Ah, The Last Jedi. The polarizing entry in the Star Wars universe that was praised by critics (and a handful of fans like myself) and angered many. I for one have always defended it as a fantastic film in world building, character development, and just general storytelling, but I’m not here for that.
While I have always stood behind Rian Johnson’s vision, I now have to concede that The Last Jedi may have been the last nail in the coffin of creativity and originality in Disney’s releases of the iconic franchise, though not because of its quality, but because of everything that has followed it.
Since the fan backlash of The Last Jedi, Disney and the writing teams behind the Star Wars name have chosen to pull their punches instead of push the boundaries of what could be. The follow up to TLJ, The Rise of Skywalker, took the creativity and new directions that Rian Johnson began to steer the series into, and fell back on the crutch of The original trilogy, inexplicably bringing characters back from the dead and haphazardly retconning entire characters and plot lines from previous installments. All in favor of fan service that just didn’t work, over coherent storytelling.
Following that was the FANTASTIC first season of The Mandalorian, which introduced great new characters and a spaghetti western style that, was slightly introduced in Solo, but expanded on in the Disney+ original. However, something happened in season 2. The boundaries that were previously pushed and new horizons that were starting to reveal themselves vanished. While the first couple episodes did much of the same in creating a new and engaging story, all of a sudden that originality was replaced with retconned deaths, live action incarnations of animated series characters, and call backs seemingly for no other reason than “look who’s here!”
This was all capped off with a finale that, instead of letting the light shine on the Title character in a final battle to save Baby Yoda (not ready to embrace the name Grogu), that had been built up to for an entire season, fell on the Rise of Skywalker crutch of an Original trilogy reveal, that was, to me, little more than uninspired fan service (not to mention the pretty terrible CGI).
While this finale was met with cheers among many Star Wars fans, I can’t help but feel disappointed and fretful for what this means for future Star Wars entries. If the excellent story telling and (original) characters of The Mandalorian aren’t safe from unnecessary callbacks, retconned storylines, and miraculous resurrections, then nothing is safe from the long arm of the Mouse.
With the releases of Ahsoka, The Book of Boba Fett, and Kenobi on the horizon, it’s safe to assume that the mouse house is milking the franchise for all that it’s worth and will rely on fan service over substance. Because of this, the remnants of George Lucas’ imagination, creativity, and originality may be dead in the world of Star Wars… Now I’m not saying series’ like The Mandalorian are, or are going to be bad, the Mandalorian has been fantastic, but as long as fans keep cheering, we’ll keep getting the same thing over and over again…
…and this is NOT the way.
FlickFix 