Star Wars: New Jedi Order: Why is this movie even needed?
The sequel trilogy of the Star Wars franchise (episodes 7-9) turned out to be controversial. Both in terms of reputation and in terms of finances, these films are now hated by almost all fans of a galaxy far, far away. In this regard, it was difficult to imagine that Disney would decide on any kind of continuation, but they decided - in 2023 they presented us with a film in which Ray, the protagonist of the sequels, would again become the main character.
First, let's take a look at what was wrong with the sequels.
After the House of Mouse purchased the rights to the franchise, many Star Wars fans were seriously scared, deciding that Disney would not be able to do anything worthwhile within its framework. And so it happened: “Mickey Mouse” confirmed all the fears and destroyed the George Lucas franchise with its actions.
The problem was that they completely canceled the interesting expanded universe that had been created for decades by a huge number of authors in different formats (games, books, comics), and did not come up with anything to replace it.
All three sequel films treated the legendary characters and their legacy with little regard for the scene with Luke Skywalker and the green milk. And Luke's story, shown in these films, does not, in principle, correspond to the character shown in the original films - the canonical character would never have given up after what happened!
Moreover, Disney didn’t even bother to properly think through the overall plot of the trilogy - it was written on the fly. The result was a stupid and torn script that did not respect not only the overall integrity, but also the style of the franchise - here you have Rian Johnson, who screwed things up, and J. J. Abrams, who tried to correct Johnson’s mistakes, but it turned out only to be a crumpled mess.
From the financial side, things are also not so sweet - the total box office of the three films was close to $4.5 billion, which seems to be very cool. But the budget of the trilogy exceeded a billion.We divide the receipts by 2 (half goes to cinemas), add marketing costs (we multiply the budget by at least one and a half times) and we get a sad picture - the films may have paid off, but barely.
In this regard, logical questions arise: “What will the film about Ray be about?” and “Who needs it anyway?”
With the first one everything is relatively simple. Even at the time of the announcement, we were told: “this will be a story about a new Jedi order.” Let's say. Although this topic has already been touched upon many times, both in the sequels and in The Mandalorian, each time the answer was that the Jedi are no longer needed by the galaxy, that they have outlived their usefulness and stuff like that.
But with the second one... everything is complicated. At the end of 2024, Disney postponed the premiere of this film indefinitely - which means that everything is not so simple with the film. Probably, the studio bosses themselves cannot understand what exactly they want to say with this tape. There is exactly the same situation as it used to be with sequels: when you don’t know what to film about, but you still need to film it. What should we expect from this approach? I think you know the answer yourself.
If we lived in an ideal world, the “new Jedi order” would be a redemption. This film should have apologised for all the mistakes of the sequel trilogy, brought back the spirit of Star Wars and so on. What would fans, having watched this film, say when leaving the cinemas: “This is what we came for. Yes, the sequels were terrible, but this film fixed everything."
But first of all, it's hard to imagine what needs to be done to undo the damage done to the franchise by the sequels. I may be exaggerating, but it’s true.
You can, of course, fantasize about how Rey will recreate the order, and the spirit of Luke and Anakin and Obi-Wan, for example, will help her. But this won't fix anything, and the film itself will just become a bunch of fan service.
Secondly, in an ideal world, there would be no sequels at all - Lucas' six films were completely self-sufficient and did not require a sequel.Even the stories from the previous expanded universe, although they were noticeably better quality than the sequels, were more likely a fantasy about the future life of their favorite heroes than a real necessity.
In the real world, one cannot expect anything adequate from the “new Jedi Order”. Rey will gather students, some Sith will appear (or just an adept of the dark side of the force, which are different things), one of her padawans will become evil, and everything in a circle.
This plot is so hackneyed with transitions to the dark side and back within the universe that it’s difficult to even call it classic - sometimes you get the impression that apart from it, the universe has nothing else to offer, which is sad. And it’s almost impossible to outdo his best performances (Lucas’s films or the Knights of the Old Republic duology of games).
In this regard, even “Acolyte”, where they tried to show us the world through the eyes of the Sith, was something new - it’s just a pity that it was made through you know what place.
In general, we will wait for news, because despite the postponement of the release date, the film is still alive - they recently found a screenwriter for it. It’s already the fourth, which once again shows how bad everything is. Perhaps it would be better if the “new Jedi order” did not come out at all.