Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars

Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars!

What I mean by this is that Star Wars is no longer what it was, and to be true, it hasn't been for a while.
There're four basic creative lives to Star Wars:

First Generation

When Lucas expected that he would only get to do one movie, and that it likely wouldn't favor very well, but that he might be able to squeak out a sequel on the low budget circuit if he played his cards right and retained sequel rights.​

Second Generation

When Star Wars became a smash and suddenly gave Lucas unexpected leverage to self-fund through building his own studio and special effects company as permanent intentions and also suddenly found himself wearing the hat of CEO and having to think like one instead of just a movie maker.​

Third Generation

When Lucas sold the company to Disney who explored how to move forward by allowing creatives a lot of leeway and a set of new directors took their swings at trying their chops at the Star Wars approach to storytelling. Here, the narrative from Disney was mostly focused on what the creatives were doing and could do.​

Fourth Generation

When Disney completed the Third Generation and swiveled to purely franchise programming methodology which aims to maximize investment and product line engagement. Here, the narrative from Disney is mostly focused on what the shows and movies have to offer the audience and not as much focus is tailored around the creative experience beyond normal press junket interviews.​

Firstly, let me start with...

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

I am not against Disney, nor will I be found to bash them around.

I consider none of these generations to be wrong. Above any other value, I am first and foremost a person of business. When I myself sit down to write for our company, when I am given a request to fill, I examine it firstly from the perspective of marketability. How marketable is this idea? Is there an audience for the idea inherently? If not, and we're dead set on doing this, then what do we need to do to shore up the edges so that it is more marketable? If marketability isn't our goal and connections or experimentation is, then I examine how to tailor it to better support those goals. In either case, I don't just write something, or lead/assist others, from a perspective of pure art.

This is not wickedness. This is basic functioning intelligence of the career in Hollywood. You have two choices: scream like a French Revolutionary or Old Man on the Porch at the "violence inherent in the system" or pull up your adult pants and find a way to make things work with what you have. That is, be at least some margin of a realist.

I'm not writing this to complain. I have no use for complaints without action. Instead, this is an examination of a very unique business case. There is no other movie asset which has the business history of Star Wars, and there never will be again. It created franchise movie making, it created intentionally continual trilogies, it created the modern visual effects industry and business model, and it created the blockbuster scale independent movie making business model. Considering how its business case has changed over time and how that relates to its artistic expression is valuable and interesting unto its own merit.​

Alright, with that out of the way. Let's consider what it is that I'm saying.

FIRST AND SECOND GENERATION
........ The First Generation isn't all that interesting to consider in this topic, other than to note that it was primarily made with primarily from an artistic sense as a one-shot chance before returning to the indie circuit, but just to be sure, a bunch of failsafe moves were played to avoid a repeat of what had happened in the fallout of THX. As such, most of our focus is in the Second Generation.

The Second Generation was driven by a want to accomplish something with each movie in an artistic sense, with a secondary focus being to essentially grow the business a little bit more each time if possible.

This was the primary motivation for making any of them. At no point did Lucas, Lucasfilm, nor ILM, need to do a Star Wars movie for business once they got going. They had secured several other business avenues and were sound enough in those ventures without requiring Star Wars. If anything, every Star Wars movie effectively represented a potential economic threat, given how expensive they were to make. Each of the originals were around the equal of $100 million today, and the prequels were around $200 million 2023 dollars per movie to make.

They weren't the most expensive movies being made, but they were truly the most expensive independent movies being made anytime any of them were being made. Unlike today, these movies weren't protected by a major studio's mega-capital infrastructure. Disney wouldn't have even been capable of supplying that back then. All movies were more dice rolls back then with less economic shielding in place than today because the business owners were relatively new and hadn't yet found a way to mitigate damages just yet. Everyone was still, more or less, playing the game of making movies completely centered around the revenue stream of just ticket sales.

Well, except Lucas. He wasn't. He was managing to take hits of failures, like Howard the Duck, unlike Alan Ladd's company (which went bankrupt), because he was operating on a business-to-business model additionally. That is, a service model. He was selling services to other companies, and this allowed his company to keep going in spite of lacking a perfect gangbuster record.

This is important, because there is no other independent film company during the 80's or 90's which had such durability baked into it. Anytime an independent wanted to make a movie, they had two choices: self-fund it so they could do what they wanted and then hope they can get a buyer afterwards to save them from near-bankruptcy, or get a financing studio or distributor up front to guarantee their economic survival but forfeit some creative control over the project (or potentially all creative control if things went badly).

Lucasfilm, and therefore Star Wars, didn't have this problem. It didn't have to rely on the good faith of a defending producer. It had its own producers. If they wanted to do a movie, they did that movie. If they didn't, then they didn't. So, of anyone around, they had the best durability to take a punch from a flopping Star Wars movie, but even still, it would be a massive kneecap that would leave them limping for a long time if that happened.

Consider that Valerian is considered the most expensive indie movie ever at just past $220 mill in 2023 dollars, and each prequel was running nearly that per movie (Phantom Menace was the most expensive of the prequels at ~$215 mill 2023 dollars). And Valerian was made in 2017, when financers were going a little nuts with the money that was being thrown around at indie movies (which is finally ending).

To put that into further context, that's the equivalent of Cameron's terrifying Terminator 2 budget in 1992, which was anything but independently financed, sporting 4 production studios and a distributor. For comparison, Valerian had one of each, and the same is true for every Star Wars movie, including the first.

That should place into perspective how insane each Star Wars movie truly was as a business case. That each OT was blowing around half of Terminator 2's budget per movie with a fourth of the production studios aiding in financing them, and the PT was blowing around almost the same as T2's budget per movie with the same number of financial backing diversity as the OT.

While, yes, Lucasfilm could take a sharp blow (given that their asset worth was in the range of 1 to 2 billion through the 90s), they couldn't just take it like it was nothing as they were diversified into separate markets (most of that worth came from toys, not the movie division).

For anyone not quite versed in business, you can't just borrow money from one division to make up for the losses of another division. You can make an excuse on that loss temporarily and say it's alright because your overall EBITDA reports will balance, but what actually happens behind closed doors is the losing division starts scrambling because the timer's running on everyone's jobs as that division may end up cut off and sold out for survival (and don't think Lucas wouldn't, he did it before - that's how Pixar happened).

The point being that this Second Generation was making every movie for very different reasons. Each movie was a business case push as well as an artistic push with a lot riding on each one.

Then Lucas rounded up to do another trilogy, but after starting to do so immediately ran into a reminder of all of the headaches that go along with these movies as even his initial prep team started debating and disagreeing about things - which just seemed to reinforce a disinterest in carrying forward even more when combined with what was obviously on his mind about how "everyone" just yells at him after it comes out about what a bad job he did, and that he was old and would rather spend time with his family than arguing with people to get things done just to get yelled at for getting it done.

So, he bounced and sold it to Disney.

THIRD GENERATION
........ Now we enter into the Third Generation where most people think everything went into a Disney boardroom decision mode, but that's not actually just yet. Yes, they obviously have a lot of sway, but like most new acquisitions of this kind, executives tend to let the project leadership take and run with it for a while because they themselves don't really know what it's like a business identity or behavior just yet and would like to observe for a few years first.

This is very normal patterning. The result, however, is that for the first round of movies that we got starting with TFA all the way through to even Mando's initial release (there abouts), everything was more or less left to each creative team to decide and govern. Each was hired because of a love and interest in doing the projects they were hired for, and a belief in uniqueness in their approach and vision.

Here, the idea was still held that the 1980's OT approach of having different creatives per title with one person governing in a sort of movie version of "showrunner" would work since it worked well for the 1980's. I have no comment on whether that made "good" movies or not. I don't care about that.

The point is, however, that here the business case was relatively free. And it was free because the acquisition of such a large intake automatically triggers a free-play period on the stock market as if a new company was started. That means you have around 5-7 years (3-5 for a new company, 5-7 for senior companies with new acquisitions) to start showing some sort of valued uptick with an organized and stable business plan which presents itself as evidentially stable. If you keep having to change things, that's not going to tickle the security feel on Wall Street.

So, at this point creators had a good amount of freedom to pursue each movie (or show, in the case of Mando) as they saw fit and chase after their own artistic fascinations out of each, only really answering to financial schedule pressures and some business politics (which inherently come with working under large studios). Further, there was a certain level of security since each movie came with at least two studios, with one of those being a deep pocket Disney corp., and the other being Lucasfilm division (now under Disney).

The indie days were gone. This was main street blockbuster business, but still it was being attempted like it was 1980's main street blockbuster business where the auteur was given a lot of rope to go hang themselves with. At first, and in general, things worked (again, not talking about whether you liked it or not). There were business bumps along the way, but nothing abnormal.

Most people would think it was TLJ that did it in, but no. That was just a popular ... debate... topic amongst fans. It was a perfectly good business case unto itself.

What happened was two things: Rogue One, Solo, and TROS.

In all three cases was that the creatives had to be replaced smack in the middle of production already going (and yes, preproduction is in scheduling value, already "production" in terms of spending dollars). In the case of Rogue One, this was during the screenplay phase, and then while not replacing, additionally required an extensive five week reshoot period. In the latter two cases, it was literally jettisoning the director mid-fly and calling in someone else to bale the project out without extending schedules (because there were economic logistics restrictions that simply did not permit moving the schedules in each case).

While Rogue One was able to shake it off, and everyone was able to sort of count it up to the old familiar way things are always a bit dicey when it comes to movie making, once Solo and TROS both experienced similar problems, it became clear that too much rope had been let out to creatives if anyone wanted to avoid such squabbling problems in the future.

This, more or less, brought the whole experiment to a close. Now the board understood what this business asset was and how it behaved. And more importantly, they had formed an opinion about how they wanted it to behave.

FOURTH GENERATION
........ This is where we are now. This is where Star Wars has entered into a style of development it has never done before. Even the Third Generation wasn't entirely alien to Star Wars, as this was approximately close to a super-charged version of what it was like under the first Star Wars under Fox back in 1976 as a related working environment.

But now, it was changing. Now it would become like Disney movies had been in the 60's and became again in the 90's on up through to now. Calculated and programmed according to a market research data driven directive. Lucas never made a Star Wars movie based on market research data. Distribution strategies, absolutely, but not making them. There was no concern about what people will or won't buy as a product. There were beliefs, but that's not why he wrote anything or agreed with anything being written into a screenplay at a critical level. Yes, he threw in Ewok design for merchandising, but he didn't put the idea of a low-tech culture into the story for that purpose - he just decided they should look that way because of toy sales. This is quite different from deciding how the stories should be made because of market interests.

And again, keep in mind, I am not against this approach. I do it myself and I'm hardly against myself. I see nothing wrong with creating around targeted market interests. Loads of movies that everyone loves were made around these kinds of manners and motives. There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't inherently make bad movies.

What makes bad movies is market tone deafness. If the creator isn't listening to the market and also doesn't vibe with it inherently like John Hughes did in the 80's, or Cameron repeatedly does pretty much anytime he picks up a camera, then what you get is someone with a great artistic point of view no one wants to watch because they're out of step with the consumer zeitgeist and won't be "appreciated" for several years or decades to come. Which is sweet, but also completely worthless in all reality. If I'm going to have to make a dice roll, I'd rather dice roll on value now than angling on nothing now and a dice roll on becoming culturally relevant later without seeing a dime off it. In fact, while I've heard some creatives talk about preferring to land on the latter over the former, strangely I've never witnessed any of them directly attempting to achieve that outcome. They do seem to hope for current market relevancy and then after that doesn't happen, this is when the notions about future legacy comes up. This isn't a slight against anyone, either. It's an observation. It's one that makes sense to me, as if I were to fail to engage audiences today, I would be left with only the hope for tomorrow's audience.

Point is, this is a perfectly valid approach - working from marketing outward. Most things, including art, in this world work this way. If you think they don't, you're drinking the press junket Kool-Aid ("There's no CGI in Top Gun: Maverick. All the planes are real planes that you see."...). Yes, there are some single-minded artists who do only what they envision and screw the consumer come what may (this is Lucas as well, at least most of the time), but there's really not enough of them to go around to the point that the vast majority of what anyone consumes can be said to be sole-artist-driven product. Especially when it comes to movies.

It is very unlikely that the only movies anyone has ever enjoyed were those by auteur independent creatives. That is just highly unlikely given how many movies are consumed by most people.

It's not like Top Gun, Die Hard, or James Bond were made as a passion projects. They were business cases designed around specific economic and/or legal considerations and selected for assessed targeted markets. The slow motion of Top Gun with its own dedicatedly written pop-rock songs wasn't tossed in there because it was a true artistic expression of anyone. It was tossed in there because it was a viable language of music videos that the target audience connected with for the tone being conveyed. That tone being: this is ssshmexy. Look, he's got a motorcycle. Mmm. Ssshmexy. He chews gum while smiling like he owns the place. Oh yeah. Ssshmexy.

Whatever anyone thinks about pandering to audiences going on currently, the 80's completely beats any other decade ever on record for doing this. Just because it was enjoyable doesn't mean it wasn't happening. It just means if someone enjoyed it, they are likely the target market and the movie's creative team nailed their target market goal right.

But, regardless, that's where Disney is now. Back to target market driven design. There's a reason they plopped Filoni into the seat. That means their target market is now fans, rather than the general audience, and they want someone running that who knows fans. Filoni has a history of getting along fairly well with fan interests - or at least, fan interests post 90's, which, to be honest, is the vast majority of the demographic anyone cares about ... sorry early Gen-Xers and late Boomers, you just aren't that big of a percent of the consumer market now. It's dominated now by late Gen-Xers, Millennials, and now Zoomers coming in. The first two make up about 75% of the theatrical market, and the Zoomers hardly count to it yet (did you think all the nostalgic 80's IPs were coming back by accident? ... oh, and Boomers basically have fallen off mattering), but on the streaming side Zoomers and Millennials take about around 2/3rds of the share while if you look at it as Gen-Xers and Millennials it's only around just less than half.

So, now the Star Wars material will be created for a target market (again, this isn't bad) rather than as an artistic venture with a prestige reputation it relies on for marketing (the two are very different).

Now...

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?
........ It means that Star Wars isn't what it was. While it hasn't for a long time been exactly the same as it was (because that's impossible), and while each Generation of its business has been slightly different than the last, it has now entered into a new Generation which is remarkably different than ever before with a completely different focus. In spite of what people may think, the Third Generation era wasn't made "for the fans" by Disney. It was at times made for the fans by the creatives at the helm of certain projects, but the executive target at that time was a wide net relying mostly on prestige reputation to do the lifting and not specifically targeted market campaigns and capital expenditure goals.

Now, however, it is being targeted very specifically at the fans. Whether that's good or not, again, I don't care nor have an opinion. I continually have respect for how challenging any of this stuff is as franchise business and art management is anything but easy. Though any singular fan may believe it to be so, as to any given individual it would seem easy - all anyone would need do is make things they would like, the problem is, there's literally millions of fans each thinking different views of this same idea.

So, it can't go back. It can't be what it was. It's completely impossible. There's not even an economic structure capable of returning Star Wars to what it was. Now, it's time for Star Wars to head into a controlled and refined version of the business it once helped to create, but never truly matured into. Where He-Man once championed and Nintendo wore the crown, now Star Wars will dig into and govern itself in like fashion. Making decisions on market data analysis and checking that the navigation trajectory matches forecast indicators for good direction. And once they get their assembly up and running, we should expect (given the history of franchise business) that an onslaught of material will start pouring out.

But don't look for some independent auteur creative vision. That will be gone. As of now, we're essentially going to enter the cinematic equivalent of what the EU used to do in the 90's. Fan targeted product creation.

Again, just to make certain there's no confusion here... I don't see this as a bad thing. It's just what it is.

And that pulls it around to the end. What, to me, is fascinating about this history is that there's only one instance of this in all of cinematic record: Star Wars. No other franchise has this kind of history with this many angles to itself and touching on every era of the business since cinematic franchising was created.

As each trilogy has been about different generations, so too has the production of Star Wars gone through multiple different generations. Regardless of whether anyone likes some of the movies or not, I hope they can appreciate how unique and fascinatingly special this side of the Star Wars history is. That it not only gave us a new kind of movie, but it also gave us a new kind of cinematic consumer business and caused the immergence of a new kind of consumer. The franchise fan.

Which even to this day is both its light side and its dark.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Guys... How much more clear could I have been? I made a whole section on it, and I repeated it several times.

This is not about where Star Wars went wrong.

At no point do I discuss that, nor is that the point of this thread.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I've been around a while. Written quite a few long posts. Ones even more dry than this. Folks do read. All that happened here was some folks got excited to share their frustrations with where they became disappointed in something they have a good amount of emotional investment in. It's understandable.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I think I'll survive.

Cheers,
Jayson