Thread by @astralfrontier

Because I can't sleep, I'm going to post a massive Star Wars thread, and talk about what I think is wrong (and right) with the franchise as such, and why that's basically okay and normal.

I feel like the tension of Star Wars is, and always has been, between two groups of writers: the ones who want to recreate their beloved childhood, and the ones who want to build from the ingredients the other group left behind.

What do I mean by that?

You've got George Lucas, who's trying to create The Hidden Fortress and Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and the magic of those 12-episode serials where someone is hauled on a conveyor belt to CERTAIN DOOM, tune in next week. So we get a trilogy of films with that very specific vibe

And after that it coasts for awhile and you've got special editions and Han doesn't shoot first and WHATEVER. But the next big blip is the prequels. More Star Wars y'all!

But what's it about? Well....

We got a throwaway line from Leia to Obi-Wan "you served my father in the Clone Wars", so naturally we need to see Obi-Wan serving in the Clone Wars (what are those? Well, it's a war.. with clones.. so....)

Because we need an origin for our fiction, right?

This is where writer group 2 jumps in. They take what group 1 gave us (rollicking space adventure) and take it seriously and Explain It to us. There's clones, there was a war, most of our favorite familiar faces will return.

And we're like, well, it's OKAYYYYY

And Hayden Christensen is in it, and people say he's bad, and he's bad the same way Robert Pattinson was bad in Twilight, which is to say that otherwise good actors can be hampered by intensely shitty writing.

(I like both guys in other stuff FWIW)

ANYWAY

And between Eps 2 and 3 this little thing drops from Genndy Tartakovsky, who did time on some seriously good animated shows, and it's called "Star Wars: Clone Wars".

And it's GREAT. Because it's from writers who are clearly in group 1. And their childhood inspirations are WILD.

A few years later (2008) we see "The Clone Wars" start to roll out, and it doesn't finish rolling out until 2020, because it's basically this massive sprawling war epic that tells the story of, well, THE ENTIRE WAR.

But it's a SERIES.

Well what does that mean?

Instead of 2 hours to tell a story through 2-3 key plotlines, it's got seasons and episodes. Which means there's a bunch of writers in both groups 1 and 2, and they're COOPERATING.

So we get this new mythology, of literal clones who are individuals, fighting a desperate war

We spend season after season watching these people being people, until we reach the point where narrative cheats like Order 66 ("what COULD kill all the Jedi?") are no longer tenable, and TCW's writers have to tell the story of this chip in all the clones' heads.

We get to see what happens to all these fictional bits as they stand the test of time. Midichlorians - out. Nobody needs them. Inhibitor chip in clones - in. We've got sympathetic, beloved clone characters now, and we need them to not be unrepentent assholes (until Bad Batch...)

Pretty soon we've reached the point where the writers in group 1 had a childhood that included Star Wars.

So we get shows like "Rebels", which is basically "young Jedi meets wise mentor, has eyes rudely opened, takes out major Imperial bad guy" all over again. Luke becomes Ezra

Finally, we're ready for the sequel trilogy! It's kind of the same deal as Rebels, actually. J.J. Abrams shows that he's really really good at reshooting A New Hope. We get a new trio of characters with frankly great chemistry, and they're gonna have ADVENTURES, you guys

So this is the point where I think things actually go wrong for the franchise. But it's not why a lot of people think. In particular, the whole "get woke go broke" mantra can suck my ass on its way down my toilet.

The problem wasn't Rey or Finn or women

So what WAS the problem?

By all accounts, the trilogy - as a trilogy - wasn't planned out. Individual movies had planning, but were then handed off to the next creative team with a "good luck".

Up until now, every unit of the franchise - a trilogy, a series, whatever - was handled by writers in group 1, group 2, or both groups in cooperation the whole time.

TLJ and TROS pushed group 1 writers into suddenly being group 2. "Take what we gave you and do something with it"

An example of this collision of styles: up until now, the mothership Star Wars films have been VERY CLEAR that impulsive cowboy bullshit is how you get things done, unless you carry a lightsaber and then the rules are different but whatever.

Break into the well guarded space station to free your ship? Send like 5 fighters to torpedo an exhaust port? Hotwire a security door while AT-STs are bearing down on you? Impulsive cowboy bullshit gets SO MUCH DONE.

UNTIL

TLJ's writers are trying to veer into a new direction, but they don't have the narrative room to work, so suddenly Holdo is cockblocking Poe. Impulsive cowboy bullshit, the backbone of the franchise, is suddenly cut off by A WOMAN.

The regressives in the audience flip out

Meanwhile Luke isn't waving his glowing laser dick around and solving everyone's problems. He's old and he's seen some shit and he has regrets. What gives? Don't the writers know the fate of the galaxy depends on THIS ONE DUDE?

btw these same people want an Obi-Wan series

The thing is, we've seen successful versions of character rehabilitation or revision before. The Clone Wars gave us an Anakin who was cocky, confident, impulsive, and increasingly dark.

What The Clone Wars had, and what TLJ did not, was narrative room.

2019 comes and we get The Mandalorian, which is thoroughly the product of writer group 1. "We like Westerns and we're gonna do Lone Wolf & Cub IN SPACE and it's gonna have a cowboy only he's a Mandalorian".

Mando takes its time, gives us characters we love (including a puppet, but that's part of the charm), tells little Western-style vignettes, builds up to some developments, and just generally does everything right. Oh, and there's like a Boba Fett cameo or something

And now we've got The Book of Boba Fett, which is... Writer Group 2: The Series.

It's got the guy in the jet pack from the original trilogy - remember him? he got knocked into the pit? - and he's doing The Godfather while a parade of Mando characters file past doing their plots

It takes a show that desperately needs to Explain It to have us meet the two representatives of the two approaches tot Star Wars meet and talk.

You have Luke Skywalker, the original Jedi hero, who kissed his sister before Jaime Lannister made it cool.

And you have Ahsoka Tano.

Luke was uncritically a Jedi. It took TLJ to make him question the dogma (and the fans HATED it). He was a product of group 1.

Ahsoka, the one who walked away from a corrupt Jedi Council to help people who needed it, was what group 2 gave us.

Luke wound up in a place similar to Ahsoka - realizing the Jedi WAYS weren't great, but that upholding the IDEAL (upholding peace, fighting for justice, preserving life) was still cool. What differed was how they got written to that point.

If we saw a series similar in principle to The Clone Wars - one that showed Luke's Jedi school, his slow path toward failure, the Knights of Ren, all that stuff - could it turn fans around, the way we saw Anakin in a new light?

Maybe.

What would it take? The same thing that would make the franchise better.

Realizing that writer group 1 can produce amazing stuff, but they need tempering from group 2, the babysitters to group 1's brainchildren. Letting both groups work together on a project, start to finish.

None of this is unique to Star Wars. Franchises like Star Trek have to strike the same balance. I'll watch Picard learn to play the flute from a dead society's mind probe a thousand times before I'll watch Voyager's crew turn into lizards at warp 10 or whatever.

But it's more prominent in Star Wars, because that galaxy is vast and can play host to WW2 analogues, heist films, mob dramas, wuxia stories, and a ton of other genres.

So all I ask is, if you're writing for Star Wars, please keep your writer groups talking to each other.

But whatever happens, as long as the franchise keeps rolling, cool stuff is going to come out of it. We'll see people like Dave Filoni scoop those up, incorporate them, and add to them, because he's one of those people who can flex between groups 1 and 2

So if a lot of this comes down to writing, Star Wars is going to be okay. There's going to be some bad and some good, just like any other franchise. And you'll find something to enjoy. Or don't. It's okay to like what you like.

That's the thread, thanks for reading.