The best way to fix the Star Wars movie franchise is to make it cheaper

Star Wars has a steady stream of new material and merchandising opportunities that are profitable, such as the Star Wars merchandise. Video Games, Novels, ComicsAnd Animations. But the film and TV side of Star Wars feels like it’s struggling. Disney repeatedly has been praised for its Star Wars films over the last five years. Plans announcedPlease see the following: New moviesThen, These were abruptly canceledOr just keep them Still, silently backburnered. Disney Plus’ recent Star Wars live-action shows keep Promising new directionsFor the franchiseReverse Mixing messages. There’s no clear vision or coherent narrative direction for the screen versions of the franchise, even though they’re the most visible and mainstream part of Star Wars. Everyone seems to desire something else from this sprawling, grand story.

So Polygon is gathering some thoughts about the franchise’s future under the loose banner of What We Want From Star Wars. These opinion essays lay out what we love about the Star Wars universe, and where we hope it’ll go in the future … or a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars’ transformation is ongoing. Disney’s slate of films and TV events are straddling the gap between the auteur-driven hero’s journey and a fully franchised system of blockbusters. Some installments seem to be doing well. Others have, let’s say, growing pains.

Disney’s newest Star Wars movie trilogy isn’t tentpoles so much as the actual tent that most of modern Star Wars content can shelter in. Those films are divisive — a word that undersells one of the touchiest fan conflagrations of the online era, a conflict that drove Lucasfilm into a hiatus of consideration. This controversy spread to include Numerous things, but was rooted in competing interpretations of exactly what defines “a Star Wars story.” Is it the characters we know? What are the places that we know? It is the philosophy. It is the morality. What is the meaning of this morality?

Star Wars has to try new things. This question could have many answers. But how does a $300 million production that’s expected to make back three to four times its budget both reach for four-quadrant appeal and experiment with the future of the franchise? It’s an impossible scenario.

This Gordian knot needs to be taken to the lightsaber. Star Wars must be made affordable again.

You don’t have any credit here

Lucasfilm

It’s impossible to say something about Star Wars these days without it being controversial to someone, so it’s worth unpacking: Star Wars needs to evolve. Not because there’s anything wrong with it in the present state, necessarily, but simply because that’s how stories survive more than a limited number of tellings.

Long-running franchises are only as versatile as the details they contain. If the story is not understood and rewritten, it will cease to exist as a living thing that can be used for remakes or adaptations, but cannot be continued. The universes of DC and Marvel Comics, the transmedia franchise of Star Trek, the BBC’s Doctor Who — these are stories where creators have found ways to renew and update the basic narrative. These franchises evolved in slow and gradual changes, while others have experienced rapid, dramatic change.

The common thread is success in experimentation. Every issue of DC or Marvel comics is a fresh experiment in the best settings. Each Doctor and Captain represents an opportunity for us to try out new configurations, ask questions, and build the foundations of our franchise. Is this possible? Does this sound interesting? Are these the right things for this audience right now?

It doesn’t seem controversial to say we would not still be talking about Star Trek if those words only encompassed James T. Kirk’s Enterprise, and if Gene Roddenberry et al. hadn’t taken a chance on the idea that Star Trek could work even when it wasn’t about the electric triangle of Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Star Trek: The Next Generation proved that the necessary (warp) core of a Star Trek story wasn’t the characters but the setting, the ideas, and the theme.

And Star Wars is likewise familiar with swift leaps of evolution, as it’s been through one already.

Star Wars Science

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Also, Star Wars would be no longer relevant if it weren’t for the leap The Empire Strikes backMade from A New HopeTone, setting, characters and moral ambiguity. Sure, A New HopeThe film would be able to hold box-office records and continue playing on AMC. It is also a beloved cult favourite of science fiction lovers, an ode of the pulp era Flash Gordon serials. But it’s easy to forget how many things are now considered inextricable from Star Wars, even though they didn’t exist until EmpireFamily ties between Jedi and Sith. Force visions. Shadowy Force Ghosts. There are two options: making personal connections or studying the Force. A conflicted relationship. Bright lightsabers in dark rooms. John Williams’ “The Imperial March”!

Today, EmpireIt was controversial. Its extreme deviation from the norm shocked some critics. A New Hope’s simple, upbeat hero story. It received mixed reviews and was criticized for its darker tone. Some disliked the reveal of Vader’s true identity and bristled at Leia’s burgeoning romance with Han Solo over the more heroic Luke. Today, EmpireIt is one of the most beloved Star Wars films, even if it’s not.The best. It’s an experiment that paid off in the long run, but to get there, director Irvin Kershner and the writing team had to take chances, make bold choices, and risk failure.

Star Wars has not been all easy. Lucas tried to make the prequel trilogy his own experiment, preferring modern digital special effects technology to traditional puppetry. He also revealed the Jedi to be less than the golden-age, crusading knights he conjured in the original trilogy. These movies caused confusion, disdain, and earned affection over time. Rogue One Solo: A Star Wars Story each have their boosters, but the comparatively weak box offices for both suggested that the eternal-prequel approach wasn’t a steady enough foundation for Disney to rest another global theatrical production on.

No matter what your personal opinions may be about The Last Jedi (an EmpireExperiment in Warping Star Wars Story to a New Place (similar to the one described above) Rise of the SkywalkerA test to determine if there is another carbon copy Return of the JediWould please the 2019 crowds), but you must admit, neither of them made it through the gates unassisted by ridicule from the audience.

The mixed reaction to Star Wars: Episode VIII was not as popular back then. The Phantom Menace and its sequel were essentially massive independent films backed with their director’s personal money. The Walt Disney Company couldn’t stomach immediately divisive Star Wars movies because its plan for the franchise rested on every installment being not merely a success at the box office, but also an emotional success with consumers as a non-controversial brand — to drive the sales of books, games, toys, clothes, home furnishings, theme parks, cruises, and so forth.

It is this way that movies look. The Last Jedi, Rise of the SkywalkerAnd Rogue OneEach of these movies, which have grossed over a billion dollars each, can send studios on a three year soul-searching hiatus. They’re failures because they didn’t immediately please everyone. That bar isn’t something that any work of art should have to reach, but that’s the box Star Wars was put in when Disney announced its (short-lived) plan to produce a massive, massively expensive Star Wars blockbuster every year.

There’s a larger discussion to be had about the effects those kinds of expectations have on our modern mythology. But this isn’t a “What do we want from the Hollywood machine?” piece, it’s a “What do we want from Star Wars?” piece. Star Wars movies should stop trying to be too big for failure.

Star Wars flourishes under pressure

Lucasfilm

It is well-known that Star Wars was made with a wish and prayer. Crew members built their spaceships using parts of battleship models kits. But I think we’ve forgotten it on a more emotional level.

One thing we could do is be reminded of was Sir Alec Guinness, who was the highest paid actor on that set. Harrison Ford also got more work at that time as a freelancing carpenter than as an actor. After George Lucas had retroactively erased the blue-screen lines surrounding pilots on Hoth and replaced them with CGI residents, it can sometimes be hard to recall the constraints of the original trilogy.

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New HopeProduction cost $18 Million, which was a huge over-budget. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $85 million today. There are many other modern action movies that have been made for this amount. Sonic 2, Shazam!And Birds of Prey. The Force Awakens’ budget, meanwhile, was $300 million.

Now, hold on!, you might say, Star Wars has to have the money it takes to be successful. To which I would reply that Disney’s first foray into prestige Star Wars television, season 1 of Mandalorian, cost somewhere not far above $100 million, and it’s a couple hours longerMore than The Force Awakens. It is possible to make many Star Wars-themed movies with a budget of between $300 million and $100 million.

One could argue that films with a lower budget may look better. Be better. The ad hoc techniques Lucasfilm pioneered to make the original Star Wars movies have become an indelible, ineffable part of the franchise’s vibe. Practical effects, efficient costumes, reusable sets, fewer CGI characters and more puppets — this is how you make Star Wars look like Star Wars, and modern directors know it.

Lucasfilm

Imagine if future Star Wars movies cost only a fraction. Rise of the Skywalker, they’d only be saddled with a fraction of the expectations. And then it becomes a simple case of the law of averages: One of them will find the key to Star Wars’ franchise status. Or, in an even more likely scenario, multiple films will find that their smaller scope is well supported by smaller, discrete portions of the audience — like the fans who really do want to see all-new characters with no old callbacks, or the fans who want less Light Side and Dark Side and more moral ambiguity.

So let’s make more low-budget Star Wars! You can make a movie within the Volume. Create a movie which never sets foot on a surface planet or in the halls of the Jedi Temple. Or features an ensemble primarily composed of puppeted robots. Give the franchise room for experimentation.

Star Wars must evolve in order to survive. Evolution requires mutation. Mutation will lead to some failures. The reduction of the risk of failing is what Star Wars needs. We must bring Star Wars back to its roots for the benefit of the franchise. Star Wars needs to be again cheap.

Previously:

Star Wars has been better without any new films.
Star Wars needs more alien heroes
Star Wars! Please forget Tatooine
Star Wars requires new characters more than ever-repeatable ones.
Gundam is the future for Star Wars
Star Wars needs more moral ambiguity