importantly, they must find a way to move the story forward creatively.  And they must find a way to move Forward  with the saga.  Looking back to the Old Republic era, or the inter-trilogy era, as they are doing now is fine for a while.

But the most powerful stories can only be written when the creators have a free hand.   When they aren't constrained by endpoints predefined by existing canon.  We already know what happens between Episodes III and IV, so the Obi-wan series can be meaningful but it can't really break new ground.  These side stories won't be the engine that drives the space opera; that requires stories of a grander scale and scope.  This is where the Disney Star Wars era must go now.

Rise of Skywalker - lingering questions

Positives

•  To someone who hated the previous episode, this movie seemed like a total repudiation of everything that happened in The Last Jedi.  All of the decisions that went wrong in that film were put right.
• Specifically, Rey was trained, albeit by Leia.  Rey was finally given an origin story and has parents and ancestors. Rey struggles with the discipline necessary to become a Jedi.  She was, in fact, totally defeated by Kylo Ren until Leia interrupted  Ben's concentration.  At last we see how Kylo represented the dark side ascendant.

Negatives

• Still never fully communicated the state of the Galaxy.  Was the First Order  truly dominating the galaxy, or were they just a limited power.  Had they taken over all of the old Empire holdings, was there anything of the New Republic left?  To me, this seemed like an essential piece of world building that was simply neglected.  In contrast, this is handled very satisfactorily in The Mandalorian. 
•  So, what happened to the First Order?  At the very end, when the emperor was again defeated, what happened to First Order ships scattered around the core worlds busily dominating planets?  Do they collapse, presumably without the cohesion provided by Kylo Ren.  This seems like a very unfinished victory.
• And while we're talking about it, we see Kylo firmly in command of the First Order, when the film opens.  What happened between the death of Snoke and the beginning of this episode?  where was Hux?
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