Star Wars’ New Strategy Has Officially Forgotten George Lucas’ Most Important Lesson

Nobody’s quite sure what the future holds in store for Star Wars right now. Next year’s 60th anniversary is sure to be a massive event; we’ve got the re-release of A New Hope‘s original cut, Ahsoka Season 2, and Shawn Levy’s Starfighter. Beyond that, though, even Yoda wouldn’t be able to chart the franchise’s future. Disney has yet to book any dates for films in 2028 and 2029, while the various live-action TV shows increasingly feel as though they’re winding down.

Lucasfilm co-president Dave Filoni has just dropped a clue. Speaking at a D23 panel related to the parks, he discussed his approach to making Star Wars. “We have several different generations of Star Wars fans, right? There’s original trilogy fans, prequel fans, sequel trilogy fans, Clone Wars fans, expanded universe fans. They all have different interests. And I always look at how we’re going to serve all these different interests. And most importantly, how do we bring them all together because they have this common love of Star Wars.”

In other words, Filoni’s approach is simple: he wants to give something to every generation of fans. Going from his comments, we should really expect to see increased segmentation; some Star Wars shows (and films) aimed at original trilogy fans, others at Clone Wars fans, and still others at lovers of the sequel trilogy. The approach makes sense, given how divided this fanbase really is, but it’s the exact opposite of the one George Lucas would have taken. And that’s a huge problem.

George Lucas’ Star Wars Was Always About Blazing New Ground

Reading Filoni’s comments, I found myself remembering George Lucas’ reaction when he saw The Force Awakens. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed it in his autobiography, The Ride of a Lifetime: “Just prior to the global release, Kathy [Kennedy] screened The Force Awakens for George. He didn’t hide his disappointment. ‘There’s nothing new,’ he said. In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.’”

Even Iger had to concede Lucas had a point, although he believed the approach was necessary. Still, notice the contradiction between Filoni’s approach and the one Lucas hints at here. Filoni’s is backwards-looking, focused on the old established fanbases, while Lucas always wanted to do something new. Having told the original trilogy, he stepped back to the prequels and redefined Star Wars with the Chosen One prophecy. When he decided to tell the story of the Clone Wars, he immediately subverted fan expectations by reinterpreting Anakin Skywalker’s story through the eyes of a Padawan.

This, of course, was the real reason Lucas’ Star Wars became so controversial. The prequels divided the fanbase (I well remember forum discussions where some fans insisted nobody really liked Anakin and Padmé, just as absurdX users today insist there’s no such thing as a sequel trilogy fan). But, although Lucas made cursory changes, he seemed relatively unfazed. He wasn’t making Star Wars for an established audience, for the people who’d been kids back in 1977. Rather, his goal was always to reach a new audience, the kids of today’s generation.

Star Wars Needs to Move Beyond George Lucas

Modern Star Wars has lost George Lucas’ boldness. It’s impossible to imagine Lucas dividing his audience in the way Filoni does; fan-service was alien to him, because he always wanted to do something wonderfully, controversially, impossibly new. Original trilogy fans, prequel fans, sequel trilogy fans, Clone Wars fans, expanded universe fans… None of them would have figured in his reasoning right now. He’d have been asking a simple question: What next? What story do I want to tell to get a new generation of kids to fall in love with Star Wars?

Notice the boldness of the Lucas era. Even the original trilogy continually subverted itself; an everyman story becomes a generational saga with The Empire Strikes Back‘s “I am your father” revelation, and then Return of the Jedi reveals redemption as the Skywalker saga’s central theme. Can you imagine modern Star Wars daring to reinterpret the past, to redefine the Skywalker saga, to introduce new themes that change everything we’ve seen before? And yet, I can’t help feeling that approach would be truer to George Lucas than any original trilogy aesthetic or Clone Wars continuation.

It’s also the only way to secure Star Wars’ future. Disney’s Star Wars era has been defined by nostalgia, but that approach has diminishing returns. I grew up with the original trilogy, I loved the old Expanded Universe (and I still read every new book), and I learned to love the prequels. I’m a fan of the franchise in every sense, transcending most of the boundaries Filoni mentioned. But if Star Wars “belongs” to people like me, it will die as the generations pass. No, it needs to “belong” to today’s 10-year-olds, to children eager for new stories who don’t have a nostalgic connection to Luke or Anakin. That’s a strategy Lucas would approve of, and I hope Lucasfilm pivot to it.

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