Is it the navelgazing overly deferential way modern Star Wars has locked in on a few small plot points from the original trilogy in a way that does not allow storytellers to explore new periods and places in Star Wars but returns over and over to spots and characters we've already seen a billion times by this point?

In other words: is Star Wars a zombie that refuses to go away and does not do anything challenging, innovative or creative in favour of cheap references to the Star Wars films/characters that people actually like?

Let me write this without seeing Kenobi, but since the topic came up...

On one hand, I hate the notion of these apocalyptic visions of the future of cinema and how huge franchises destroy the art of movie-making, etc etc. I'm sure there are "eras" in filmmaking just as there are eras in history, you know, monarchies going and republics coming, and I'm sure in filmmaking there's the possibility of living through this current era of mega-franchises and find ourselves in a newfound world of "new wave" cinema, where originality and small productions of visionary filmmakers rule once again.

But - I still believe there's something wrong with how Disney (almost single-handedly) is shaping our understanding of films and our culture of watching them. I definitely have a weird feeling when I see tons of new SW content announced, even though I have no problem with - the possibly endless stream of - fan-fiction novels and comic books that have come before. Maybe the difference is that with these new series and films and whatnot, fan-fiction and that sort of expansion of a well-known universe becomes "canon" or "mainstream", and for some reason I dislike that.

One part of the problem for me is that, in most films or stories in general, characters aren't living beings. They don't have histories, past lives or even futures. They are elements of a story. They are colors on a painting, and asking questions like "Where did they come from? How did they meet? What were they doing before the events of the film?" are extremely childish in my eyes. As a grown person, I think, we should be able to understand that stories, films, novels, etc. are - or supposed to be - self-contained pieces of art. Knowing where Leonardo da Vinci bought his paint for Mona Lisa should be interesting, but not on an artistic level, rather a historical one. And this is where the confusion arises: fan-fiction, the whishful expansion of self-contained storylines and characters shouldn't be more than it is.

I just can't stress enough my idea that a single character in a film should have no life before "the events of the plot". They aren't people, they are storytelling tools. "Before" shouldn't even make sense when it comes to the starting point of a plot. But nowadays this sort of attitude is nowhere to be seen. Every single character in a film must have a lifestory, from birth to death and beyond both. And, to me, this is a complete misreading of film as an artform, and a form of storytelling. I am, of course, not trying to deny the existence of good sequels or even prequels in the history of cinema (and literature). But, to my taste, whatever is going on with SW (and the MCU) these days is definitely extreme.

But it's not entirely Disney's fault, and that is something I just realized a few days ago. George Lucas himself is surely to blame for a whole generation's desire for retconning and reverse storytelling. The guy went to great lengths to alter his past films, the original SW-trilogy, even daring to change scenes in order to re-interpret main characters (you know, the "who shot first" controversy). I mean, I don't know the background that much, maybe it wasn't Lucas but rather the studio, but this whole bullshit trend definitely originated from that environment. By thinking that audiences would like your already classic movies more by altering them in hindsight in order to make them stand up for your imaginary standards, you completely misunderstand your whole craft and art. That is what I believe of the original creators of SW, whether it's Lucas alone or a bunch of people: their wish to change past films is undeniable proof that they just don't get it on a massive level. And their legacy is surely felt to this day, and provided the groundwork for the present state of blockbuster filmmaking and fan culture.

And this is something I just feel more and more alienated by every passing day. I would love to love Star Wars, but whatever is going on right now has nothing to do with whatever fantasy we have in our minds about this mythology. It is a toxic relationship with someone who we wish would be the perfect partner, and our hope and self-delusion is the only thing keeping this relationship together. Okay, this might've been a little too dramatic, but still.

I agree with most of this, except for one thing: I DO think it is mostly Disney's fault. They are one of (if not THE) biggest company around when it comes to American filmmaking, even though the kinds of films and tv shows they make are hardly great cinema/tv but they take up a lot more space in the popular consciousness than they used to. But the pattern has always been the same: if it sells, Disney will market the sh*t out of it and that now extends to the idea of making Star Wars spin-offs as well. And why wouldn't it? Every single detail from the original films that they can milk for money, you can bet they will find a way to exploit, no matter whether there is a need to actually tell stories or not. It's just content in the eyes of the company, not actual art that serves as the creative expression of human beings. I think it's also why I hate the word 'content' as a supposedly synonymous expression for 'art'. It's gross. Anything that would distinguish one Star Wars show from another (be it visually or in terms of the storytelling) has been excised because in theory it makes the other Star Wars stuff that Disney wants to sell harder to sell. For the company it's about maximising profit for the least amount of effort because that means it does not need to spend as much money to make this stuff. Promoting Obi-Wan as a character is a lot easier than a character they just made up themseleves. That is why we get mostly medicore Star Wars stuff that is almost exclusively about tiny details that were referenced only once in passing previously, even though we know that there are tons of worlds and time periods in the Star Wars universe that could be explored and people would be open to watching that. But that would mean that those stories would need to survive on the strengths of their own storytelling and Disney is so risk-averse that they will not greenlight anything that they don't know 100% for sure will make a profit and it results in worse art just in general. The fact that Disney will also not make available a lot of their Disney+ stuff on DVD to create a fake sense of scarcity and to keep people subscribed to their streaming service is also difficult to ignore.

The idea ultimately always comes down to selling stuff and when the company owns a huge chunk of the market it's easy to convince the target audience for Disney products that there has never been way of making films other than the way the Disney company made them and I can sense that this is impacting how people talk and analyse visual storytelling and fiction just in general. Most people do not even associate most of the Star Wars and MCU stuff with individual filmmakers anymore because the company has usurped the place of the filmmaker in those cases. It's not George Lucas' Star Wars or Rian Johnson's Star Wars...it's Disney's Star Wars and totally corporate art and it feels and looks like being in an Apple store for all eternity, which is to say it's as close to creative hell as it gets for me. What's sadder is that most people don't seem to want to voice their opposition to this either because likely this is how they've come to think about how you tell stories.

The fact that even now a lot of people expect you to get excited about every new Star Wars thing that comes out and get aggressively defensive when you don't partake in the anticipation is also a bit irritating.

Anyway, all that has generally been a fairly alienating experience for me and why I disengaged with almost everything Star Wars at this point (not that I was a huge fan or anything to begin with but I did own some Star Wars comics back in the day and I watched the Prequels and the original trilogy when I was a teenager). The Prequels were awful in a lot of ways but you at leats knew that they were George Lucas' vision.

Yeah this is incredibly underwhelming.

Racist criticism of Moses Ingram is disgusting and condemnable at all points. However, she is not good in this series.

Kennedy went from multiple award winning highly celebrated writers such as Rian Johnson and Tony Gilroy to the writer of King Arthur and Army of Darkness.

Right now I'm much more interested in Andor, which looks freaking amazing, compared to anything this show is going to offer.

I mean it is kind of bad. I personally don’t think it’s worse than Fett but it’s more disappointing.

Master Virgo wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2022, 12:29 am

Kennedy went from multiple award winning highly celebrated writers such as Rian Johnson and Tony Gilroy to the writer of King Arthur and Army of Darkness.

I was so confused at first.

The filmmaking is so blah. Which is suprising because Deborah Chow did some of the best episodes of Mandalorian.

I guess going from the operatic fight on Mustafar in ROTS to seeing the fight here really highlights how bland the filmmaking is in these Disney+ shows. I guess Mandalorian worked because it was a more pulpy TV Show with a villain of the week feel to it and great music by Ludwig. But you really can't do that with Obi-Wan - these characters are too large for this. And even if you wanted to, even if you want to make Obi-Wan into Logan (which you can also see), even that doesn't have the right visual aesthetic.

Disney Lucas Film has gotten so many things wrong with Star Wars, but I'll give them this. Freaking Vader has been steadily spot on. The have made some weak imitations of him including one in this very show, but the real deal himself is still as menacing and imposing as he's ever been.