It's no secret that over the last decade or so, Hollywood has gone utterly batshit crazy over remakes, reboots and sequels. It's a fairly broad issue, with accusations of pure money-grubbing and creative cowardice - studios unwilling to bet on new IPs when they know they can at least make a bit of cash if you've heard of the thing before (Dishonorable Mention goes to Battleship.)
And yet, I would argue that this trend started with what was actually a good movie: Batman Begins. The Dark Knight trilogy was actually good, because unlike a lot of these written-by-committee cash grabs, there was a clear creative incentive behind them. The Dark Knight trilogy (and isn't it interesting that the series is named after the middle film?) set aside the campiness of the latter half of the 90s era Batman movies and took it to a darker, grittier, and more realistic place than even the better-remembered Tim Burton films of that era. It attempted to boil Batman down to its basic mythology - a superhero who becomes more frightening than the villains - and puts it in a reasonably believable modern Gotham. The Scarecrow isn't a madman with crazy gas - he's a psychiatrist who has embraced a radical ideology. The Joker isn't just a violent prankster - he's a genius who had dedicated himself to entropy.
Anyway, the point I'm making is that there is nothing inherently wrong with sequels, remakes, or reboots. If you come at the form with genuine artistic intention, it can be a great work of art. Think about how many Shakespeare plays were based on previously-written stories. They may have existed in other forms, but there's a reason why we talk about Shakespeare's versions.
Yet Shakespeare's stories were from a time when there was a kind of canon of stories people told. That's not to say that there weren't a lot of them, but it's interesting to note that complete originality is a relatively recent thing. Greek plays were based on previously-established mythology, tweaked to be relevant to then-modern audiences, but, for example, none of the Oedipus plays that have survived were actually part of the same trilogy.
To clarify: In Ancient Athens, every year there would be a theater-going festival that served as your annual worship of the god Dionysos (I imagine a lot of wine-drinking and partying was involved as well.) The theater was, literally, the Temple of Dionysos. Each year, the festival would involve watching a set of plays: the main event was the Trilogy - typically a series of three plays that told an evolving tragic narrative (though thanks to Deus Ex Machina, you could have happy endings,) there would also be a comedy, and something called a "Satyr Play." As I understand, no one today has any idea what a "Satyr Play" is.
The thing is, new plays would be written every year, but they would often go back to familiar wells for stories. The only surviving trilogy from the same year - as in, the three plays were meant to be performed back-to-back - is the Orestia, telling to story of Orestes, which is comprised of The Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and the Kindly Ones. But you've probably also heard of Oedipus Rex. Another Oedipus play is Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, which are all by Sophocles and all about Oedipus and his family, but the three plays are believed to have been written and performed different years.
The long-winded point I'm making is that going back to old material is not a new practice.
So now I'm getting to the point of this article: the creation of Grand IPs.
Of course everyone is talking about Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and the obvious consequence that a new Star Wars film is in the works.
Star Wars is one of those stories to spawn an immense fictional world that many feel an intense tie to. Beyond just the movies (all three of them) there have been probably hundreds of books written about the series, expanding the universe with its own canon. The Star Wars "EU," or "Extended Universe," has become its own landscape of fictional material, serving as a kind of secondary canon that, unless I'm mistaken, is regulated by Lucas' company. The movies are of course allowed to contradict the EU as a kind of "primary canon," but writers in the EU take that world pretty seriously.
And now, with a rumor floating around that there could be a Yoda-centric film, perhaps telling his life story, I think Star Wars may be evolving into something very different.
While we do have myths in this time (no offense to the religious, but the stories in the Bible serve the same function to its adherents as classical mythology did to the Greeks and Romans,) these grand works of science fiction and fantasy give us an entire "Age of Heroes" to work within. Star Wars is now coming to a third generation (well, sort of - less of a gap between the prequels and this than there was between the originals and the prequels) and it even appears that it's spreading into other areas.
Star Wars has grown past George Lucas to become something bigger, and that fascinates me. As of yet, it's still unclear whether it will grow linearly - simply adding onto the ongoing saga - or begin to branch out, but I hope for the latter.
Imagine, if you will, a Star Wars film that breaks with the conventions - existing within a different genre, telling a different scale of story. You could have a Film Noir set on the rainy streets of Coruscant, or a personal drama about a Jedi Knight losing his faith.
I'm just spitballing here, but imagine if Star Wars were to ascend to become a mythological setting that anyone could use. Clumsy self-insertion Fan Fiction could transform into real art, utilizing the mythological context that we are all familiar with to tell a powerful and relevant story.
It's high hopes, and perhaps it would be foolish to expect anything other than big-budget spectacle with cash as its primary purpose. But a guy can dream, can't he?
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