8 Things WWE Can Learn From Star Wars: The Force Awakens

3. Refresh The Brand For The 21st Century

The WWE Network is a wonderful thing... but so much of it is geared towards everything except the core product. The vast library already uploaded to the Network is all about the past of the core product: old episodes of RAW and Nitro, old pay-per-views. The various original shows on the Network are all about the things that surround the core product: Table For Three was WWE superstars chatting out of character over dinner; Breaking Ground is a fly-on-the-wall documentary series about WWE's developmental wing; Swerved was Punk'd for WWE superstars, while Superstar Ink is about their tattoos; Culture Shock is a magazine show on the different places and people the WWE tour visits. WWE's core product is a television show (two of them, if Smackdown regains any form of relevance again in 2016) about a professional wrestling promotion, and the various wrestlers, managers and other talent that interact within that promotion. There are live shows, taped shows, and monthly live spectaculars that bring many of the storylines and feuds in those shows to a head, or a climax. Despite massive line-up changes, that core product has remained more or less exactly the same in fifteen years, with barely a break week to week. It looks the same, it sounds the same. The Force Awakens is an attempt to take the Star Wars franchise, a product with as many recognisable traits and tropes as WWE's core product, and update and expand it for a new era, while retaining all the things that made it so beloved by so many people. By and large, the film is considered to be a storming success in this area: it feels like old school Star Wars, but it also feels fresh, new and exciting. WWE need to look at the tools at their disposal to revitalise and reenergise their own core product, because nothing appreciable has changed about RAW and Smackdown since about 1999. Their pay-per-view format is almost entirely dead, thanks to the Network. Why are they still sticking to the same monthly formula, the same weekly formula? Ratings are plummeting. People are bored. Even a cosmetic change to the format of one or both shows would be something.