The Force Has Left The Building; Middle-Aged Musings Upon A Lifetime Of Star Wars. Part V: The Future?
Having rehearsed three generations of Star Wars films in detail, forming a conclusion, positive, negative, or indifferent, is all that remains for me to do. I may be chronologically advantaged in doing so; from childhood to the present, I have always had Star Wars in my life and—so long as the IP remains lucrative to The Walt Disney Company—likely I always will. Indeed, these films and their ancillary offshoots comprise a large part of my generation’s cultural clutter.
I have changed a great deal in forty-one years, but both my current cynical exterior and my inner child agree that our aesthetic heart resides permanently in 1977. For me, Star Wars, in its original, quaint, and gloriously analogue form, was and remains a perfect work of art—a timeless fairy-tale with an intriguing beginning, exhilarating middle, and satisfyingly rousing end. And while I admit my preference may derive entirely from nostalgia, I still believe this seminal master-work to be the aesthetic and thematic superior of all subsequent installments. I thus leave it to tomorrow’s children to judge whether Disney’s current iterations constitute inspired works of art, or forgettable diversions in an endless ocean of media.
Both Star Wars and the film industry have evolved and, cantankerous old reactionary that I am, I believe they have done so for the worse. So goes an evolutionary arms race in which corporate predators develop ever gaudier adaptations to entice dollars from progressively warier wallets. Inspiration, originality, craftsmanship, and humanity are going extinct, to be replaced by homogenised, committee-approved content, cheap spectacle, artistically irrelevant gimmicks (IMAX 3-D and chairs that vibrate, FFS), and shameless political pandering. Perhaps the trend is inevitable, given how art is now technologically and economically disseminated. Antique humanity’s spontaneous cultural efflorescences have become, with our progressive economic and political sophistication, prefabricated, ideologically-infused commodities. Our ancestors, sharing their stories around communal fires, were not bothered about film rights, cross-market promotion, overseas distribution, video game adaptations, and merchandising; The Walt Disney Company, churning out its hackneyed derivatives, does not seem bothered over artistic integrity.
Disney’s political pandering, however, co-joined with a colour-by-numbers production ethic, is inducing a grass-roots backlash. General audiences are growing impatient with the pontifical overtones infusing their favorite franchise. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has garnered decidedly polarised reviews: a gushing 91% critics approval rating against a dismal 46% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. More importantly to Disney’s executive types, Last Jedi managed a paltry 1.3 billion dollars in total box office, down about 700 million from its predecessor. In response to great swathes of negative online criticism, Disney’s creative management have circled their wagons, assigning the fault entirely onto an aging generation of bitter and reactionary man-babies. But political contention aside, evidence mounts that Star Wars Exhaustion Syndrome may be setting in. As I write this Solo: A Star Wars Story (a spin-off plagued very publicly with its own developmental problems) has hit the cinemas to lukewarm reviews, and disappointing box office. Quoth Variety: “Solo” represents the lowest opening for a “Star Wars” film since Disney took over the franchise starting with 2015’s “The Force Awakens.” Despite these critical and financial trends, Disney proceeds apace with the cultivation of its cultural empire. We will be blessed (or cursed) with yet another film trilogy, a new Star Wars live action television show set to debut on Disney’s streaming service, more spin-offs, more merchandising…
I sometimes think that Star Wars was simply too successful for its own good. It might have been preferable, in 1977, for it to have achieved only modest financial success, or even to have flopped, then perhaps to have grown a cult following. Thence it would have joined the ranks of universally cherished classics without having to suffer its current fate—lackluster star in an endless, mercenary cabaret. Having satisfied my curiosity as to the current generation’s Star Wars inheritance with a single screening of Force Awakens, I look on disinterestedly as Disney continues assiduously to render George Lucas’s spark of inspiration down into banal obscurity. I am done with these new Star Wars films, but can still sympathise with the generations of fans, new and old, who remain loyal to that spark, their curatorial plea ringing across the inter-webs—how can Star Wars be saved?
Living, as we do, ironically, with instantaneous, disposable entertainments, shallow, breadth-less news cycles, and real-time political animadversions, it is easy for us to forget about universals. Indeed, despite all our ceaseless and transient digital noise-making, there are still human qualities, expressed artistically, which transcend time and place. If this were not true art from different times and places would be incomprehensible and unrelatable to us; yet we have no trouble comprehending and relating to art from even the remotest antiquity. Which is a pedantic way of saying, Worry not, kids, somewhere out there it is always 25 May 1977; Star Wars is doing just fine. Star Wars does not need saving; embodying perfectly timeless human universals, Star Wars (and likely its preternaturally serendipitous sequel, Empire) will stand the test of time. Great stories are far more durable than any corporation. Let Disney have its way; children will be thrilling to Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star long after The Walt Disney Company has disappeared from human memory.