Star Wars: The Force Awakenswas a $2.07 million success story, but it set the franchise up for a massive fail. WhenDisney boughtStar Warsback in 2012, the House of Mouse had a simple plan; to get the franchise back on the big screen again, with alternating anthology and sequel trilogy movies. It was an ambitious plan, not least because Lucasfilm had no development pipeline andGeorge Lucas' sequel trilogy scriptsrisked being as controversial as the prequels themselves.
Star Warsreturned to theaters in 2015 withStar Wars: The Force Awakens, and it’s impossible to overstate how massive a cultural event it felt. The movie grossed a staggeringly impressive $2.07 billion, feeling like a declaration:Star Warsis back, and it’s here to stay. Almost a decade later, though, it’s possible to look back and see thatThe Force Awakensmade several crucial missteps- ones that set the sequel trilogy as a whole up for the controversy Lucasfilm had hoped to avoid.
Why Lucasfilm Played The Nostalgia Card So Heavily With The Force Awakens
There’s a reason The Force Awakens is something of a nostalgia overdose
Disney never had any real intention of making Lucas' sequel trilogy scripts, although sadly Lucas himself doesn’t seem to have gotten the message until one painful meeting that ended with him walking away feeling betrayed. The core problem was that Disney felt Lucas' decisions had proved too divisive after the prequels, and the House of Mouse wanted to make something as universally loved as the OT. As Disney CEO Bob Iger reflected in his biographyThe Ride of a Lifetime:
“In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to [Lucas] to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.’ He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars. We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do.”
What Has George Lucas Really Said About Disney Star Wars?
George Lucas created Star Wars and oversaw the franchise for decades, so what opinions has he shared publicly about Disney’s movies and TV shows?
The sense of OT nostalgia inThe Force Awakenswasn’t an accident, it was a conscious decision - as was the choice to avoid the prequels aesthetic. The problem, though, is that this also said something about the target audience; while it’s true Disney and Lucasfilm wanted to introduce a new generation of viewers toStar Wars, it wasa particulartypeofStar Wars, focused on the things familiar to those who grew up with the OT. It’s no wonder Lucas was disappointed, because the overdose of nostalgia was a step backwards for the franchise as a whole.
J.J. Abrams' “Mystery Box” Storytelling Guaranteed The Trilogy Wouldn’t Work Out
There were far too many unanswered questions
Lucasfilm chose J.J. Abrams to helm the first sequel trilogy movie, and that had consequences; while Abrams brought all his tremendous cinematography skills to the table, he also brought a certain approach to narrative. Abrams is well known for his “mystery box” storytelling, which depends on unanswered questions to keep viewers engaged. He’d cut his teeth onLost, where far more questions were raised than were answered, and he followed the same approach withThe Force Awakens.
Just think about all the questions raised by that first movie: Where did the First Order come from? Who was Snoke, how did he rise to power, and how had he seduced Ben Solo to the dark side? Why did Ben worship his grandfather? Where was Luke Skywalker, why had he exiled himself, and why hadn’t Anakin’s Force Ghost intervened to put Ben right? Who were Rey’s parents, and why was the Falcon on Jakku? There are so many unanswered questions inThe Force Awakens, and it would be almost impossible for the trilogy to resolve them all.
In theory, that’s not a problem;Star Warshas always been a transmedia franchise, and Lucasfilm intended to publish a steady stream of newStar Warsbooksand comics. But these should always be secondary, incidental, adding something to the main story, rather than essential for understanding the movie or resolving arcs viewers have just seen play out on the big screen.Abrams' mystery box approach setStar Warsup to struggle going forward, because there were too many questions to satisfactorily resolve.
Lucasfilm Rushed Production Of The Sequel Trilogy
The studio should have waited to see how The Force Awakens was received
Reading through Iger’s biography, it’s hard not to wince at the irony of the chapter onStar Wars. At one point, he talks at length about the importance of not sticking to arbitrary release dates, explaining whyThe Force Awakensmoved from May 2015 to December of that year. That was the very mistake Lucasfilm made with the sequels as a whole (and, for that matter, with the anthology projectSolo: A Star Wars Story).
Disney was in a rush, and it did real damage to the overarching narrative.
Pre-production onThe Last Jediactually began in September 2015, beforeThe Force Awakenshad even released, although principal photography was subsequently delayed until February 2016 for rewrites. Still, the speed of production meant Abrams' successor Rian Johnson had precious little time to see which of Abrams' many mysteries viewers had resonated with. He had to pick and choose which ones to run with, discarding others, and he had no way of knowing whether he’d chosen the right ones. Disney was in a rush, and it did real damage to the overarching narrative.
The Force Awakens Was A Great Movie, But A Poor Foundation
Lucasfilm’s mistakes set the studio up to fail
All this isn’t to sayThe Force Awakensis a bad movie. It’s not;watchingThe Force Awakensfor the first timeis an unforgettable and thrilling experience. There’s a sense of sheer momentum to the film, with the familiar OT elements reworked into something that feels fresh and new. The characters are engaging, even if they’re ill-defined, and there are pulse-racing action scenes.The Force Awakensis a good movie, and a successful one, grossing $2.07 billion in the worldwide box office.
The problem, though, is that it’s perfectly possible to be a good movie and a poor foundation. This was intended to be the first chapter in theStar Warssequel trilogy, meaning the narrative needed to be told with a lot more care. Many of the sequel trilogy controversies are subtly set up byThe Force Awakens, most notablyThe Last Jedi’s divisive portrayal of Luke Skywalker; Johnson had to think of a story that explained Luke Skywalker’s hermitage while also ensuringhisheroism didn’t overshadow Rey, the sequels' true protagonist.
So many of Hollywood’s current problems flow from, or were exacerbated by,The Force Awakens.
Making matters worse, the overuse of nostalgia had a consequence - not just forStar Wars.The Force Awakensushered in an era of what’s sometimes called “nostalgia porn,” where movies are created simply to evoke the same familiar feelings in viewers that they had when they were children. The problem comes when a franchise then dares to try doing something new, because the originals are seen as sacrosanct, and actual evolution and innovation is rejected. So many of Hollywood’s current problems flow from, or were exacerbated by,The Force Awakens.
The Force Awakens Failed To Learn One Vital Lesson From Lucas
This one decision would have improved the sequel trilogy so much
Hindsight is an exact science, and Iger’s argument inThe Ride of a Lifetimedoes have merit; it’s impossible to overstate how much pressure Disney and Lucasfilm bosses felt they were under. AlthoughStar Warshas grown to love the prequels, they were still poorly-regarded in 2015, and there was a general fear of failing the fandom again. Disney hoped to make something that would be as dearly-loved as the OT, and in so doing to unify the fanbase at last.
This was the core mistake, the problem underpinning everything else that went wrong with theStar Warssequel trilogy. With the benefit of hindsight, there’s a sense of desperation toThe Force Awakens' appeal to nostalgia,a desperate desire to be loved. When later chapters proved as divisive as the prequels (perhaps more), this led Lucasfilm to conduct course-correction after course-correction. This undermined the quality of the trilogy as a whole, making the resolution wholly unsatisfying.
Lucas himself had never been quite so impervious to criticism as he sometimes pretended to be;Lucas dropped midi-chloriansfrom the prequels afterStar Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, recognizing that continuing that particular story would be “self-indulgent.” But, fundamentally, he knew the movies he was making were an expression of himself, and he stuck to as much as he could even in the face of heavy criticism. His successors in Lucasfilm lacked that resolve, and ironically, they wound up with a fanbase even more divided than the one in the early-to-mid 2000s.
There were so many mistakes made during the production of the sequels. Correcting any one of them would have helped - avoiding overplaying the nostalgia card, maybe cutting down on the number of mystery boxes, or spacing the sequels out to give more time for writing. But Disney’s biggest mistake lay in failing to learn from George Lucas himself, failing to stick to their guns, and instead pivoting time and again, desperate to regain the success ofStar Wars: The Force Awakens.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
Cast
Star Wars: The Force Awakens takes place 30 years after the fall of the Galactic Empire. It follows Han Solo and new allies, including Finn and Rey, as they confront the rising threat of Kylo Ren and his army of Stormtroopers while seeking the elusive Luke Skywalker.
