Why would the franchise want to go back to the post-Rise of Skywalker era, when all the interesting action in the Star Wars universe is occurring in the timeline of The Mandalorian?
When the Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk described modern consumer culture as “a copy of a copy of a copy”, he was probably thinking of Ikea churning out coffee tables with all the personality of an overcooked noodle, rather than the next episodes in a long-running space opera known for heroes who use quizzically reversed syntax. Nevertheless, he might easily have been talking about Star Wars, and the once great saga’s descent into self parody in the wake of reports from Hollywood that the future of the franchise on the big screen is to be based on ... yep, you read it right ... Daisy Ridley’s Rey.
It had already been announced that Rey, whose presence lent the sequel trilogy all the emotional resonance of a damp tea towel, will return for a movie set 15 years after the events of the execrable Rise of Skywalker, as she endeavours to build a new Jedi order. (Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is attached to direct.) That was worrying enough for those fans of the saga still reeling from the most recent episode’s attempts to tie up loose ends by lighting them on fire and hoping nobody noticed. But
according to the Hollywood Reporter
, Lucasfilm has decided that Rey is now seen as Star Wars’ “most valuable cinematic asset” – admittedly because “the closet is a little bare” following the deaths either on or off screen of pretty much the entire cast of the original trilogy.
It’s hard to argue with this – except to point out that if Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo are no longer available for new Star Wars adventures in the current timeline, it is almost completely Disney and Lucasfilm’s fault for killing them off in the first place. However there are solutions that would allow both characters to return in other, earlier eras, as has already taken place to greater and lesser success in the Mandalorian and Boba Fett TV series (in which Hamill appeared via motion-capture technology as a brilliantly de-aged take on Luke) and the middling movie
Solo
, which tried and failed to recast the role of the galaxy’s most sardonic Corellian smuggler. Sadly, Carrie Fisher’s Leia is probably lost to us for ever following the actor’s death in 2016, but even here there is some hope, given the character appeared in a youthful incarnation in the same year’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Reports emerged
last week that the new Star Wars trilogy is being shepherded by writer-producer Simon Kinberg, who is perhaps best known for 20th Century Fox’s mercurial X-Men films of the 2000s. According to the Hollywood Reporter’s sources, Rey will play some kind of role, which suggests the films will be set in the period post Rise of Skywalker. This seems bizarre, given that all the interesting Star Wars stuff right now is happening in the post-original trilogy era occupied by The Mandalorian and the forthcoming big-screen entry The Mandalorian and Grogu, directed by Jon Favreau. In this context, returning the Star Wars timeline to the period following the Emperor’s second (and far more tedious) demise feels like dragging it back to a plot that’s been vacuum-sealed in fan indifference while the real action is off somewhere sipping blue milk with Baby Yoda.
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