A lot to learn, Disney still has.
This week has been a busy one in the Star Wars universe. The good news is that the trailer is out for season two of Andor, the best Star Wars product of the past two decades. The series is a prequel to Rogue One, the 2016 caper film about Rebel spies acquiring the plans for the Death Star immediately prior in the story to the original film (Episode IV, now known as A New Hope). Rogue One, while it had its flaws, was itself the best Star Wars film since at least 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, as the film built up to a thrilling nonstop action ending over its final half that included a dramatic and menacing appearance by Darth Vader. Andor, like Rogue One, labors under the familiar problem of a prequel (in broad terms, everybody knows the story’s ending and what happens to the main character), yet it has taken Star Wars in a grittier direction by focusing on the hard worlds of espionage and secret rebellion: how rebellions are financed, how they evade detection, how they steal information, how they recruit, how they lead double lives, what moral costs they pay, and what they endure in imprisonment, torture, and the loss of family, friends, and colleagues. I’m looking forward to the second season, which debuts April 22.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Kennedy, who has run Lucasfilm since its 2012 acquisition by Disney, is reportedly stepping down at the end of this year — a report some sources deny. Jeff Blehar looked back at Kennedy’s legacy, concluding that “she squandered an enormously popular creative legacy of a series that didn’t have to die,” and that the dabbling in woke politics was more a symptom than a cause of that. I agree with a good deal of Jeff’s critique, and I’ve had my own specific suggestions for where the franchise has gone wrong since I detailed the wrong turns and missed opportunities of the prequel trilogy, which had its moments and some fine performances but could have been great.
Unlike Jeff, I’m an incurable Star Wars fan. I was five years old when the first film came out, it was the first grownup movie (i.e., not aimed mainly at small children) I ever saw in a theater, and it’s still my favorite film, just as the first grownup book I read (The Hobbit) is still my favorite book. I walked into the movie having read the six-volume comic book version so often I already knew the whole story by heart. My dad, my brothers, and I waited two and a half hours in the broiling heat to see Return of the Jedi when it came out on Memorial Day weekend in 1983. I’ve read many of the Star Wars “expanded universe” novels and stuck with nearly all of its products ever since. I even just watched Skeleton Crew, the first Star Wars series built around kids as the main characters (along with Jude Law as a mysterious rogue they encounter along the way), and it was entertaining. But the Star Wars films have just made one glaring error after another on Kennedy’s watch, the TV products have been uneven, intellectual properties like the books have been carelessly discarded, the market has been oversaturated, and Disney has often given off a whiff of hating its fans and wishing for different ones.
What I forgive least of Kennedy is squandering the one thing that can now never be recaptured: the final opportunity to put Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher on film together. Ford alone saved The Force Awakens, but there was no reason why the story could not have been written to at least reunite the three of them in a scene, and while Han Solo got an ending that did justice to the character, Luke Skywalker was treated very badly by the sequels. Those missed opportunities are permanently lost.
It’s clear now that Star Wars has been figuring out, fitfully, what works for television in terms of getting away from the Skywalker family and the repetitious blowing up of Death Stars, hiring different creative people who care about the franchise, and exploring different aspects of the Star Wars universe. But those lessons have yet to be applied to the films. A lot to learn, Disney still has.