7 Reasons To Give Up Star Wars

“Better than the prequels” really isn’t an accomplishment, but that was the scale everyone used to grade The Force Awakens. Unless you’re one of those people who filmed themselves watching the trailer to upload to the internet and is definitely not a narcissist, you recognize that the movie was a rehash of A New Hope that moves from action scene to action scene quickly enough to keep you from wondering about how the political system of this new galaxy even functions. It’s not like the man responsible for Lost would give us a movie that doesn’t follow up on the plot threads it starts weaving.

The Force Awakens is not a great film and one could make the argument that this generation’s “Star Wars” is actually Guardians of the Galaxy. Rogue One was very underwhelming and it seems that everything anyone liked about it were all the recycled things from previous movies, meaning: they liked the parts of the movie they already liked.

They don’t actually have to make good Star Wars movies. All they have to do is shove in a bunch of recognizable elements so it has the stench of the franchise. When a huge portion of your fanbase climaxes at the sight of an X-Wing, what’s the point of worrying about quality? In fact, executives tore Rogue One apart so they could add a bunch of things that threw off the pacing and distracted from the main plot, things that would probably ruin other movies (see Suicide Squad). But Rogue One made tons of money and they have every reason to believe it was because of their meddling.

Abrams won’t be directing The Last Jedi. That will be helmed by Rian Johnson. His debut film, Brick, which he wrote and directed, is an underappreciated gem. Looper was good; The Brothers Bloom was bad. That he directed the “Ozymandias” episode of Breaking Bad probably evens things out.

The important thing is that he’s a small time director without any power behind his name. If Abrams wants to do something Disney likes, he has a lot more clout in his favor. Johnson will likely be strong-armed into making decisions he’s not fond of. Hopefully it won’t be similar to Josh Trank’s experience making Fant4stic Four.

When more power is in the hands of the studio than the director, it usually doesn’t result in a great film. It’s likely that, thanks to the brilliance of Disney marketing, you’ll find yourself going to a Star Wars movie every year, feeling let down, but always somehow forgetting that by the time the next one rolls out. Do you want to live like that? Do you?