After four years, Disney’s take on Star Wars is coming to an end and its overall impact is mixed to say the least; reactions to the final chapter of the Skywalker saga are all over the place and greater reflections on the journey the sequel trilogy has taken are now in full swing. Charting the rise and fall of Star Wars this decade is an extended endeavour, one I’ll be taking on in this post-viewing.
Of course, it all began in October 2012 when filmmaking auteur George Lucas, disgruntled at the backlash over his prequel films, sold the franchise he created to Disney for a total of 4.05 billion dollars. To varying degrees, I can get some enjoyment out of the prequels with Revenge of the Sith being my favourite and The Phantom Menace remaining my least liked mainline entry in the entire franchise. The news of the sale was met with both excitement and scepticism from fans; yet a few years later when Star Wars Episode VII was finally announced, excitement began to build rapidly, just as it had for The Phantom Menace sixteen years prior. With some fantastic trailers and marketing building up the new trilogy of films, we were all eager to see the opening chapter on its release in December 2015. With such lofty expectations and a new company handling production, there was certainly a lot riding on The Force Awakens; luckily, it delivered and then some.
I walked into an IMAX screening with family and took in The Force Awakens; enthralled by the movie, we all loved the new characters, call-backs to the original trilogy and the sheer scale of it all. J.J. Abrams and Disney had succeeded in bringing Star Wars back to the big screen with flying colours. I remember coming out of the cinema feeling a sense of euphoria, a real excitement that Star Wars had returned to brilliance once again. It’s that rare feeling that very few franchises can match. Despite some bemoaning the narrative similarities between it and the original Star Wars from 1977, most audiences had a blast with it. Episode VII would overcome its familiar premise and setup to deliver true excitement for Star Wars again, while also breaking multiple box records and turning in as the highest grossing film of 2015. All eyes were now on Disney to see how they would continue the series and expand on this great starting point; but before they pressed forward, they instead looked to the past for their first feature-length spin-off.
In 2016, we were presented with Rogue One, a prequel showing how the infamous Death Star plans were stolen by the rebellion, an effort by Disney to connect the gaps between films. While not sharing the same towering anticipation as The Force Awakens, Rogue One ended up being arguably the best received entry on Disney’s resume among the fans; with a markedly different tone and a set of connections to both the prequel and original trilogies. The first of Disney’s spin-offs was a war film, one that portrayed the rebels as a downtrodden force desperately trying to rip the empire apart at its foundations. This made up for the lack of character development which became the spin-off’s biggest issue among reviewers. Of course, the moments we all remember are the sequences featuring Darth Vader and the final battle on Scariff, which alternates between ground and space combat in a swift and exhilarating set piece. Director Gareth Edwards did a great job at setting the standard for Star Wars spin-offs, causing many an audience to wonder what planets and characters would be explored next in the expanded cinematic universe. Sadly, the then successful series would take a drastic downturn the following year.
In 2017, the mid-point of the new series, all this good will was met with a gargantuan collapse with two entries; Star Wars Battlefront 2 from DICE and EA and Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi from Rian Johnson. While the former created one of the biggest controversies in gaming history with its horrendous use of loot boxes and monetisation (Not to mentioned expose EA’s utter mishandling of the license), The Last Jedi generated a raging firestorm of backlash that dwarfed just about every other film released this decade. Not since 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull have fans been so vitriolic over a popular franchise. Personally, I looked to avoid the storm of hate as I went to see Episode VIII in December 2017 and I came out with quite a few thoughts spinning in my head. I enjoyed the film for what it was at the time, a production that went in a different direction from what we were all expecting. Rian Johnson was given free rein and therefore presented his vision for the franchise; he’s certainly not a bad director as many have claimed, having directed the underrated Looper and arguably the best episode of Breaking Bad between 2012 and 2013. In retrospect and further examination though, The Last Jedi is a film that I only enjoy partially; perhaps that’s why I never returned to it after one viewing. I’m intrigued by the direction the filmmakers took with Rey, Luke and Kylo, but unfortunately most elements surrounding this narrative are insufficient or pointless. The second act sideshow to a casino planet is a weightless plot thread that goes nowhere and barely connects to the rest of the film; ultimately though, the greater issue is that we really don’t learn anything about Finn, Poe or the other main characters. Instead of expanding on the seeds that were planted in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi drags them along for the ride without expanding their stories. Episode VIII was ultimately a critical and divisive chasm the Disney sequel trilogy would never really recover from.
From that moment on, Disney’s Star Wars was placed on a downward trajectory, a trend personified by 2018’s Solo; a competently made prequel for sure, but one that told a hackneyed and mostly unnecessary story. It remains the weakest of Disney’s offerings for me and at the time, I wasn’t the only one who thought that. Unlike previous releases, Solo holds the dubious honour of being the first and currently only Star Wars production not to break even at the box office, a sure sign that audiences just weren’t interested in this spin-off. Considering its rough production cycle and flimsy attempts to connect the dots between prequel and original timelines, it wasn’t nearly as successful as Disney hoped. All future spin-off films were cancelled as a result of Solo’s disappointing performance, a shame considering the other tales that could have been told. At the time I was hoping for an Obi-Wan story that would see Ewan McGregor return to the role to play out events in between Episodes III and IV; sadly it was not to be as Disney was now too caught up in controversy and course correction to explore those projects.
Only after seeing Episode IX in 2019, did I realise how much Rian Johnson’s contentious vision impacted the sequel trilogy in the long run. It has been revealed that Disney disregarded George Lucas’s proposed sequel scripts and the result ended up being unclear from a filmmaking standpoint. When looking at the sequel trilogy as a whole, it feels as if the middle act is missing and in the end, The Rise of Skywalker was severely diminished by the fallout; it was rumored that Disney and studio head Kathleen Kennedy were in panic mode between 2017 and 2019, struggling to deal with the fallout and writing a final chapter that would work. Fellow critics have defined the Star Wars sequel trilogy as a set of passing batons, rather than a coherent vision; writing this in December 2019, it’s a very fitting analogy. The angrier segments of the Star Wars fanbase were ready to pounce on this final chapter the moment it came out and once again I looked to avoid the blowback. In a remote cinema out in China, I walked in with some optimism that a rousing conclusion could be delivered, only to feel rather deflated when it wrapped up; The Rise of Skywalker offered spectacle for sure, but none of the heart and soul that defined Disney’s 2015 debut. Rather than being its own film that connects coherently to the previous two, Episode IX instead feels like a reactionary entry that felt it had to pull all these elements from other Star Wars flicks without much ingenuity in putting it all together. It’s ironic how the sequel trilogy started off on such a high note and ended in middling territory, the excitement thoroughly dissipating over the last two years. While the finale of the Skywalker saga may still earn some success, there’s no doubt that it’s the least memorable of the new offering.
In conclusion, Disney’s Star Wars had high ambitions but with no roadmap, scrutiny or consistency, things inevitably went downhill. It’s a far cry from what Disney have accomplished with Marvel and Kevin Feige’s leadership. Now that the Star Wars film franchise has wrapped up, the series is set to focus on smaller ventures; despite all the backlash, rage and divided fanbase, there are still entries to get excited about. Just before Episode IX hit theatres, we had both The Mandalorian TV series from Iron Man director Jon Favreau and the video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order from Respawn Entertainment and EA; both entries, mostly unplugged from the main franchise, have been received very positively and are certainly steps in the right direction. Perhaps the franchise’s future lies in more standalone stories throughout the vast galaxy far, far away. Currently a second season of The Mandalorian has been ordered and EA’s hold over the IP in video games will remain in place for the foreseeable future; a current status that holds the fanbase’s excitement at a tentative position. Much like the classic line in A New Hope, Star Wars will always be with us; what form it may take will only be told with time.
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