Sympathy for the Disney Devil Part II: A Different Perspective on the Failure of the Sequel Trilogy
The last decade has seen a lot of turmoil within the Star Wars community. The announcement of the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm was a bombshell at the time, and led to equal parts anticipation and angst. The Force Awakens did blockbuster business, and began to expose a new split in the fanbase – but the rift was not great enough to dismiss the sequel trilogy prematurely.
From a business perspective, “A New, New Hope” – erm…”The Force Awakens” was a smashing success. It took “The Last Jedi” to begin to take a sledgehammer to the foundations of Star Wars, and the conflict within the fanbase continues to this day. The blame for these failures can almost exclusively be laid at the feet of Kathleen Kennedy, the Lucasfilm Story Group, JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, and Disney itself. But is there another culprit? In this article, I want to posit the possibility that some of the divisiveness of the sequel trilogy was actually created by Lucasfilm trying to be TOO respectful of George Lucas’ vision. Nonsense, you say? Let’s take a look.
What is Star Wars?
Star Wars is different things to different people. Some people latch onto a particular trilogy. Some watch all of the filmed material, but ignore the comics, games, and books. Some people became attracted to the property only BECAUSE of the games, comics, or books. Why is this important? Because what you think Star Wars is likely is quite different than what George Lucas thinks Star Wars is. In the mid-90s, Lucy Autrey Wilson finally managed to convince George to let her start a Star Wars publishing program. While spin-off material had been produced for Star Wars in the past, this was the first real germination of what would become the EU. The response was seismic, and quickly led to more and more material being produced. Books led to action figures, which led to games, which led to major merchandising efforts.
In the 90s, our Star Wars toys were ripped. Even C-3PO was jacked. pic.twitter.com/sYPJKGqlUc
— Alan Johnson (@AlanJohnson) May 14, 2021
Out of the Dark Times, a financial powerhouse had re-awakened. Lucasfilm realized there was still an audience for Star Wars – a generation that had grown up with the movies, and now had disposable cash. Just as suddenly, the prequel trilogy being made became a real possibility. The waters were tested – the first was a multimedia project surrounding the novel “Shadows of the Empire” – the first novel that took place in the original movie timeline, not outside of it. For the first time, a living Darth Vader could be used in a story. Tied into this were new action figures, statues, comic books, and a soundtrack. Everything BUT the movie.
The next step were the Star Wars Special Editions – both to test digital effects technology, and to try to bring the original movies up to the level of SFX that would blend with the prequel movies. These experiments concluded, the prequel trilogy moved forward. An Old Hope When scripting The Phantom Menace, George retconned his original trilogy in some significant ways. People forget how jarring that first movie was now – prior to The Phantom Menace, there was no Qui-Gon Jinn. There was no Jedi Council. We had no idea there were only two Sith at a time. (Most of the audience didn’t even know who the Sith were – the word was never uttered in the original movies.) Timing was a problem as well – up until the prequels, it was thought that Obi-Wan and Anakin were roughly the same age. Much more time was assumed to have taken place between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy, due to the ages of Sir Alec Guiness and Sebastien Shaw. Lucas also deviated somewhat from his original “Hero’s Journey” concept.
In telling the original stories, he relied on The Force as a religious analogue, but without a conscious deity behind it. Think of it as a passive or “Sleeping God.” With the prequel trilogy, Lucas layered new material onto The Force. The most important of these concepts was the idea of a prophecised “Chosen One.” Some of these ideas existed in original script drafts, stories, or noveliations – a quote from “The Journal of the Whills” references a “Son of the Suns”, originally intended to be Luke: “…And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as THE SON OF THE SUNS.” ―Journal of the Whills, 3:127 It was decided that the prophecied Chosen One would bring balance to the Force – but these concepts were never explicitly defined. The original focal point in the movies had been Luke Skywalker – (or Starkiller, depending on which draft). By making Anakin the Chosen One, the focal point had to shft – Lucas now began telling the world that the entire saga was about the Rise and Fall of Anakin Skywalker – a tragedy. Despite these claims, Darth Vader had never been intended to be a major character in the series.
In the original drafts, he was a relatively minor character who was a blunt instrument for the Empire, but he had not yet acquired his breath mask or tragic backstory. He was dispatched in that first story, and if those drafts had moved forward would not have returned. All of this is to say – the story of Star Wars was always a moving target, and certain aspects of it are still debated today. For instance – what does it mean to bring “balance” to the Force? Does it mean an equal number of Jedi and Sith? Does it mean that the Sith are eradicated? Does it mean using both the light and dark side of the Force without allowing it to corrupt you, or something more ephemeral?
To hear Dave Filoni tell it, it is similar to the elimination of a cancer. A body cannot live healthily nor be in balance if cancer is within the bloodstream – the only way to live and thrive is to eliminate the cancer, and so it went with the Sith.
This potentially is what truly caused the downfall of the sequel trilogy. By explicitly making Anakin Skywalker “The Chosen One”, George Lucas had closed the loop on the saga. He was perfectly willing to profit from spin-off materials, but never considered them “canon”. There was his story – and everybody else’s ancillary stories that didn’t matter to him. It took major arm twisting from his own marketing department for the name of the galactic capital to remain “Coruscant”, and not “Had Abbadon” – because Timothy Zahn had christened Imperial Center with that name in his Thrawn trilogy. Lucas didn’t like it, but his business sense won out and he conceded the point.
Why does this matter?
Because Disney wanted to make more movies. It was vital to their interests that more Star Wars movies be made, as quickly as possible but the major driving force of conflict – the Sith – had been eliminated. Because they were too timid to contradict Lucas on this point, they had to create new villains – the cosplaying wannabes, the Knights of Ren. Only when the entire sequel trilogy was in danger of completely flaming out did they relent and bring Palpatine back – otherwise, they had no villain. In doing so, they undermined the entire lynchpin of the story. If Vader didn’t kill Palpatine, then his sacrifice meant nothing beyond personal redemption. It rendered every prior movie pointless, and made Rey a “Stolen Valor” case. The new canon attempts to compensate by this by claiming that the “Chosen Ones” are cyclical – “Bring balance to the Force, as I did, Rey.”
Ugh.
A better way to deal with all of this could have been to simply have knowledge of Sith ways rediscovered. You need look no further than the Tales of the Jedi comics to see how bored aristocrats who became obsessed with the Sith created a secret society called “The Krath” who resurrected the Sith Order, millenia ago. But all depended on what “The Chosen One” and “Balance” meant. All of this is to say that perhaps by introducing the concept of a “Chosen One” who would bring balance to the Force, Lucas hamstrung the ability to tell more stories by anybody else in the future, without twisting the galaxy into pretzels. This is why his story treatments for his version of Episodes VII-IX are so intriguing. By all accounts, these were going to explore the mystical side of the Force – delving into the origins and driving force BEHIND the Force.
It’s understandable that Disney was skittish about such concepts after the introductions of midichlorians in The Phantom Menace, but it neatly sidesteps the problem of having vanquished the Sith. Any future stories exploring the restoration fo the Jedi Order would naturally have to explore the relationship between the Force and the Jedi, and would likely be a meditation on predestination vs. free will. While I understand Lucas wanting to introduce the mythological concept of “The Chosen One” into the saga, I’ve never felt it was a good fit. I do wonder if these aspects had been left out – if Anakin was just a naturally gifted boy who fell, like Lancelot – what would Star Wars look like today? None of this is to bash on the prequels – I think they ultimately deepened the Star Wars mythos, and taken with the original trilogy tell a self-contained story. It’s only in the context of additional storytelling (and the desire for profits) that problems begin to manifest.
What do you think? Could some of the seeds of problems with telling Disneys Sequel Trilogy have been laid in Lucas’ prequels? Do you think Lucas sequel treatments could have been fleshed out into satisfying movies, and what do you think they would have covered? Give me your thoughts below!
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