Is The Rise of Skywalker Bulletproof?
When Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas in 2012, to describe their acquisition as a golden goose would be the understatement of the decade. Since the premiere of the first film in 1977, Lucas’ vision grew into a sprawling multimedia empire encompassing six films, novels, comics, video games and more. Upon acquiring the franchise, Disney immediately announced a new trilogy of films, to the delight of millions of fans who had resigned themselves to thinking that 2005’s Revenge of the Sith would be the last big-screen incarnation of their beloved characters.
2015’s The Force Awakens was a smashing box-office success, grossing over $2 billion worldwide. Disney’s plans for the franchise immediately became clear, as in addition to the new trilogy they announced plans for stand-alone films that would fill in gaps between the stories in the original story’s films. Rogue One would tell the story of how the plans for the Death Star were stolen and ended up in the hands of Princess Leia, while Solo would give us the backstory behind beloved fan favorite Han. Every other year would switch back and forth between the new trilogy and these stand-alones, giving fans one Star Wars film per year, essentially forever. And plans for new television series and other properties were not far behind.
It was the perfect strategy on paper for handling the world’s most valuable intellectual property, and in broad terms, it has succeeded for Disney. By 2018, the company had already recouped the $4 billion investment that the acquisition of Star Wars represented. But in the years since the premiere of The Force Awakens, cracks have started to appear in the monolithic facade that is the Disney incarnation of Star Wars.
Rogue One, the first of the stand-alone “Star Wars Stories” seemed to be continuing the trend of success after success. While it did not perform nearly as well as The Force Awakens, it still brought in over $1 billion worldwide. And some underperformance was to be expected, as unlike The Force Awakens it featured no Original Trilogy characters (save a cameo from Darth Vader, with James Earl Jones reprising his iconic role). The impending sequel to The Force Awakens would surely equal that film’s take, if not surpass it. It would be directed by Rian Johnson, a filmmaker coming off the success of Looper, an original sci-fi film that had garnered critical success and was a sleeper box office hit. Someone as creative as Johnson would surely address fans’ major complaint with J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, which was that it was an overly formulaic rehashing of the original 1977 film.
Unfortunately, things did not play out as either Disney or the fans had hoped. While Johnson did attempt to deviate from Abrams’ formula in The Last Jedi, many of his creative decisions proved divisive and controversial among the Star Wars fanbase. And whereas fan complaints could be overlooked in the light of The Force Awakens’ box office success, The Last Jedi disappointed on that front as well. While it took home $1.3 billion, the film disappointed after its opening weekend, and crucially underperformed in the Chinese market. Toy sales, a critical source of ancillary profits, also were down from the previous film.
If The Last Jedi was a disappointment, the next iteration of the stand alone Star Wars stories would be an outright disaster. In retrospect, Solo may have been doomed from the start, as the production was troubled by creative disuptes between the original directors hired, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, and the Disney production team, particularly lead producer Kathleen Kennedy. Lord & Miller, who wanted the film to be more light and comedic in tone versus a straight action film, were fired halfway through shooting and replaced with Ron Howard. Solo could not overcome this bad buzz, as it debuted to poor reviews and a box office total of roughly $300 million, a disaster by the standards of the Star Wars franchise.
In the wake of Solo flopping, Disney was forced to reevaluate its Star Wars strategy for the first time, shelving all further stand-alone films indefinitely. By saturating the market with Star Wars films of diminishing quality, what Disney had done is to dilute the value of each individual film to their customer base. The original Lucas trilogy and prequel trilogy had seen films released every three years, which allowed massive fan anticipation to build in between each installment. The franchise had finally reached the point of diminishing marginal returns.
This is not to say that the golden goose had been killed, far from it. The franchise’s expansion into live action streaming TV with The Mandalorian has been a rousing success according to viewership data, to say nothing of Baby Yoda toy sales. But what is clear is that Disney can not just put out any Star Wars product and expect it to garner record profits, and with The Rise of Skywalker there is real risk of failure.
Reviews have already polarized critics much as The Last Jedi did, with some reviews outright scathing. If the final installment of the new trilogy were to disappoint, Disney would have to once again reevaluate its Star Wars strategy. Disney has already been forced to alter their plans for Star Wars post-Skywalker, as it walked away from a deal with Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to create a new set of films. A new Star Wars film used to be the biggest event in cinema, Disney’s mismanagement has made it mundane. I find myself shocked to be saying this, as a lifelong fan of the franchise, but the House of Mouse might well be served to put the galaxy far, far away into the vault for a while. An abscence of a few years may be the thing needed to rekindle diminishing fan enthusiasm for the franchise, on the silver screen at least. If not, any future films after The Rise of Skywalker may be doomed before a frame is shot or a page of the script is even written.
