kylanfedje

[kylanfedje]

This is a Neel fan page from now on

[kylanfedje]

Also this place is definitely a brothel, right?

[kylanfedje]

If you need me I'll be over there in the corner obsessing over this little ferry gremlin from E2 of Skeleton Crew

[kylanfedje]

I believe that we as a fandom should insist on referring to Fern as "Captain Fern" in the way Jack Sparrow does

She worked hard for the position dammit, not easy killing the old Captain and taking their place

[kylanfedje]

I’m not joking when I say that I’d literally die for neel

[kylanfedje]

Disney Star Wars Retrospective - Episode IV: The Disney+ Awakens

“Where do I begin?” is a common question for anyone interested in a new franchise to ask. For most fandoms, it has an easy enough answer, as it’s often the first in the series. But other times, you can jump into a franchise more or less anywhere. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where you first gained your appetite for a property, but rather how much of yourself you’re willing to give to it.

I got into Star Wars largely thanks to The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network, right about the time when season two premiered. I still remember watching the episode “Landing at Point Rain” over and over and over in the wait between new episodes. I just couldn’t get enough of it. The Jedi and the Sith, the Republic and the Separatists, clone troopers and battle droids, lightsabers and blasters…I was hooked.

But when that wasn’t enough, I had the saga films to turn to. At some point, my family purchased a box set of the Original Trilogy on DVD, so those were easily accessible. As for the Prequels, I had either had to DVR them when they aired on TNT or beg my parents to take me to Family Video so we could rent them. Eventually, though, I was able to get caught up on the franchise, and my fate was sealed. I’d fallen in love with Star Wars.

That said, the initial passion I felt towards the franchise began to fade over the next several years. I wasn’t nearly as invested in The Clone Wars by the time its fifth season began airing in 2012, only catching a few episodes here and there. This can be explained by a number of things, but it ultimately came as the result of growing up. As I grew from a shy third grader into an awkward middle schooler, my interests were invariably drawn elsewhere, and Star Wars couldn’t satisfy me any more than it already had. The franchise hadn’t changed. I had. But I never truly forgot where I came from. The movies, especially the Original Trilogy, always held a special place in my hart, and the DVDs remained regular staples for school breaks and family road trips alike.

Perhaps my waning interest was aided by a relative dearth of new content being released at this time. The Clone Wars was essentially the only major piece of Star Wars on the market, with new seasons beginning in September or October and running until March or April of the next year. That left plenty of time between episodes and seasons to get distracted by other things. Video games, blockbuster superhero movies, and after-school activities all competed for my attention, and my interest in Star Wars steadily dwindled as those won out.

But it would soon return. For young Kylan, the Disney buyout represented a new hope for the franchise. The Clone Wars was good, yes; but after five seasons at around twenty-two episodes a piece, the taste of it had grown a bit stale and I was ready for something new—something fresh. It was a bit disappointing when The Clone Wars was cancelled prematurely, but it was an easier pill to swallow when coupled with the anticipation for an all-new series on an all-new network.

I’ve already written at length about Rebels in the first part of this series, but I didn’t mention how closely I followed the series in its infancy. I remember reading all the theories about who “Fulcrum” really was and how some had decoded the modulation on the character’s voice to discover that it sounded an awful lot like Ashley Eckstein, somewhat spoiling the eventual reveal of Ahsoka Tano as a secret agent in the Rebellion. I also remember the excitement when Captain Rex and Commander Wolffe and Captain Gregor made their triumphant return early in season two, and when Hondo Onaka and Darth Maul likewise returned in one way or another.

More than that, there were new movies to get excited for as well, with a trilogy of sequel films on the horizon and a whole host of spin-offs that would keep the adventure going ad infinitum. I still remember tuning into Monday Night Football to watch the trailer for The Force Awakens live as it aired, despite not caring about the game being played in the slightest. And when the movie finally came out, the buzz of sitting in the theater on a cold December morning to watch the film in glorious 70mm IMAX was like nothing I’d experienced before. I did fall off Rebels eventually, but I still went and saw each new film on their opening weekend. I may not have been as committed a Star Wars fan as I once was, but I was still heavily invested in the property as the decade—and the franchise’s cinematic period—came to an end.

The end of 2019 was an interesting time in Star Wars history. That the finale for the first season of The Mandalorian would air within the same week that The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters was surely a deliberate act of “brand synergy” in that the buzz generated by one would beget interest in the other. But in hindsight, it also made for a near perfect baton pass between the franchise’s cinematic and television periods in the Disney era, as there has not been a theatrical Star Wars project released since then. Instead, the franchise has found a new home on Disney’s proprietary streaming service: Disney+.

I’m not sure anyone could have predicted The Mandalorian being the runaway success that it was. A weekly series set in the Star Wars universe and inspired by old cowboy serials and samurai films would appeal to certain subsections of Star Wars and film history nerds. But would the general public want to watch it too? As it turns out, yes. It didn’t hurt that there was an absolutely adorable “Baby Yoda” creature as the eponymous bounty hunter’s ward and sidekick as he hopped from planet to planet, aiding the locals as he sought to find a proper home for his adopted son. But the marketability of Baby Yoda is only part of the show’s success story. You also have to understand how its weekly release schedule helped make it the phenomenon that it was.

Prior to The Mandalorian, few—if any—streaming-exclusive shows aired weekly. Instead, binge-watching was the name of the game. Entire seasons would drop at once, and viewers would often burn through the episodes in the better part of a weekend, in contrast to the usual once-a-week format of scripted television common to network or cable shows. This model cuts two ways. On the one hand, it satiated audience’s lust for instant gratification. On the other, it didn’t allow for much hype or anticipation to build throughout a show’s run. Under this format, shows would often burst onto the scene suddenly and then slowly fizzle out as the audience got their fill and moved on to the next big thing.

This affected the companies producing and distributing the shows as well. Netflix was the top-dog in the streaming market when Disney+ came onto the scene, and it had succeeded largely thanks to multiple well-received original series like Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, and Stranger Things. Because streaming works on a subscription basis, it would be relatively trivial for someone to either use a free trial to watch that new show everyone’s talking about or buy a month of a given service and then cancel once their done with it. As such, producing consistently quality content was essential for retaining subscribers and motivated companies like Netflix to be always on the lookout for the next big thing, the next original show that would get people talking and investing their time—and money—in their service.

As Netflix’s share price grew and grew, Disney wanted in on that action. But it wouldn’t be enough to simply buy up a Netflix competitor (though they eventually would get Hulu in the 20th Century Fox merger). No, they’d build their own from the ground up—a service dedicated exclusively to hosting the company’s massive catalogue of classic films and television series.

But Disney+ wouldn’t just be home to the nostalgic media of your childhood. It would also feature “original” content—original in the sense that they were made specifically for the service—in the form of spin-offs of your favorite Disney properties. But, to differentiate itself from the competition, new episodes of these series would air weekly, rather than entire seasons dropping all at once like they did elsewhere.

While this may have frustrated viewers who’d grown accustomed to the instant-gratification model Netflix had pioneered, it ultimately benefitted both the show and the company behind it. It should be said that The Mandalorian had an excellent pilot episode that perfectly establishing who our titular hero is and what he’s about, while also ending with the show-stopping reveal of “Baby Yoda” and Mando’s relationship to the character as the show’s emotional thrust. You didn’t have to be a Star Wars fan to be hooked. And, because you had to wait a whole week for the story to continue, it allowed fans to talk to others about how great it was. And people listened. Word of mouth quickly spread, and viewership steadily rose as more and more people wanted to see what all the fuss was about for themselves. They would sign up for Disney+ to watch the show, maybe at first taking advantage of a one-week or one-month free trial, but with eight episodes airing over the course of nearly as many weeks, the show’s length eclipsed the trial window and would effectively force people to pay for at least a month’s subscription if they wanted to see how it ended. Savvier viewers may have tried to wait for the entire season to finish releasing before getting the free trial, then marathon the show in a matter of hours, but social pressures would encourage them to jump in sooner rather than later. You didn’t want to be the only one left out of the conversation when everyone else in the break room was chatting about Mando’s latest adventure with Baby Yoda, so you’d bite the bullet and buy in.

In the end, the weekly release model introduced to streaming by The Mandalorian and Disney+ helped create a solid base of subscribers for the platform, as well as generate a steady and reliable viewership for streaming Star Wars television. Combine that with the one-two punch of Solo flopping and The Rise of Skywalker closing out the saga films, it was all too easy for Disney to see their shiny new streaming service as the future home for the franchise. Better yet, you wouldn’t have to share any of the revenue generated from these ventures with those pesky theater chains, always demanding a cut of the profits from any film of yours they exhibited. With Disney+, they owned both the means of production and distribution—a capitalist’s wet dream.

As a result of all this, the Star Wars films in development at the time—namely the long-rumored but as yet unconfirmed Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett spin-offs—quickly switched gears into being television shows. The latter became The Book of Boba Fett (2021), a spin-off of The Mandalorian following the character’s reintroduction in the show’s second season. The former, meanwhile, would ultimately come in the form of a six-episode limited series released in May and June of 2022. These shows, however, received mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike upon their release, with many lamenting their slow pacing and poor story construction. Much of these problems boiled down to the fact that their stories were initially developed as two-hour long feature films that had been stretched to fill five-to-six hours of television, meaning their runtimes were padded with superfluous fluff that might otherwise have been left on the cutting room floor.

That said, there were still bright spots amid these lesser entries to the canon. Season two of The Mandalorian was generally well received, particularly among diehard fans, as it not only saw the return of Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison), but also featured the live-action debuts of both Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff). And to top it all off, the season ended with a young Luke Skywalker rescuing our band of heroes from an impending attack and taking the young Grogu (Baby Yoda) to train as a Jedi.

That was at the end of 2020. The Book of Boba Fett followed roughly a year later, beginning at the tail end of 2021 and wrapping up in February 2022. Obi-Wan Kenobi came out only a few months after in May 2022. Then, August would see the release of Andor, a spin-off of Rogue One that tells the story of how Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) joined the nascent Rebellion against the Empire. The Mandalorian then returned again for its third season in March 2023, which was then followed in August of that same year by Ahsoka, a live-action continuation of Rebels where Ahsoka Tano teams up with Sabine Wren and Hera Syndulla to find Ezra Bridger after he disappeared into hyperspace with the Grand Admiral Thrawn at the show’s conclusion.

That’s a lot to unpack, but here we go. The first few years of the Disney+ era was more or less a continuation of the annual winter release cycle of the preceding cinematic era, with the first two seasons of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett beginning in November or December. But starting with Obi-Wan Kenobi, the pace of new releases nearly doubled, with two new seasons of television dropping in 2022 and 2023 respectively. The motive for this is relatively simple: subscriber retention. With a year transpiring between the release of new seasons, it wouldn’t be too much work for fans to cancel their subscriptions during the months when The Mandalorian wasn’t actively releasing, then re-up before the next season’s premiere. So, to keep fans from leaving, Disney likely encouraged Lucasfilm to produce more content for the service and thus give Star Wars fans more incentive to hold onto those subscriptions between seasons.

The effects, meanwhile, are a bit more complicated. On the whole, it’s somewhat evident that this more aggressive release model directly contributed to the overall dip in quality across the shows produced since it was implemented. Particularly in the technical aspects, shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka appear much cheaper than the first and even second seasons of The Mandalorian, which both debuted prior to this accelerated timeline becoming the norm. Even The Book of Boba Fett and season three of The Mandalorian were not exempt from this trend, as they too were widely criticized for bearing many of the same flaws as their contemporaries. However, standing above all of this is Andor, which miraculously avoided falling victim to this trend. This has as much to do with the show’s production history relative to its counterparts than anything else.

The show was first revealed to be in development in 2018, meaning it had at least four years to gestate before coming to fruition. Moreover, it was planned from the beginning as a series, unlike The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, allowing its writing team to properly construct their plots and character arcs for the medium of television, rather than the forced reworking that the other two had to overcome. The Book of Boba Fett’s apparent production timeline is particularly revealing, with the show evidently not being fully greenlit until sometime in 2020 and ultimately releasing by the end of the following year, giving it—at best—two years for pre-production, principal photography, and editing before reaching audiences.

Ahsoka, meanwhile, falls a tad closer to Andor in terms of its assumed production schedule. Having been announced alongside The Book of Boba Fett, we can infer it began development around roughly the same time. But since it would not come out until August 2023, it had a bit more time to come together before the cameras started rolling. That said, it still seemed to be plagued by many of the same issues in quality as its counterparts, suffering from lackluster production design, visual effects, and cinematography, to name a few.

Part of the reason for this might be that the creative resources—the VFX artists, prop builders, set designers, costume designers, etc.—were split between multiple projects and thus couldn’t give any one show the proper time or attention necessary to make them look the best they could. And even for the people in the “above-the-line” roles—the directors, cinematographers, editors—the faster release schedule left little room for delays in production and might therefore have encouraged them to shoot things more economically than they would if they’d had more time. Aiding this was the development of “the Volume” a form of digital matte painting/rear projection where environments could be simulated in real time and captured in-camera alongside the actors’ performances, as opposed to being added in post like with blue- or green-screen technology. But the Volume is just as much a crutch as it is a useful tool for artists in bringing their vision to life, and many of the shows released in this period reflect that. The Volume is often best utilized when: a) the effects team can fully detail the rendered background; b) the cinematographer can properly match the lighting on set to the backdrop; and c) there are sufficient props and set decorations to blend the tangible and digital staging as one seamless environment. But, as these productions show, they likely did not have enough time or money to ensure all of these pieces were in place, resulting in a set of projects that are generally lacking in creative verve, except (of course) for Andor, the exception that proves the rule.

But the adverse effects of this ceaseless barrage of content have not only been felt by the shows themselves. The fans have likewise suffered to an extent under the weight of so much Star Wars in so little time. For newcomers and established fans alike, the amount of time you need to spend either catching up or following along with the new material is staggering, especially when compared to how it was in the years between the buyout and the launch of Disney+ and The Mandalorian. Five Star Wars films were released between 2015 and 2019. Their combined runtime nears around 710 minutes, or 11 hours and 50 minutes, including credits—a long marathon, but nothing unreasonable. Then, from 2019 to 2023, five live-action Star Wars shows premiered on Disney+, one of which (The Mandalorian) received multiple seasons. Altogether, it would take you approximately 1 day, 19 hours, and 39 minutes to watch every single episode of each series without pausing.

So what does this all mean? It’s created an environment where it’s not only encouraged but practically imperative to dedicate more time than ever to watching new Star Wars content, lest you be left behind as the franchise plugs along. Before Disney+, that meant watching a new movie every now and then, and for the more diehard fans, tuning into The Clone Wars or Rebels depending on what year it is. However, these longer TV shows were generally ancillary to the core saga; you didn’t need to watch either of them to follow the live-action film releases (for the most part—see my analysis of Rogue One and Solo in part two of this series for more detail).

But without the core saga anchoring things, the executives as Lucasfilm have tried to turn The Mandalorian into the basis for the future of the franchise. And while some have enjoyed the direction this has gone, others (myself included) believe it’s ultimately to the show’s—and the franchise’s—detriment. The Mandalorian began as a relatively isolated story set against the backdrop of the wider conflicts happening in the galaxy as the New Republic seeks to assert its rule and eradicate whatever traces of the old Empire remain. It established the expectation that, while Republic and Imperial forces would intrude on Mando’s adventures every now and then, his journey would ultimately be about him finding his place in the galaxy while shielding Baby Yoda from harm. But as the second season drew on, it became increasingly clearer that our Mando was going to take a backseat, the story instead focusing more on the wider conflicts occurring in the galaxy and the legacy characters at the center of them.

It would be one thing if these characters appeared as simple one-off extended cameos that were motivated entirely by the demands of Mando’s journey. But they were not. Rather, they were there to set-up other shows and storylines at the expense of the one already happening. Arguably the most egregious of these was Ahsoka Tano’s appearance midway through season two. There were certainly many fans of The Mandalorian who’d never seen a minute of The Clone Wars or Rebels, and as such had little frame of reference for who Ahsoka was and what she was doing at this point in the Star Wars timeline. This wouldn’t necessarily matter if her presence was in the service of furthering Mando’s storyline, as whatever context uninitiated viewers would need could be handily delivered without too much exposition. But instead, her role is more of a backdoor pilot to her own spin-off series than anything else. The references to Thrawn and Ezra ultimately detract from the overall viewing experience as it left the uninitiated viewer lost and confused as to who Ahsoka was talking about and why she was after them. These people came here to see Mando and Grogu work together to make the galaxy a better place, not be assigned homework for another series that was only loosely related to this one.

Likewise, Boba Fett’s presence, while a more regular and natural fit to The Mandalorian’s overall story, ultimately served to set up a spin-off show of his own, one that was cobbled together from the incomplete standalone film after Solo flopped. But, as fate would have it, even The Book of Boba Fett would not be spared from the same curse that had befallen its antecedent. The show begins by focusing on Boba Fett and his exploits on Tatooine after his escape from the Sarlacc pit and taking over the remains of Jabba the Hutt’s crime syndicate, but by the end, becomes for all intents and purposes Season 2.5 of The Mandalorian. Not only do Ahsoka Tano and Luke Skywalker return yet again, but Mando gets Grogu back from Luke’s training temple and also acquires a modified N-1 Starfighter to replace his destroyed Razor Crest. For nearly two whole episodes, the show’s title character was sidelined in favor of yet more “brand synergy.”

To some within Lucasfilm and Disney, this may have been seen as a stroke of genius, as it seamlessly connected the disparate storylines of the new Star Wars together into one, cohesive saga, while also filling the holes caused by extending a two-hour film into a seven-episode miniseries by using existing characters, props, and costumes to help save on production costs. However, it also caused an inordinate amount of confusion and even frustration among those who’d yearned for live-action media dedicated entirely to the iconic bounty hunter introduced in The Empire Strikes Back when the show became less and less about him as it went on. Likewise, fans of The Mandalorian who weren’t interested in a Boba Fett spin-off would find themselves in a similar boat as the third season of The Mandalorian would begin with Mando not only having found a new ship by also already being reunited with Grogu after separating in the season two finale. Such a critical status quo change occurring in a completely different show between two seasons of one show should be unthinkable. And yet, it happened. Even then, the rest of season three moves even further away from the simple “adventure-a-week” format of the first season, instead devoting more of its time towards Bo-Katan’s attempts to reclaim Mandalore and the efforts of the Imperial Remnants to rebuild in the face of New Republic persecution. Mando still factors into the plot, but it’s hard to say that the show is truly about him anymore, despite it bearing his name.

What this all points to is a phenomenon I like to call the “MCU-ificiation” of Star Wars. I already wrote about how the films of the early Disney era were patterned after the MCU and the problems that caused, but the Disney+ period has been even worse. While Disney and Lucasfilm may have expected audiences to sit for Rogue One and Solo between installments in the Sequel Trilogy, the spin-off films were ultimately inessential to the new iterations of the core saga and could therefore be skipped without missing much. The Mandalorian began similarly. While it existed within the broader Star Wars galaxy, its scope was far more limited than the grand epics of the saga films. But, in the absence of a stable film market—thanks to a combination of Solo flopping and the COVID-19 pandemic hobbling public interest in movie theaters—Disney+ became the main avenue for generating revenue from the Star Wars IP. But it was not enough to have these projects exist as largely standalone ventures. No, they would have to be inextricably linked to one another by copying the MCU’s method of stringing together multiple seemingly disconnected superhero movies into one overarching storyline. And after the runaway success of The Mandalorian’s first season Disney and Lucasfilm decided its second season would serve as a vehicle for launching multiple other projects, hence why Boba Fett and Ahsoka were included as set-up for their own spin-off shows. No longer was The Mandalorian a fun but ultimately inessential jaunt through the Star Wars universe, but rather a critical pillar of the franchise’s future.

The MCU made this formula work, for the most part. In the first phase, you only needed to have seen Iron Man to enjoy Iron Man 2, and films like Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger could be avoided if you weren’t interested in those particular heroes. Likewise, phase two did not require you to have seen Iron Man 3 to follow Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Guardians of the Galaxy. Furthermore, you also didn’t need to have seen every film in a given phase before watching The Avengers or Avengers: Age of Ultron, as those films only tangentially reference the events that occurred before them. But phase three changed this with Captain America: Civil War, which was essentially Avengers 2.5 with how many of Marvel’s superheroes factored into its story. However, this was not much of a problem at the time as the franchise had been running for long enough and built up enough goodwill with general audiences that it was assumed that they would turn out for whatever new MCU film released regardless of who’s name was in the title. And they did, making it one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time and turning its two-part finale of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame into two of the highest-grossing films of all time.

In the wake of this, Disney likely felt inspired to see what else in their pantheon of intellectual properties they might turn into a true Cinematic Universe, and Star Wars emerged early on as a key contender, with The Mandalorian serving as the beginning of this experiment. However, the transition would prove difficult, as neither the show nor the franchise around it was properly equipped for it in the way that Marvel comics were, causing certain complications when the new direction butted heads with the audience’s expectations. Historically speaking, the storytelling in Star Wars has largely been driven by epic sagas, not the myriad character-centric storylines coming together intermittently in climactic crossover events that define the MCU and the comic books their based on. When spin-offs have existed in Star Wars, they were largely as supplementary material meant to expand the lore for the dedicated fans who weren’t satisfied with the franchise’s main canon.

Moreover, Star Wars’ relevance in popular culture was largely built by its relative scarcity. For the longest time, it was an incredible trilogy of films that radically altered both its genre and the industry as a whole. But it ended. It didn’t continue into eternity. There were novels and comics, but those were for nerds. The general moviegoing public needn’t concern themselves with those. Instead, they could continue rewatching the old movies and remember the way they felt when they saw them for the first time. That’s why it was such a big deal whenever the franchise would return to theaters, first with The Phantom Menace and then with The Force Awakens after over fifteen and ten years of dormancy respectively. General audiences turned out in droves, wanting to recapture the magic they’d felt when they first encountered that galaxy far, far away.

Would the franchise have been better off if, after The Rise of Skywalker, Lucasfilm and Disney had let shows like The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett, and Andor stand on their own for several years? I think so. It would have given the more casual audiences time to miss it, and the diehard fans something to keep them engaged while they waited for the next epic saga to reveal itself, perhaps another trilogy to help bridge the gap between the Original and Sequel Trilogies or something set before or after the Skywalker Saga altogether. You might have even used this as a vehicle for telling the story of Ahsoka’s search for Ezra and Thrawn and the rise of the First Order. But instead, you demanded immediate returns, necessitating the non-stop production of more and more shows that would posit themselves as the essential to the canon in order to maximize viewer—read: subscriber—retention.

The MCU’s history after Endgame also reveals certain flaws in this formula, and it is especially interesting how it mirrors the Disney+ period of Star Wars media, even down to when and how they started. 2019 saw the grand conclusions to both the Infinity and Skywalker Sagas, with Avengers: Endgame premiering in April and The Rise of Skywalker in December of that year. Likewise, they both saw their franchises expanding into the new territory of Disney+ in the succeeding years, with the shows produced for the platform becoming as relevant to the overarching storyline as the films that built it. Only, in the case of the MCU, the films kept coming.  That meant two things: 1) the studios’ resources were being spread across more projects than ever before, resulting in diminishing quality; and 2) audiences grew exhausted by the amount of content they had to consume that wasn’t anywhere near as good as it had been before.

For the MCU, this resulted in the franchise experiencing some of its first true commercial and critical failures, with audiences balking at screenings of more recent installments like The Marvels, Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, and Thor: Love and Thunder. The sheer volume of film and television content being added to the MCU has precipitated a phenomenon known as “superhero fatigue,” where audiences who’d once have turned out in droves for the latest MCU film are no longer willing to invest their time, energy, or money in the franchise’s present or future.

Star Wars has suffered a similar fate in recent years. If it was too much for there to be a single, two-hour film to be released once a year over the course of five years, then the last few years of two-seasons of around eight-episodes of television, with each clocking in somewhere between 35 minutes to an hour, has been nothing short of overwhelming. While some devoted fans have been able to keep up with this, others have fallen behind, with the franchise showing little interest in slowing down to let them catch up.

I am one of those people whom Star Wars has abandoned. I watched the first two seasons of The Mandalorian as they aired. I watched season seven of The Clone Wars and the first season of The Bad Batch when those premiered. I missed The Book of Boba Fett but tuned back in for Obi-Wan Kenobi when that was released. However, by this point, the cracks in the franchise’s state under the business model forced upon it by the demands of Disney+ were too obvious for me to ignore. I wasn’t as enthralled by The Mandalorian’s second season as others were. I found the legacy characters’ appearances more gratuitous than anything, and especially felt that Luke Skywalker’s role in the season finale was the epitome of fan service. While I was initially intrigued by the premise of The Book of Boba Fett, I didn’t watch it for reasons that I can’t now recall, but it doesn’t seem like I missed much. And lastly, Obi-Wan Kenobi left me feeling underwhelmed and dejected.

Because of this, I didn’t watch Andor when it first aired (though I’ve since rectified that mistake). I skipped season three of The Mandalorian all together, and only watched Ahsoka begrudgingly. But from everything I’ve seen and heard from these projects, I’ve been left mostly disappointed by the finished product. To me, Mando season 3, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka are commercial products more than they are works of art. It’s difficult to see their stories as anything more than excuses to have characters we recognize deliver lines to one another in a sterile environment dressed up to look like a familiar location. In the process of trying to appease the fans and win over their money, the franchise has lost its way and begun prioritizing quality over quantity. And as the quality continues to drop, I’ve felt little interest in paying attention to anything new coming out of the Disney Star Wars production mill.

That’s left me in a precarious spot. I still love Star Wars, but not as intensely as I did in that first honeymoon period with The Clone Wars or even in those blissful early years of the Sequel Trilogy, Rebels, and Rogue One. I look at the upcoming slate of Star Wars films and television shows not with excitement, but apprehension. Recent experience has told me that I should expect nothing more than disappointment and fan service to await me. And that’s a shame, because I want to care about Star Wars again. I want to be hyped for the next big thing, but I also want to enjoy the smaller stories taking place at the margins of the galaxy. Only, I’m not sure we can have one and the other coexist under the current regimen of twice-annual streaming series.

Thankfully, Star Wars is more than film and television. There have always been novels and comic books to help expand the lore and introduce new characters, locations, and conflicts to the broader canon. And in 2021, a new era began for the franchise. No longer were we beholden to the strict bounds of the Skywalker Saga. We could forget those stories and characters and explore all new terrain, see the galaxy as it was when the Jedi and the Republic were at the height of their power and influence. Fitting, then, that this new era would be called “The High Republic” and would debut with a novel titled The Light of the Jedi.

I’d never really gotten into Star Wars books before. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe the High Republic could give me the fresh start I needed to fall in love with Star Wars all over again.

[kylanfedje]

Disney Star Wars Retrospective - Episode III: The Theme Park Strikes Back

The first of the morning sun’s rays peek through the clouds as you board a bus covered in those little yellow characters from that new Despicable Me movie everyone’s talking about. It’s June 18, 2010, and you are in Orlando, Florida, barely awake after a restless night of tossing and turning, your dreams filled with visions of what today would bring. After a short ride, you arrive at the bus terminal and make your way through Universal’s CityWalk shopping district. You think about stopping to get a coffee, but the crowds thrumming around you keep you on course. Any delays, any hesitation, and you might miss it. You can’t miss it. Not for anything. Not when you’ve come this far already. Not even for that little shot of caffeine you so desperately crave.

What awaits you beyond the gates of Universal’s Islands of Adventure is more than enough to keep you going. A new experience unlike anything you’ve seen before; a fully realized rendering of a place which—before today—could only exist in the imaginations of those who dared to dream. But now, it’s real. And all it takes to get there is the cost of a round-trip flight through ORD, the cab fare from the airport to your hotel, a three-night resort stay, and two-day park hopper tickets.

After a quick security screening, a park employee scans your ticket. They can tell by your silver-and-green scarf where you’re headed and give you directions for how to get there, though it’s ultimately futile as all you have to do is follow the flock as they move towards the end of their pilgrimage. You pick up your pace as you enter Seuss Landing and keep it up as you continue through the Lost Continent. You have no time or need for the trite and mundane experiences these lands have to offer. No, your sights—and the sights of everyone around you—are singularly set on the land just beyond; a spectacular place where magical creatures dwell, where illusion becomes reality, and for a few fleeting moments, your troubles will melt away in the hot Florida sun.

You hear gasps and cheers from those who’ve already made it, and when you round the corner, you see it: a medieval castle high up on a hill, its stone walls and slate gray roofing as familiar as your mother’s face. Welcome to the future of themed entertainment. Welcome to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade.

The world was forever changed when Universal partnered with [REDACTED] to bring the iconic characters and locations of her beloved wizard school adventure series to life. What resulted was a revolution in how theme park lands were conceived and designed. Before, most lands would have some sort of cohesive story to tie them together— Frontierland was set in the Old West, a trading outpost at the cutting edge of westward expansion; Tomorrowland made the dreams of the future the reality of today. These were broad enough descriptors that you could include rides and attractions themed to specific films or franchises, but ultimately, a section of a theme park dedicated to a single piece of intellectual property was too great a risk for the suits to stomach. If the IP behind a ride fell out of favor, then you could simply retheme it or tear it down and replace it with something more current and marketable. An entire land, however? Unthinkable. You’d have to find a brand that was so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that it would never—and I mean never—become unpopular. But then again, why bother if we can just put Star Wars in Tomorrowland and call it a day?

Such was the conventional wisdom when the Wizarding World debuted. Though, in truth, there may be evidence that such a venture was not as misguided as some may have believed. Right next door to Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure is an area of the park themed after Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park franchise, aptly named: Jurassic Park. This section acts as a real-world version of the fictional theme park created by entrepreneur John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) in the hit 1993 film, where dinosaurs were brought back to life for the viewing public’s pleasure—and the investor’s profit. Of course, things still go awry, namely on the Jurassic Park River Adventure ride, just as they did in the film, as the dinosaurs are let loose from their paddocks and wreak havoc on unsuspecting riders. Even the visitor’s center seen in the film is present, with interactive attractions telling the story of how the park’s scientists cloned dinosaurs out of extinction. Grab a bite to eat from the Burger Digs quick-service restaurant as you explore, and don’t forget to stop by the gift shop on your way out!

But while the Jurassic Park section of Islands of Adventure is directly tied to a famous movie franchise, its success has as much to do with the aesthetic and narrative qualities inherent to the property as it does its cultural context. For Average Tourist and her two-and-a-half kids, the concept of a dinosaur theme park all but sells itself, nor is it out of place as a smaller portion of a larger park environment. They don’t even need to have seen the film to understand the story—the “science” involved in reviving these long-extinct species is explained easily through the Discovery Center, and the threat posed by these creatures is clearly demonstrated through the incredible thrill rides you can go on. My point is that neither the film Jurassic Park or the novel it’s based on necessarily needed to exist for a land sharing a similar premise and visual identity to also exist or even be successful.

The Wizarding World, meanwhile, relies almost entirely upon guests coming in with at least a cursory familiarity with the established Harry Potter lore in order to invest themselves in the land’s story. I think you’d have had a hard time selling most people on the idea of visiting a village adjacent to a wizarding school as a compelling experience prior to the publication of the first Harry Potter novel. But after the series became a worldwide bestseller and spawned an equally successful film franchise, that was no longer an issue. An entire generation of children grew up dreaming of enrolling in or even just visiting Hogwarts, meeting Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore, or whatever witch or wizard suited their fancy. As such, a theme park land dedicated to realizing that experience was practically a no-brainer.

That said, there were certain logistical hurdles to be resolved before such a place could open to the public. A theme park needs rides, yes, but it’ll struggle to make back its operational expenses without restaurants and gift shops to drain guests’ savings. Hogwarts, while a compelling space on its own, was not terribly conducive to these sorts of places. Sure, the Great Hall could be reserved as a dining space, but where would guests get their wands or their robes or their butterbeer? It was a school, not a shopping mall. Thankfully, the canon had a solution for this. The fictional village of Hogsmeade was not only near enough to the school’s grounds that you could transition seamlessly from one to the next but contained a robust selection of shopping and dining options that guests would be all too eager to spend money on.

And with the area eventually being connected to the neighboring park’s Diagon Alley section via the Hogwarts express, Universal had done the unthinkable and bested Disney at their own game. Before, guests visiting Orlando would debate over which theme park resort was the better value: Disney or Universal. And for many, Walt Disney World was broadly seen as the more worthwhile experience, with most visitors prioritizing their parks when planning trips. If they visited Universal at all, it was mostly as an afterthought, a, “we might as well check it out while we’re here,” above anything else. But after the WizardingWorld expansions, Universal quickly became a much hotter ticket in town, with many tourists extending their stays to visit both resorts and some even omitting Disney’s parks from their trips entirely. The WizardingWorld elevated Universal into the first serious challenger to Disney’s status atop the theme park industry since Disneyland opened in 1955. But the Mouse could not abide this, and the company would soon fire back with an immersive land themed around a lucrative and marketable IP of its own.

Their first attempt at aping Universal’s Harry Potter lands was not Star Wars. The franchise had been present in the parks ever since Star Tours opened in 1987, and not long after the debut of the WizardingWorld areas, Imagineers began developing concepts for an entire land themed to the franchise’s iconic planets which would feature fan-favorite characters from throughout the series. But this would have to wait until Corporate could negotiate the rights necessary to make this dream a reality—which would eventually be finalized with Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm in October 2012. In the meantime, they would have to look elsewhere for inspiration.

2009 saw the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, a sprawling sci-fi epic set on the alien world of Pandora, where a group of human colonists seek to exploit the planet’s natural resources, despite the efforts of its native inhabitants, the blue-skinned and nine-foot tall Na’vi, to stop them. The film was a box office smash, out-earning James Cameron’s own Titanic (1997) to become the highest-grossing film of all time. In the wake of WizardingWorld, Disney was looking for a cash cow IP with universal appeal to compete with Universal Studios, and with Avatar, they smelled blood—er, money—in the water.

In 2011, they announced a partnership with James Cameron to develop an all-new section of their Animal Kingdom park themed around his blockbuster film, allowing visitors to commune with the Na’vi and enjoy the wonders of Pandora in between rides on Kilimanjaro Safaris and Expedition Everest. But the land would not open until 2017, and by then, Avatar had lost much of the cultural relevance it once had. People remembered it, yes, but if pressed would more often describe the spectacle of the film’s stunning visual effects than they would a fondness for Jake Sully and the Na’vi or their fight against the RDA. That’s not to say that Pandora: TheWorldofAvatar was not a success, either creatively or commercially, as many have gone on to praise its attention to detail in bringing Pandora to life and its attractions have become some of the most popular in the entire Walt Disney World Resort. But it was not the monolith of popular culture that Harry Potter was. Thankfully, Disney was well under way with an IP that was.

Plans for what would become Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge were first announced in August 2015, with the land eventually opening in Disneyland and Hollywood Studios in May and August of 2019 respectively. Through the development process, Imagineers’ initial plans to bring guests to the familiar worlds of Tatooine and Endor were scrapped, and they were given a new directive: brand synergy.

Instead of focusing on the past, this new land would be built for the present. That meant that it would be developed alongside Disney’s slate of Star Wars sequel films. As such, its story would take place alongside them and primarily feature the characters originated therein. You could not go there and expect to see Obi-wan or Darth Vader, Qui-Gon Jinn or Count Dooku, or any number of recognizable legacy characters; nor would you be visiting the ice planet Hoth or the cloud city of Bespin. Instead, you would find yourself in the Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu, a remote world in the Unknown Regions of the Outer Rim. Once a popular stop for pre-hyperspace travelers, the advent of lightspeed travel has resulted in the outpost becoming largely forgotten by the wider galaxy and drawing the interest of smugglers, bounty hunters, and other agents operating on the fringes of civilized society. Now, during the era of the Sequel Trilogy, the Resistance uses the remote world as a recruitment center, safe from the prying eyes of nefarious interlopers. But the First Order has caught wind of their activity and maintains a presence in the outpost as they try to root out any who would dare stand in their way.

This conceit allows for a wide array of Star Wars iconography to be present in the land. In one corner, you can have the Millenium Falcon, docked as the façade for the Smuggler’s Run show building. In another, you can have a TIE Fighter marking the First Order’s base of operations and serving as the hub for a regular parade of stormtroopers led by the mighty Kylo Ren. To see an X-Wing, you first need to enter the secret Resistance base (the queue for Rise of the Resistance) before boarding a shuttle that is ultimately intercepted by a First Order Star Destroyer, culminating in a daring rescue attempt by our heroes: Rey, Finn, and Poe, that sees you safely returned to the planet’s surface to continue your visit on Batuu. Now, you can pay to take part in a special experience where a cast member guides you through the process of building your own lightsaber using pieces scavenged from across the galaxy; or you can visit a seedy cantina and sip on otherworldly drinks; or you can buy outfits to either dress yourself as a First Order officer or blend in among the locals; or you can purchase dolls of iconic characters and creatures; or you can build your very own droid—for a fee. And what would a Star Wars land be without blue milk?

Most of this should be expected from a Disney theme park venture based around the Star Wars IP. Whatever they could do to convince you to part with more of your money, they’d do it, only now it would be totally immersive. You weren’t just riding Star Wars; you were living it. This commitment to immersion above all else is a direct result of the success of Universal’s Wizarding World and its efforts to fully-realize the familiar settings and characters audiences had come to love from the Harry Potter books and movies. Only Galaxy’s Edge differed from its largest influence in one obvious way: Batuu did not exist in canon prior to the park. It has since appeared in some canonical works—mainly comics and novels—but there has yet to be a single scene in any Star Wars movie or TV show set in or referencing Black Spire Outpost whatsoever.

What does this mean for Galaxy’s Edge and its appeal to the park’s visitors, be they Star Wars fans or not? Creating an original setting for the land gave the creative team a great deal of control over who and what can appear there and allows them to narratively justify their presence however they see fit in that they were not necessarily limited to only featuring the Resistance or the First Order, nor were they encouraged to recreate certain scenes if they’d gone with a more familiar locale. At the same time, the choice to set this land firmly between the events of the Sequel Trilogy meant that the iconic characters of the Original and Prequel Trilogies could not appear without breaking the land’s canon. So, for fans looking to meet Anakin, Obi-wan, Yoda, Luke, Han, Leia, or any of their favorite characters from the wider saga were out of luck. Moreover, while hardcore fans may have learned of the lore behind land prior to their visit, the casual tourist would have no frame of reference for Batuu or the Black Spire Outpost and might have a lesser experience because of it.

What Disney executives were likely banking on when planning the land in this way was that the Sequels would be a runaway success on par with the two trilogies that came before it. And while they certainly were profitable, it’s difficult to assess the trilogy’s overall contribution to popular culture and how that affected the general public’s approach to Galaxy’sEdge. The derivative nature of The Force Awakens arguably gave the land a broader appeal, as it meant stormtroopers, TIE Fighters, and X-Wings could all be present. But the backlash to The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker’s failed attempt at course correction ultimately caused the trilogy to fall flat on its face when it should have taken a victory lap. So, while many who visit Galaxy’sEdge have likely seen the Sequel Trilogy, it’s less likely that they’d harbor any greater affections for the characters and stories they originated than they would for those of the Original or even the Prequel Trilogy, regardless of if they’d call themselves Star Wars fans or not.

Not only that, but the land’s dedication to total immersion in a specific era and place in canon makes it difficult to incorporate newer icons of the franchise that fall outside of its purview. When The Mandalorian became a huge hit in 2019, Disney would of course want to capitalize on that by featuring the eponymous bounty hunter and “The Child” (Grogu, aka Baby Yoda) in the parks as characters visitors could meet and interact with. But because the series was set before the Sequel Trilogy and the land during, their appearance would necessarily imply that the characters not only survived to that point in the timeline but were still traveling together. As a result, Imagineers were forced to concoct a contrivance that these characters were, “visiting Batuu in the time that you know them from the series—or somewhere close to it,” in order to justify their presence in the land and, in effect, breaking its canon for commercial rather than creative reasons.

The myriad merits and faults of Galaxy’s Edge would only be amplified when the Galactic Starcruiser embarked on its maiden voyage in 2022. The hotel marketed itself as an all-inclusive, totally immersive two-day experience taking guests on a journey through the Star Wars universe where they were explicitly encouraged to roleplay as someone taking a cruise through the galaxy, with opportunities to meet and befriend both original and familiar characters along the way and join them on their quests. But perhaps their goals were too ambitious and the audience for them smaller than anticipated, as the hotel would close less than a year and a half after opening.

For an in-depth look at the complete history of the Galactic Starcruiser, I highly recommend Jenny Nicholson’s video on the subject (above). It’s long, but it’s the most comprehensive analysis of what exactly went wrong with the project and is well worth the watch. You don’t have to have seen it to follow the rest of this essay, but it will certainly help as I argue that the Galactic Starcruiser represents the apotheosis of the flaws inherent to Galaxy’sEdge and the model of immersive theme park experiences pioneered by WizardingWorld.

There are two kinds of people in this world: the sickos who are obsessed with themed entertainment and everyone else. I belong to the former camp, but I recognize that most of the millions of people who visit theme parks every year do not, and as such don’t always go into these experiences with the same expectations that I and others like me do. That is not a flaw necessarily as much it is a reality that theme park designers must contend with when developing different attractions. Just as blockbuster films might push the envelope in terms of their cinematography or editing in ways that enhance an audience’s viewing experience even if they can’t explain why, so too do theme park designers have the capacity to innovate and experiment with their attractions in ways that, while not obvious to the average tourist, still enhance their overall experience.

Sometimes, this can be done through innovations in ride systems or animatronics, of which Galaxy’sEdge is a prime example of both. The Rise of the Resistance is arguably one of the greatest theme park attractions ever built. The ride effectively begins the minute you enter the queue, with various preshow elements receiving a level of attention to detail typically reserved for the ride itself and a unique blend of motion simulators, trackless, and drop ride systems create a completely immersive and thrilling experience for riders no matter their familiarity with the Star Wars franchise. At the same time, the design team’s dedication to total immersion can inadvertently alienate more casual audiences. It expects a level of commitment on the part of guests in order for the land’s story to play out in the way the designers intended. You are meant to be a resident of the Star Wars galaxy stopping by the Black Spire Outpost. Perhaps you’re here to take on a bounty or smuggle some goods. Maybe you’d like to join the First Order or ally with the Resistance. Whichever way you go, you are asked to buy into the narrative to a degree to have a complete experience, something that’s not necessarily expected when visiting more generically themed lands in other parks.

Not only that, but you are also expected to literally buy into this participation. Activities like dressing as a First Order member or Black Spire local require the purchase of the proper costumes. Likewise, building your own lightsaber or droid, acts which can help to deepen one’s connection to the area’s story only, are locked behind even more expensive transactions. This would not necessarily be a problem if the land also featured sufficient “streetmosphere,” entertainment between attractions, shops, and restaurants to help make a land feel more “alive.” And while you can occasionally glimpse marching stormtroopers or Rey and Chewbacca out on a mission, the land is otherwise dreadfully static. In other Disney parks, motion is often used to help draw guest’s attention towards certain areas. Features like the Astro Orbiter in Tomorrowland or the Mark Twain Riverboat in Frontierland, in addition to being attractions in and of themselves, provide a sense of kinetic energy, of momentum to the land that helps guests feel like they’re part of a living, breathing community. Galaxy’s Edge, meanwhile, offers little in this regard. Instead, it relies upon the agency of the visitors themselves to create the story. In a bustling bazaar, it’s the people buying and selling goods who are kinetic, their lives the stories of the environment. But in Galaxy’s Edge, the consumers are not cast member performers but rather other tourists, complete with the uniform Mickey Ears and Loungefly bags, not all of whom are interested in cosplaying Star Wars for a day. In other lands, you can stop, sit, and watch the activity of the park’s attractions or costumed actors to let yourself be transported into its story. In Galaxy’s Edge, you’re essentially required to be an active participant, buying things and talking to cast members, or else the story simply stops.

Galactic Starcruiser embodied and exacerbated nearly all of these problems. Not only was it still dedicated to an unfamiliar setting—the Halcyon starcruiser had no precedent in canon—it also necessarily had to occur alongside the events of the Sequel Trilogy since guests were allowed to visit Galaxy’s Edge for a few hours during their stay. Furthermore, the exorbitant price tag suggested that this was a one-of-a-kind, A-list experience that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Only, as Jenny Nicholson details in her video, this was far from guaranteed due to flaws in the design of the experience’s roleplaying elements, flaws which may have been addressed either before or after opening if not for corporate expectations of quick returns on investment. They might have hoped to recoup some of these costs from visitors purchasing the clothes and merchandise necessary to fully immerse themselves in the story, but that only replicated the issue of prioritizing active engagement over atmospheric world-building in constructing an experiential narrative. In the end, what ultimately doomed the Starcruiser was the likely fact that there simply wasn’t a large enough audience of people interested in a two-day immersive Star Wars hotel experience who would also be willing to shell out the thousands of dollars needed to do so. As such, the venture struggled to make its money back even with the financial restraints placed on the project’s creative team which precipitated its eventual closure as a cost-saving measure and tax write-off.

So, what does the future look like for Galaxy’sEdge? It’s been almost five years since the Sequel Trilogy ended, and a bevy of new iconic characters and vehicles have arisen as staples of the franchise since then. And yet, the land remains stuck in that era in which it was developed. Could it one day receive an overhaul, its facades and its rides retooled to fit within the bounds of the Original or Prequel Trilogies, or some other era of Star Wars lore? Perhaps. As much as the land’s conceit as a continuously inhabited outpost for a cross-section of the galaxy’s heroes and villains can be limiting, it also allows for a certain degree of flexibility in shifting the timeline around. How might Batuu and the Black Spire Outpost have looked during the Clone Wars, or the Galactic Civil War, or even the High Republic? But at this point, it’s difficult to imagine such changes happening anytime soon. With how much money has already been invested into making the land what it is and how much was presumably lost with the Galactic Starcruiser, it’s difficult to see Disney’s corporate overlords wanting to invest the resources needed to adapt the land further and incorporate new rides and experience, even if it might improve overall guest satisfaction to do so.

Then again, there’s a new sheriff in town, and its name is Disney+. Gone are the days of Star Wars being primarily a cinematic venture, with spin-off material being the domain of only the franchise’s most devoted fans. Now, streaming television series is where it’s at. If Disney is as committed to brand synergy as they were when they created Galaxy’s Edge, then perhaps we might one day see newer characters and settings reflected in the parks. But that day is not today.

[kylanfedje]

Disney Star Wars Retrospective - Episode II: Revenge of the Cinema

10,000+ words ~ 42 min read

Oh, how great it was to have been a Star Wars fan in 2015. Rebels was in full swing, with the incredible Ahsoka Tano being revealed as the operative behind the “Fulcrum” alias, and anticipation was through the roof for the upcoming release of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. And rightly so, as the film presented in the trailers, posters, and other marketing materials Lucasfilm produced in the run-up to the film’s December 18th release date promised to satisfy the nostalgia of old fans while still offering plenty of new characters, worlds, and stories to discover.

That said, there was still a significant amount of cautious optimism underlining the fandom during this time. The memory of the disappointment that was The Phantom Menace—and the Prequel Trilogy as a whole—loomed large in the minds of fans, leading many reluctant to buy into the hype. Nevertheless, the general atmosphere of excitement was easy to get swept up in. After all, this was a new era for the franchise. Disney, the brand’s new corporate overlord, was riding high on the success of their Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which took the comic book characters and stories once beloved only by a niche but dedicated fandom into a mainstream powerhouse of popular culture while not alienating those original fans in the process. As such, it was not unreasonable for Star Wars fans at the time to hope that Disney’s management of the property would provide similar results.

Not only that, but a host of both returning and brand-new creative voices were involved with the project. J.J. Abrams, the man behind the successful 2009 Star Trek reboot, was hired to direct, and would write the script alongside Lawrence Kasdan, who’d worked on the screenplays for both The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), with contributions from Michael Arndt, writer of the pitch-perfect adaptation of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013). Notably, George Lucas would not be involved beyond a brief story consulting role early in pre-production (though his ideas were eventually discarded). At the time, this was seen by many as a boon rather than a hindrance as he was often blamed for the shortcomings of the Prequel Trilogy, that nearly all of their idiosyncrasies were the result of Lucas’ weaknesses as a writer and director, and that few in the production were willing to contradict him as he was the “Great Visionary” behind the beloved Original Trilogy. The Prequels ultimately revealed that Lucas worked best when he had others around him to redirect and support his creative impulses, though many wondered if he had simply grown too far out of touch with what audiences wanted to see from the Star Wars universe. Therefore, his detachment from the Sequel Trilogy led fans to believe the new films might somehow manage to recapture the magic of the Original Trilogy after all.

For the most part, this belief was proven true, as when The Force Awakens premiered in December 2015, it debuted to rave reviews and record-setting numbers at the box office, proving the hype was more than justified. Fans and critics alike lauded the film for its exciting set pieces, incredible visual and special effects, and compelling characters introduced by the film. At the same time, many were quick to point out its aesthetic and structural similarities to previous entries in the series, particularly to Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). A brief plot synopsis illustrates this: An orphan on a desert planet discovers a dormant connection to the Force and joins an upstart Rebellion/Resistance in fighting against the tyrannical Empire/First Order, which seeks to subjugate the galaxy through the use of a planet-killing mega-weapon. Furthermore, much of the plot is driven by a secret message carried by a lost droid that has to be delivered to the good guys’ secret base before the bad guys can get ahold of it. However, the film still did enough to differentiate itself from A New Hope and not be merely a shot-for-shot remake of it by giving its characters unique motivations and personalities compared to their predecessors. While Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammil) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) both originated on desert planets, Luke was a farm boy, and Rey was an abandoned scavenger. Both yearned to escape their oppressive homes, but both found distinct reasons to stay—Luke so as to not leave his aunt and uncle to manage their farm alone, and Rey to wait for the family she was sure would return. Moreover, Rey’s fierce independence, born from a life of struggle in a hostile environment, is repeatedly affirmed throughout the film, whereas Luke often relied heavily on the help of others to get by in the wider galaxy, reflective of his relatively sheltered upbringing in the isolated Tatooine desert.

Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) most obviously parallels Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in that he’s a rogueish and charismatic pilot. But where Han was an opportunistic smuggler, more interested in the money to be earned in rescuing a princess than in the righteous cause underpinning it (until he triumphantly returns to help Luke blow up the Death Star and subsequently join the Rebellion), Poe is “the best pilot in the Resistance.” He’s a freedom fighter, devoted to the cause of preserving the Republic and destroying the First Order, a far cry from the self-interested scoundrel that Han Solo starts out as.

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver) is similarly analogous to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker (David Prowse and James Earl Jones), a pupil of the light who was seduced by the dark side and is also related to one of our main characters. And yet, The Force Awakens shows us that his fall from grace was nothing like Vader’s before him. Though he wears a scary mask and head-to-toe black, he bears none of the disfiguring scars that marked Vader’s turn to evil, nor is he the measured-yet-strict enforcer of the pure power that Vader was. Rather, he’s more of a temperamental child, channeling his anger and insecurities through both his lightsaber and the Force, and who also happens to command an army of loyal followers as a bonus.

Finn (John Boyega) is arguably the most original character introduced in The Force Awakens. Kidnapped as a child and raised to be a First Order stormtrooper, he defects after seeing his first action and spends the rest of the film switching between trying to run away from the life he left behind and trying to keep his new friend Rey out of trouble. There truly weren’t any characters like him in the established canon of films, and his uniqueness demonstrated a clear desire by the filmmakers to develop a distinct identity for the Sequel Trilogy compared to its predecessors.

However, while the film certainly was more original than some gave it credit for, it still leaned heavily on paying homage to the most beloved aspects of the Original Trilogy, even beyond the desert-dwelling orphans and planet-killing mega-weapons. The Skywalker lightsaber is treated as an object with innate spiritual power, serving as the catalyst for Rey’s awakening in the Force, paralleling the way in which Luke’s journey with the lightsaber ignited the imaginations of Star Wars fans everywhere. Furthermore, legacy characters like Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) are treated as legends with whom our protagonists are already well acquainted through the stories of their exploits, in much the same way fans of the franchise venerate them and the films that originated them as if they were sacred texts. The omnipresence of X-Wings and TIE Fighters is also an extension of this reflexive reverence for the Original Trilogy, as is the role of the Millenium Falcon in the film as the vessel of choice for our heroes throughout the film.

These creative choices continue the trend established by Rebels of borrowing much of its aesthetics and iconography of the Original Trilogy. But where this was justified in Rebels by nature of its premise and place in the timeline, The Force Awakens has far fewer excuses. For starters, the Resistance and First Order don’t need to use the same fighting vehicles as the Rebellion and Empire before them. After all, more in-universe time elapsed between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens than did Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and yet the design of the vehicles featured across the films change far more drastically in the latter pair than in the former. While I’m sure the filmmakers can offer an in-universe explanation for this, the real truth behind it is more likely that they believed audiences wanted to see the ships they knew and loved, or that they’d be more willing to accept the newer elements if they were accompanied by things they already knew. Either way, the decision to keep the fleet vehicles of the good guys and the bad guys the same as they were in the Original Trilogy is yet more evidence that the franchise’s producers were often prioritizing fan service over original storytelling as they sought to reimagine its identity following the Disney buyout.

With all that in mind, it’s important to recognize that The Force Awakens played an important role in winning back general audiences’ interest in Star Wars after the reputational disaster that was the Prequel Trilogy. Perhaps leaning on the iconography of the Original Trilogy so heavily was exactly what the franchise needed to regain the trust of the wider public before subsequent films could push the series in new and interesting directions.

The first test of this theory would come in the form of 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the franchise’s first live-action theatrical spin-off film. It tells the story of the daring Rebels who stole the Death Star plans, which were later used to uncover and exploit its critical weakness during the events of A New Hope. Like Rebels before it, its premise and place in the timeline meant it would naturally feature the iconography of the Original Trilogy—stormtroopers, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, the Death Star, etc. And just like Rebels as well as The Force Awakens, this need not have prevented it from telling an engaging story with original compelling characters. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The main protagonists of the film, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) have paper-thin motivations and personalities, as do much of the supporting cast around them. Audiences are frankly given little reason to grow attached to them over the course of the film, and thus can hardly be asked to care when they start getting picked off one by one during the climax of the film. Instead, it’s expected that they’ll already know why the events of this film matter from having seen A New Hope and therefore need nothing more than token appearances by the characters that film created to keep them invested, as evidenced by the cameos of Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, and uncanny CGI reanimations of Grand Moff Tarkin and young Princess Leia,

But Rogue One goes beyond the pool of easily recognizable faces listed above, pulling in some of the more obscure characters in the Star Wars canon. The most prevalent of these is Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a leader in the Rebel Alliance, who makes his live action debut after having been introduced in The Clone Wars and returning in Rebels. A character originating in animation jumping into live action is not without precedent in Star Wars, as Boba Fett debuted in an animated segment of the Star Wars Holiday Special before appearing in The Empire Strikes Back, and General Grievous was in Genndy Tartakovsky’s Star Was: Clone Wars animated series before showing up in Revenge of the Sith. But the projects where these characters originated were developed in tandem with their live-action debuts, whereas Saw was not. As such, his role in Rogue One can be understood in a different context, more as “fan service” than as a natural extension of an existing storyline.

That said, despite a perhaps fan-servicey motive for his appearance, Saw Gerrera’s presence is more justified than those of Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba.

Hang on, who? Remember in A New Hope when Luke orders a drink in the cantina and two guys start threatening him, only for Obi-wan to step in and literally disarm one of them before they can kill him? Yeah, it’s those guys. They only appear for a brief moment in Rogue One, but it’s long enough for diehard Star Wars fans to notice and recognize them. What are they doing here, you might be asking? Absolutely nothing except appearing on screen just long enough for diehard Star Wars fans to notice and recognize them. They are the ultimate example of Rogue One’s fan service and are an early example of the “Glup Shitto,” a term coined much later to refer to the phenomenon of obscure Star Wars characters reappearing in newer media for little reason other than for fans to point and say, “I know that guy!”

Now, that’s not to say that general audiences disliked Rogue One. In fact, the film was quite well-received upon its release and is still beloved by most of the fandom today. However, its critical and commercial success can ultimately be understood to be a result of this fan service and its dependence on familiar iconography rather than its originality. More people are inclined to fondly remember Darth Vader’s “hallway scene” than they are Jyn and Cassian wordlessly battling stormtroopers on Jedha.

Either way, by the time the first trailer for Episode VIII was released in early 2017, the Disney Star Wars era was still seen by most as a resounding success. With an acclaimed animated television series and two hit films under their belt, what could possibly go wrong?

I don’t think I need to explain just how vicious the response to Episode VIII was in certain sections of the internet, but I have to, as it marks the inception of a large schism within the fandom which has yet to heal.

Full disclosure before I continue: I love The Last Jedi. It is far and away my favorite Star Wars movie ever. That said, I will do my best to assess the film and the criticisms leveled against it as objectively as possible. With that out of the way, it’s time to talk about the so-called “Fandom Menace,” an informal collective of content creators who erroneously believe that Disney is “ruining Star Wars” through “forced diversity.” They are among the ideological and tactical heirs of “Gamergate,” a similar movement that proclaimed to advocate for “ethics in games journalism.” However, both have been responsible for serious harassment campaigns against the individuals they view as persona non grata in their respective “nerd” communities. Ultimately, these are reactionary movements driven largely by and for cishet white men who are resentful of the growing visibility of women, queer people, and people of color in popular culture and have resorted to extremist rhetoric and tactics in an effort to preserve the “purity” of their fandoms—this despite such people having always been part of these communities but are only now being represented in the media they enjoy. The Fandom Menace is therefore, in essence, a fascist-coded political movement centered around media consumption, in which adherents and participants wish to return to an imagined past when Star Wars was “pure” and “good” rather than “woke” and “bad.”

While there was a degree of racist and misogynist backlash to The Force Awakens, with opponents railing against the film’s Black and female protagonists—Finn and Rey respectively—it failed to gain the same kind of traction that the Fandom Menace did in the wake of The Last Jedi. The reasons why it failed are multiple: first, the film’s overall quality and its reliance on familiar iconography helped fans and general audiences alike to feel warmly about it and thus not be swayed by the “anti-woke” crusade against it; second, those most vocally criticizing Rey as a “Mary Sue” and Finn as “forced diversity” were most often also proponents of Gamergate, and by late 2015 when the film released, were widely understood to be grifters with an axe to grind rather than good-faith critics; and third, this was before the 2016 election and the rise of the far-right under Donald Trump. It’s easy to forget now that he’s been out of office for some time, but his presence in national politics lent legitimacy to these cranks and weirdos that they did not have before, leading to an increase in their overall influence by the time The Last Jedi came out and helped open the Fandom Menace’s proverbial floodgates.

So, what did The Last Jedi do that enraged these chuds as much as it did? In addition to still having the same main characters as The Force Awakens, it also added Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), two female characters—and one played by an Asian-American—in central roles in the story. Not only that, but it also brought the great Luke Skywalker down to the level of a lowly hermit, a far cry from the legendary hero the galaxy—and the fans—knew him as.

But that doesn’t explain why the hatred against The Last Jedi became as widespread as it did. After all, The Force Awakens committed many of these same “sins of wokeness,” and its opposition didn’t receive nearly the same level of prominence as its successor’s did. To understand why, we have to analyze the film itself to figure out what it was trying to do, why audiences might have reacted poorly to it, and how the Fandom Menace were able to capitalize on that.

The story of The Last Jedi can be divided into three separate but intertwined plotlines. The first centers around Rey and Luke on Ahch-To. We rejoin them right where we left off at the end of The Force Awakens, with Rey offering Luke his old saber, inviting him to return and fight the First Order on behalf of the Resistance. But he rejects it, callously tossing the hilt over his shoulder and refusing her pleas for help. Eventually, he agrees to teach her the ways of the Jedi…and why they need to end.

This is not the Luke Skywalker we last saw the end of Return of the Jedi, the one who declared himself to be “a Jedi, like my father before me.” Many fans felt hurt and betrayed by this, that the great Jedi they knew and loved would fall from grace was unconscionable. They wanted Luke to take back his saber and take on the whole First Order by himself. But that was not the story The Last Jedi would tell, nor should it have been. For him to have done that would have effectively sidelined our new characters and done the trilogy a disservice by retreating further into meaningless fan service. Instead, writer and director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Looper) looked at what The Force Awakens had established and took the next logical step. Luke didn’t run away for no reason at all, and he wouldn’t be convinced to return so easily either. The motive behind his exile, the film explains, is that he inadvertently caused his nephew to turn to the Dark Side, and the shame and guilt he felt as a result of that shook his faith in the Jedi and the Force so severely that he abandoned them altogether. Therefore, when Rey bonds with Kylo Ren through the Force and believes he can be brought back to the Light, his sense that he failed to prevent his fall in the first place is too heavy for him to accept that as even a remote possibility. But she leaves anyway, and he decides to burn the island’s Jedi Temple and its sacred texts, to destroy them and the values they represent once and for all. But in this moment of weakness, his old teacher, Master Yoda, appears to him and reminds him of his responsibility in this moment. His failure at preventing Ben’s corruption and in convincing Rey of the folly of the Jedi is not a condemnation but an opportunity because, as Yoda explains: “Failure, the greatest teacher is.” He should have learned from his mistakes rather than run from them. Now, when the galaxy needs him the most, he’s nowhere to be found. But there’s still time. He can still provide the Resistance with the spark of hope it needs and inspire the next generation of heroes to fight in his absence. Which is precisely what he does when he projects himself onto Crait to, in his own words, “walk out with a laser sword and take on the whole First Order by [himself].” His actions are not only the ultimate heroic sacrifice (as the exertion is too much and he becomes one with the Force after he’s finished), but it is also the most perfectly Jedi thing he could have possibly done. He gave himself up to allow others to escape. Not only that, but he did so without harming a single person. If the Jedi lost their way when they became warriors for the Republic, then Luke’s sacrifice represents the Order’s rebirth and its embrace of the ideals of peace and justice that it once stood for. So, while I understand why some might have felt slighted by Luke’s sorry state at the start of the film, it’s disingenuous to say that he’s only that. Rather, the film puts him in such a low spot because: one, that’s how the previous film established him; and two, it services his ultimate redemption as the great hero the galaxy needed and reaffirms the need for the Jedi as guardians of the Light.

The next plotline to discuss is the one revolving around Poe’s secret plan to save the day without Vice Admiral Holdo finding out. For context, this comes after Poe is demoted when plan to destroy a Dreadnought-class First Order Star Destroyer results in him losing most of his squadron along with the Resistance’s entire bombing fleet. So when Holdo takes command after Leia’s knocked out of commission, his reputation leads her to not trust him and thus exclude him from her plan to save the fleet. But because he can’t stand to sit down and let someone else be the hero, he joins Finn and Rose in concocting a plan to break onto Snoke’s Star Destroyer and disable the system that allowed the First Order to track them through hyperspace. But the plan is doomed to fail, and it ultimately results in the Resistance’s true escape plan being discovered and the First Order continuing their pursuit to the surface of Crait, where Poe rallies a last-ditch attempt at halting the enemy’s advance. But when his team starts getting picked off one by one, he now knows to retreat before it gets out of hand, having learned his lesson from before. Then, when Luke arrives to confront the First Order, he realizes it’s a distraction and that the correct response is not to join him but to use the opportunity it creates to escape, thus completing his arc from hotshot pilot to level-headed leader, the exact thing the Resistance needs given its dire circumstances. It also goes along perfectly with the theme of learning from one’s failures established through Luke’s character arc, with Poe learning how to be a leader by reflecting on the shortcomings of his more impulsive plans and becoming more strategic as he considers new ones.

And yet, many of the film’s critics would describe this subplot as frustrating or even pointless as it all could have been easily avoided if Holdo had only told Poe what her plan was from the start. And while I can understand how it would feel this way in the moment, there are legitimate reasons why Holdo wouldn’t tell him what’s going on. Seeing as he was just recently demoted for poor judgment and insubordination, it’s reasonable for her to not believe he could be counted on to execute her orders as needed. It’s not her fault that he decided to go behind her back and develop an even riskier plan of his own. But from a story standpoint, it ultimately helped him on his journey to becoming a respected leader in his own right and thus contributes positively to the film as a whole.

Finally, we have the Finn and Rose subplot, which begins as an extension of Poe’s subplot but ultimately exists to give Finn a character arc of his own. Despite that, this section, particularly the scenes on Canto Bight, is often derided as unnecessary filler that contributes nothing to the overall story. They go there looking for the “Master Codebreaker,” only to leave with DJ (Benicio del Toro), a common thief they wound up incarcerated with. And even when they do succeed in breaking into Snoke’s Star Destroyer, their plan still fails when they’re captured and are only saved thanks to the fortunate timing of Holdo ramming the ship at lightspeed to save the escaping Resistance transports, an act which is only necessary because of DJ’s duplicity. So yes, the Resistance would have been better off if they’d never carried out this plan, but then Poe would have never learned how to be a proper leader, nor would Finn have learned what it meant to embrace a struggle instead of simply running from it. That’s what this subplot is all about.

Without going to Canto Bight with Rose, without seeing the slavery and oppression that allows for such opulence in service of the arms dealers that profit from it, he would never have been willing to sacrifice himself by flying his skimspeeder into the throat of the battering ram cannon at the end of the film. DJ is equally important to his journey as well, serving as the devil on Finn’s shoulder arguing against Rose’s angel. If Rose is trying to get him to care about more than the comfort and safety of himself and his friends, than DJ is telling him the opposite, that moral detachment from the politics and war is good, actually. Ultimately, Finn sides with Rose and becomes a true believer in the cause of the Resistance, rather than the opportunistic runaway he was throughout The Force Awakens and at the start of this film.

Now, I do need to talk about the elephant in the room. The way this subplot ends is controversial, to say the least, and while I understand why you might think Finn should have been allowed to complete his sacrifice, I believe it was the right decision to stop it. Not only would it be a disservice to the trilogy to kill off one of its main characters before the third film, but it also wouldn’t have done much to help the Resistance in the first place. The First Order would still march on and infiltrate the base, and the Resistance would not be able to hold them off for very long on their own. The best course of action then, as Poe rightly understood, was to regroup and reevaluate their position and not lose any more soldiers. That’s why Rose had to crash into him to save his life. Now, what happens next is a little trickier to parse, but I’ll try my best. I will admit, the kiss was a bit corny, especially when it’s backdropped by a massive explosion. However, I think we can unpack her line before that as I believe it speaks to what Finn’s arc is really all about.

After saving him, Rose explains that they will win not by “fighting what we hate,” but “saving what we love.” What does this mean exactly? On the surface, you could see her use of “love” as romantic in some way, an interpretation backed up by the kiss that follows. But I believe the line to be more symbolic of what Finn needed to learn in order to be an effective advocate for liberty and justice in the galaxy the Resistance sought to preserve. It wasn’t enough to be motivated by a desire to destroy your enemies; you had to have something to fight for, something you cared about, be that a group of people or an ideology of some kind. Finn’s attempted sacrifice was born more out of a desire for revenge against the people who kidnapped and enslaved him rather than a legitimate belief in the just causes of the Resistance. That’s not to say that violence in pursuit of that end is immoral, but rather that, without the proper motivation, it can result in ineffectual tactics and strategic blunders that ultimately hinder the movement overall.

All of this put together makes The Last Jedi one of the most thematically rich films in the saga, on par with some of the prequel films’ attempts at complex political themes. I use the word “attempts” here because I don’t believe the prequels do as an effective job of conveying their messages about how democratic republics can fall to tyranny in times of crisis as The Last Jedi does its themes of the righteous rebellion and personal redemption. You can certainly see the structure of these ideas throughout the prequels, but it’s so bogged down by substandard performances and unconvincing visual effects that it becomes nearly invisible. As such, I would argue that The Last Jedi succeeds where the others failed in that Rian Johnson is simply a better writer and director than George Lucas was when making the prequels. This is not say that Lucas is a bad filmmaker, only that the circumstances under which he made the Prequel Trilogy only revealed his weaknesses as an artist. The Original Trilogy and the Indiana Jones films show that he works best when he’s working with others. Rian Johnson, on the other hand, routinely writes and directs his scripts on his own, and has shown time and time again that he can be trusted to independently develop and produce films in that manner.

This is all well and good, but I do need to return to the question that started this section, and that’s this: why do people dislike The Last Jedi so much? For the average Star Wars fan, I don’t think you can attribute it to the sort of racism and sexism that unifies the Fandom Menace. Rather, I think it had more to do with just how much The Last Jedi set out to accomplish and the different ways it went about doing that. I’ve already touched on how the main plotlines may have rubbed some the wrong way, but it’s also important to note the ways in which the culture of fan theories spurned by The Force Awakens led to some of the backlash following The Last Jedi. Episode VII introduces Rey as someone yearning to be reunited with an unseen family, and when she was revealed to be incredibly gifted with the Force, many fans thought this to indicate that she was related to some powerful Force-wielder we already knew. This set off an avalanche of speculation about who her parents or grandparents really were, with Luke Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi, and Emperor Palpatine all being thrown around as legitimate contenders. So when The Last Jedi decides to answer this question by revealing Rey to be a nobody, her parents “filthy junk traders who sold [her] for drinking money,” it might’ve felt like a slap in the face to those fans who had spent so much of the time between the films imagining who Rey was related to.

The thing with that is that Rey being a nobody makes perfect sense both narratively and thematically. If Rey were a Skywalker or a Palpatine or a Kenobi, what would that mean to her? Nothing. She doesn’t know these people. Perhaps if she were related to Luke then she may feel some degree of resentment towards him for abandoning her, but then wouldn’t Kylo Ren have told her that anyway to get her to join him? Except he didn’t. Instead, he told the truth because it was the very last thing Rey wanted to hear. Early on, Rey tells Luke that she wants “someone to show me my place in all of this.” So if she’d found out that she was part of some legendary family of Force users, then it would be just the thing she wanted. But it wasn’t what she needed. What she needed was the truth, that she came from nowhere but still had this great power inside her, because that would inform her journey going forward. It gave her the freedom to choose what side she takes, who and what she fights for, unburdened by ideas of legacy or lineage, which in turn makes her the perfect foil to Kylo Ren, the heir to the Skywalker name and all the baggage that comes with it. So while it may have angered fans initially to hear that their theories were bullshit, it’s actually the only answer that makes sense given the story being told.

The other main mystery implicitly established by The Force Awakens which The Last Jedi sought to answer was the importance of Supreme Leader Snoke. It was understandable for fans coming out of Episode VII to wonder who this guy was, where he came from and what he wanted. Given that it was a sequel in a long running film series, it’s reasonable to assume that he might have been a secret pupil of Palpatine’s or some independent agent of darkness, operating in the shadows while the Empire crumbled. As such, fans spent a considerable amount of time speculating on Snoke’s background as they waited for Episodes VIII and IX to confirm their theories. So when Kylo Ren betrays Snoke by slicing him in half with the Skywalker saber, it read as yet another case of The Last Jedi mocking these fans for daring to theorize on the mysteries established by The Force Awakens. Only this is yet another example of the film recognizing what direction the story should go and doing that, rather than simply giving the fans what they want.

When developing the story of The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson rightly recognized that the more interesting conflict in the trilogy was the one between Rey and Kylo Ren and the things they represented. Rey the Nobody and Kylo Ren the Nepo Baby, both equally powerful in the Force but pulled in opposite directions by their respective backgrounds. The Light and the Dark, pushing and pulling on one another in an eternal struggle for balance. How did Snoke fit into all of this? Han Solo was right when he told Ben that “Snoke is using you for your power. When he gets what he wants he’ll crush you.” Snoke only ever wanted Ben for his mighty Skywalker blood and saw his connection to Darth Vader as a way of twisting and manipulating him towards the Dark Side. Kylo Ren eventually realizes this, and that’s why he kills him. As he explains himself, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” He says this to Rey, but in truth, he’s talking about himself. His entire life has been defined by the legacy of his ancestors, the good and the bad. All he wants is to be free of that, to be allowed to decide for himself what course his life will take. And since Snoke stands in the way of that, he must be eliminated. That’s also why he kills his father, the war hero, and why he wants to kill Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. They all represent the shadow of the legacy he’s trying to run away from. Snoke ultimately didn’t matter to the story of the Sequel Trilogy, and the film therefore had no reason to explain who he was before he became the Supreme Leader. That’s what spin-offs are for.

Regardless of the narrative justifications for these decisions, they nevertheless left a sour taste in the mouths of many fans as they left the theater after watching the film, a feeling the Fandom Menace was all too eager to exploit in pursuit of their ant-Disney, “anti-woke” agenda. What made their attacks against the film so persuasive this time around was that they weren’t just complaining about the presence of women and minorities but about details of the plot itself. So while the Fandom Menace had gone into the film knowing they’d hate it for ideological reasons, it became easy to point to these aspects of the film as “legitimate criticisms” instead of their usual thinly-veiled hate-filled tirades. Those fans who then went online to see what others had to say about the film were immediately inundated with scores of videos, tweets, and reddit threads from the Fandom Menace and their followers ravaging it for “ruining Luke Skywalker,” killing Snoke without explaining his backstory, and pointing out the supposed “plot holes” in the mutiny/Canto Bight subplot, all of which helped to sway public opinion against The Last Jedi. This is not to say there weren’t others online at the time singing the film’s praises—established film critics are mostly unanimous in celebrating it—but the opposition all but dominated the discourse from the very beginning. Not only that, but the tenor of the conversation was so hostile that many fans were persuaded into believing that the film was beyond redemption, that you shouldn’t even bother rewatching it because it’s just that bad. I sincerely believe that if more people revisited the film with an open mind, they might find their opinion of it changed or at least softened.

But in early 2018, the effects were obvious. The Fandom Menace’s anti-Disney Star Wars agenda had gone mainstream within the fandom. Not only that, but some of its worst actions had resulted in wider media coverage, like when a racist and sexist hate mob of Fandom Menace acolytes bullied Kelly Marie Tran off the internet for the crime of portraying a character in a Star Wars movie they didn’t like. Again, I’m not saying that everyone who dislikes the movie is racist and/or sexist, but it’s undeniable that an inordinate amount of the criticism levied against the film was propagated by a concerted movement bent on poisoning the discourse with bad-faith attacks on the film and the people who made it, one that cloaked its bigotry through less objectionable rhetoric that still emboldened those who shared their beliefs to act on it.

This was the general atmosphere when the next film in the Disney era came into. Solo: A Star Wars Story, released in May 2018, was the second spin-off film released since the Lucasfilm buyout and was also its weakest both critically and commercially. Initial reviews were mixed, mostly praising the cast’s performances but criticizing its inconsistent tone, which was almost certainly the result of its troubled production. Even before the film was released, the headlines about it weren’t great. Midway through shooting, the original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) were let go due to “creative differences” with the studio and replaced with Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind), who would be responsible for finishing the film and also reshooting much of Lord and Miller’s material as well. This alone contributed to the film’s problems from a storytelling standpoint, but it also lent credence to the narrative being spun by the Fandom Menace that Disney and Lucasfilm were micromanaging the Star Wars brand into the ground. Furthermore, rumors that the film’s producers had brought in an acting coach for Alden Ehrenreich, the actor cast in the role of young Han Solo, only helped to sour fans and audiences against the film before it could even hit theaters.

Once all was said and done, the result was clear. The film, with a massive budget of at least $275 million—largely due to its production woes—returned only $393.2 million at the global box office. On paper this seems like it turned a profit, but blockbusters of this scale often spend around double their stated budget on marketing, meaning it would have had to make somewhere in the ballpark of $500 million on the low end to even break even.

Its failure to receive the support of general audiences is the result of several factors. First is the aforementioned toxic discourse surrounding the franchise following The Last Jedi. If audiences went to see Rogue One because they’d enjoyed The Force Awakens, then it’s reasonable to assume that the general antipathy towards The Last Jedi would have the opposite effect on its follow-up. Second, you can also point to the shorter period between the releases of these films as part of the problem. An entire year passed between The Force Awakens and Rogue One, giving audiences a chance to miss the franchise and get excited for the next installment. Meanwhile, Solo came out only five months after The Last Jedi, in time for the summer blockbuster season, yes, but perhaps too soon to have general audiences eager to check out the next Star Wars thing.

You can also see Solo’s failure to generate much buzz in the box office as the result of a general disinterest in Star Wars spin-offs. For the average consumer prior to 2015, Star Wars was a series of six films telling the story of Anakin Skywalker’s rise, fall, and ultimate redemption. While they might be vaguely aware of stories within the Star Wars universe outside of that, they were not necessarily the big-screen blockbuster events that the main saga had been. Probably the most well-known of its spin-offs was The Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network, but even that, along with the EU/Legends canon of novels and comics, were largely seen as the domain of Star Wars nerds and children, things the average moviegoer didn’t need to worry about. As such, a spin-off film, even one focusing on a familiar character from the Original Trilogy, would not be as easy a sell as an all-new entry to the Skywalker saga.

This then raises the question: if spin-off Star Wars films would not appeal to general audiences, then how did Rogue One succeed? I can point to three things to help explain that. First is the residual hype from The Force Awakens carrying enough momentum for general audiences to be interested in it. Second is that the considerable amount of Original Trilogy imagery peppered throughout the marketing for the film likely created a sense of familiarity with the story being told; even if there were new characters and planets involved, audiences would still feel warmth at seeing Darth Vader, the Death Star, and the like again. And third is that the events of the film tied directly into the saga, specifically A New Hope, as it effectively told a more detailed version of the film’s opening crawl.

Solo, however, while also set in the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, did not feature nearly the same degree of familiar iconography as Rogue One had, apart from the titular character and the Millenium Falcon. Nor could they market it as a necessary piece of Star Wars lore in the same way that Rogue One was. What did it matter how Han Solo won the Millenium Falcon and became the smuggler we knew and loved? You don’t need to know all that to still get excited when he helps Luke rescue the Princess and save the day. From its premise alone, Solo had a much harder time selling itself to general audiences compared to Rogue One. It also didn’t help that it just wasn’t of a high enough quality for word of mouth to generate interest either.

Even for the general audiences who did turn out to see it but hadn’t been following the franchise outside of the main saga, a moment at the film’s conclusion likely left them scratching their heads in confusion. That is, when Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), having taken over Dryden Vos’ (Paul Bettanny) division of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, contacts Darth Maul, the organization’s leader, to pledge her loyalty to him. For viewers who were unaware of Maul’s return in The Clone Wars and Rebels this moment must have struck them as an out-of-left-field reveal that a character they last saw falling down a reactor shaft in two pieces was not only alive but also running one of the most powerful organized crime rackets in the galaxy. His presence here is entirely as fan service to those fans who were up-to-date on The Clone Wars and Rebels and is utterly lost on anyone didn’t.

Comparing his appearance to Saw Gerrera’s in Rogue One can help us understand why one works and the other doesn’t. When Saw shows up in Rogue One, you don’t necessarily need to know that we first met him leading an insurgent campaign against the Separatists during The Clone Wars to understand his place in this story as a Rebel leader and mentor to Jyn Erso, as those are clearly established by the film itself. But with Maul, his return and journey to becoming a crime lord was only ever shown in the animated spin-off shows which, while popular among Star Wars fans, were largely ignored by the general movie-going public who might have been interested in Solo otherwise. So while you might see Maul’s inclusion as a positive in that it might inspire some of those ignorant viewers to give The Clone Wars and Rebels a shot, it has an equal if not greater chance of having the opposite effect of turning them away from the film all together. No one wants to do “homework” before watching a Star Wars movie.

Well, I guess I have to talk about The Rise of Skywalker now. Where do I even begin? Episode IX, the grand finale of both the Sequel Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, could not have been more of a complete and utter disappointment. There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’ll start by going over the film’s production and how that led to the finished product being what it was. Which is bad. Really, really bad.

In August 2015, Lucasfilm announced that Colin Trevorrow would direct the then-untitled Episode IX, writing the script with his longtime writing partner Derek Connolly. At the time, they seemed like an excellent choice considering they were hot off the heels of their wildly successful Jurassic World, a reboot of the Kathleen Kennedy-produced Jurassic Park franchise. Surely, they could be trusted to create the epic conclusion to one of the most beloved franchises in cinema history.

Then, in 2017, after over a year of preproduction, Trevorrow and Connolly left the project, again citing “creative differences” with the top brass at Lucasfilm. Rumors abounded that Kathleen Kennedy had soured on the duo after they’d failed to turn in a satisfactory screenplay, despite several revisions. But since the film was slated for a May 24, 2019, release date, they’d have to put together a new creative team fast if they wanted to avoid any serious delays. A few names were tossed around, including Episode VIII director Rian Johnson and David Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl), but ultimately, J.J. Abrams was brought back to finish what he’d started, with Chris Terrio, the writer of such hit films as Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League coming in to help write the script.

This was bad enough already, as a film of this scale changing its writers and director so late in the game rarely results in a quality product, as evidenced by Solo. But as if to add insult to injury, they were also tasked with working around Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing in December 2016. Fortunately for The Last Jedi, all of her footage had been shot. But since Leia had survived to the end of the film, it was expected that she would return in its sequel. This created a problem for Abrams and Terrio where they had to go back through the archive footage and deleted scenes from Episodes VII and VIII that featured her to try and retrofit them into the story they needed to tell. Additionally, they would have to be strategic in how they filmed her character during principal photography, using body doubles and head-replacement CGI to bring her character to life without simply recasting her or killing her off entirely.

That alone would have likely resulted in a certain degree of awkwardness in the final film, but it doesn’t explain why everything else about it is the way it is, nor does the fact that they fired their writers and director midway through pre-production. But what can explain this is who they brought in to replace them and their what their strengths and weaknesses as storytellers are, and why they might have made some of the creative decisions that they did.

J.J. Abrams is a notorious crowd pleaser, and his films have often been criticized for being derivative as much as they’ve been praised for their merits as works of art. The Force Awakens and his two Star Trek films are obvious examples, but even Super 8, the only original feature in his filmography, is clearly heavily inspired by Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial and other “kids on bikes” movies that were popular in the 80s. As such, some—myself included—felt a certain degree of pessimism when we heard he was coming back to finish the trilogy. Especially after the intense backlash The Last Jedi received across the board, it was easy to imagine Abrams might backtrack or at least quietly ignore some of the creative decisions made by The Last Jedi in an effort to appease the aggrieved fanbase.

That’s at least why I believe he and Terrio decided to revive Palpatine, make Rey related to him, and sideline Rose entirely, among other things. I’ve already talked at length about how important it was for the story that Rey be related to no one important, so it should be obvious why I fundamentally disagree with the decision to retcon that and make her a Palpatine. Not only does it complicate the truth of the matter—it’s explained that her parents still sold her, that money did change hands (it was to protect her!)—but it also betrays a lack of trust in the audience to be able to accept that the story is going in a direction they didn’t expect. It’s been so long that it’s easy to forget that the reveal in The Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader was Luke’s father was initially met with confusion and even anger by fans at the time. Then imagine if Return of the Jedi came out and said, “Actually, no. We lied. Oops.” It would have cheapened that moment and the trilogy as a whole. Instead, it stuck to its guns and developed an interesting story out of it, with Luke now being motivated by a love for his father and the belief that he could still be saved, rather than merely wanting to destroy him because he’s evil.

But because the fans refused to accept one of The Last Jedi’s most controversial and brilliant decisions, they had to undo it and write in their own explanation instead. Now, this may have been the answer Abrams intended when he made The Force Awakens, but by the time he came back to Episode IX, The Last Jedi was well under way and Rian Johnson had written his own conclusion to that particular mystery. It would have been better for the film and the trilogy if they had simply let it be and worked through its implications rather than discard it altogether and come up with something else instead. You can even still bring Palpatine back, but that doesn’t mean Rey—or anyone for that matter—has to be related to him. Even then, I still think The Rise of Skywalker would’ve been better off if Palpatine had been left to rot in the ruins of the second Death Star.

Was Palpatine’s return part of Abrams’ initial plan for the trilogy? Maybe. But if it was, either he didn’t tell Rian Johnson that or, if he did, Johnson decided the story needed to head in a different direction and ignored it. Either way, bringing back Palpatine in the way that they did is too great a status quo change to happen off screen. At least when Maul shows up in Solo, you can point to The Clone Wars and Rebels as proof that this didn’t actually come out of nowhere. But for The Rise of Skywalker, it did, and it therefore becomes the movie’s responsibility to explain how he survived and why, ultimately distracting from the story being told of Rey, Finn, and Poe leading their scrappy rebellion against the overwhelming might of the First Order. Now everything must be about Palpatine and his master plan that I guess he’s been working on for decades but that we’re only learning about now in the eleventh hour. At the same time, it still wants us to treat us to those fun adventures with our heroes we came to love from the previous two films—and those are some of its best parts—but all this results in is an unfocused mess that tries to cram far too much into its two-hour, twenty-two-minute runtime.

Even with all of this being the case, there is absolutely no excuse for Rose being written the way she was other than pure cowardice. Her character was nowhere near as bad or annoying as the bigoted hate mobs on the internet wanted you to think she was, but because the discourse had become so polluted by their vitriol, Abrams and Terrio evidently felt the need to reduce her character to a glorified extra in order to appease the anti-The Last Jedi bandwagon. What makes this all the more offensive is that, early in the film, there’s a scene where Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca are on a mission to retrieve an encoded message from a spy in the First Order (which turns out to be confirmation that Palpatine has returned). They’re soon set upon by TIE Fighters, and Poe’s daring maneuvers put immense stress on the hyperdrive as they make their escape. You easily could have had Rose be part of the crew here as the Falcon’s overworked mechanic struggling to keep the ship in working order, seeing as she introduced herself as “working behind pipes all day,” but no. Instead, it’s this hideous giant slug-thing named Klaud in her place. I mean what can he even do?! He’s a fucking slug! He doesn’t even have arms! Rose could have and should have been the mechanic, and she should’ve had a little porg friend that sits on her shoulder and fetches her tools and stuff.

That’s also something wrong with The Rise of Skywalker: where are all the porgs? They’re clearly shown in The Last Jedi to have started nesting inside the Falcon. Shouldn’t there still be at least a few of them hanging around there? Maybe they’ve even begun to spread at the new Resistance base. That they’re almost entirely absent from the film, only appearing briefly when Rey returns to Ahch-To during her second act slump, further demonstrates the filmmakers’ desire to wipe away anything viewers might associate with The Last Jedi.

All of this comes together to make a film that is so bloated with unnecessary plot points that it ends up devaluing the stories that came before it. Because the film became so invested in not only bringing back Palpatine, but also making him the film’s main villain and Rey’s grandfather, it makes it difficult to go back to The Force Awakens and especially The Last Jedi and see them as anything more than meandering setup for the derivative fluff we ended up getting from the trilogy’s conclusion.

That’s not to mention how The Rise of Skywalker treated—or rather, mistreated—Finn’s character. It’s once again an example of a missed opportunity on the part of the filmmakers. I’m not talking about his Force-sensitivity—I like that—or the lack of a payoff for his attempted confession to Rey—more a case of bad editing than anything else. No, I’m talking about Finn not leading a stormtrooper uprising during the climax of the film. His arc in The Last Jedi set him up perfectly for that; not only was he a stormtrooper who saw the evils of the First Order and decided to leave, but now he was ideologically committed to fighting against it. What better way to finish his journey than have him inspire a legion of his former comrades to take up arms against their oppressors? But no, we have to have him taking down Star Destroyers equipped with mini-Death Star cannons instead.

Even Poe wasn’t spared from a degree of character regression in this one. The Last Jedi clearly set him up to be the new leader of the Resistance, taking over from Leia so she can finish training Rey to become a Jedi. But for the most part, he still comes across as the same hothead he was when we first met him. Perhaps that’s Abrams only being able to envision him as he was in The Force Awakens when he was still in charge of the character, but it also speaks to the broader trend of the film either undoing or outright ignoring the character beats of its predecessor, even if unintentionally.

There are, of course, flaws outside of these more existential issues with the film’s storytelling. The breakneck pacing in the opening act, for starters; Ben’s half-baked redemption arc and the irritating MacGuffin dagger also come to mind. But these are problems that, despite sometimes stemming from the decision to bring back Palpatine, were not inevitable, and rather speak to the weaknesses of the filmmakers. A better storyteller might have avoided making these mistakes, though it’s difficult to say for certain. It certainly didn’t help that they were working under an abbreviated pre-production timeline, giving them fewer opportunities to workshop and revise the story before they had to shoot it. But that was a problem Disney and Lucasfilm could have easily avoided if they had kept the traditional release of a Star Wars trilogy intact.

That, I believe, is the fundamental flaw of the Sequel Trilogy, one that informs many of the problems that arose throughout its production, and that came to a disastrous head with The Rise of Skywalker. See, the films in the Original and Prequel Trilogies all released three years apart from one another—1977, 1980, and 1983 for the former; 1999, 2002, and 2005 for the latter. This gave the production ample time to write, record, and edit the film before putting it out to the public. But with the Sequel Trilogy, it was decided early on that they would shorten the time between its installments to only two years, with additional spin-off films releasing between them. Perhaps they felt audiences wouldn’t be willing to wait three years for the next chapter in the saga, that their attention spans had become so much worse since Revenge of the Sith that it was no longer possible for them to remember what happened in the last part before watching the next. Whether or not that’s true, this truncated release schedule made the productions inflexible to the sorts of challenges and delays The Rise of Skywalker ended up facing. Having Episode VIII release in 2018 and followed by Episode IX in 2021 would have given Lucasfilm not only more time to polish out some of the kinks in the former but also ensured that the latter would also have had enough time to buff out its story to make it out on time, even after changing its director and writers. Of course, hindsight indicates that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic would have ultimately interfered with this schedule more than any mid-production change in creative direction could, but that couldn’t possibly have been known in 2013 when the studio was laying out their plans for the upcoming trilogy.

So then why did they greenlight five different productions in five years? This is the one aspect that the Fandom Menace is sort of correct on. Disney, despite all the goodwill they’ve earned over the years as the industry leader in family-friendly consumer entertainment, are a business at the end of the day. And if they feel it’ll maximize their shareholder value if there’s an endless stream of Star Wars movies coming out one year after the other, then so be it. And if anyone could do it and have it be successful, it would be them. After all, they were the ones putting out two to three different MCU movies every year, each seemingly more successful than the last. Couldn’t that model work for Star Wars as well?

From the very beginning of the Disney era, you can see how the franchise’s new corporate overlords wanted to model its future after the MCU as a monolith of popular culture which will grow in perpetuity and dominate all forms of media. The two-year turnaround between saga films is certainly proof of that, but so is the introduction of spin-off films that fill out the lore and character backstories between the big event films. Rogue One and Solo are to the Sequel Trilogy what Ant-Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are to the Avengers movies. Only Star Wars didn’t benefit from this model in the same way the MCU did. Let me explain why.

The basis for the MCU was comic book superheroes, a medium and genre built around serial releases of individual, character-centric storylines that occasionally tie into larger crossover events. Adapting this formula to film, while risky, certainly paid off for Disney and Marvel, and led many other studios to try building their own “cinematic universes” in its wake. The most prominent of these was Warner Bros.’ now-defunct DC Extended Universe franchise, which began with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel in 2013. The reasons why that experiment failed are myriad but mostly have to do with Snyder’s habits as a filmmaker being incompatible with what’s necessary to sustain such a massive undertaking, both critically and commercially, in addition to other issues outside of that (the sudden death of Snyder’s daughter, general studio meddling, and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad to name a few).

But while DC and Warner Bros. could have made the “cinematic universe” model work for them (and still can if James Gunn can successfully right the ship over there), I’m not sure Star Wars is the right fit for that kind of experiment. As I’ve stated, Star Wars, in popular consciousness, was mostly the main saga of six—now nine—films. There were always spin-off novels, comics, and TV series for the hardcore fans to follow, but to the general public, a new Star Wars movie was always a massive event, something that only happened every once in a while, and was to be appreciated whenever it did. This scarcity was one of the intangible aspects of the franchise that made it so valuable to Disney and why they wanted to buy it. But by basing their plans for the franchise off the comic book-inspired cinematic universe model they’d pioneered, they inadvertently devalued what it meant to be a new Star Wars movie, leading fans and general audiences alike to not be nearly as excited or interested in whatever new projects are revealed or released, thus resulting in diminishing returns on their investment.

We’ll eventually look at how this trend continued to develop as Star Wars moved away from theaters and onto Disney+, what impact the streaming ecosystem has had on the franchise, and how fans have responded to it. But first, we have to take a bit of a detour. A walk in the park(s), if you will, to discuss Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and the franchise’s increased presence in Disney theme parks since the buyout.

[kylanfedje]

do you ever wonder how ahsoka saw her childhood. do you ever wonder if she thought it ended the day she stepped off that ship and met anakin for the first time. do you ever wonder if she went back to the temple and felt too old for her bones. do you ever wonder if she told a joke she’d heard anakin or rex make to someone who’s the age she was when the war started thinking it’s fine, it’s normal, everyone lives like this, everyone knows what i mean only to be confronted with quiet horror. do you ever wonder if ahsoka didn’t think she was a child anymore because after the thirteenth time you see someone torn to pieces by shrapnel you can’t think that way anymore or you’ll go insane. do you ever wonder if she knew how young she was.

[kylanfedje]

Just saw someone refer to getting an abortion bc you're not ready to be a parent yet as "letting God babysit" and my jaw dropped.

Absolutely brilliant. Genuinely a perfect euphemism.

[kylanfedje]

can we as a society make puppetry cool again. like lets make it trendy. Mainstream. more people should get into doing it and more people should appreciate it. puppetry requires craftsmanship and charisma and physical acting and vocal performance!! you can’t get that from ai. it has a charm to it that neither 2D nor cg animation has. Have you ever watched a puppetry performance and realized you were genuinely convinced that the puppet was getting into bed or eating something or giving a hug that you wholly forgot there was some guy’s arm in there.

isn’t it lovely. to make a funny little guy to tell stories with. is that not so human of us. it’s such a lovely art form. I love you puppets I love you muppets I love you marionettes I love you handmade sock puppets I love you paper bags with googley eyes I love you armatures I love you I love you I love you!!!!!

[kylanfedje]

Deet: Hey do my lips seem dry to you?

Rian: Let me see. *kisses her*

Rian: They're a bit chapped. Here. *gives her lip balm*

Deet: [redder than an apple] Thanks.

[kylanfedje]

Reblog if you can hear this image I'm trying to see something

[kylanfedje]

My comfort movie🌿

[kylanfedje]

Disney Star Wars Retrospective - Episode I: The Phantom Mouse

A long time ago, in a conference room far, far away....

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. Or is it the lightsaber? On October 30, 2012, a few strokes of ink were all it took for one of the most lucrative media enterprises of all time to be subsumed into arguably the largest entertainment empire in history. I am talking of course about the $4.5 billion sale of Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company, which brought iconic film franchises like Indiana Jones and Star Wars under the ever-expanding Disney umbrella of intellectual properties.

While Indiana Jones has been no box-office slouch, George Lucas’ epic space fantasy saga was the real prize in the transaction. And the new regime at Lucasfilm, headed by Kathleen Kennedy, longtime movie producer and frequent collaborator of Steven Spielberg’s, could hardly wait for the dust to settle before greenlighting a series of moves that would define the franchise for the decade to come.

Shortly after the purchase was announced, so too were a new trio of Star Wars films set after the Original Trilogy, which would pick up the stories of Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, and a host of new characters as they sought to protect the galaxy against a resurgent evil, seeking to destroy the peace brought by the establishment of a New Galactic Republic. Additionally, the company also announced plans for a series of anthology films, which were to release between the latest installments in the Sequel Trilogy. However, to compensate for the number of resources devoted to such an ambitious film schedule, the fan-favorite Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, which had aired five seasons on Cartoon Network since 2008, would come to an end. Alongside these announcements was also the confirmation that the Expanded Universe (EU) material, the books and comics that had filled out so much of the galaxy’s lore before, between, and after the films, was no longer considered canon for the purposes of new Star Wars projects and would be reclassified as “Legends.”

Many of the creatives behind The Clone Wars continued onto Rebels, including showrunner Dave Filoni, and as a result, many storylines and characters from the former were brought into the latter in one way or another. Fan favorites like Captain Rex and Hondo Ohnaka would return, as well as lesser-known ones like Saw Gerrera and Bo-Katan Kryze would appear, though rarely for more than a few episodes at a time at most. But easily the most prevalent of The Clone Wars originals to join the cast of Rebels was the one and only Ahsoka Tano, the former Padawan of Anakin Skywalker who, after being falsely accused of bombing the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and murdering a witness to cover it up, decided to walk away from the Order, even after she was exonerated on all charges. Since The Clone Wars hadn’t reached its natural endpoint of the Jedi Purge (commonly known as Order 66) before its untimely cancellation, fans were left wondering what fate may have befallen their favorite ex-Jedi at that critical moment in Star Wars lore. Now, they would at least know she had survived Emperor Palpatine’s directive to rid the galaxy of the greatest threat to his power, even if the specifics of how she’d done so were left unsaid at the time.

However, Rebels was hardly a direct successor to The Clone Wars in terms of its general tone and art direction, both of which were noticeably altered from the relatively mature and moody atmosphere of its predecessor, particularly its later seasons — though Rebels would eventually reach similar levels of emotional and thematic intensity as The Clone Wars had by the end of its run. But while the lighter tone of Rebels can be easily attributed to a desire by the franchise’s new overlords to keep the franchise more in line with Disney’s “family friendly” brand ethos, the change in art direction is more indicative of a broader trend within the franchise that began in this time and arguably persists to this day, which is an almost compulsive reverence for the Original Trilogy and its iconography.

It’s no secret to anyone familiar with the history of cinema that the Star Wars prequels were not very well-received upon their initial release, though they have received a critical reappraisal by fans in recent years. Either way, when Lucasfilm went to work on their new slate of Star Wars projects in 2013, the general consensus was still that the Prequel Trilogy was a collection of overly ambitious and poorly executed disasterpieces, a fact they were like well aware of and would make them want to avoid whatever associations with it they could when developing new material. This might also help to explain why The Clone Wars, a series set in the midst of the trilogy, was cancelled so unceremoniously at the time, with only a 13-episode sixth season released straight to Netflix, a handful of unfinished animatics dumped on the Star Wars website, and other unproduced story arcs being adapted into quasicanonical books and comics to fill the void left in its wake.

What this represents is a desire among the creative minds behind the franchise towards inserting Original Trilogy “fan service” into their work. The style of Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art, while critical in shaping the visual language of Star Wars, is in truth only recognizable as such to the most die-hard of fans and thus provides no more — or less — value to the average viewer, and therefore can be seen as a decision made primarily to cater towards the superfans while not alienating newer or less knowledgeable ones. Likewise, the series’ (re)introduction of Grand Admiral Thrawn in the third season can easily be understood as yet another case of this phenomenon, albeit in a slightly different manner.

The character of Thrawn was first created for Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy of novels, a core component of the EU/Legends canon written in the early 90s during that time when Star Wars was mostly seen as “uncool nerd shit” to the general public. But for the fans who grew up reading and loving these books, they may have felt hurt and betrayed when Disney came in and told them these stories were no longer canon. So, when Thrawn reappeared in Rebels with the same character design and personality as he had in the novels, it signaled to them that the franchise was still willing to look to the EU/Legends for inspiration and would even draw directly from them, thus rewarding their continued devotion to the franchise’s extended lore.

That’s not to say that casual fans were necessarily turned off by this either. If anything, because the Heir to the Empire novels were no longer canon, it was easier for them to only see Thrawn as the version that appeared in Rebels and therefore discard the ancillary material as unnecessary to understanding who he was, where he came from, and what he wanted. Those novels still existed if they wanted to dive deeper, but it was ultimately inessential to following the show’s plot, and thus wouldn’t make newer or more casual fans feel like they had “homework” to do before they could start enjoying the franchise’s current marquee offerings.

In a similar vein to Thrawn’s role in the series is that of Darth Maul, the failed apprentice to Darth Sidious who somehow survived being sliced in half by Obi-wan Kenobi during a duel on Naboo in The Phantom Menace. It could have — and probably should have — been a disaster class in fan service when he was brought back in The Clone Wars, but to the show’s credit, it went to great lengths to make it work both narratively and thematically. It presented his miraculous survival as the product of pure hatred, channeled through the Force, and directed towards the man who nearly killed him and the master who abandoned him. Through much of his screentime both shows, he is motivated almost singularly by a desire for revenge against both Kenobi and Sidious, eventually culminating in a final rematch between him and Kenobi in the Tatooine desert that ends with him being slain and set free at last from his eternal torment.

For Rebels viewers who had perhaps seen the main saga films — Episodes I-VI at the time — but missed The Clone Wars, Maul’s return would come as an utter shock. The last they had seen of this man he had been falling down a reactor shaft in two pieces; now he was alive and well and menacing the galaxy yet again. When did this happen? How did this happen? They would have to watch The Clone Wars or read a Wookiepedia article to learn for themselves, since the show mostly assumed you were already aware of his return. Thankfully, the entire show was available on a popular streaming service and came highly regarded by much of the fandom, so the reward for “doing their homework” might be seen as worthwhile. Not to mention its arc-based structure lent well to isolating a few specific episodes as “essential,” instead of needing to view the entire show to understand how and why Maul had come back from the dead. And yet, the prospect of there being “homework” at all for an animated show geared towards children and teens might have also turned away some of those who had been lured in by the stormtroopers and lightsabers they once knew and loved.

All told, the first few years of Star Wars under its new management indicated a great deal of how the next decade of Star Wars media would play out. Anything the fans didn’t like — the prequels, mainly — could be mostly ignored. Aspects of the franchise beloved by fans but unknown to broader audiences — The Clone Wars and the EU /Legends— may continue to appear, but only when it can contribute positively to the story already being told. And above all, stick to what everyone knows and loves as much as you can — the aesthetics and iconography of the Original Trilogy: X-Wings and TIE Fighters, Rebels and Empire. These were as good as gospel in Disney’s new church of Star Wars, a fact which was only proved truer when the highly anticipated Episode VII hit theaters in December 2015, the first theatrical live-action Star Wars movie in a decade, and the first since the Disney buyout.