It Could Be Said #65 How One Mistake By Disney Ruined Star Wars For All
Will tells the multimillionaires at the multinationals where they went wrong...FOR FREE!
To read the first part of our look at the Star Wars Sequels; Did George Lucas Ruin The Star Wars Sequels?, click here and the second part; JJ Abrams vs Rian Johnson In The Fight of The Century!, click here.
Rushing the production of The Force Awakens lead to a film that had all the plotting and characterisation issues we explored in the previous article, but it also meant that it was made before anyone had a clear plan for the subsequent films. There was never a firm understanding established as to how the wider world worked 30 years after the Battle of Endor. Indeed, even after The Rise of Skywalker it’s still shockingly unclear what state the sequels have left the galaxy in, hence Disney gravitating towards telling stories around the time of the original trilogy or the prequels.
This failure to establish a clear plan for the sequels is sometimes defended by highlighting that the previous films had not been meticulously plotted out in advance. But that ignores that those trilogies had in George Lucas a clear creative lead which the sequels lacked. And of course as we covered in our first article he had been so overwhelmed that he used each of his trilogies’ final film to bring things to an abruptly hard end.
Despite Lucas’s struggles being a matter of public record, Disney took the courageous decision to not just release the sequels on a more aggressive schedule but also produce two spin-off movies at the same time. Whereas it had twice taken Lucas six years to release three films, the new Lucasfilm was aiming to release five films in four years. And remember this was a company that basically didn’t exist three years before The Force Awakens was released.
This was a recipe for disaster with the new Lucasfilm running before it had sat down let alone learnt to walk. With the apparent exception of The Last Jedi every film saw its creative team overhauled at varying stages of the project; scripting for The Force Awakens, editing for Rogue One, directing for SOLO, and scripting/directing for what became The Rise of Skywalker. A process that couldn’t reliably deliver a film which aligned with its own initial trailers, was no way to produce a coherent trilogy.
Walk Like Peter Jackson
A danger whenever you play armchair booker is that you use unreality to give the creatives more time, greater resources and fewer constraintmms which inevitably means what they produce is better. Because of course, if their task was easier then they would fulfil it better. QED.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Disney rushing The Force Awakenes into production and committed themselves to a schedule that meant the company could never catch its breath to properly consider the sequels as a whole. Ideally we need to find a way to go faster by first going slower, and to me the obvious template is The Lord of the Rings. Famously, Peter Jackson took the time to prepare all three films together, so that the majority of the trilogy could be filmed in one megashoot that took a year to complete. This ensured that the story of the trilogy had been worked out in advance, that all actors were present to complete all their scenes and that everyone involved was happy the series was greater than the sum of its parts. Even better this approach allowed for the films to be rolled out annually, meaning that the taking a bit more time in pre-production wouldn’t actually delay getting the films out to the public. Disney would themselves use this approach to great success when ending Phase 3 of the MCU with Infinity War and Endgame.
If Lucasfilm had followed this method you’re probably looking at starting filming the sequels towards the end of 2014 or beginning of 2015. That gives you time to pick someone to act as the producer of the trilogy responsible for plotting the key story beats and approving the final scripts. They can establish the writers room that hones the three scripts, ensuring that the characters and scenarios are fully fleshed out, with the trilogy building to a climax that is both satisfying but leaves a natural hook for a fourth trilogy. And the producer can either direct the films themselves or leave that to someone else, as they instead focus on other tasks such as being more hands-on with the editing and marketing. The first film of the new trilogy can then debut Christmas 2016 or May 2017, with the whole trilogy wrapping up no later than May 2019.
An additional benefit of such a schedule is that it means Lucasfilm doesn’t start doing spin-off films, allowing it to focus on the sequels. That creates the space for a proper conversation about whether it would be better to keep spin-off content to television and streaming, to maintain the prestige of the main film brand.
This schedule change would more than anything else solve the problems with the sequels, as even if it was all the same people involved, it would force Lucasfilm to make a decision about who was making the key creative calls and make it obvious from the start that they had stuffed The Force Awakens with characters they didn’t actually have a lot to do with, and stop them just throwing more random characters at the problem in subsequent films.
Some Rules of the Road
The key thing is that there was never only one story that could be told after Return of the Jedi. As we explored in our in our first article there were real problems with trying to restart the story, but it was possible. But between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, Disney blew up the franchise, as they rushed to get films into theatres without thinking about the broader story. And what we have unfortunately lost is the sense that Star Wars is a coherent universe that is larger than the sum of its parts, with a singular narrative that drives the story forward. The sequel trilogy we got in reality could not have been more harmful because it divided the fanbase between the mystery boxes of the first film and false profundities of the second, as well as aggravating the existing divide between original trilogy and prequels fans. It is not a coincidence that since the sequels fans of all striples have stopped speculating about what lies ahead in the franchise’s future, because it really does feel like the franchise has hit a dead end. And that’s a crying shame because after the failure of the prequels, a strong sequel trilogy was really needed to create the permission structure for Star Wars to take more chances with its storytelling and settings.
Maybe next year I’ll lose what passes for my sense of self control and write a full-blown fantasy booking article, but for now let’s establish my three rules for what a successful sequel trilogy needed.
Do Not Soft Reboot A New Hope
The Force Awakens was a fundamentally selfish film, that used every cheap trick in the book to make fans like it, without thought for setting up its sequels nevermind establishing a fully realised world that shoulder content could be set in. There is nothing wrong with the idea of soft reboots per se; they are a sensible compromise between wanting to repeat the same high concept of the original film whilst still retaining legacy characters and history that add marketability and meaning. The problem with applying the concept to Star Wars is that it’s a continuous narrative rather than a franchise such as Jurassic Park or Ghostbusters that exists to recapture the magic of the first film. Not only are the sequels picking up the story in a very different place to where A New Hope begins, but Empire Strikes Back profoundly changed our understanding of the characters and how they interact.
Have Something To Say About The Force
If JJ Abrams answered the wrong question well, then Rian Johnson answered the right question poorly with The Last Jedi threatening to say something meaningful about The Force but ultimately failing to do so. But Johnson was right to believe that the sequels needed to say something unique about The Force that moves our understanding of the Star Wars universe forward. George Lucas initially planned to further explore his biological understanding of The Force by introducing The Whills as the microorganisms that controlled the universe and fed on it. I personally think exploring the popular Expanded Universe idea of a “Grey Jedi”, people who blend the Light and Dark Side of The Force, would align quite well with the romance between Rey & Kylo Ren. Likewise you could explore what it means for the dead Jedi to still be living on the astral plane and whether that means they could be restored. Whatever story you pick, the trilogy has to have something distinctive to say about The Force if its not to feel like a repeat of The Return of the Jedi in us being asked to celebrate the defeat of The Dark Side by a underdog neophyte.
Set Up A Fourth Trilogy
An oddity of Disney’s plan for Star Wars is that whilst throwing out all George Lucas’s ideas for the sequels they seemed wedded to his idea that this would be the final trilogy. But that makes no sense given the sequels would inevitably introduce a new cast of characters who could appear in future stories; look how long Marvel ties actors to their films in comparison.
Indeed, keeping in mind a fourth trilogy makes it easier to manage the third one, because you can slowly introduce the new cast, safe in the knowledge that their stories will continue long after the legacy cast have been written out. Furthermore thinking about what films will come after the sequel trilogy should provide greater discipline to those involved in the story; this is not just about getting through these movies but leaving the franchise in a place where it has a clear story to tell in the future. For instance it could be as simple as establishing Poe and Finn as the leaders of the military side of the Republic in preparation for them to clash across Episodes X to XII with Rey and Kylo Ren.
Final Thoughts
That best evidnece for the sequel trilogy being mismanaged is that we’ve not had a Star Wars film since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. The franchise will return to cinemas next year with what is effecitively the series finale of the Mandalorian as Disney hopes Pedro Pascal, Baby Yoda and Jon Favreau can help kickstart a new slate of films. At the same time their sister company in Marvel is trying to revive its fortunes by rushing Doomsday and Secret Wars into production with both films having started filming less than a year after the company confirmed it had abandon their previous plans for the Avengers to fight Kang the Conqueror. Lucasfilm may be trying to learn the lessons about where it went wrong but Disney still seems determined to rush key projects.