io9 – The firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from the Han Solo movie feels like it could be a turning point for the rejuvenated Star Wars. We’re learning a lot more about what Lucasfillm feels is acceptable within its universe and what isn’t. The problem is that what’s acceptable looks to be very, very narrow.

Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, beginning work on new Star Wars movies almost immediately. Disney also started streamlining pretty much all production of material within its universe, canceling Clone Wars, shutting down the production arm of LucasArts, moving the comics license from Dark Horse to Marvel (another recent Disney acquisition), and decanonizing pretty much everything that had been made prior to 2012, with the obvious exceptions of the movies themselves.

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Lucasfilm and Disney seem to be so wedded to quality control that they’ve become totally risk-averse. So the subjects of the anthology films are things everyone already knows about, while the “episode” movies themselves aren’t allowed to deviate too far from the standard action-adventure tone of the original Star Wars.

That sense of being quality-controlled started to be evident with Rogue One. It was a direct prequel to A New Hope, filled with cameos of characters fans would recognize. It’s an idea that makes some sense; it’s perfect to ease people into caring about new characters by making the plot of the movie integral to the mythology. The darker tone also eased people into the idea of different-feeling Star Wars.

I actually used to read io9 all the time back in the day but after their old EIC left the quality started to dip so I checked out. Bored out of my mind tonight I ended up on the site and saw her article, titled “Star Wars Is All the Same Nowadays, and It’s Becoming a Problem”, and I clicked it thinking it was a joke. Turns out I was wrong and Katharine Trendacost legitimately thinks that two movies into relaunching a series is when Disney should be doing crazy things and experimenting with wild stories – you know, right when the brand’s image is at it’s most precarious.

First, she complains that they canceled Clone Wars, moved the comics over to Marvel, and shut down LucasArts. Now I’ve never seen the show or read more than a page here and there of the comics but if you have even the tiniest bit of business sense you know that they pretty much had to do so. It makes sense to cancel a show that was being headed up and storyboarded by the former leadership. Sure it may have been a great show but it was created under the former leadership and when they bought the brand you know they needed to take a step back from everything and plan out the next few years. That means halting everything and deciding if the stories were worth devoting more resources to – which I’m being told is exactly what they did with their show Rebels that continues a bunch of the plotlines from Clone Wars. 2. Who the fuck wouldn’t move the comics over to Marvel? If you own one of the two largest comic publishers in the world and just bought the rights to the comics you’d be a fucking idiot to not have that publisher make it. LucasArts is pretty much the same as the old show. You need a second to breathe and decide what should be continued/scrapped/retooled and then move from there and considering they’re still releasing Star Wars games I’m assuming Disney figured that out. That podracing game was legit back in the day though – I’ll give Katherine that.

Next she’s complaining about decanonizing all the old books and comics. Have you ever read those books? Well don’t worry if you haven’t because I’m a big enough nerd that I had read about 80% of them and there were hundreds. About 10 were actually good. That’s what she’s arguing for. 10 fucking good books and a bajillion more bad/mediocre ones that would put huge limits on what the movies could do. Want to know what happened after ROTJ? Well there’s already books about that that cover the next 100 years of Star Wars history so no chance we get to see something original that Luke, Leia, and Han were up to. To say that Disney should treat them all as canon is fucking stupid and if you have that opinion just know that your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

This takes us to the new movies. Do I wish The Force Awakens hadn’t had as many callbacks to the originals? Yeah of course I do but I’m also a huge Star Wars nerd who has read a ton of the books and whose earliest memory of a movie is watching Episode 4. The average person hadn’t thought about Star Wars since the prequels came out and those had left a bad taste in a lot of their mouths so of-fucking-course it was going to be a really safe movie. Now she’s also bitching that Rogue One was “too safe and controlled” too. And she’s still a fucking idiot. I saw it and while the story was a little weak, particularly the first act, it wasn’t a bad film at all, it was much darker than the norm for Star Wars (Anakin fucking up the younglings is up there too though), and who cares if they made the director tone it back a bit. When you’re making a film in a major series you have to know that when you’re signing up you’ll be given some artistic freedom but ultimately the series has been mapped out for quite a bit and you’ll need to work within those confines and that includes the tone of the film. Plus it was only the second movie and audiences are still getting their faith in the brand back. By all counts The Last Jedi‘s director was given more freedom than JJ was and has said numerous times that it’s still very much a Star Wars film which tells me he knows what needs to go into it to not seem tonally off.

This brings us to the Han Solo movie. I’ve already blogged about it, first when Lord and Miller were fired and then again when it was announced that Ron Howard was taking over and that the problems seemed to stem from the fact that Lord and Miller weren’t being true to the characters. If you can look at everything that’s come out and still think that having a tonally different film is more important than getting the characters right then you’re a hack and just writing to be clickbait. Especially when the writer/producer of the movie is Lawrence fucking Kasdan. You might have seen a few of his movies: Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens among others. I’m sorry I don’t care who you are – you don’t know more about the Star Wars characters and how to write them than him.

She goes on in her blog to compare TFA and Rogue One to the MCU’s Winter Soldier and GOTG which is a dumbfuck comparison. We know the details of two movies that are in development and there have only been two movies that have been released. If you don’t know the math Winter Soldier was the NINTH movie in the MCU, and Guardians was the TENTH. If the rebooted Star Wars was the MCU they’d be on Iron Man 2 and Thor. We wouldn’t even have Captain America yet! If Star Wars is still playing it safe in 2025 when there have been ten of these movies then MAYBE she’d have a leg to stand on but as it is Disney needs to keep doing what they’re doing to build up steam and good will. So fuck you, Katherine Trendycost and people like her, and stop trying to find something to bitch about just because the Disney movies have been pretty damn successful at restarting the brand and have some faith in the major corporation that is putting out some of the most consistently good movies every year.

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