Disney Star Wars Should Change Back to its Original Formula, With a Little Difference

Everybody has a take on what went wrong with Star Wars after the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012. Many things, ranging from the storylines chosen, character choices, the eras spoken of, and so much more, were heavily criticized by longtime fans of the franchise. At first, everything was alright, but there were some long-term effects that would take place. Critical and audience reception to the projects that were released had a huge impact on what was to come. The idea was to have a sequel trilogy, accompanied by spin-off movies based on fan favourite characters being released in between the Sequel Trilogy entries. The Sequel Trilogy entries would come every two years and the spin-off movies would come between the releases of the Sequel Trilogy movies. Eventually, of course, this plan failed, and they altered their plans for them to follow something different, and the result is less than impressive to the more die hard fans of the franchise. This article will look into that and explain how Star Wars should change back to its original strategy, but just modify one aspect of it.

The Original Plan

When Lucasfilm was bought by Disney in 2012, the major company’s first announcement was that of a sequel trilogy which would be released, starting from 2015. This got fans excited, and looking forward to the continuation of the beloved story. When the movie was released, there were various other projects which were in the works, but it wasn’t until the widespread praise for The Force Awakens that the plans were really revealed to the public. After The Force Awakens was released, they went back in time in the story and told us how the rebels got the plans to the Death Star in 2016’s Rogue One. This was the first time in history that there were two consecutive years in which a Star Wars movie was released. After the success of Rogue One, Disney convinced audiences that the IP was in perfect hands, and that all changed with the release of 2017’s The Last Jedi. Love it or hate it, that movie divided the Star Wars fanbase and it still has an effect on it today. Solo: A Star Wars Story followed, being released just five months after The Last Jedi, with many stories about behind-the-scenes chaos, as we heard of many directors leaving the project due to creative differences, even after shooting some footage which, by the way, ended up in the final film. The movie, although well-received by critics and those who watched the movie, fared poorly at the box office and became a box-office bomb: the first ever Star Wars project in history to do so. This made Disney reconsider the original plan, as they had spin-off movies based on Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi planned for release sometime after 2019’s third Sequel Trilogy movie. Solo’s box office showed that not everything with the name “Star Wars” attached to it would be immune to failure. Whatever the actual reason for the failure was, that failure was what put a stop to the vast expansion that Lucasfilm was planning. The way that Solo: a Star Wars Story ended, we know that there were definitely sequels in mind, but it didn’t come to fruition.

How They Compromised

As expected, there was still a way to compromise, given the lesson they learned and what they had intended to do. Was it the right lesson? That is up for debate. Was it the best decision they could make? Not entirely a yes, but not entirely a no, either. Their new approach is to focus on live action and animated shows. Since 2019, we have had The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, The Bad Batch, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and will be getting the Skeleton Crew, Ahsoka and the Acolyte. Only recently did Lucasfilm announce that they would be releasing new movies (and the list of canceled movies is far longer than you can imagine.) The most interesting project they have announced is the one about the new Jedi Order which will be founded by Rey. Although the one that has the most fan interest in general is the movie which was said to be culmination of the live action series which branched off from The Mandalorian, the most interesting one is the Rey project, since her character is the source of contentious debate online among fans. Lucasfilm had, for a long time, decided to stay with series, as they were far easier to handle due to their limited release and exposure as compared to movies, but now it looks like they are ready to try their hand at movies once more. Who knows? Maybe they may decide to announce a sequel to Solo: A Star Wars Story to answer all the questions the movie leaves us with, without making us have to read comics or novels, or play video games to find out what happened next.

What they Could do

Lucasfilm had a very good idea regarding what they could do with the release of Star Wars projects. Their plan of releasing a main saga movie every two years was not the best. George Lucas kept his releases every three years. Even when The Clone Wars movie was released, it came out three years after Revenge of the Sith. If Lucasfilm were to follow the 3 years gap for the main saga releases (like these Rey Jedi Order movies), Star Wars releases would definitely feel more like an event, like they used to. If their aim is to continue making spin-off movies, they can, and these spin-off movies can come in the years that the main saga movies aren’t released in. It is similar to what they were doing before, but this new model will give them a little more breathing room between main saga releases for them to properly plan out what will happen in the next installments. Suppose they have a release schedule as follows: Rey movie; Dave Filoni movie; Rogue Squadron; something else…- what if they could follow this schedule, and the movie that follows Rogue Squadron would be the Rey movie sequel? That would be a better release schedule than what they had initially planned out. The key to planning out release schedules shouldn’t be to get as much content out there as possible per se, but to have the right amount of content released at the right time. The release schedule will also rework their live action series as well, and we could have multiple sagas going on at the same time, with equally distant release dates, being every three years. It could lead to a reduction of live action series and bring Star Wars back to the big screen, as it's very expensive to make them anyway, with a limited audience in the case of series. All in all, these are suggestions that we have in order to help them make Star Wars great again. Let series be animated. Keep live action projects as movies.

What do you think? Do you agree with this? Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below: