Disney Destroyed Star Wars, and Here’s Why
George Lucas created Star Wars simply because he wanted to make money. Initially the young director was known for making weird and experimental films like THX 1138 (1971) and dramas like American Graffiti (1973). Famously, his good friend Francis Ford Coppola almost rejected directing The Godfather (1972) for lacking artistic merit, but then Lucas advised him to take go for it, just because they needed money.
“Francis, we need the money! The tax authority is going to chain the front door… You’ve got to take a job like this’,”
The original pitch for Star Wars (1977) was instead an adaptation of the Flash Gordon (1934) comics, and it was clearly aimed at being nothing but fun entertainment for children and a vehicle for selling toys. George Lucas’ main objective was to entertain and inspire children in the same way he was by the those Flash Gordon serials as a kid. Of course, Lucas was an artist, and so he imbued this production his own art style, weirdness and political commentary into his films regardless.
That’s precisely the reason why Star Wars died immediately after it was sold to Disney, because that’s the moment the franchise lost the artistic soul that was unique to George Lucas. All the weird and crazy ideas that he came up with during his career are completely unique to him, and it’s something that’s lost the very instant the property changes hands.
The reason why Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) was so incredibly successful, making two billion dollars in revenue, is because it was a cynical imitation of George Lucas’ movies, with maybe some Spielberg thrown in into the cinematic mix. The problem of course is that J. J. Abrams was merely tracing over previous artists while coming up with very few ideas of his own. The action scenes were flashy and the characters were charming, but it ultimately his movie didn’t offered a new creative vision, rather it was purely a nostalgic shadow of the past.
This is also why The Last Jedi (2017) proved to be so controversial among fans, because Rian Johnson was a slightly more serious artist, so he tried to insert his own personality and style into the mix, but the problem is that Rian’s ideas are nowhere near as ambitious, interesting or weird as those of George Lucas. It’s like telling someone to make a sequel to the Lord of the Rings (1954) that’s not written by Tolkien, even if you get a competent writer the end result is gonna be completely different in style to that of the original author (and probably nowhere near as good).
I enjoyed some of Rian Johnson movies like Looper (2012) and Knives Out (2019), but those movies heavily rely on metacommentary and dicey plot twists, rather than on fun action and strong characters. Rian’s better films are also good also in that they have solid cinematography and careful writing, which is not the case in The Last Jedi given the rushed schedule, overreliance on green screen and plot twists that go literally nowhere.
And yet the level of subversion, parody and creativity in Rian Johnson films is not particularly notable either, it’s just comparable with that of any random good show for children, like The Powerpuff Girls (1998).
Funnily enough, things got even worse with The Rise of Skywalker (2019), which was J. J. Abrams’ and Chris Terrio’s desperate attempt at bringing back Star Wars to its roots, trying to make dumb fun shlock that somehow had some political commentary thrown into the mix, but it was so devoid of artistic merit that it came across as completely disingenuous and cynical to most people, especially after Rian Johnson previously tried to insert some of his own artistic style into Star Wars. A lot of people didn’t liked Rian’s ideas, but at least he was trying to do something unique.
Dave Filoni’s shows like The Mandalorian (2019) and Ahsoka (2023) faced a similar problem to that of J. J. Abrams, although not as bad. After all, he is not just a random imitator of George Lucas, but rather his apprentice, someone who worked with the master for several years and got to understand some of his weird ideas better than most people. And yet, that’s clearly not enough to save the franchise from its current zombified state. These days Star Wars is so creatively bankrupt that Disney has trouble making money from it.
Andor (2022) has a completely different and more profound problem than the Filoniverse shows, even though it’s a legitimate attempt by Tony Gilroy of turning Star Wars into something that’s completely different from what Lucas was doing. The problem is that this show was yet another example of Disney completely missing the point of why George Lucas created Star Wars back in 1977.
The point of Star Wars was to make money, to make money by entertaining children and selling toys, toys based on weird aliens, strange vehicles and cool weapons. The prequels had serious problems when it came to writing and direction, but they completely focused on the central aspect of the franchise, which was creating strange worlds full of cool shit that could be turned into toys and video games. Lucas’ movies weren’t trying to be serious political dramas, they were meant to be fun content for children.
Star Wars will remain dead (or semi-dead) until someone with a strong creative vision takes helm of the franchise and gives it a completely new life by making movies that are fun to watch and have a lot of cool shit in them, rather than making a mediocre HBO-style drama. These movies also need to have their own ideas, rather than merely imitating those of George Lucas.
Kathleen Kennedy’s biggest mistake was firing Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for the crime of trying to turn Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) into a fun parody of itself, rather than being faithful to the the more serious elements that Lawrence Kasdan and his hackfraud son wrote into the script. This showed that her main concern was never about making fun movies for children, but rather to make movies and shows that could only be taken seriously by very boring adults.
The only glimpse I have seen of people actually trying to make fun Star Wars content were the Star Wars Visions (2021) shorts, but Disney is clearly way too racist to give the reins of their franchise to non-Americans, or even anyone who doesn’t follow the most generic Hollywood or HBO standards.
There are millions of people all around the world that have been inspired by George Lucas, and most of them are making weird original content, like the Skibidi Toilet (2023) guy. And I am not saying that they should hire Alexey Gerasimov to make Star Wars movies… actually they probably should. It’s not like what Disney is currently doing is anywhere near as good or creative.
