Upcoming New Star Wars films/Disney+ series

[Stan Shinn]

I'm actually quite enthused about a non-trilogy structure, which they appear to be moving towards.

Bear in mind that Jon Favreau (who is behind The Mandalorian series) kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 'Iron Man' a few years ago and since then Marvel movies have slowly increased in pace until now we have several a year typically. Most of the Marvel movies are in a loosely connected universe, ultimately they recently connected into a 'grand finale' movie for the arc, the two-part movie climax ('Infinity War' and 'End-game').

Disney owns Marvel and they have a winning strategy I believe they will be using across their IPs:

"...Disney is taking a very different approach to the future of Star Wars films that is more in line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe than the trilogy / stand-alone format we’ve seen over the past few years."

(Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2020/01/08/the-next-star-wars-movie-is-reportedly-set-in-the-high-republic-era---heres-what-that-means/#1de0d5c219c1)

So I think this is great news. They will slowly ramp up movie production and make more of the popular movies, and if a movie / Jedi character is a dud, we see less of that character. Great flexibility for the franchise. More quality movies lie ahead, I think.

I'm excited.

[Whill]

I love your optimism, Mr. Shinn! But...

Iron Man was the only true "stand-alone" film in the series that is now known as the MCU. After Iron Man's success, they then decided to start rolling with a shared universe. They put RDJ at the end of The Incredible Hulk and started planning Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man 2 to build towards the Avengers. And before the second Avengers they had an overarching plan for building to the "Infinity War" (Avengers 3 and 4), totaling 22 movies when they added Spider-Man. There was a grand design and a single person steered all these nominally different franchises on course. Don't let them fool you. The MCU is one masterminded franchise composed of sub-franchises that have some individual freedoms but are ultimately subordinate to the Avengers franchise.

I morally object to them even referring to this Rey series as a "trilogy". Lucasfilm can't even do with three movies what Marvel did with 22 films. There was no trilogy plan. Abrams said he declined the first offer to do even Episode VII. Months later after they still couldn't get anyone to do one film, they went back to Abrams (and I presume they $begged$). Abrams said he and Johnson had maximum creative control of each of their episodes, and Abrams didn't know he was going to do the third one until after he finished the first. Lucasfilm obviously would have had a trilogy plan if they could have, so it seems that offering the max creative control to individual directors for each episode in the campfire chain message story method was an incentive to entice people to even take the job.

If directors are refusing offers to do even one Star Wars movie and the ones who accept don't want overarching guidance, how are they going to make a coherent series like Marvel films? In your quote, the word "trilogy" is only used in the strictly numerical sense of limiting the "series" to three films. As mentioned earlier up in this thread, they had already abandoned strict adherence to three-film multi-film stories when they announced the GoT guys were doing a series of films not specifically three in number. But now plans for that series are abandoned.

If Lucasfilm can't get manage an overarching planned story, then this "Marvel" method is a pipe dream. TRoS was an obvious cash grab where Abrams didn't even bother maintaining continuity with his own prior Star Wars film in the "series". There is absolutely zero evidence so far that this Marvel method will work for Star Wars. You know what worked for Star Wars? Planned out series. No, they don't need to be three in number, but they need a plan with overarching guidance. If they give too much individual creative freedom, it will fail. If they have a plan with good guidance and can't get anyone of caliber to execute the parts, it will fail.
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[MrNexx]

I more or less agree with Whill in principle... I think the ST could have been fantastic if they're chosen to had something like a series bible. Even if they wrote it after TFA, and said "Ok, build the story as you like, but here's a few beats we need you to hit for part 3, because we're building towards this." But that lack of overall concept hurt the series as a series.

However, this is a post from someone over at the Giant in the Playground message boards that I very much agree with:

[TauntaunScout]

I wasn't invested in Rey, either. Or Snoke! I was so glad he died because it meant we were all done with revisiting the Emperor. So then we got the ACTUAL EMPEROR. Facepalm.

I generally agree with all the sentiments about Rey, Poe etc you copied over. But it needed to be about Luke & Leia, that's its real "problem" with protagonists. After the massive blunder in TFA of not having the movies be about them, it's unclear to me if recovery was ever going to be possible. Given the confines of the Hollywood machine.

I find "character development" to be a bit too broad of a term. I guess I don't actually care if characters change or not, I think Hollywood venerates the character-arc and it's hurt a lot of films. I care if the characters get well-established in the first place or not. When Han shot Greedo (first) under the table, we learned a lot about that guy. He changes, but not in some dragging, slow, dramatic scene about finding his inner strength or anything like that. He changes with a few guilty looks, then we forget about him, till the Falcon flies at the Death Star like a bat out of a cage. It doesn't need to do a barrel roll and dodge 15 obstacles and repeatedly do things that we're told are "Impossible!". Han's rebel yell covers all of that just fine. And Luke makes just one shot that's "impossible, even for a computer", he doesn't need to keep doing impossible things every 45 minutes of screen time. But I digress.



By all rights, TROS shoulda gotten about 7 ticket sales out of my household. It only got 2. So claiming financial success is a bit "off" when you're steering a franchise that's too big to fail anyways.

[Grimace]

I, too, am interested to see where they intend to go with movies/shows going forward. I am quite enjoying "The Mandalorian" and cannot wait to see where they go in season 2.
It really reminds me of a series of comics that came out in the early 2000's called Star Wars: Empire. It was serialized and showed events in the galaxy that weren't related to the main characters of the movies. That's a win in my book!

[Whill]

I loved Rey. TFA overall works for me, but it went downhill from there. In the future, I's like to see cohesive SW series (regardless of episode number) or standalone films. There should either tie in well to the Lucas SW films, or be totally unrelated but still have the same verisimilitude.

[Grimace]

[Whill]

[TauntaunScout]

[Whill]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/taika-waititi-direct-new-star-wars-film-1293092

I enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok a lot but thought it still a bit too much comedy for the source material. And Kathleen Kennedy fired the Lego movie guys from Solo because they were making it into a comedy. So, who knows what this means. But right, now I still feel better about this than Rian Johnson or JJ Abrams doing another Star Wars.
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[Aelwe]

I like Waititi and his directing style, and I do enjoyed the episode of the Mandalorian he directed. However, I think that he needs to be kept in check. A little fun in Star Wars, some comedy bits...sure, I can enjoy that. But with some measure, for instance, while I enjoyed Thor Ragnarok I don't think the same tone would work for Star Wars.

Unless....they go with a stand alone, full comedy movie in the Star Wars universe. I don't know if that would work, but it could.
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[Whill]

I liked the Mandalorian episode he did too. I'm pretty sure the film will be standalone, but I doubt I would like a full-on comedy, even if standalone. Yes, I would like to keep an open mind, but they really would be making that difficult with comedies. Leaving the Skywalker saga behind and making new stories is their chance to start fresh. I hope they don't further dilute the brand, but if so I'll always have the Lucas saga.
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[TauntaunScout]

I am actually interested in completely different genres of Star Wars. Romantic comedy. Buddy cop. Costume drama. Etc.

[MrNexx]

[Whill]