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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
This summer, something unthinkable happened. The Mandalorian and Groguthe first Star Wars movie since 2019, ended up earning less in its opening weekend than Solo, the lowest-performing live-action movie in the franchise. Soon enough, the movie was getting its butt kicked by Obsession and Backroomstwo low-budget horror movies. Once upon a time, Star Wars was the biggest sci-fi franchise in the world. Now, it’s generating less buzz than scary movies by a couple of directors who weren’t even alive when The Phantom Menace came out. For fans of a galaxy far, far away, this leaves one question: where did everything go wrong?
Needless to say, you won’t be hearing too many official statements from Disney or Lucasfilm about when and where their expensive franchise went off the rails. However, in an ironic twist, the most hated Star Wars director may have accidentally revealed the franchise’s biggest problem. While working on The Last JediLuke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill frequently questioned director Rian Johnson’s decisions. At one point, Hamill told Johnson, “We gotta think of what the audience wants.” Whenever he mentioned this, the director uttered the words that arguably doomed the entire franchise: “No, we’ve gotta think of what we want.”
He Had A Bad Feeling About This
Way back in December 2017, Rolling Stone interviewed several of the creators and actors behind the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. They uncovered plenty of interesting tidbits, including the fact that Rey actor Daisy Ridley cried when she learned that J.J. Abrams wasn’t coming back to direct The Last Jedi. But the outlet also learned more about something that would eventually set the fandom on fire: the creative disputes between Mark Hamill and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. Over the years, we’d learn about plenty of the actor’s objections, including the fact that he hated Luke giving up on everything and ultimately dying at the end of the film.
The reason the debate between actor and director got so much attention is that Hamill was (as if seeing the future through the Force) trying to warn Johnson about all the things the fandom was going to hate about The Last Jedi. In his interview with Rolling StoneHamill revealed an exchange that arguably foreshadowed the failure of the Star Wars franchise. “At times, I’d say to Rian, ‘We gotta think of what the audience wants.” To this, Johnson would always offer the same response: “No, we’ve gotta think of what we want.’
Was Rian Johnson Right? From A Certain Point Of View
To hear Mark Hamill tell the story, Rian Johnson was right, and it was simply “a learning process” for the actor to process those words. To hear angry fans, though, the director’s words are a real smoking gun. He’s basically confirming that he cared more about doing what he wanted to do, something that would always take precedence over what the audience wants. So, that makes this a cut-and-dry case, right? Johnson and the rest of Lucasfilm dismissed what fans actually wanted and then did the shocked Pikachu face when fans stopped showing up, right?
Well…yes and no. In hindsight, it’s obvious that The Last Jedi was not what most audiences wanted. Sure, it made over a billion dollars, it annoyed fans enough that, half a year later, Solo: A Star Wars Story became the lowest-earning live-action movie in franchise history, a terrible record that may be beaten by The Mandalorian and Grogu. For that matter, it looks like the latest Star Wars movie is on track to make about 85 percent less than The Force Awakens. It would be easy to say that directors ignoring what the fans want has really killed Star Wars, a franchise whose movies used to regularly earn over a billion dollars at the box office.
Figuring Out What Fans Want
However, it’s not that simple. As a kind of course correction, J.J. Abrams used The Rise of Skywalker to walk back the most controversial elements of The Last Jedi (like Rey being a nobody, like Snoke being the Big Bad, like Rose being a main character, etc.) and pander to our nostalgia with appearances from Emperor Palpatine, Lando Calrissian, and (most inexplicably) Han Solo. Basically, it was the most blatant attempt to give fans exactly what the director thought they wanted. However, the pandering failed, and the movie was considered such a critical and creative failure that Star Wars stayed out of theaters for seven years.
What’s the lesson here? Obviously, just ignoring what fans want to see is a great way to kill your franchise. However, trying to tilt into full-blown fan service is also a great way to turn people off because audiences still enjoy excitement and surprise. To create a successful Star Wars movie or show, you need to have people more like George Lucas: ones who have a passion for the universe, who know how to plan, and who are willing to take creative choices. Once upon a time, it seemed like The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau was such a person; after all, he distilled the space western into its purest elements, to great audience acclaim.
Is Star Wars About To Explode?
Additionally, Dave Filoni took the best of what fans actually liked about the prequels to create Clone Warsarguably the best Star Wars show ever made. Unfortunately, just as Lucas fell off with the prequels, Favreau and Filoni have both stumbled. The third season of Favreau’s The Mandalorian weakened as it tried to embrace the rest of the franchise, and Filoni’s devotion to his own past work has led to one cringe moment (like Cad Bane in The Book of Boba Fett) to another (like giving Sabine a weird Jedi retcon in Ahsoka). Now, The Mandalorian and Grogu (written by Filoni, directed by Favreau) is wheezing its way to the end of a disappointing theatrical run.
There’s some good news here: while they have had some recent creative misfires, both Favreau and Filoni have created really great projects for the franchise. However, Lucasfilm needs to hire some new creators who are basically unicorns. That is, we need somebody who is willing to take risks like Rian Johnson, someone who understands the rule of cool like Favreau, and someone utterly steeped in franchise lore like Filoni. The Last Jedi was risky but uncool; The Mandalorian and Grogu was cool, but not risky. If Lucasfilm can find someone who can bring balance to the franchise by combining all of the above qualities, they might actually save Star Wars.
Otherwise, Star Wars will die in the most ironic way: by continuing to play it safe by pandering to a fandom that can’t even agree on what they want.
