Rogue One vs The Force Awakens

Rogue One vs The Force Awakens

                Kathleen Kennedy might be one of the best things to happen to a franchise. Let me explain. Since she took over as the head of Lucasfilm, she made it clear that Star Wars would be open to a new generation of film makers, so that they may be given the chance to give their own vision to the Star Wars universe. That way, the films would not just be limited to one person’s idea of what it should be. This is similar to the way Kevin Feige has approached Marvel entertainment. While Kennedy and Feige are very much the ones in charge, they are more than happy to give their directors enough creative freedom to make the film they want.

                And that, oddly enough, is what my biggest criticism of George Lucas was. I’m willing to let the prequels go and just say “they sucked, now let’s move on with our lives”. I can forgive him for making sub par movies. What I can’t get over is that he is on record saying that Star Wars is restricted to his vision and what he wants. This is his brainchild and ain’t nobody gonna mess with it. He was once asked if someone came up to him with an idea for Episode VII, would he consider using it? Nope.

I don't really know what I'm supposed to take from this.Is he mansplaining what an opinion is?

                There are 2 issues I have with this. First of all, while George can certainly be credited for directing that first movie, what a lot of people tend to forget is that he didn’t have that much to do with the following 2 movies. And a good number of his original ideas for A New Hope were all scrapped and rewritten. If Star Wars had been his original vision, with as much control as he had over say, the prequels, then Star Wars probably wouldn’t have been the mega franchise that it is today, and I probably wouldn’t have wasted so much money on Darth Vader merch. I still would have wasted it, but it would probably be more Batman related. But I digress. The point is that with all things considered, it sounds like Lucas is taking a little more credit than he deserves.

                The second problem I have is that if you look at a number of today’s directors, including JJ Abrams, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo Del Toro, Rian Johnson, Joss Whedon, Peter Jackson, Ron Howard, Ridley Scott, and Brad Bird have all stated how much they love Star Wars and how much it impacted their careers. If you know your directors, you’ll notice that they all have very different styles. Whedon and Nolan, for example, have both made excellent sci-fi and superhero movies. But both have very different approaches. And yet, if I told you that either one was going to make a Star Wars movie, you’d probably get excited. Whedon actually confessed to owning 8 lightsabers. With such an array of talent all pointing to one movie as being the one that made them want to get into film making, it seems wrong to keep it restricted to one person’s idea of what it should and shouldn’t be. Especially when that one person is taking too much credit in the first place. I find it funny that the one criticism about the newer Star Wars movies is that they are just high budget fan films. Cause that's exactly what they are. They are films made by fans who grew up and want to make a movie of their own. And they found a studio who is willing to let them do that.

                And that idea of having two visions for the same series brings us to today’s topic, Force Awakens and Rogue One. One of the criticisms that a lot of people had of TFA was that it felt like it played it safe, it was the Star Wars  movie that we were used to. Although the argument could be made that TFA was the exact time to play it safe. Keep in mind, it had been ten years since the last prequel came out, and since then, all we had were an animated show and an animated movie that nobody bothered with. Seriously, who remembers the animated Clone Wars movie? So for all intents and purposes, we just kind of considered the franchise to be dead before TFA came along. This was the time to play it safe. It was the time to give us the Star Wars that we knew and loved. Think of it as a friend who you haven’t seen in a while but the last time you saw them, things didn’t end on the best of terms. But when you do see them after all these years, you just want to remember the good times you had with them. Sure that means you’re just remembering stuff from years ago, but it gives you a sign that things are looking up. And after you’ve had that first encounter, now you are more open to having some new experiences and making new memories now that you are older and more mature than the last time you met. To give you an idea of where I’m going with this, your friend is Star Wars, and that first encounter you have with them is The Force Awakens after being left with Revenge of the Sith. So yeah, TFA had a lot of stuff that we had seen before, but it also introduce enough new things and characters that it made us excited for what was to come. That new thing to come is Rogue One. Rogue One is what we wanted to see as fans who grew up and wanted to see a Star Wars movie that was darker, grittier, more mature. The one thing that has become evident in the last decade is that things like comic book heroes, fantasy, science fiction and video games aren’t just kids stuff anymore, and they aren’t just limited to the geek section anymore. With movies like The Dark Knight, The Avengers, and Game of Thrones, the geek culture has expanded and touched all walks of pop culture. People who don’t like fantasy found themselves reading A Song of Ice and Fire, even people who never read a comic book in their life are lining up to see a Marvel movie the night it comes out. The Force Awakens was everything Star Wars has been, Rogue One is showing us what it can do. Since The Force Awakens managed to be a hit financially and with a lot of fans while taking the safer route, it paved the way for Rogue One to take risks and do things that we hadn’t seen in a Star Wars movie before. Unfortunately I can’t really go into much more without spoiling things.

                Truth be told, I think this was the only way it could have happened. While Star Wars should not be seen as just kids stuff, it has always been seen as that thing that we grew up with and now we want our kids to experience it the same way we did. If someone had taken their kids to see a movie like Rogue One, people wouldn’t have known what to make of it. Sure it still would have been a hit because it was a great movie, but there certainly would have been people asking is this what Star Wars has become? And then we wouldn’t know what to think when we started seeing advertisements for Episode VII. This really was the right way for things to go. Sure, they played it safe initially, but they did it the best way possible. Now Kennedy is showing that she and Lucasfilm have the spine to take the franchise in other directions and to darker places. Many people believed that the studio had doubts about letting Gareth Edwards take this route, but now their gamble is paying off, which will hopefully encourage the studio to keep it up. And if you think I’m full of shit, and that Star Wars is dead now thanks to Disney’s involvement, then that’s your prerogative. I’ll enjoy my money from Disney. Not because they are paying me to say that I liked the movie, but because I literally work for them. I’m a cast member.