Roundtable: Disney Star Wars

The Mythical Sequel Trilogy and the Problem of Canon

Aren: I remember back in 2012 when I was browsing on my phone in the midst of a particularly boring cinematography class at film school and stumbled across the startling news on Twitter: Disney had purchased Lucasfilm from George Lucas for $4 billion and they were planning to film the apocryphal Sequel Trilogy. It was dizzying information to read and completely upended the rest of the day for me. I had thought Star Wars had ended in 2005 with the release of Revenge of the Sith. Growing up, we all had conversations about what the Sequel Trilogy would’ve looked like had Lucas made it—Anton and I even imagined a version of Episode VII that had a central concept similar to The Force Awakens—but I never really thought a new trilogy would ever happen. But now, out of the blue, it seemed it was going to happen and I could get excited again.

Anton: If I recall correctly, our idea was for a movie about an old Luke Skywalker living in exile because the galaxy no longer needed him, and his desire to return. The inspiration was, vaguely, Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” It was imagined as an one-off episode, epic in length. Not a trilogy. Of course, in the actual new trilogy, it’s more Luke, rather than the galaxy around him, that’s moved on and done with heroic action. But there is that intriguing aspect in The Force Awakens that people in the galaxy seem to have forgotten that the Jedi were real, which has always struck me as resembling the Telmarines, from Prince Caspian, who occupy Narnia but have forgotten that magic and talking beasts are real. But that’s a digression for another time. 

The news that Lucas was selling Star Wars, and to Disney of all people, was definitely a shock. But I remember thinking that the sale somewhat fit, given that Lucas himself was courted to take over Disney in the 1980s (if that rumour is true). I remember being slightly optimistic. I thought the outrage at the sale was overdone, but I was also skeptical about what Disney would want to do with Star Wars. And now, in 2020, with Star Wars just another jewel in Disney’s franchise crown, Disney Star Wars somewhat makes sense, but it is also its own thing, separate from Lucas Star Wars. The fact that it was just Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, not Episode IX, in the marketing sums up Disney’s approach to the sequels.

Aren: You hit on it. Now in 2020, looking back on the five years of Disney Star Wars and the completed Sequel Trilogy we got, I realize that the Sequel Trilogy never really happened. We got more Star Wars films but we didn’t get a true continuation of what came before. That’s why we refer to this new trilogy as the Disney Trilogy, which is something we didn’t even really have to think about; it just happened organically. It’s not the story that George Lucas envisioned for Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. It’s not even the Expanded Universe sequels that we got with the Thrawn Trilogy. It was something else. Something very good, and very worthwhile, but not really the same as the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy. In short, it’s not canon.

Anders: Yes, when I read the news in 2012 that Disney had purchased Lucasfilm, I too was a bit thrown for a loop. As you noted, as far as I was concerned Star Wars was over in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith. I loved the prequels, but at the same time I was perfectly happy to have the series done then. In fact, I was OK with Star Wars, my first and foremost film love, being done, and moving on, relatively speaking. I never even watched the The Clone Wars when it was released in 2008. Whatever you think of it, Revenge of the Sith “closed the loop,” as Matt Brown wrote way back in 2015. But unlike Matt, I could never convince myself that I didn’t care about Star Wars (and given his gushing over The Last Jedi, he couldn’t convince himself either).

So, when Disney announced they would be making a sequel series to Lucas’s films, it was a bit of a Michael Corleone moment: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

Anton: Yes, I also was satisfied with Revenge of the Sith closing things off. The prospect of new Star Wars movies brought me anxiety and a sense of weariness as much as excitement.

Anders: I was cautiously excited, mostly at the prospect of sharing new Star Wars films with my children. But the truth is that this wasn’t going to be George Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy—something that Michael Kaminski persuasively argues was never really anything more than a few vague ideas that got compressed into Return of the Jedi to begin with. It was going to be Disney’s Sequel Trilogy. Note we kind of automatically say “Disney” not J.J. Abrams or Kathleen Kennedy. These films are hard to square with any kind of auteurist theory of filmmaking and art on a scale larger than a single film, something we observed in our The Rise of Skywalker roundtables, noting the fact that these films so obviously weren’t conceived of as a unity. So, in the end, it’s not really a Sequel Trilogy as I might have imagined it. And I think the new films, for all their good and enjoyment, really are something different.

So, that question of “canon,” of what is the accepted and genuine continuation of the story, is a vexing one. Who gets to determine canon? Is it whoever has the copyright? Also, did Revenge of the Sith “close” the canon in the biblical sense? Meaning, can new stories meaningfully be added?

Anton: For me, sort of. I basically have a special affinity for The Force Awakens, even though I think it has flaws, and then I think about the rest of the Disney movies as apocryphal or Expanded Universe. New stories, but not necessarily true. 

Anders: Aren, you said that these films are worthwhile and good. I’m torn on that question even as I give these films a fairly high rating and enjoyed them. Enjoyment is good and worthwhile I believe. But at the same time, there’s something nagging me that Star Wars might have been best just let to rest.

Aren: I think they’re worthwhile because they’re good. I’m trying not to overcomplicate it. Yes, Star Wars probably never needed to continue past Return of the Jedi, let alone Revenge of the Sith. But if Star Wars was going to come back, and if Hollywood was only going to make franchise films, I’m glad the new Disney Trilogy exists, because in terms of Hollywood franchise films, they’re among the best.

Anton: I think they are high caliber in comparison to the current field of blockbusters, but that they also embody plenty of contemporary weaknesses and blindspots. So I’m more lukewarm on them than you, Aren.

Reactions to The Rise of Skywalker and Evaluating the Disney Trilogy

Anton: We each noted the dizzying and sometimes bewildering experience of watching The Rise of Skywalker. (Actually, we probably said that about each new movie.) And this is coming from Star Wars buffs. How do you think regular filmgoers will respond to this movie? 

Anders: I suspect it might be incomprehensible for those who aren’t well-versed in Star Wars lore. 

Aren: But why would people who don’t like Star Wars or who are not emotionally invested in the saga care about the ninth movie in a series? Critics are paid to see this stuff, but if you’ve hated the Disney films, why even bother seeing The Rise of Skywalker? The adherence some people have to films and art they supposedly hate is baffling to me. Why waste all that time and energy?

Anton: Actually, based on some reactions I’ve read, I think Rise might work best for some people who are lukewarm on the other two sequels.

Anders: Let me clarify, I think there are a significant portion of the audience who are “fans” of Star Wars, but who don’t know the minutiae of who Palpatine is let alone debate how the Force works, or even know anything of the extra-filmic Star Wars stories. And this is even more confused by the fact that geek culture, and the people who were obsessed with that minutiae, is now the mainstream culture. But you’re right that Star Wars, at least the original trilogy and the Episode I release, transcended geek culture. It was mainstream late-70s culture!

Ultimately, I’m not complaining. I mean, I agree that most critics aren’t fans in the same sense I am, and so I’m not really invested in what they think in this case. They don’t really see Star Wars the same way I do. There are a few Film Twitter folks whose opinions I‘m curious about. But these are people who have a deeper and more idiosyncratic connection to Star Wars than either the majority of other critics, who are really just dealing with this film in this moment more or less, but also aren’t just fans who are into uncritically consuming all the material and predisposed to like it.

Aren: I think I’m just over with popular criticism, especially when it comes to Star Wars. Filmspotting and my small list of Letterboxd follows, including some critics I disagree with but largely respect, like Mike D’Angelo, is all I care about. Most popular critics are bad thinkers and bad writers. And they’re lazy as hell and not really interested in movies outside of the cultural sphere. 

Anders: Yes. Often very myopic and stuck in the moment.

Aren: It’s just stunning how they will contradict themselves aggressively and with extreme snobbery constantly. This Disney Trilogy is a good example. This is how their logic goes: The Force Awakens is a repudiation of the prequels = good. The Last Jedi is a repudiation of The Force Awakens = good. And The Rise of Skywalker is a repudiation of The Last Jedi = bad. Not only are those contradictory thoughts, but they’re not even correct in their initial statements about the films, because The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker are not undoing the previous films nearly to the degree as suggested in the critical coverage of the series.

Anton: I think Rise corrects more than you argue, Aren, but not as much as some say. But I’ve only seen it once, so I’m still unsure how it fits into the trilogy. How smoothly.

Did you guys like The Rise of the Skywalker better than The Last Jedi? Is it the best of the trilogy? I still admire The Force Awakens the most, especially if I tend to think of it as almost a stand-alone film and less the source of the original confusion—the source of so many mysteries that had to be later unpacked. 

Aren: If I was basing the quality of The Rise of Skywalker purely off of how satisfied I was walking out of the theatre, I might say it’s the best of the trilogy. I can’t deny how it affected me. But it’s probably not as good as the other two films in terms of conventional filmmaking. 

The Force Awakens is the best movie of the bunch, but the problems of the other two films originate in that film and its conception. It has to bear some of the blame for the limitations of its sequels. The Last Jedi is fascinating and a boldly idiosyncratic vision. It’s easily the most original of these new films, but it also leaves me unsatisfied, not just in terms of what it does to some conceptions of the Star Wars universe and characters, but simply in terms of plot. It’s anticlimactic. 

Anton: I’m still not sold on The Last Jedi. I almost don’t enjoy it. Or rather, there are parts I actively dislike, and some good stuff. I have very mixed feelings about it. It’s visually elegant, but I also find it the least entertaining.

Aren: The Rise of Skywalker is the most patched-together of the new films, correcting for past mistakes, introducing new threads in a rushed manner, and having to deal with the tragedy of losing Carrie Fisher. But it’s so emotionally satisfying. I love where Rey and Ben ended up, and that ending, with Rey watching the twin suns of Tatooine rise over the Lars Homestead, is perfect. Abrams is great at those kinds of moments, where he leans so hard into iconography while giving us a bit of a new perspective on it. He buries his thematic interests in the way he remixes the original iconography—in this case, offering a Tatooine sunrise, instead of a sunset. (At least, I think it’s a sunrise.)

Anton: I do think the emotional beats of The Rise of Skywalker worked generally, and sometimes worked great. The new trio finally working together on screen was satisfying enough for me that it overshadows the more insane, patched together, Frankensteinian aspects of the production and narrative. It has some big flaws in my estimation but also some great parts. 

Aren: They finally created a dynamic between the three main heroes. The problem is that it’s just basically a trilogy in one movie. It’s so overstuffed!

Anton: Whereas I found the The Last Jedi too stretched out. 

Anders: Here’s where I end up on a different page than either of you, or than I would have expected a couple of years ago: while my admiration for The Last Jedi has cooled, I still prefer it to The Rise of Skywalker, but I now think The Force Awakens is the best of this “trilogy,” not something I initially thought I would think. There are diminishing returns to these films for me. While a second viewing of Rise confirmed the bits I liked (and I think I like it more than most critics or fans of The Last Jedi), it’s too different either stylistically or thematically from the Lucas films for me to love it unreservedly.

I think the diminishing returns are in part due to our aforementioned noting of the lack of unity in these films. Each film creates a puzzle for the next film to solve, and Abrams’ final solution was fun and mostly emotionally compelling, but its final treatment of Ben Solo and, especially, its sidelining of Anakin Skywalker keeps it from being particularly satisfying for me.

The Last Jedi for all its stretching out (as cool as Canto Bight is, that whole plotline could have been dropped with very little loss to the film as a whole) is more satisfying for me in its Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren elements. Its visual schema is more controlled and its filmmaking less slapdash. While it introduces new and disorienting elements, it never feels quite like the Star Wars version of an Avengers movie.

The Force Awakens suffers the least because it was our first return to Star Wars in a decade and its visual reliance on the Original Trilogy gave it a comforting sheen, even as I’ve discussed how I find its use of nostalgia to be a mixed bag.

There are individual moments in each of the Disney Trilogy films that I find exciting and more thrilling than most other blockbusters these days. But they aren’t perfect, and none of them are as meaningful to me as the Original Trilogy. 

Maybe Rise will grow on me like Rogue One did, but today, this is where I’m sitting.

Connections between The Rise of Skywalker and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Aren: I’ve seen The Rise of Skywalker three times now and I cannot get a bizarre idea out of my head, which may also explain the polarizing reaction to the film: The Rise of Skywalker is super similar to the splendid and definitely insane Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. This shouldn’t be surprising. J.J. Abrams wrote the film along with Chris Terrio, who won as Oscar for Argo, but who is probably better known as the writer of Batman v Superman. Am I crazy in thinking there’s some structural and visual connection between these films? And a general spirit of artistic anarchy at work in both?

Anton: I agree. Both The Rise of Skywalker and Batman v Superman play like fever dreams, movies made by excited yet unhinged imaginations, drunken on the source texts they love. 

Anders: Oh they both are! It’s someone weaving the iconography of the respective franchises in wild ways with a nod to the present moment. In fact, that’s pretty much why I like both of them. Both are kind of sweet in that way even if I can see why some people don’t like them. In both cases there are moments I absolutely love and others where I have a hard time even conceiving of how the story is supposed to work. 

It’s interesting how even some of the story beats of each film contain some echoes of the other. The villains’ plots are barely realistic and mostly impressionistic. Each film even has a ghostly memory of a father show up at a key moment and talk to his son! They’re like a dyad: dark and light, an idea mentioned a few times in Rise in relation to Kylo and Rey. You can pick which one you think is which.

Aren: I think it’s pretty obvious which is which. They’re also both examples of technically-adept filmmakers pulling out all logical stops in order to unleash fever dreams on their fans.

Anton: Maybe the best way I can describe Rise to people, the good and the bad of the film, is that this movie seems like something I dreamed of.

Take the start of the movie and Exegol. I actually like the insane first 10 minutes with Kylo raging across the galaxy. I don’t think nine out of ten people will understand what is going on. But remember the Batman future vision in Batman v Superman? Same type of thing.

Aren: The Knightmare sequence. It’s my favourite scene in the film because it’s truly spectacular and original.

Anders: Best scene in Batman v Superman! But yes, Anton, as overwhelming as the first few minutes of the film are, it’s true: it’s kind of exhilarating. One of my favourite sequences in The Rise of Skywalker.

Anton: While the big battle finale of The Rise of Skywalker is lacking the logic of Lucas’s films, in terms of battle strategies and tactics over clear geography, it is stunning on a sensory level, and more than half mad. 

Aren: It’s so delirious and amazing and is a genuine spectacle. The hundreds of Star Destroyers. The rag-tag fleet of Resistance fighters and allies. The Force lightning into the sky that shuts down the fleet. The stadium of Sith worshippers watching Palpatine’s confrontation with Rey and Ben Solo. It’s bizarre and bold. But so are moments of Batman v Superman beyond the Knightmare sequence. Luthor’s whole plot is apocalyptic—the monster he creates is literally called Doomsday. Both films are concerned with the end of everything and they operate in a kind of apocalyptic haze similar to prophetic texts and myth.

Anton: All those Star Destroyers out of the fog, fully staffed, doesn’t make a lick of sense when we have whole movies about how hard it was to build the Death Star. But wow, it’s a comic book come to life. The Rise of Skywalker plays like a greatest hits of the Expanded Universe. 

Aren: Yeah. I get what you’re saying. It took 20 years to build a Death Star between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, but apparently it only takes 30 years to build the greatest fleet of Death Star Destroyers ever assembled, all with planet-killing weapons.

Anton: Who built them? Who is the staff operating them? How did they all get out to the hidden Sith planet? Lucas actually builds a world with believable mundane aspects.

Anders: Ultimately, its mad vision is the reason I like it despite my quibbles. I’m having the problem of reading descriptions and agreeing with how insane and stupid some of the stuff in the film is. But it still worked for me. 

Aren: Obviously, as my review shows, I like The Last Jedi a fair deal. But I was pretty conflicted after that first viewing. For this one, I basically had to fight crying for 30 minutes straight.

Anders: I don’t quite agree. I liked The Last Jedi quite a bit and it was only after a few viewings that the things that keep me from unreservedly praising it have niggled away, though for reasons very different from most who criticise it. But honestly, The Rise of Skywalker threw me off balance.

Anton: You mean literally. Like it’s hard to see up and down after screening it.

Anders: Yes. That’s partly what I mean! It never has the geography or coherence of even the prequels. And the Lucas films, in all their classicism, share with old Hollywood cinema a strong sense of continuity editing and camera movement. Abrams seems to have no interest in spatial relations in any of his films. Actually, all these films suffer from it. Echoing the ridiculous scene in Star Trek (2009) where Spock Prime sees Vulcan destroyed from another planet, consider how in The Force Awakens they can view the destruction of planets and systems halfway across the galaxy from the surface of Takodana. Then Rian Johnson has his very confusing slow-motion ship chase, which conceptually seems cool, until characters can just fly away and back undetected in a matter of hours (it seems inconsistent how long it takes to fly across the galaxy in these films in comparison with the Original Trilogy). In The Rise of Skywalker, all bets are off. “Light-speed skipping.” OK. Whatever!

Aren: To be fair, “light-speed skipping” is a not a central element of the plot like the sub-lightspeed chase is in The Last Jedi.

Anders: That also points to the problem. Huge new concepts are just thrown in as quick fixes, not woven into the film in a meaningful way. But I do like the audacity of a few of Rise’s best moments.

Anton: Abrams’ two Star Wars movies, and Rise in particular, seem to suffer a bit from chaotic plotting and pacing that makes me think of the Pirates of the Carribean movies. Where there is a lot going on, and it can be difficult to summarize as a story as well as to understand the causality—what leads to what. Who or what are we chasing now?

In spite of some great action, I also have to say that I’m getting tired of all the Legolas-kicking-ass-type moments in these Disney Star Wars movies. I don’t need to see Poe blasting a half dozen tie fighters in one go. It makes Luke look like a bad pilot. I don’t like this unbelievable and overwrought “badass” action that overpopulates our blockbusters these days. I just want well-conceived, relatively realistic action spectacle. Is that too much to ask?

More and more, I’m coming to think that The Force Awakens is both special when read entirely on its own, as one last tale, but deeply deficient if read as Episode VII in a larger, nine-part story. It creates all the problems, which Johnson then reacts to in bad ways and with too much cheekiness, in my estimation.

Aren: Exactly! It is the source of all the significant problems in the subsequent films. 

Anton: And why is there a map to a man who vanished? Why would you fly system to system across the galaxy, and just go straight to the end? It’s those half-good ideas that don’t hold up to repeat interrogations.

Aren: I brought up this point during our The Last Jedi roundtables and I’m bringing it up here again: there should’ve been a film before The Force Awakens. There are too many gaps in the story regarding our old heroes. That film nicely sets up Rey, Finn, and Poe, but it does not bridge the gap between Han, Luke, and Leia in Return of the Jedi and the current time frame. There are too many unanswered questions and so many quibbles about Luke’s exile, Snoke’s existence, Palpatine’s return, and the fracturing of the heroic triad of Han, Luke, and Leia that would’ve been dealt with in another film.

Star Wars as Religion and Religion in Star Wars

Aren: In so many ways, the films of the Original Trilogy are more religious texts than movies. And I don’t mean that as referring to a bunch of ironic atheists in the United Kingdom who listed Jedi as their religion on the census. I mean that the way people treat these films, and specifically the pre-Special Edition versions of them, are as sacred texts and not simply works of entertainment.

Thus, the treatment of the characters in these new films, and especially The Last Jedi, is considered blasphemy by a large contingent of diehard fans. At the same time, the entirety of Disney’s output has incorporated this religious fervour into the films themselves. For the characters themselves, especially Kylo Ren and Rey, the stories of the Original Trilogy have taken on the level of myth. They treat the diegetic stories about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader much the way we treat the films of those stories.

Anton: Or the way people treat stories about heroes of old, such as Achilles or Odysseus. I like the idea, but 30 years isn’t long enough for this sensibility to evolve in the galaxy, is it? Again, so many of Abrams’ ideas don’t seem to be able to stand up to rigorous interrogation.

Anders: I actually find this ultimately humourous, in that it was Lucas who made the more “political” films, and in our hyper-politicized, if ideologically confused, era, Disney-made films that pay lip-service to the notion of Star Wars as religion. I think The Force Awakens does the most with this, literally treating the events of the Original Trilogy as myths and the ruins that the new film is built on.

Anton: The Last Jedi is perhaps the most spiritual of all the films, particularly with its memorable montage explaining the Force (one of the best parts of the movie). Given the visual nature of the montage (remember: the Original Trilogy only ever used dialogue to explain things), the sequence almost functions like a short documentary on the nature of the Force. 

While Lucas has been described as a Buddhist Methodist, Johnson’s vision for Star Wars is more Eastern, in my opinion, or more Gnostic. He emphasizes one side of Lucas’s philosophical fusion. He rejects the hero, the individual, and more explicitly embraces the idea that the world is illusion, and reality is not broken and in need of redemption, but rather is false. There is an Eastern quality, it seems to me, about Luke’s final heroic act, for, if we take Christianity as a reference point, in orthodox thought Jesus has to actually die for the Atonement to work. The Last Jedi also suggests Christian heresies in which only a phantom of Jesus suffered and died on the cross.

Anders: Perhaps. I think that Force sequence in The Last Jedi is one of the best elements of the Disney Trilogy. I think the mistake is taking Luke as a Christ figure in the film. As I would argue, Luke is actually an Arthur figure. A legendary hero who is fallible, not a saviour.

Anton: But Arthur is both. He is a saviour, a Christ figure. There are prophecies about his birth, and it’s even said he will return when his country needs him most. But he’s not divine and is a flawed human being. But I agree that Johnson is drawing on the established traditions of the aged and failed hero. 

Anders: I’m not sure that Johnson’s vision is significantly more “Eastern” than Lucas’s. The prequels, especially in the figure of Qui-Gon Jinn, are very Taoist. But at the same time the Disney films most interesting explorations of religion in Star Wars, versus Star Wars as religion, happens in Rogue One with Chirrut îmwe and the Jedi temple on Jedha. 

Aren: It’s an interesting point to contemplate. I think that the Church of the Jedi in Rogue One is actually more diegetic than any religious stuff we get in the Disney Trilogy. Luke may chide Rey about the Force not being simply about “moving rocks” but in the end, the ability to move rocks or perform similar supernatural feats is the main feature. Everything else is a platitude about overcoming fear or embodying the Light Side.

I think there’s definitely something to your idea, Anton, that there are Gnostic elements to The Last Jedi, but I think you overstate it. This focus adds to Johnson’s compulsive need to undercut the established understanding of things. He wants to reveal a “truth” that is hidden in regular understandings of the Force and these characters. But he doesn’t reject the notion of heroism or the individual, even if he deemphasizes the “chosen” aspect of the hero.

Anders: Yes, I think Johnson and his fans need to undercut the established order isn’t as radical as they think it is. I mean, there’s nothing Luke tells Rey in that montage that isn’t encapsulated in Yoda telling Luke, “Life creates [the Force], makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Who is the Hope in the Disney Trilogy?

Anton: Speaking of The Last Jedi, I’ve also always rejected Johnson’s idea that the Resistance is the true hope for the galaxy: “the spark that will light the fire.” Leia thinks Obi-Wan is her “only hope,” in her hologram message in A New Hope, but Luke actually is the hope, the saviour of the galaxy. And so I take that to mean that the Jedi are the true hope for the galaxy. Not the Rebellion or the Resistance. I think this is the heart of Johnson’s subversion. A faith in political cause over the Force.

Anders: I don’t think that the Disney films can really be said to have faith in a political cause over the Force, given, firstly, how incoherent its political analysis is, and secondly, that they see Rey as the final hope, even in The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker places the hope firmly in a one-on-one battle between good and evil. I might even push back on your notion that A New Hope has such a dichotomy between institutional and individual goodness or hope. I mean, with Obi-Wan dead, at the end of A New Hope it was never clear that Luke would be a Jedi in the same way that we end up seeing them portrayed in the prequels. Yes, he has to “trust [his] feelings” to blow up the Death Star, but the actual outcome is very material and political, rooted in anti-imperialism.

I think you’re reading your own reaction to the political discussions surrounding representational politics in the films into the narratives themselves. To be fair, its defenders do the same thing.

Aren: Yup, the haters and the lovers of The Last Jedi in particular are both misreading the film to some degree. Anton, I addressed that line you point out in my review of The Last Jedi, which is that Johnson is not referring to just one of the Resistance or the Jedi, but sees both as intimately linked. Poe and Holdo refer to the Resistance as that spark of hope, but the opening crawl of the film, which is as close as a direct statement from Johnson as you get in the film, speaks of Luke sparking that hope. I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think Johnson sees the Resistance and the Jedi as one unified good.

Anders, I think Anton is speaking in terms of politics as they’ve come to be understood in our popular culture: as in identity, representation, agency. Not actually politics in terms of governance and class relations and the operation of an economy. Because as you say, the politics of the Disney Trilogy are incoherent. We have no true understanding of how the world operates on a political level—who is governing the galaxy? The New Republic or the First Order?—so we don’t actually know what kind of politics the films are promoting, either purposefully or inadvertently.

Anton: We have an inkling. Johnson clearly favours a politics of the oppressed and their resistance, and Abrams, especially in The Force Awakens, imagines a neo-Fascist resurgence that must be stopped. They are political films even if they aren’t fully coherent.

The Star Wars Stories

Aren: For a brief moment, the Star Wars stories were supposed to be a recurring thing, but after the relatively-light box office haul of Solo, plans changed. And now with the advent of Disney+, it seems that those projects have migrated to the small screen. The Mandalorian was born out of the failure of Josh Trank’s proposed Boba Fett movie, while Deborah Chow’s upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series was originally a movie idea. It seems that Disney has determined that these Star Wars stories were failures, but I loved the freedom allowed by making films not linked to the larger Skywalker saga. What do you guys think about the two Star Wars Stories and the concept in general?

Anders: Rogue One is my favourite thing that Disney has made with the Star Wars property, while Solo would honestly have to be my least favourite. The Mandalorian is great and bodes well for further explorations of the Star Wars universe, but really “freedom” is going to result in hits and misses. I think the concept of letting people tell stories set in the Star Wars universe unrelated to the “saga” films is a great idea, but really both of the feature film Star Wars stories are pretty linked to the Original Trilogy. The Mandalorian might be the closest we’ve actually gotten to this idea in a live-action context. The Mandalorian is insanely satisfying in its deployment of genre tropes (Western and samurai movies) in the context of the Star Wars universe.

Anton: I’ve only watched the first episode of The Mandalorian, and quite enjoyed it. I like the strong Western vibe. I probably feel less strongly about Solo than any Star Wars movie. I can’t tell if it’s worse than The Last Jedi though. The Last Jedi is clearly better made, but it also has more parts I actively dislike. I didn’t love Rogue One when I first saw it, but it is growing on me, and my most recent viewing, this past December, confirmed its depth in terms of themes—something I hadn’t noticed before. But I have a hard time getting past the video game Tarkin and Leia still.

Aren: I think The Mandalorian does embody freedom the best. Rogue One and Solo are very conservative in terms of their world-building and narrative risk. They don’t want you to invest in new conflicts, but a conflict from the Original Trilogy, so that your sympathy carries over to this new story. Rogue One does this remarkably well and I’ll still defend Solo as a good film, but it’s definitely inessential. The Mandalorian plays around in the post-Return of the Jedi storyworld, so it can play off iconography, but it’s mostly charting a new course. It’s not trying to make you invest in the fate of the galaxy, but the fate of one man and his Baby Yoda.

The thing I most admire about the concept of the Star Wars Stories are their relative lack of stakes. There’s a danger of always making films where the entire fate of the galaxy is at stake. How many times can you have planet-killing weapons and galactic fascists? Clearly, Disney has answered by saying as many times as is profitable. But really, the fact that Solo and to a larger extent The Mandalorian can bypass the whole Rebel-Empire dynamic and the Jedi-Sith conflict gives it a freedom that is only possible by lowering the narrative stakes.

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