Pausing The Star Wars Story Spin-Off Films Can Be Good
You’ve probably heard the news. Lucasfilm is putting on hold all of the already announced spin off films from the Star Wars universe. So it might be a while that we get to see the announced Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi spin off/Star Wars films. As reported by Collider, the news of the postponing come after the disappointing critical and commercial performance of the Solo- A Star Wars story film, and the studio is taking a break from developing any future origin stories from the Star Wars universe. The second Star Wars Story/spin off movie in just a couple of years, scored $84.4 million on opening weekend and has grossed $192.8 million domestically (and $339.5 million worldwide) in four weeks. For comparison’s sake, Rogue One opened to $155 million and had grossed $424 million domestic by Week 4.
It wasn’t the reception that Lucasfilm expected from Solo (i personally liked the movie), but is this a drastic measure coming from Lucasfilm? No, not really. They’re not canceling the movies…. They’re just taking a time off to reflect on the past 2 films, and learn from their mistakes in order not to repeat them. Which is a good thing in a long run. You can blame Solo’s poor performance on the fact that it was competing against Deadpool and Avengers: Infinity War, and on the fact that it was released in May, just 6 months after Episode VIII. Some might put the blame on the fact that it had constant production problems, but i think it’s due to the fact that the fans are over-saturated with Star Wars projects. I wrote about this in the past, and i can’t stress that enough (again). Milking the franchise to the very last drop will have the opposite effect, trust me.
Besides the spin off solo movies, there is also the Star Wars – Rian Johnson directed trilogy (that was announced earlier this year), The Benioff-Weiss Star Wars Trilogy and Jon Favreau’s Star Wars series. Oh and let’s not forget the J.J. Abrams directed Episode IX that will be released on December 20, 2019. It think it’s admirable that Lucasfilm is taking a breather for a while. They should take this time of to think, and prioritize. Which projects are priority, which are passion projects, which are just obsolete and intended to push them down our throats just for the hell of it. I’m not naive to think that they’re all done because of the love for the franchise, but surely can’t be all about the money and milking the franchise?
Personally, for me as a Star War fan it all boils down to over-indulgence on the franchise to the point of being sick from it. And right now i’m sick of it, as i’m sure many other are too. I’m a child of the 90’s and I long for the time when i had to wait a few years to see the next Star Wars movie in the movie theaters. And it was just the next Star Wars movie. This decision (unfortunately) is not by any means waving the white flag at the trolls and the hard core fans. This is a good decision to fix something that is broken. It’s not broken beyond repair, but a pause for maintenance once in while can be good. Don’t you think?
