Folks at home, I’ve got some bad news. This is going to be hard to hear, but it’s true: Sooner or later, the reborn Star Wars series is going to get bad. It is, simply speaking, an inevitability. Disney has incredible plans for the Star Wars series, including a new movie every year from now until kingdom come . And that’s the problem. It is now Star Wars’ destiny to be milked for all its worth… until it gets bad (and probably well beyond that). And there’s no way this dark and terrible fate can be avoided. It won’t happen with Episode 8, which Kylo Ren says will be great , but badness is now Star Wars’ destiny.
Sorry, Star Wars Will Get Bad
Star Wars under Disney’s power has been a revelation. The Force Awakens wasn’t perfect, but without a doubt it revived the series for a new generation of fans and the old stalwarts alike. And it kicked off an era that will be Star Wars’ new golden age and its eventual fall, all at once. Disney has inaugurated the era of one Star Wars movie a year. And there’s no way it can keep that up and keep having all of those movies be good at the same time.
Every Star Wars movie is going to cost north of a hundred million dollars, have huge stakes riding on it, have increasingly high expectations (and cast salaries) behind them, and have to invent increasingly new and exciting stories. No more A New Hope knockoffs allowed after The Force Awakens. And the field of decent science fiction directors is only so deep, for now. Like with the Marvel movies, Disney will have to go deep into the fold to keep every one of these helmed by someone affordable and interesting. The company will take risks—even with Star Wars.
Just look at the Marvel and DC movies. Marvel has been putting out several movies every year for the better part of a decade now, and while they haven’t had an outright flop yet, the formula is wearing a little thin. The core of the movies continues to remain strong, but some of the peripheral ones— Ant-Man , much?—aren’t as compelling and won’t bring in as many people as the original movies did. Sooner or later—especially once major roles start getting recast—the Marvel movies will fall. They cannot last forever.
The same is true for Star Wars. Chances are the actual, formal numbered Episodes will stay good for a long time, just like the Iron Man and Avengers movies do. But the side treatments? Not Rogue One, but Rogue Four, or How The Bothans Died Getting That Information? Sooner or later we’ll get a stinker. Eventually, we’ll even get two stinkers in a row, and the second one will lose money.
But… it’s okay. Star Wars is going to have a few bad apples every once in a while, but the series will survive. Hell, it survived getting bad already—everybody hates the prequels now, with good reason. And yet Star Wars survived. No one disgraced the name of the Original Trilogy, even after that debacle. Star Wars survived. And under Disney’s graceful tutelage, another bad Star Wars movie will eventually emerge. And again, Star Wars will survive. You’ll just waste fifteen bucks one time, and kvetch about it.
