I haven’t done one of these “think pieces” in awhile, so I’m gonna start with a list:
Star Wars movies either canceled or in limbo:
Obi-Wan Kenobi (reworked as a show)
Boba Fett (reworked as a show)
Rian Johnson Trilogy
Benioff & Weiss Trilogy
Knights of the Old Republic
Kevin Feige Movie
Rogue Squadron
A Droid Story
Lando
Taika Waititi Movie
Damon Lindelof Movie
That’s fifteen movies. Quite a bit, eh? So now the question becomes: Why does this keep happening, and will it ever get better?
I can already answer the second part of the question: No.
But to understand why, we need to dissect the first part of the question…
Back in 1972, George Lucas began working on what would eventually become Star Wars. The movie came out in 1977. That means he had five entire years to work on the movie soup-to-nuts, without having to worry about fan expectations because, surprise, there were no fans yet…
Thankfully, the film received immediate universal praise. The following film, The Empire Strikes Back, was met with some initial criticism, but people quickly came around to it. Since then, each installment has been divisive, at best. Things became even more complex in 2012, when Disney acquired the property. Now, the franchise had to try to please both fans AND shareholders alike. Spoiler alert: both camps want as much content as possible, even if they don’t admit it…
To make matters worse, Disney launched its own streaming service in 2019, just as the mainline Skywalker Saga was coming to end. Similarly to Marvel, Star Wars now had to define a new, post-saga course for its movies, while also justifying the existence of multiple shows a year, all while still having to appeal to both fans and shareholders alike…
Therefore, as one would expect, Lucasfilm is under pressure to keep announcing content on a regular basis. Some of you reading this may go “they should at least write an outline before announcing something.” While I’m not on the inside, I can all but guarantee that every new movie they announce has at least an outline before they announce it. That said, a good outline doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good script, let alone a good movie. Speaking as a writer myself, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve written an outline, thinking I have a hit on my hands, only to then start expanding said outline into an actual manuscript and realizing what I had was actually shit. In fact, it just happened to me again today…
So now you may be thinking “okay, well then they should write at least one full script draft before they announce something.” I think it’s pretty safe to say that, if it weren’t for having to keep the shareholders happy, that’s exactly what they would do. In fact, they even tried that a few times, but the problem is that scripts take quite a bit of time to write, and when it comes to Star Wars, it’s hard to keep things a secret, especially from scoop-hungry journalists. Keep in mind that the Kevin Feige movie was never officially announced by Disney or Lucasfilm themselves. They were secretly working on the script, and then someone on the inside talked to a journalist, and the rest is history. Same thing happened to the Damon Lindelof film.
This is all to say that, a lot of times, a project is either forced into announcement prematurely by the major studio (Disney, in this case), or its existence is leaked to the press while it’s still in the scripting phase. This even happens to small, non-IP projects that never get finished, let alone something like Star Wars…
Even Marvel’s beloved Infinity Saga hit some bumps in the road along the way (some entries were better than others, plus, remember when Inhumans was supposed to be a movie?). And while the Multiverse Saga continues to chug along, its reception seems to keep declining with each and every new release, and their plans are slowly becoming more “wobbly” now too (remember when Armor Wars was supposed to be a show? Is Kang still gonna be the new final boss?). I’ve also said this before, but even the Infinity Saga itself didn’t become “solidified” until the first Avengers film in 2012 (they didn’t know they were gonna pursue the Thanos story until then, hence why the cartoony-looking gauntlet full of stones in the first Thor film had to be retconned as a decoy). Either way, Marvel movies will keep chugging along, cause that’s what they’re known for…
Besides, do you think the people running Star Wars want to keep putting out multiple mediocre movies every year, like Marvel does? Especially when Star Wars seems to receive ten times as much scrutiny? As a matter of fact, no other franchise outside of Marvel has managed to pull off the assembly-line model that they themselves pioneered, and can barely still do themselves. I can’t even count on two hands how many abandoned film slates DC has had in the last decade, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole James Gunn thing doesn’t work out now either…
With that all being said, I think it’s time for all of us to accept that the Infinity Saga was a fluke, and that a pre-determined, decade-long film slate like that is never gonna happen ever again. When it comes to any franchise, movies are gonna keep getting announced because shareholders (as well as fans, to a lesser extent) want to keep knowing what’s going on. Some of those plans will happen, some of them won’t. It is what it is. In fact, we now live in a world where an entire movie can be filmed and yet still be canceled (RIP Batgirl). My best advice would be to just not take any of this stuff too seriously until you see a trailer for it…
I’d like to also remind everyone that good art usually takes time. It took Tolkien seventeen years to finally publish all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, after all. I also think that the days of something getting announced and then being released just a few years later are over. Like I said at the start of this post, Lucas took five whole years to make the original film. Similarly, he announced The Phantom Menace in 1993, and the movie itself only came out six entire years later. On another similar note, the original Spider-Man movie was in development hell for like ten years and went through a few different directors (even James Cameron was supposed to do it, at one point). Terminator 2 and Aliens both took seven years to make (both by Cameron too, funny enough). Pixar sequels take a while too. The list goes on…
People these days expect a slate announcement for everything when, not that long ago, there were no slate announcements for franchises cause franchises as we know them now didn’t even exist yet. For a long time, there was no internet/ social media to even use for such announcements. Everything just got reported through trade magazines like Variety and whatnot. Also, up until 2008, superhero movies did not connect together to form cinematic universes, and other series like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Middle-Earth, etc. were nowhere near ready to think about spin-offs and whatnot. Furthermore, Marvel head Kevin Feige even said recently that, going forward, Marvel itself “will operate more like a normal development studio, so don’t expect every project that gets reported on to actually get made” (I’m paraphrasing there). Even he’s getting tired of these big slate announcements, cause they’re starting to backfire on him (remember when the Blade reboot movie was announced in 2019?).
I say all this because I’ve noticed movie nerds getting more and more anxious about this stuff. A few months ago, it was announced that the sequel to The Batman would only be released in late 2026 (four and a half years after the first one), and a bunch of people online threw a temper tantrum over it. Unfortunately, it seems that Marvel (and major studio culture in general) has conditioned everyone into thinking that we need content within a few years from announcement. We need to get out of that mindset…
If it’s any consolation, I’m sure all the in-limbo Star Wars projects listed at the top here will eventually get made. Some might mutate into shows (like Kenobi and Fett did). Some might change directors still. Some might only get released like ten or so years after they were originally announced. This was the world before Marvel, and it’s the world again now…
Peace!
UPDATE: I’m not saying that all future Marvel films will suck, nor am I saying that Star Wars shouldn’t start doing multiple movies a year like Marvel does. I’m not in a position to say what any of these brands should or shouldn’t do. Maybe all Marvel movies from here on out will be great. Maybe Star Wars will start doing multiple films a year and be able to do it just as well as Marvel does. Both of those cases would be nice, actually…
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