After ‘Solo’ bombs, what should be the future of ‘Star Wars?’
By Jack Murphy// Staff Writer
On Oct. 30, 2012, Disney announced that they had acquired Lucasfilm from George Lucas for four billion dollars. Not long after, Disney announced that Kathleen Kennedy would become the new president of Lucasfilm and that there would be a slew of new Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies coming soon. Now, almost six years later, Disney has released four Star Wars films, zero Indiana Jones films, with one in the works, and has now put all future Star Wars Story films on hold for the time being. What happened? How could America’s most popular film franchise of all time be in jeopardy after only less than three years since their first film, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Let’s break down what led to Disney putting the future of Star Wars on hold.
On Dec. 18, 2015, the much-anticipated return of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released in the United States, and it crushed at the box office, cashing in two billion dollars worldwide. One year later, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first of the Star Wars solo films were released, and it too made a massive profit at the box office, earning more than one billion worldwide. Both Episode VII and Rogue One also earned high praise from general moviegoers and Star Wars fans alike. The next film in Disney’s Star War’s trilogy, “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” would release on Dec. 15, 2017, and like the previous two films, it grossed over $1.3 billion at the box office. However, while general audiences were mixed on how they felt about the film, Star War’s fans were incredibly disappointed with the film. Many of the bizarre choices made by writer and director, Rian Johnson, along with the films poor pacing, and near betrayal to what “The Force Awakens” was trying to set up. The hatred that filled die-hard Star Wars fans even caused Kelly Marie Tran, Rose in The Last Jedi, to delete all of her social media accounts just because she had been harassed that badly by Star Wars fan that she deleted all of her accounts to make it stop. With all the animosity coming from Star Wars fans, the next film was only five months later, and it felt the wrath from Star Wars more than Disney ever could’ve imagined.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” aka the Han Solo prequel film began filming in Jan. of 2017, and was supposed to last up to seven months. On June 20, 2017, the original directors of the film Lord and Miller had been let go due to creative differences. Ron Howard took over the film and re-shot, reportedly, seventy percent of it. At the end of production, “Solo” cost a total of nearly three hundred million dollars, and according to sources close to the production, it was the most expensive Star Wars film ever made. The film ended up getting mixed reviews and a terrible box office performance compared to the rest of the Star Wars films, making less than one hundred million dollars opening weekend and two hundred seventy-five million in total worldwide. After this terrible performance, all other films besides Episode IX were stopped until further notice. That’s where we are today, unsure of the future of Star Wars and the future of Lucasfilm as Episode IX begins filming.
So with all that knowledge, what should Disney do? First, in my opinion, Kathleen Kennedy should be fired as the president of Lucasfilm. I don’t want to endorse anyone to be fired from his or her livelihood, but to be honest; she had no plan in order for what to do from one film to another. For being in charge of the biggest film franchise of all time and to go in with no plan and to have so many director troubles, someone else should be in charge of that daunting task because I don’t believe she’s done a good job with the handling of the properties she was put in charge of. Finally, Disney needs to make Star Wars an event that people are excited about again, like how The Force Awakens felt upon release. Now, people are fatigued from Star Wars because all four of the films feel the exact same and they’ve come out in such a short time span. Unlike the Marvel films, in which each film can be either a comedy, espionage, or action thriller and features different heroes and story lines, Star Wars has not evolved past the Skywalkers, Empire, lightsabers and the normal things people have seen ten times now. Unless Disney and Lucasfilm change the direction of Star Wars, the franchise seems to be on the road of becoming creatively stagnant.