At a Disney D23 panel in August, Dave Filoni revealed what his mission statement was for Star Wars after taking over Lucasfilm from Kathleen Kennedy.
“We have several different generations of Star Wars fans,” he said. “There’s original trilogy fans, prequel fans, sequel trilogy fans, Clone Wars fans, expanded universe fans. They all have different interests. And I always look at how we’re going to serve all these different interests. And most importantly, how do we bring them all together because they have this common love of Star Wars.”
This quote perfectly summarizes Filoni’s goal as Star Wars’ steward: unify the fanbase. His remarks drew mixed reactions. While appealing to all Star Wars fans is a noble goal, it also carries a sense of “playing it safe.” If you want to please everyone, then you run the risk of, well, not taking risks.
One month later, Filoni’s plan for the future of Star Wars is coming into focus, and it’s exactly what he promised at D23 — for better and for worse.
Why Star Wars Episode X has fans worried
Filoni’s mission statement had already worried fans, but the announcement of a new Star Wars movie trilogy confirmed some of their worst fears. Lucasfilm is once again retreating to the safe embrace of the Skywalkers, with seemingly no plan to expand the franchise beyond following the most angst-ridden family in a galaxy far, far away.
A flurry of reports over the weekend revealed that Filoni has tapped director Jon Watts (Tom Holland’s first three Spider-Man films, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) to helm a new Star Wars trilogy, beginning with “Episode X.” Meanwhile, screenwriter Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dark Phoenix, Star Wars Rebels) will pen the new movies. While both of them are Star Wars bonafides, the decision suggests that, under Filoni, Lucasfilm’s goal is no longer to seek out exciting filmmakers. Watts and Kinberg are both perfectly palatable, but far from daring.
While much of the angry reaction seems aimed at Watts (perhaps because director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day exposed how much potential the Spidey “Home” trilogy was leaving on the table), he isn’t the main concern. Watts has shown he can handle big-budget IP without embarrassing everyone involved.
Watts is also no stranger to Star Wars, having co-created Disney’s sci-fi answer to The Goonies with Skeleton Crew. That extremely slept-on series perfectly balances a rewarding story with the delight and hope that runs deep in most films set in the Star Wars universe. Skeleton Crew also gave us some delightful New Republic and Jedi lore along the way. The TV series was fun, engaging, and a fine reminder of what Star Wars can be when you get a little whimsical.
Kinberg, however, raises some huge red flags. His X-Men writing was so incredibly safe and milquetoast that it became exasperating to go into these films expecting anything but boredom. And while Star Wars Rebels is beloved by fans, it is a children’s show with a lot of filler. It doesn’t quite have the same scale as an epic blockbuster. This doesn’t mean Rebels isn’t great, or that Kinberg performed poorly. Still, I’m not convinced Kinberg can reliably pen a Star Wars trilogy, especially when the franchise’s name has lost its mystique and fans across several generations want better.
A bed of our own making
It’s undeniable that Lucasfilm isn’t doing anything particularly daring by choosing Kinberg and Watts. But then again, some Star Wars fans have proven they don’t want the franchise to veer from the status quo at all. Case in point? The reaction to Rian Johnson’s 2019 sequel trilogy entry, The Last Jedi.
For fans who weren’t around at the time, it’s hard to convey just how intolerable the social media and discussion around The Last Jedi were. It got so bad that some speculate it even affected the reception of Star Wars’ next film, Han Solo’s origin story, 2018’s Solo.
Critics praised The Last Jedi. Fans, however, were not so kind, and the film currently sits at 41% on the Rotten Tomatoes “Popcornmeter,” compared with a critic’s score of 91%. While there were some serious bad-faith takes out there, particularly about the involvement of women and people of color in the film, criticisms of Johnson’s entry also cast blame on the director for “ruining Star Wars” due to his take on Luke Skywalker, the stunning “Holdo Maneuver,” and for quickly ridding the trilogy of its ‘big bad’ by abruptly killing off Supreme Leader Snoke.
Given how nasty the discussion around The Last Jedi became, is it any wonder it spooked Disney enough to backtrack so severely with its cowardliest entry, The Rise of Skywalker? Even that didn’t end well for Lucasfilm, with several revelations — Palpatine’s return being no.1 — that it’s still trying to make sense of in other material like The Mandalorian and spin-off books.
With Watts’ and Kinberg’s Episode X set to pick up where Rise of Skywalker left off, Filoni has a chance to correct past mistakes. Some Star Wars fans would no doubt love the idea of a trilogy addressing the mess the sequels left behind. Others, however, would prefer Lucasfilm and Disney pretend the movies never existed and explore another corner of the vast Star Wars galaxy and timeline instead. Unfortunately for the latter, franchises don’t make money that way. Disney needs recognizable characters to fill theater seats. The next Star Wars trilogy being Episode X, XI, and XII was inevitable from the start, regardless of who ultimately makes it.
While Star Wars has produced defiant, genre-bending entries on TV like Andor, The Acolyte, and Visions, it’s clear that Disney and Lucasfilm, at least for their movie blockbusters, are sticking to what they know will get butts into seats: the same ol’ Skywalkers. Yawn.
