It’s a classic question: How much is too much of a good thing until it becomes a bad thing? When it comes to Disney mass-producing Star Wars sequels, the answer to that question will arrive sooner rather than later. In recent comments to Cinemablend, Star Wars godfather Mark Hamill (aka Luke Skywalker) stated his worry about running the well dry.
“I will say they should pace themselves, because you don’t want to over-saturate it. I said to Disney, ‘Really? Five months after we come out comes [Solo: A Star Wars Story]? Can’t you at least wait until Christmas?’” Hamill said. “But they’ve got things booked—they’re doing Marvel and their own movies, so that’s beyond my [purview.]”
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Just a quick recap for the uninitiated: a Han Solo prequel titled Solo comes out this May, just five months after Rian Johnson’s moody and somewhat-polarizing The Last Jedi. Disney has also hired Johnson to develop his own Star Wars trilogy of movies outside the main narrative. They’ve also given Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff a trilogy, too. And Jon Favreau is currently writing and executive producing a live-action Star Wars TV show that’s in development.
So yeah, that’s a lot!
When Lucasfilm and Disney returned with The Force Awakens to launch the new trilogy, you could feel the vibration of excitement throughout the culture. We missed Star Wars because we had a chance to actually miss it—and it represented another opportunity to dismiss the prequels. Those were good times.
As Hamill said to Cinemablend:
Well, there shouldn’t be [a limit to the storytelling], as it’s a canvas that’s so infinite. With the standalone films they can all have their own identity. Rogue One can be gritty, and like a war film… I’m assuming, I don’t know, but I would assume that Solo will be more comedic-ly oriented because he’s a rogue, a scoundrel, and a gambler, and a womanizer and all those things. So I think the advantage of the standalone films is that they don’t have to follow the formula of a trilogy, so they can establish their premise, get it on, get it done and get out leaving the audience wanting more. So there’s infinite possibilities.
Only time will tell, though Solo will likely represent a distinct tentpole for exactly what we should expect from these “infinite possibilities” moving forward.
