Star Wars needs to stop ask­ing the wrong questions

Last week­end, the unthink­able hap­pened: a Star Wars movie under­per­formed at the box office. The sub­se­quent post­mortem of Solo has seen com­men­ta­tors and fans blame ​‘fran­chise fatigue’ and reflect on the film’s trou­bled pro­duc­tion his­to­ry. Yet could the sim­ple rea­son be that this par­tic­u­lar Star Wars sto­ry asked ques­tions no one want­ed answers to?

Solo is a pre­quel that essen­tial­ly hinges on how Han Solo become Han Solo, yet box office his­to­ry sug­gests that the for­ma­tive years of a famous character’s life is not always appeal­ing to main­stream audi­ences. The ques­tion Dis­ney should have asked was ​‘does any­one actu­al­ly care?’, and look­ing back at the franchise’s own his­to­ry, the evi­dence seems to point towards ​‘not really’.

Twen­ty years ago you’d have been hard pushed to find a film with more hype around it than Star Wars: Episode I – The Phan­tom Men­ace. While there were mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors such as cast­ing and script­ing, the first part of a tril­o­gy that would even­tu­al­ly reveal the ori­gins of Star Wars’ most icon­ic char­ac­ter, Darth Vad­er, quick­ly squan­dered that good will. In hind­sight, did George Lucas real­ly need to por­tray a back­sto­ry that had already been dis­cussed in the orig­i­nal trilogy.

Thir­teen years on from its con­clu­sion in Episode III, the pre­quel tril­o­gy hasn’t added much to the lega­cy of Star Wars – in fact, many would argue the films detract­ed from Lucas’ orig­i­nal saga. The new tril­o­gy has thus far large­ly ignored those instal­ments, so no men­tion of Midi-chlo­ri­ans, Gun­gans or pod rac­ing. Darth Vader’s appear­ance in Rogue One required no pri­or knowl­edge of the ear­li­er pre­quels, while by con­trast anoth­er vil­lain­ous cameo in Solo feels clum­si­ly crow­barred in. Even though Lucas­film didn’t mar­ket Solo as a ​‘pre­quel’ out­right, the extent to which the film adheres to that for­mu­la is sur­pris­ing. Was any­one real­ly des­per­ate to know where the name ​‘Solo’ came from, or how Han and Chew­bac­ca met?

Although the pre­quel trend exist­ed in Hol­ly­wood long before The Phan­tom Men­ace, the idea real­ly took off some­time in the ear­ly 2000s, with fran­chise-hun­gry stu­dios real­is­ing they could extent a series’ lifes­pan by look­ing back­wards. Soon back­sto­ries were being fleshed out left, right and cen­tre: we had Dumb and Dumb­er­er, Exor­cist: The Begin­ning, Han­ni­bal Ris­ing, X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine, Oz the Great and Pow­er­ful, The Thing and Prometheus. All these films delved into some past aspect of a pop­u­lar char­ac­ter or sto­ry and ulti­mate­ly con­tributed very lit­tle to their development.

The thing pre­quels always seem to miss is that it’s not enough to sim­ply re-enact fabled events. Audi­ences want to spend time with these char­ac­ters, not have every detail about them shad­ed in. Find­ing out how Anakin Sky­walk­er turned to the Dark Side is intrigu­ing in prin­ci­pal, but find­ing him ful­ly formed and caus­ing destruc­tion is much more fun – which is what a good block­buster should be. It’s why Rogue One suc­ceed­ed as a self-con­tained adven­ture with large­ly unknown char­ac­ters. Set­ting a film in the past is no bar to suc­cess, but there should always be a sto­ry that feels fresh and keeps view­ers guessing.

Despite the indif­fer­ence to Solo, Star Wars won’t be turn­ing its back on pre­quel sto­ries any­time soon – and nor should it. The new­ly announced Boba Fett film and rumoured Obi-Wan spin-off have plen­ty of poten­tial to be fun movies that add to the canon. How­ev­er, these films must learn from the mis­takes of their pre­de­ces­sors and realise that a famil­iar name isn’t enough if there isn’t any­where inter­est­ing for them to go. After all, what use is a crowd­ed movie uni­verse that no one cares about?