The fact that a movie as mindless and incoherent as The Rise of Skywalker can make more than $1 billion seems to prove that these fears are unwarranted, but Star Wars’ big-screen output could be doing a lot better than it currently is. One way to shake up the franchise and keep these movies fresh would be to lean into genres outside space opera.
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This vast fictional universe can be used to tell all kinds of stories. The Mandalorian has become a huge hit as a revisionist western about a lone gunslinger, which deconstructs the Star Wars myths in the same way films like McCabe & Mrs. Miller broke down the western genre’s own myths. From Mando’s ice-cool Man with No Name characterization to the Wild Bunch-esque shootout between the bounty hunters and the other Mandalorians, the more The Mandalorian leans into its western influences, the better it becomes.
Han Solo’s origin story, Solo: A Star Wars Story, was primed to be a great space western in this vein, but the filmmakers fell short on this promise. Beyond a futuristic train robbery sequence and a climactic shootout in which Han mercifully “shoots first,” Solo didn’t do too much to capture western tropes. After the original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired, Ron Howard finished Solo as a generic sci-fi blockbuster. Star Wars needs to lean more into its cinematic influences.
Disney executives might be worried about alienating modern audiences with obscure old genres, but Star Wars fans come to these movies to see Lucas’ curious worlds. The exact way that the stories are told is up in the air. A Star Wars noir isn’t the same as a regular noir – it’s a noir set in a galaxy far, far away, so it’s much more likely to attract audiences. And a Star Wars movie that does something new is more likely to be praised by fans than a supposedly safe bet that tries to please everybody (which is a one-way ticket to pleasing nobody).
When George Lucas first created Star Wars, he drew from all kinds of genres. The lightsaber duels were inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s samurai movies, Han Solo’s gunslinging antics were ripped straight from classic westerns, and the shots of Imperial forces assembling to rule the galaxy with an iron fist were taken from Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films. There’s no mistaking the pulpy aesthetic of the Star Wars universe, so directors can draw from all kinds of films in telling their stories.
Trying out different genres has been doing wonders for Marvel. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a ‘70s-style paranoid political thriller; Spider-Man: Homecoming is a John Hughes-style high school comedy; Guardians of the Galaxy is a space opera; Ant-Man is a heist movie; and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness promises to be the MCU’s first full-on horror movie (with the perfect director for the job: Sam Raimi of the Spider-Man and Evil Dead trilogies). All of its movies are about superheroes, obviously, and follow more or less the same three-act structure, but incorporating elements of other genres has helped these movies feel fresh – and it could do the same for Star Wars.
If Lucasfilm opens up the genres it explores with Star Wars movies, then the franchise will be able to have the kind of longevity it risks losing if it keeps turning out movies like Solo. All Star Wars movies are war movies, but the series could benefit from a visceral war movie in the vein of Dunkirk that captures the conflict from the ground level. Humor has always been a big part of the Star Wars saga, but the franchise has never veered into full-on comedy. Scenes like Luke’s cave vision and the Emperor’s Force lightning attack have been terrifying, but there’s never been a straight Star Wars horror movie.
Guillermo del Toro has pitched a Godfather-style gangster epic chronicling Jabba the Hutt’s rise to the top of Tatooine’s criminal underworld that Lucasfilm should seriously consider. Star Wars could even deliver a political thriller like All the President’s Men revolving around a scandal in the Galactic Senate, or a House of Cards-style epic charting Palpatine’s rise through the ranks as a young politician. The Star Wars universe even has its own musical instruments that could be used to create a unique space-bound musical. There’s an infinite number of genres that the Star Wars franchise could incorporate in the future. The upcoming Disney Plus show The Acolyte promises to be a martial arts series, so it seems like Star Wars is already leaning into this angle. With any luck, that trajectory will continue.
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