Star Wars: The Force Awakens It was a $2.07 million success story, but it set the franchise up for a massive failure. When Disney bought Star Wars Back in 2012, the House of Mouse had a simple design; To get the franchise back on the big screen again, with alternating anthology and sequel trilogy movies. It was an ambitious plan, not least because Lucasfilm had no development pipeline and George Lucas’ sequel trilogy scripts risked being as controversial as the prequels themselves.
Star Wars Returned to theaters in 2015 with Star Wars: The Force AwakensAnd it is impossible to overplay how massive a cultural event it felt. The movie earned a staggeringly impressive $2.07 billion, feeling like a declaration: Star Wars is back, and it’s here to stay. Almost a decade later, however, it is possible to look back and see that The Force Awakens Made some critical missteps – ones that set the sequel trilogy as a whole up for the controversy that Lucasfilm hoped to avoid.
Why Lucasfilm played the nostalgia card so hard with The Force Awakens
There’s a reason The Force Awakens is something of a nostalgia overdose
Disney never had any real intention to make Lucas’s sequel trilogy scripts, although unfortunately Lucas himself does not seem to get the message until one painful meeting that ended with him walking away feeling betrayed. The core problem was that Disney felt that Lucas’ decisions had proven to be divisive after the prequels, and the House of Mouse wanted to make something as universally loved as the OT. As Disney CEO Bob Iger reflected in his biography The ride of a lifetime:
“In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to [Lucas] To introduce new worlds, new stories, new characters and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘there are not enough visual or technical leaps forward.’ He wasn’t wrong, but he also didn’t appreciate the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt like Star Wars. We deliberately created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the previous films, so as not to stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George criticized us for the thing we were trying to do.
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The feeling of OT nostalgia in The Force Awakens It wasn’t an accident, it was a conscious decision – as was the choice to avoid the prequels aesthetic. The problem is, however, that this also said something about the target audience; Although it is true Disney and Lucasfilm wanted to introduce a new generation of viewers Star WarsIt was a separate Type of Star WarsFocused on things familiar to those who grew up with the OT. It’s no wonder Lucas was disappointed, as the overdose of nostalgia was a step backwards for the franchise as a whole.
JJ Abrams’ “Mystery Box” storytelling guaranteed the trilogy wouldn’t work out
There were far too many unanswered questions
Lucasfilm chose JJ Abrams to direct the first sequel trilogy movie, and it had consequences; While Abrams brought all of his formidable cinematographic skills to the table, he also brought a certain approach to storytelling. Abrams is known for his “Mystery Box” story, which relies on unanswered questions to keep viewers engaged. He cut his teeth LostWhere more questions arose than were answered, and he followed the same approach with The Force Awakens.
Just think about all the questions from the first movie: Where did the first arrangement come from? Who was Snoke, how did he rise to power, and how did he seduce Ben Solo to the dark side? Why did Ben worship the grandfather? Where was Luke Skywalker, why did he get out, and why didn’t Anakin’s Force spirit intervene to put Ben right? Who were Rice’s parents, and why was the falcon on Jack? There are so many unanswered questions in there The Force AwakensAnd it would be almost impossible for the trilogy to keep them all.
In theory, this is not a problem; Star Wars has always been a transmedia franchise, and Lucasfilm intends to release a steady stream of new ones Star Wars Books and comics. But these should always be secondary, incidental, adding something to the main story, rather than essential for understanding the movie or resolving arcs viewers have only seen play out on the big screen. Abrams’ mystery box approach set Star Wars Up to struggle forwardBecause there were too many questions to satisfy stop.
Lucasfilm rushes production of the sequel trilogy
The studio should have waited to see how The Force Awakens was received
Rereading Iger’s biography, it is hard not to wince at the irony of the chapter. Star Wars. At one point, he talks at length about the importance of not sticking to arbitrary release dates, explaining why The Force Awakens Moved from May 2015 to December of this year. This was the mistake Lucasfilm made with the sequels in general (and, for that matter, with the anthology project Solo: A Star Wars Story).
Disney was in a rush, and it did real damage to the overarching narrative.
Pre-production on The Last Jedi Actually started in September 2015, earlier The Force Awakens Even released, although principal photography was subsequently delayed until February 2016 for rewrites. Still, the speed of production meant that Abrams’ successor Rian Johnson had precious little time to see which of Abrams’ many mysteries viewers resonated with. He had to choose which ones to run with, discard others, and he had no way of knowing if he had chosen the right one. Disney was in a rush, and it did real damage to the overarching narrative.
The Force Awakens was a great movie, but a poor foundation
Lucasfilm’s mistakes set the studio up for failure
All this is needless to say The Force Awakens is a bad movie. It is not; Watching The Force Awakens For the first time is an unforgettable and thrilling experience. There is a sense of sheer momentum in this film, with the familiar OT elements reworked into something that feels fresh and new. The characters are engaging, even if ill-defined, and there are pulse-racing action scenes. The Force Awakens is a good movie, and a successful movie, with 2.07 billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
The problem, however, is that it is perfectly possible to have a good movie and a poor foundation. This was intended to be the first chapter in the Star Wars Sequel trilogy, meaning the story needs to be told with much more care. Many controversies of the sequel trilogy are subtly placed by The Force AwakensMost notably The Last Jedis detailed image of Luke Skywalker; Johnson had to think of a story that explained Luke Skywalker’s hermitage while also ensuring Be Bravery did not overshadow Rey, the sequels’ true protagonist.
So many of Hollywood’s current problems flow from, or are exacerbated by, The Force Awakens.
Making matters worse, the overuse of nostalgia has a consequence – not just for Star Wars. The Force Awakens Ushered in an era of what is sometimes called “nostalgia porn,” where movies were created simply to evoke the same familiar feelings in viewers that they had when they were children. The problem comes when a franchise dares to try to do something new, because the originals are seen as sacred, and real evolution and innovation is rejected. So many of Hollywood’s current problems flow from, or are exacerbated by, The Force Awakens.
The Force Awakens failed to learn one vital lesson from Lucas
That one decision would have improved the sequel trilogy so much
Hindsight is an exact science, and Iger’s argument in The ride of a lifetime has merit; It’s impossible to overstate how much pressure Disney and Lucasfilm bosses felt they were under. Although Star Wars Having grown to love the prequels, they were still poorly regarded in 2015, and there was a general fear of failing the fandom again. Disney hoped to make something that would be as loved as the OT, and in doing so to finally unite the fanbase.
That was the main mistake, the problem underpinning everything else that was wrong with these Star Wars Sequel trilogy. With the benefit of hindsight, there is a sense of desperation to The Force Awakens‘ appeal to nostalgia, A desperate desire to be loved. When later chapters proved as divisive as the prequels (perhaps more so), it caused Lucasfilm to make course correction after course correction. This undermined the quality of the trilogy as a whole, making the resolution extremely unsatisfying.
Lucas himself has never been as evasive of criticism as he once imagined; Lucas dropped midi-chlorians from the preckles after Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom MenaceRecognizing that continuing the particular story would be “self-indulgent.“But fundamentally, he knew that the movies he made were an expression of himself, and he was determined to do as much as he could even in the face of heavy criticism. His successors at Lucasfilm lacked that determination, and ironically, They wound up with a fanbase even more divided than those in the early-to-mid 2000s.
There were so many mistakes made during the production of the sequels. Correcting any of them would have helped – avoid overplaying the nostalgia card, maybe cutting down the number of mystery boxes, or spacing out the sequels to allow more time for writing. But Disney’s biggest mistake was in failing to learn from George Lucas himself, failing to stick to their guns, and instead pivoting time and again, desperate to regain the success of Disney. Star Wars: The Force Awakens.