A friend recently shared a story about her seven year old daughter that perfectly sums up where Star Wars currently finds itself. And where its going.
Already a pretty big Star Wars fan, said daughter had even cosplayed at a number of fundraisers and other events with the local chapter of the 501st Legion. So her parents naturally made sure they had plenty of age appropriate Star Wars literature during lockdown. But she noticed the glaring absence of any female characters halfway through her first activity book. And she made her feelings on the matter well known, announcing to the entire room (and at the top of her lungs) that “Star Wars should know that there are plenty of girls who like it too and not just boys!”
We’ll come back to that a little later.
When Disney made Rise of Skywalker available on DisneyPlus last year, it officially put the Skywalker Saga to rest. Star Wars Day of 2020 may wind up representing the most pivotal moment in the franchise’s modern history as a result.
Given the size and passion of the Star Wars fanbase, Disney likely underestimated the uphill battle it faced relaunching the franchise. The House of the Mouse seemed to have a solid plan in place; use the first movie to shake the dust off and honour both its past and its fanbase. Once that was done, use a fresh direction with new characters to modernize Star Wars and expand the fanbase to include people born after 1985. And it looked like it might work.
At first.
The Force Awakens was essentially a love letter to the original, hardcore fans. While it introduced new characters, it took great pains to bring as many of the originals back as possible and the story was essentially a carbon copy of A New Hope. The more than two billion dollars it grossed world wide was an encouraging sign. Then the wheels fell off.
After Disney made their overture to the first generation of fans, they tried moving Star Wars in a different creative direction to attract a new generation of followers. This space first wrote about that idea when The Last Jedi faced enormous and seething fan backlash (and this space also got a little bit of a social media ass kicking of its own as a result).
Long story short, much of the original fandom turned on the franchise with a rabid contempt. People who had cheered the return of Star Wars were now passionately rooting for it to fail and actively seeking to sabotage it. Disney quickly tried to course correct, taking a more conservative, fan friendly approach to the trilogy’s third and final entry. All that really did was dilute it further, undermine some of the characters and their actors (Kelly Tran) and result in a giant meh from fans across the board. Rise of Skywalker enjoyed a tepid reception and was the lowest grossing of the three Disney movies (though it still joined the billion dollar club).
But now the sequel trilogy has been laid to rest. In fact the entirety of Star Wars to this point has been. The original characters have been honoured and many of the new ones retired. But don’t think Star Wars has been buried. Quite the contrary. There’s still plenty of life left in those bones from a galaxy far, far away and with the prequel trilogy out of the way, the franchise is now unshackled to play in what ever sandbox it wants.
The truth is Disney had to do a sequel trilogy. If you think the outcry following The Last Jedi was loud, it would have been beyond deafening if Disney hadn’t done any more movies featuring Luke, Leia and the rest of the gang right of the gate. A sequel trilogy was practically an obligation. But now that obligation is out of the way they have a blank canvas to work with.
And the franchise no shortage of new tools at its disposal.
Star Wars has never been restricted solely to the Silver Screen. It’s always had a strong presence in books and comics and more than a few top notch video games. But it never had the multi-media potential it does today and Disney is leveraging all of its assets to attract the new fans necessary to keep the franchise going for another four decades while also throwing the die-hard originals some tasty bones along the way.
Look no further than The Mandalorian for proof. Adored by millions of fans worldwide, Star War’s award winning first entry in the streaming wars has been a smash success. It’s success sets the bar for other DisneyPlus shows . In just two seasons it has rehabilitated Star Wars bruised reputation, reintroduced fan favourite Bobba Fett and launched three additional streaming shows. It has become such a cultural phenomenon that it has attracted top notch talent to guest star. Can any other show in the history of entertainment boast a guest list that includes the likes of Timothy Olyphant, Rosario Dawson, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Sackoff, Ming-Na Wen, Werner Herzog, Mark Boone Jenner, Clancy Brown and Bill Burr among a tonne of others? Even the show’s director chair has become a revolving door of marque talent with Hollywood resumes.
And if you’re Disney, you’ve got to be thrilled by the fact that the fanbase the show attracted not only included the die-hards it was meant to appeal to, but plenty of newbies as well (having an uber-adorable Baby Yoda didn’t hurt).
And that’s the point. Disney’s biggest mistake with the prequel trilogy was thinking it could appease old fans while appealing to new ones at the same time. Star Wars is over forty years old and the 1977 might as well be an alien planet compared to today. Absolutely everything has changed, right down to the food we eat and the air we breath. The truth is that what enamoured and enchanted fans in the 1970’s often doesn’t today. And that’s fine.
Because today Star Wars exists in that rare place where it can be different things to different people. Disney has both the tools and the resources to allow different voices to be heard and different stories to be told. To allow it to be all those different things at once.
There will still be plenty of stuff for fans whose loyalty stretches all the way back to the days of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. But there’s also plenty of stuff for fans just discovering the franchise as well. New shows and movies with new heroes and adventures for new fans. Fans like my friend’s daughter, for instance.
And make no mistake, Disney is aggressively cultivating a new fanbase. Between the new stuff coming down the DisneyPlus pike (including todays’ release of The Bad Batch) to it’s new High Republic publishing initiative, Disney is making a highly co-ordinated pitch to a new generation of fans.
The trick for chief Star Wars gatekeeper Kathleen Kennedy (who takes an enormous amount of flak for the franchise’s failures but never gets a speck of credit for it’s successes) is to make sure the creative architects in charge of Star Wars’ are the right people for the job. John Favreau (who is also one of the Founding Fathers of the MCU) and Dave Filoni have already proven to be well worth their paycheques. Now Kennedy has to make sure that every branch of the growing Star Wars family tree has an equally creative mind in charge.
And after that, the challenge will be to stay out of their way while preventing them from tripping over each other. And she has a perfect tutor for that job in MCU head honcho and fellow Disney executive Kevin Feige. It won’t be easy and every day will probably feel like they’re walking a tightrope. And don’t forget there will be a lot of people eagerly hoping to see Star Wars stumble (it’s a little disturbing to see how many people genuinely hate Kennedy). But while it’s made it’s share of mistakes, there’s a reason Disney is the biggest entertainment company on the planet. If anyone can pull it off, it’s the house Mickey built.
What’s truly fascinating is that after twenty something blockbusters, Marvel is using DisneyPlus to compliment and expand it’s shared cinematic universe. Star Wars meanwhile is using DisneyPlus to re-establish the franchise from the ground up with a shared streaming universe. And for the foreseeable future, it looks like the movies will compliment the streaming screen.
The original fans have to realize that the franchise no longer belongs to them. And the newer fans have to realize it would be recklessly cruel and insulting if Disney ignored the people who have given years of loyalty and mountains of consumer dollars to the franchise. Star Wars is a big roller coaster now-bigger than its ever been-and there’s plenty of room for everyone to ride as long as they respect one another. Because soon there will be something for everyone.
Star Wars isn’t going anywhere. Despite the speed bumps and the headaches, Disney has made back the fortune it paid George Lucas for the franchise. The future is now and it’s just going to get bigger and bigger. Disney made some mistakes with its sequel trilogy (which it hopefully learned from) but is charging ahead fearlessly into exciting new territory. And for that fans should be grateful.
With the Skywalker Saga safely in the rearview mirror, Star Wars is no longer shackled by yesterday. It may be mining the mythology’s past for content, but it no longer needs to gingerly tip toe around the epic tale begun over four decades ago in a different world. It will be fun seeing what surprises they have in store for fans, new and old alike.
Star Wars is dead. Long live Star Wars.
Image via www.attractionsmagazine.com
