Star Wars: The Real Reason You Should Be Worried About The Rise Of Skywalker

Is this really the end?

Star Wars Episode IX The Rise Of Skywalker Rey Daisy Ridley
Lucasfilm

December 27th 2019 will mark 42 years since we first boarded the Millennium Falcon to a galaxy far, far away...and with The Rise of Skywalker landing in our cinemas on the 19th of December, it's almost time for us to say goodbye to a story that has spanned multiple generations.

2012 arrived and Disney invested in a company, in Lucasfilm, that hadn't really achieved anything of note since Revenge of the Sith brought the prequel trilogy to a steady close in 2005. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) managed to mostly be a decent return to form for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, all before that questionable ending sent the franchise into another world entirely, and it's fair to say that it's one that some fans didn't wish to continue following.

With that stutter, it looked as though Lucasfilm didn't have any real ambitions to create new material (The Clone Wars animated movie being a prequel spin-off) and after being in bed with 20th Century FOX, Paramount, Warner Bros and Universal over the years, finally took the bold move to become monogamous with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

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A move like this made sense for a blossoming studio that had just acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion (paying a similar price for Lucasfilm - $2.2 billion in cash, $1.855 billion in stock) though anxiety hung in the air as the Star Wars fandom were worried about their precious series being coloured in Disney crayon and the oncoming deluge of films would be unrecognisable to them. With that being said, there's no denying that, die-hards aside, additional Star Wars films would be good news.

The next generation of Padawans would be immersed in the galaxy that we had waxed lyrically about since we were that age. Now they would know how it felt to witness the force, the Jedi and the Dark Side for the first time. Lucas' proclamation that it was 'now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of film-makers.' showed promise as J.J. Abrams (the hottest Sci-Fi director in Hollywood in 2013) had signed on to helm the first of a new trilogy, set after the original trifecta - what could go wrong?

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Not much.

Star Wars The Phantom Menace George Lucas
Lucasfilm

In the early days, at least, Star Wars had rumbled up a similar grade of hype to that of The Phantom Menace in 1999 where a similar lapse of time had allowed the public space to long for more adventures with new heroes and old. The Force Awakens (2015) blasted records away like a rogue X-Wing taking down the Death Star. Highest worldwide opening weekend/single weekend gross ($529 million), Widest IMAX release (940 screens), Fastest film to $1 billion (12 days), the list goes on. Narratively speaking, the film in question did glide very closely to the first entry into the universe, A New Hope (1977), a hero being found on a desert planet with no real knowledge of who they are, an old hand guiding them through this new world and it all ending in a huge dogfight to blow up a mega-weapon. If the idea was to hit a few of the series' greatest beats to rekindle our love, then you can't call this anything but a success.

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Rogue One, the following year, took us back to the original era we adored and gave us a war-time epic based on the Rebels stealing the plans for the Death Star. It was another return to form but then The Last Jedi (2017) arrived and the worry that had tingled in the fandom of 2012 began to manifest itself on screen.

It wasn't that Disney had glossed up the franchise or over-commercialised the story/characters (Porgs are this generations Ewoks - kids love them), the mixed reaction to the eighth outing in the main series fell down to a few things. Many of the seeds (Rey's parentage) that had been planted in The Force Awakens had been planted so deep that Rian Johnson didn't feel the need to go looking for them and instead went about planting his own (we can all be Jedis!).

It was a fantastic piece of subversion and looked to have steered the franchise into new, uncharted space, only for Disney to panic and pull the trigger on Colin Trevorrow, of Jurassic World fame, directing Episode IX. Disney President Alan Horn and CEO Bob Iger citing that his scripts weren't up to scratch. Abrams got drafted back in as a safe pair of hands to round off the story he began four years ago. What perplexed many was the obvious mission to popularise the movies and steer away from controversy - only to hand Rian Johnson, who attempted to revolutionize the world, a trilogy of his own. Does this suggest that we are about to pursue a bolder, diverse new narrative, with a whole new set of characters and perhaps even leave behind the Jedi for good?

Don't bet on it.

The real reason you should be worried about 2019's Rise of Skywalker is down to one cold, realistic fact. Money. Are you convinced that a group of characters as marketable as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Yoda, R2-D2, BB-8, Rey, Finn, Poe and the rest of the gang are just going to hang up their weapons and move on? The four films released since the takeover have already reimbursed Disney's initial fee and then some ($4.8 Billion) and that's not even taking into account the countless action figures, lightsabers, costumes and games that have only bolstered their return. One alarming observation was that of The Last Jedi being outperformed by Rogue One in merchandise sales.

Luke Skywalker
https://www.starwars.com/databank/luke-skywalker

That leads nicely into why Rise of the Skywalker appears more and more likely to be a false dawn. Disney are a business that make money and, if Kevin Feige's recent negotiations over Spider-Man are anything to go by, the company want to keep generating more of it. Bucket loads. So, to suggest that a cash manufacturing beast like Star Wars will completely leave behind all notions of the very saga that has lined its pocket to begin with, is fanciful.

Abrams and Disney themselves have repeatedly stressed how this is the end for this four decade narrative and George Lucas famously always had 9 films in mind, even going so far as to elaborate that his sequel trilogy was 'going to get in a microbiotic world' with 'creatures that operate differently than we do' called 'the Whills'. We've seen studios have a change in heart before. The Matrix looks set to be reloaded with Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Lana Wachowski all returning and Indiana Jones looked to have sealed its fate beautifully in The Last Crusade only to be re-animated in the previously mention Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What links these unburials of classics is the necessity to hold onto characters that were popular in order to keep a level of familiarity for the returning fans.

The Last Jedi attempted to give us something new and exciting, liberated by not being held to the previous constraints of the Skywalker destiny but if you're expecting Rise of Skywalker to draw a conclusive line under these characters and their journey, the outcome may not be to your liking.

Contributor
Contributor

Lifts rubber and metal. Watches people flip in spandex and pretends to be other individuals from time to time...