On Second Thought… Maybe Less?

People on the internet have thoughts about an interview with Adam Driver in the Associated Press, in which he reveals that he and Steven Soderbergh were working on developing a movie that would continue the story of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. The process had gotten pretty far along until it was rejected by top-level execs at Disney (namely, Bob Iger and Alan Bergman).

I usually agree with the folks at Star Wars Explained, and Alex’s take on the story, and the frustration over Disney’s hesitance to take big swings with the franchise, is perfectly reasonable.

But the most surprising thing to me was that I heard about a potential Star Wars movie starring Adam Driver and directed by Steven Soderbergh, and my immediate gut reaction was, “eww, no thank you.”

I don’t doubt that the end result would’ve been pretty cool. I’m not a Soderbergh super-fan, but I loved Out of Sight, and everything else I’ve seen directed by him has been an impressive achievement in filmmaking even if it didn’t blow me away. And I’m a fan of Driver mostly from his appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he gets to have fun playing with his public persona of Intense A-List Actor Who’s Too Good For All This Lowbrow Shit.

We only got a hint of his take on the personality of Ben Solo, with just a shrug to a bunch of bad guys in The Rise of Skywalker before he totally wrecked them. But to me, it was a perfect demonstration of how much a really good actor can pack into one brief moment.

So I don’t think the question is whether this conjectured movie would’ve been good. They almost certainly could’ve made something interesting; that’s just what good artists do when they’re adapting other people’s work or developing within existing IP. There’s nothing inherent to Star Wars that automatically stifles good or original work.

But still: if Driver and Soderbergh were working on an action-oriented project, I’d want it to be almost literally anything other than Star Wars. Not even an original movie set outside the main timeline, or an alternate reality story, or a Star Wars take on Ocean’s 11, anything. I would so much rather see them make something new.

Obviously I get the appeal of working within the Star Wars universe, making a new story, and putting your own spin on it. I’ve been wanting to do that since I was around 7 years old and playing with the dolls action figures. And obviously I’m still a fan of franchises in general, and Star Wars and the MCU (and now, after this summer, the DC Universe) in particular, and I’m generally pro-new stuff to watch. As long as it’s done well and has a reason to exist beyond filling some required-content quota.

But it’s also abundantly clear that we’ve hit a saturation point. With everything consolidating, and all the studios just churning out sequels and franchise pictures, there’s a noticeable lack of new, original stuff that gains any traction.

Hell, I’d even been hoping that the excellent Dungeons and Dragons movie would launch a new take on that franchise, because even though that’s extremely well-worn territory, at least it would’ve meant some variety. It had the tone of a new, original, independent project.

Right after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, and there were reports of all kinds of projects in the works from accomplished directors, it was exciting. It felt like the potential for a bunch of new styles of storytelling within a universe I already loved, exploring different time periods and different genres of story within a format that seemed infinitely expandable and adaptable, so what’s the down side?

The down side is that original projects are how you get stuff like Star Wars in the first place. Even if you’re taking big swings and making cool new stuff set within that universe, you’re still ultimately just iterating on something that’s come before. Instead of creating something that has the potential to expand in all sorts of directions on its own.

Not to mention that if your only constraint is “feels like Star Wars,” and you’re using some aspects of the lore to spin off in a completely different direction, or if you’re going all the way and using nothing more than the aesthetic, then what’s the point? Why not just build something new that’s inspired by Star Wars, just like it was inspired by serials, westerns, and samurai movies that came before it?

I still love The Mandalorian unreservedly, and a while ago I decided that the reason I like it so much is because it’s the “flavor” of Star Wars that I like the best. Pulpy, good guys vs bad guys storytelling, lots of lasers and explosions and hints of mysticism and impossibly ancient societies, with plenty of cool creatures and robots.

But I think the real reason it pushes my buttons so specifically is that it leans so heavily into nostalgia. It was designed from bottom to top to call back both to old TV series and to kids of my generation playing with their Star Wars toys. Much like WandaVision as the first MCU series, the first Star Wars series had nostalgia for past television baked into the premise and the format.

And while I’ve been hesitant to declare any “flavor” of Star Wars to be the best one, I’m more convinced than ever that the heavily-nostalgic variety is the one that works the best. Just by choosing to work in that franchise, you’re calling on what’s come before, after all. And a key part of the franchise in particular is its suggestion of civilizations that have already been ancient for thousands of years before the story starts. Nostalgia and looking to the past are baked in.

So again, at what point, when you’re trying to make an original story in that universe, are you no longer getting anything from the Star Wars property?

I’m not completely naive, so of course I’m aware that making a Star Wars project gets a budget and built-in audience that original projects almost never do. All of Driver’s and Soderbergh’s quotes about their project talk only about the creative side, but obviously, a big part of the appeal must’ve been the idea of making an “independent”-feeling movie that would automatically have more cachet and more potential for success than any of their actually independent movies.

But when I started working at LucasArts, it was on the tail end of what had seemed to be like a complete no-brainer of a business model. The Star Wars and Indiana Jones-themed games had excellent art and the commitment to storytelling that the studio was known for, and would make enough money to fund a good balance of smaller, original projects. If an original project takes off, then you’ve got a new property!

It took a while before the attitude of “you can make anything and slap Star Wars on it, and it’ll sell” took over. But even before then, when the studio was still making stuff on the level of Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, and the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, you could see a shift in philosophy start to creep in. Sure, we could keep making licensed games that sell well, to fund the original ones. Or… we could just exclusively make the games that we know are going to sell well.

It’s not just disappointing creatively; it’s a really short-sighted way of doing business. It’s like slash-and-burn agriculture, getting everything you can out of your assets, but not reinvesting anything for the future.

Years ago, I got put on a panel about video game storytelling at some convention. There was a question about fan fiction, and I said that considering all of the stuff I’ve worked on, I was basically a professional fan fiction writer. I didn’t necessarily see that as a bad thing, and I still don’t; again, there’s nothing inherently bad about working within someone else’s constraints, and there’s nothing about working within an existing property that makes it impossible to do good, interesting work. There are dozens if not hundreds of examples proving that.

But even within the most expansive fictional universe, it’ll only get you so far. At a certain point, you’re at best making a copy of a copy of a copy, with a little bit of the spark of life being drained out of each it at each step. I’m definitely going to keep on being a fan of Star Wars and comic book movies and TV series, but now more than ever, it feels like we need talented people to be making new stuff.