The future of the Star Wars franchise has been in flux ever since Solo disappointed at the box office in the summer of 2018. In the wake of that film’s commercial failure, all the spinoff Anthology movies were shelved and anything past Episode IX is nothing if not uncertain.
The only things for sure, at least regarding films taking place in that galaxy far, far away, are that Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, is working on a trilogy of movies that may or may not be related to the trio of films that former Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are in charge of.
Whatever the case may be, one thing that’s known is that Johnson’s trilogy will move beyond the legacy characters that have been featured so prominently in the Sequel Trilogy. In fact, it’s possible that these new movies in the franchise won’t have anything at all to do with Luke Skywalker and his merry band of Empire-flouting outlaws.
According to Johnson:
I think that the fun and challenging part of it is to dive in, figure out what’s exciting and then figure out what it’s going to be. We’re doing something that steps beyond the legacy characters. What does that look like? To me, the blue sky element of it is what was most striking about it. I know the way that I’m coming at it and what’s fun about it for everyone in George Lucas’ films is figuring out, ‘what’s the next step?’ It really makes you think and figure out what the essence of Star Wars is for me and what that will look like moving forward.
This is a very good thing, as part of the issue that audiences seemed to have with Solo, which isn’t a bad film by any means, was that it relied so heavily on these legacy characters. Many felt that the story was superfluous and shoehorned in for the sake of corporate greed.
Johnson seems to be saying here that Lucasfilm has not only recognized their mistakes but are learning from them, which is good to know. Perhaps by exploring some different time periods and expanding beyond stories about the Skywalker clan, the magic of Star Wars can be recaptured once more.