Look, I love Star Wars as much as anyone (maybe far too much more than anyone. But what came out of the Disney Investor Event a few days ago worries me:
Ten... count 'em TEN... new Star Wars projects going on for the next few years. Those are in addition to The Mandalorian. Most of these are likewise going to be streaming series on the Disney+ service. Ahsoka and Rangers of the New Republic are said to be spinoffs of The Mandalorian. We knew that Obi-Wan Kenobi was coming (it begins filming next month) as well as the series about Andor from the movie Rogue One. Ditto the animated series about the Bad Batch (introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars).
Do we really need... or were we at all asking for... a series about young Lando Calrissian though? No offense to Donald Glover, I thought he nailed it in Solo: A Star Wars Story. But seriously, it's going to have to be something special to keep me tuned in every week. The Rogue Squadron movie to be directed by Patty Jenkins piques my curiosity. Done right, it could be a real homage to the fighter pilots of World War II (which George Lucas based the space fights in the original trilogy off of).
But to be honest, the only ones from this list of Star Wars projects - along with The Mandalorian - are the Star Wars: Visions animated anthology series (I have long argued that Star Wars needs an anthology series of fresh stories and new perspectives) and The Acolyte. The latter said to be set some two hundred years before the time of the Empire, and focusing on the Dark Side.
THAT is what I want most from Star Wars right now. Some new eras to open up and explore. Instead it's as if Disney is to afraid to move away from the well of the Clone Wars-Empire times.
How much more are they going to milk that? When there is some twenty thousand years of potential Star Wars lore to draw from and expand out into?
I want more Star Wars, no doubt about it. But of greater import I want good Star Wars. I want a saga that is fresh and full of surprises. And what came out of the investors event fell short of fueling anticipation for anything like that.
The good thing about Star Wars though, is that you don't have to imbibe of all of it. There's a lot of freedom to pick and choose which parts of the saga you will follow along with and which don't really satisfy your appetite. So I can maybe skip some and still thrill to The Mandalorian. Just like I have come to disavow The Rise of Skywalker almost completely.
(Hey Disney, give us that rumored "Lucas cut" of that movie instead!)
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