Star Wars is one of the biggest franchises of all time.
It has defied expectations and transcended the boundaries of generations.
In 2015 the series returned and was welcomed by a more devoted fan base than ever.
But with a new film scheduled for every year until 2020, and many still floating around as ideas, the iconic aspect of the series may be nearing its final years.
Disney seems to be following in the footsteps of their own massively successful Marvel Cinematic Universe (The Avengers, Captain America: Winter Soldier, etc.), by releasing a dense outpouring of interconnected films featuring unique characters and stories, as well as one flagship “main story.”
This is an extremely profitable strategy as it allows different filmmakers to be making their own movie in completely separate locations at the same time, and the films are released in such close proximity that the excitement never really dies down.
What enables the studio to do this with Marvel properties though, is that superhero stories are manufactured to have an infinite amount of sequels, whereas the Star Wars franchise is centred on larger, more tonally similar events within its universe, leaving the series with a fairly limited amount of stories to tell.
Each new entry in the Star Wars canon falls deeper into the forgettable onslaught of modern blockbusters.
2018 will give us a recast Han Solo movie, which, if it’s successful, could gain a sequel or even grow into its own trilogy.
I should be thrilled about this, as Han Solo is one of my personal favourite film characters of all time.
He’s charismatic, fun, and more than anything well-developed.
But as the leading man of his own series, the pop culture icon could really lose some of his initial charm and mystery.
Think about Yoda. With little screen time, he was one of the best parts of the original trilogy.
But facing overexposure in the prequels, many of his loveable traits became annoyances.
This could be seen as a metaphor for where the entire franchise is heading.
The problem isn’t that Disney is going to employ bad filmmakers, or that they plan to cheap out on producing the movies. What’s worrisome is that, no matter how well made something is, too much of a good thing can cause the original property to rapidly lose its effect.
There’s not much to be done at this point except hope that the studio realizes the high probability of this over-saturation and is willing to take the risk of diversifying the styles of films in their Star Wars line up.
Noah Wilson is a student in Lauren Frodsham’s Writing 11 class at Belmont secondary.
