It's Been Over Five Years Since the Last Star Wars Movie Came Out
Give me my Ben Solo action figure already
As the holiday season winds down, I am reflecting on Disney’s short-lived attempt to stake out the third week of December as the traditional time for an annual Star Wars release.
The plan had a kind of fuzzy-yet-undeniable logic. People love Christmas. People love Star Wars. Even though the franchise started as a summer blockbuster, it really rooted itself in pop culture through toys. Yoda and Santa have comparable Q scores and magic abilities.
Now there hasn’t been a live-action Star Wars film in five years. I’m not crying about it. Even though you’ve subscribed to a Star Wars Substack newsletter, there is such a thing as too much. I’ve become like the libertarian whose biggest rooting interest in politics is partisan gridlock. I cheer whenever another spin-off film enters development hell.
But it’s not like Disney put out a statement saying that they take their stewardship of this American cultural icon seriously, and have decided to put a pause on all future projects in the hopes of more carefully planning any next steps. They just seem incapable of making a Star Wars movie lately.
Maybe some version of that thinking informs Kathleen Kennedy’s decision-making. I’m going to delude myself and say she’s announcing these movies to please her bosses and then creating an impossible bottleneck for their completion. You could kind of read her statement about firing Lord and Miller from Solo as an attempt to protect a brand as much as an attempt to fix a workflow. I don’t know though…they certainly seem to want to pump out a lot more of this stuff:
There’s also an undeniable Rise of Skywalker effect at play. Even as the Star Wars content machine hums along, making shows and comics and merch, Lucasfilm/Disney have tried to distance themselves from Episode IX.
After five years, there is no Ben Solo action figure! No Final Order Palpatine action figure! No General Finn action figure! Mind you, Hasbro will make an action figure out of literally anyone.
The Rise of Skywalker had probably the best costumes ever, but it’s been memory-holed via merchandising. For those of us who play tabletop games, it’s been even more obvious. Star Wars: Shatterpoint is doing a pack anchored by C-List prequel Jedi before a single sequel release.
And don’t tell me it’s because no one would buy a Ben Solo toy!! They’re selling the badger from The Acolyte!!!! (I’d rewatch Rise of Skywalker 10 times before I’d rewatch The Acolyte.)
The craziest part of this rant is I don’t even collect the action figures. I just want my favorite characters represented as a sort of culture war victory. Boy that’s not fun to admit.
Even harder to admit is that the 2015–2017 Christmas-time run of Star Wars was my peak theatergoing experience. No spin-off movie will generate the same excitement. For those of us who grew up loving the Original Trilogy above all, it was a great moment while it lasted.
Anyway, while I wait for Episode X, here are my favorite parts of The Rise of Skywalker (bad title):
Gotta get that Badger now tho