I like having a wide variety of genres within future Star Wars projects instead of everything feeling like classic Star Wars.
I’m bumping this opinion since it’s sorta topical and has been bouncing around in my mind for a while now.
I feel like this isn’t talked about enough, but the more Star Wars films and TV shows Lucasfilm makes, the more often they’re going to be finding themselves treading the same ground. (Sometimes literally! 😉) I’ve heard some people complain about some of the recently announced, upcoming instalments being too ‘genre-specific’ like for example, Andor being described as a spy-thriller whilst The Acolyte sounding like a creepy, mystery series.In my opinion, this is exactly what the franchise needs to remain a pop-culture staple. I know people hate the idea of Star Wars turning into the MCU, but if Lucasfilm really wants to keep making new things, it can’t just continue being, as emanswfan describes it, ‘classic Star Wars’
Star Wars has long evolved from being just a series of films, it’s now the name of a multi-media franchise, so why does everything have to be those same few films retold again and again? Honestly, go nuts Lucasfilm, I wanna see whatever random-ass story you can imagine just told in the Star Wars setting with the Star Wars name. Sounds crazy, but this is the unpopular opinion thread.
I believe Star Wars has only been great when it has broken new genre ground. The first movie was a classic romance, while Empire was radically different in tone, almost becoming sci-fi horror in places. Jedi was so mediocre compared to the first two because it was the first one to go back to the well, so to speak, and ended up being a greatest hits of the first two films without the freshness of either.
Phantom Menace failed because it didn’t go far enough into the political thriller which made it a weird hybrid political drama and adventure film, neither of which worked. Clones had a mystery noir and romance angle but again neither were done competently enough to work. Sith works mostly because the tragedy angle was competent, and it is almost an inverse of a Star Wars movie.
TFA fails because it’s basically a thematic retread of the original, and TROS doubles down on the OT beats without any of the supporting tissue. TLJ is the only film which succeeds, even if the postmodernist deconstruction angle deconstructed the franchise one film too early and wasn’t super well-executed.
We’ll never know how Solo would have turned out as a straight comedy, but I suspect it would have been better than what we got. Same for RO before the Vader reshoots.
All this to say, I’m all for new directions for Star Wars films.