credit: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Before 1977 people might have never believed that a franchise such as Star Wars would possibly be around four decades later, much less that it would have become a worldwide phenomenon. But here we are, and to this day, one can speak the name of a character from the franchise or highlight a single moment, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people will know exactly what they’re talking about.
It’s a little unfortunate that things have become a bit confusing over the years, especially after Disney bought Lucasfilm, but the truth is that no matter what people want to say about this franchise, it’s still here, and it’s still thriving in a number of different ways. Unfortunately, one of the many problems that continue to assail the franchise is that it is not a unified idea, and it hasn’t been for a long time now.
The truth is that once the story was taken on by several different writers and was allowed to grow and expand, it became something that George Lucas, the actual creator, could not hope to control any longer. That does happen when fans tend to like something, and in all fairness, it’s like trying to stop an avalanche with a snow shovel.
credit: Star Wars: A New Hope
Star Wars might need a full reboot one day
This has been mentioned more than once by more than a few people, but those at Lucasfilm, if they’re aware of it or if they’re in denial (it doesn’t matter, really), are bound to make this happen at one point or another. Despite the size of this galaxy and the many different eras and tricks that can be used to tell a story, it would appear that a lot of stories are so grand and vast that they’ve been crowding one another and creating massive inconsistencies that many fans have noticed.
Claiming that one story or another has eschewed any mention of another since it’s being told from a certain point of view, wink wink, is easy enough, but there are quite a few fans that have been less than pacified by such an explanation and want to know that everything can fit together like a well-constructed puzzle. Sadly, some of these folks are storytellers, but they have forgotten the idea that a story is fictional and can exist in a lot of different ways based on the difference that POV can make.
Becoming entirely unified doesn’t feel as if it would be embraced by everyone
A unified story can make a lot more sense and create far less anxiety in a lot of people since it doesn’t make folks wonder what happened to this character, or that character, or why this event appears to disrupt that event, and so on. Creating a unified vision for Star Wars is possible, but it would require minimizing the number of writers this story has been given over the years, which would lead to cries of exclusion and a lack of diversity, even if several different writers from very different backgrounds were brought in to work together.
Unfortunately, that means that the various different viewpoints that were being used for the story might create various snags in the story that didn’t work. In short, unifying this story is possible on a smaller scale for individual stories, but bringing the entire universe into line isn’t bound to happen since many people will attempt to instill their own point of view, which will muck things up continually, and will keep the story from being one hundred percent unified.
credit: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The current course of the franchise is a good example of what happens when people try to apply too much control
As of right now, some people might state that Star Wars is a mess, while others might decide that it’s fine as it is and doesn’t need to be touched in any way. But the truth is that this story has been destined to travel in many directions at once since George Lucas created it since there is an infinite number of stories that might affect the main characters directly or indirectly. But thinking that the cinematic vision that we’ve been given at this point is what has come from the hard-won respect that the story earned over the years is a bit confusing.
In other words, we went from having a well-defined villain and hero that had to earn his way up to a young woman who’s an immediate badass and a villain who throws a temper tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. Thinking that this is an improvement and a sign that Star Wars has ‘evolved’ is like saying that an adult who wants everything without working for it and throws a tantrum if they don’t get it has shown signs of maturity.
Sadly, fans aren’t bound to agree on anything in a universal manner other than the fact that the story is one of the most popular of all time
Fans wouldn’t agree on much of anything unless there were a few unifying factors to the story. Star Wars is still a beloved franchise, and many will defend it for some time to come. But it might happen that one of these days that a reboot could be in the works, or that it might be the best idea since right now it feels as though the franchise is a house of cards that’s been glued together. It can still fall, but it would take effort.