The next Star Wars movie is dead, and the franchise is better because of it

by Chris Snelgrove
| Published 39 seconds ago

Recently, James Mangold (director of successful films such as… Logan) signed a major deal to create multiple feature films for Paramount. This led to widespread speculation that the deal would prevent him from establishing Dawn of the Jedihis original Star Wars film, for Disney. If it’s canceled (which really seems inevitable), the Star Wars franchise will be stronger because the Star Wars franchise will be stronger last What we need is another movie that destroys power.

Revealing the origin of the Jedi?

For some context, Dawn of the Jedi It is supposed to be set 25,000 years ago The imaginary threat It is intended to focus on where power comes from, how it was discovered, and how people learned to use it. Mangold also wanted to explore how this would develop into a galaxy-spanning religious mythology. Although this sounds neat on paper, the stark reality is that this movie was actually doomed to fail because fans of the franchise always hate prequels that mess with pre-existing lore.

The greatest example of this is the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which ditched the Force mystique in favor of a gentler interpretation involving mid-chlorians. This served a narrative purpose by explaining how a Jedi could scan and detect someone’s Force potential (the more midi-chlorians, the greater the ability), but it really ruined a lot of the magic of this franchise. It turns out it was cool for us fans to speculate about the mysterious energy field instead of explaining everything in terms of in-universe pseudoscience.

Repeated failure of the imaginary threat

This is the main reason I believe James Mangold Dawn of the Jedi It would be a disaster: the point is, from A to Z, to explain how power works. Remember how angry everyone was in one scene The imaginary threat Which tried to explain how force works? Just imagine how angry everyone was in totality film It was intended to provide explanations for something previously left largely to our imagination.

Additionally, Mangold created a kind of no-win scenario here: if he changed the power too often, it would upset fans because it would change our understanding of characters like Luke Skywalker And Darth Vader. But if it doesn’t change anything, there’s no real point in having a Jedi origin movie in the first place. Therefore, a director can either make a controversial film or an unnecessary film; Either way, the result is a bunch of upset fans, and Star Wars can’t really afford to turn any more of them away at this point.

This will be the assistant again

Finally, Mangold has previously expressed that he’s happy to set a film so far in the series’ past because it means he doesn’t have to worry about disrupting canon. But aside from the fact that changing the force would be the biggest change you could make to this law, assistant This is proof that setting a Star Wars project in the distant past doesn’t guarantee that it will be good or that fans will care about it. This show also tried to explore other aspects of the Jedi (including how similar they are to the Sith) in ways that ultimately annoyed the fanbase just as much as the series’ inconsistent storytelling.

Shows that have been successful (eg Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobiand Ahsoka) shows that fans are more keen to see old characters and familiar settings; Therefore, Dawn of the Jedi It would be a hard sell even without the clumsy handling of the power. The movie hasn’t been officially canceled yet, which means we may finally see James Mangold’s vision of this famous galaxy far, far away. But unless he wants to create unrest in the fandom (as if millions of voices suddenly screamed in terror), it had better be this Star Wars movie He never sees the light of day.

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