COMMENTARY: Why Disney’s Reimagining Of ‘Star Wars’ Is Not Going As Expected

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a turning point for the Disney era of Star Wars. It was the film that exposed Disney for what they started in The Force Awakens, which is their intended makeover and reimagining of perhaps the most beloved fictional universe that exists.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the beginning of the process. Under the guise of “reintroducing Star Wars to a new generation”, J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy put together what was basically a remake of A New Hope. It was obvious what they were doing, complete with yet another Death Star space station that destroys planets, and yet another trench run at the end of the film to destroy it.

Since it was the first Star Wars film in 12 years, and the fan base was so starved for more Star Wars at the time, the derivative plot was forgiven. Almost everyone celebrated The Force Awakens as a return to form for the franchise, despite its complete lack of original story line and any new ideas.

Star Wars: Rogue One was the second Disney Star Wars film, directed by Gareth Edwards, and the lone bright spot for what Disney has done with the franchise. Far from being a reimagining of Star Wars, it was a direct prequel to A New Hope, and a pretty fantastic one for what it set out to do.

It tells the story of how the Rebel Alliance secured the battle plans to the original Death Star that leads to the events in A New Hope. It’s a great idea for a story, and one that had never been told in the Expanded Universe. In fact, it tells its story so seamlessly that if you watch Rogue One and A New Hope right next to each other, it feels like one giant film.

George Lucas met and personally congratulated Gareth Edwards for his efforts and told him he liked it. That may seem like Lucas just being polite, but that isn’t what he said about The Force Awakens when it released.

After Rogue One, Disney’s downward spiral began.

The Last Jedi was the direct sequel to The Force Awakens, directed by Rian Johnson. It was supposed to answer the hard-hitting questions posed in The Force Awakens. Who are Rey’s parents? Who is Snoke? What happened to Luke Skywalker? For the first time, Disney was now in a position where they had to present their new vision of Star Wars to the fan base without hiding behind warmed over story arcs and ideas from the original trilogy. Rian Johnson wouldn’t dare try to reimagine The Empire Strikes Back the way Abrams did A New Hope. Would he?

Would he???

No, he didn’t. What he did do was butcher the story set-ups and character arcs from The Force Awakens so completely that it makes The Force Awakens almost a meaningless film. Without getting into a full review of the movie, it did little to expand on the universe in any meaningful way or present any characters that resonated with the fan base. In fact, quite the opposite. The movie was a disaster.

The displeasure of the fan base over The Last Jedi dwarfed any issues they had with Lucas’s prequel Star Wars films. The outcry over The Last Jedi was an all out mutiny of a large portion of the Star Wars fans, which bled over into box office returns for Solo: A Star Wars Story that released six months later. Many fans boycotted Solo over their displeasure of The Last Jedi.

Disney and their apologists did their best to put a good face on it, but now Disney has to count on Episode IX in December to smooth things over. There is a lot riding on the success of Star Wars: Episode IX. Its failure or success will largely determine the future of Star Wars for years.

Disney’s Star Wars problem is that they’ve never been upfront about their intentions with what they’re trying to do with the IP. Disney Star Wars is a reimagining of the whole Star Wars universe. That’s why their sequels are the way they are, and that’s why they decanonized the beloved Expanded Universe. In fact, decanonizing the Expanded Universe was one of the first things Disney did after they bought LucasFilm.

Disney is still not being upfront about their intentions because they know they could never get away with doing it if they were honest with the fan base. How do you tell Star Wars fans that you’re reimagining Star Wars? You don’t. You just do it and hope they go along with it.

It almost worked, but now everyone can see the emperor has no clothes, and fans aren’t happy. Unless Abrams and Kennedy get back to the roots of what Star Wars has traditionally been, they’re not going to get it right. When your foundation is wrong, anything you build on top of that foundation is going to be fundamentally flawed.

The absolute best thing Disney can do is give George Lucas control of Star Wars again, let him do what he wants, stay out of his way, and handle the day-to-day business part of running LucasFilm while Lucas runs the creative side. No one understands the fabric of Star Wars like Lucas. If you want other ideas outside of George’s brain, then you bring in the Expanded Universe authors like James Luceno and Drew Karpyshyn and others for ideas. Not J.J. Abrams.

Disney needs to understand that making Star Wars films is not like making Marvel superhero films, or their animated films. The tone is different, the characters are different, the whole fabric of the respective universes are different. The story arcs that work in Marvel films don’t necessarily work in the Star Wars universe. The tone of the humor that works in Marvel films isn’t appropriate for Star Wars most of the time.

Star Wars is a unique universe with its own fictional history and rich legacy. If Disney wants to ingratiate itself to the fan base once again, they need to fully embrace that history and legacy instead of trying to give it a makeover. Yes, the fan base grumbles about every Star Wars movie that Lucas makes, whether it’s about Jar-Jar or Anakin’s whiny personality or midichlorians – but they still go see them in the theater. All of Lucas’s Star Wars films cleaned up at the box office in spite of the fan complaints.

This is because, like most visionaries, George Lucas is incredibly stubborn and uncompromising in his vision of what Star Wars is and is not. Even if you have issues with the story and characters, the universe itself is incredibly compelling and unique. You know when you go see a Lucas-made Star Wars film in a theater, you’re going to see something you’ve never seen in a movie before.

Disney needs to embrace that attitude and immerse itself in the legacy and history of Star Wars instead of treating it like second-rate fiction for nerdy fanboys who live in their mother’s basement. That starts with George Lucas himself, but goes on into the Expanded Universe. Until they do that, this war between Disney and Star Wars fans is not going to be resolved.