#boy howdy forgive me mister baby yoda for I have engaged in star wars discourse again

[legionofpotatoes]

All other criticisms of modern Star Wars aside, the thing that gets me the most is how every single story is being written to fit into some Avengers-level grand finale that just isn't laying a solid enough foundation to make it worth the wait. Regardless of whether the individual stories are good or bad, what makes them fall so short, imo, is that there's usually no real payoff within their own runtimes (unless you count cheap callbacks or loose promises of More, which you shouldn't)

Like, I already knew halfway through Ahsoka that we were in for a cliffhanger and it's just like...alright, guess we'll see how this ends in about 5 years? Even Mando, which had a great first season and was poised to stand on its own two feet and ride off on a rootin' tootin' bounty huntin' adventure, has ultimately become yet another dusty path on the road to the current Big Plot with an indeterminate due date. That's not deliciously addictive media, it's a dry-ass carrot on a spindly little stick, lol

Of course, this is a problem that many franchises are happily getting cozy with lately because everybody wants to have their own Infinity War / Endgame moment, but I guess it seems a bit more egregious with Star Wars because, ironically, it used to work best because it had less overall focus. Like, sure, we had concurrent movies, animated series, and games, but they were always happy to do their own things and tell their own stories with definitive conclusions. Now it all has to funnel into the Big New Plot and, man, I honestly just can't bring myself to care when it feels like an endless waiting game

I definitely need to get around to watching Visions at some point because, every time it pops up, it sounds like the lifeblood that Star Wars sorely needs atm

Yeah the setup-and-payoff a-to-b type dramatic clarity that seemed so entrenched into the very bones of cinematic grammar - up to around the emergence of streaming, wink wink nudge nudge - is sorely missed in star wars atm. sure maybe downsized writers rooms fidgeting with limited series formats instead of doing actual seasonal TV has something to do with it, but even that is probably such a small piece of the larger issue that spins all this longform storytelling bullshit ferry wheel around.

Another part is certainly chasing the MCU business model of it all like you said. Carrot on a stick is verbatim how I've often described these things myself, the endless promise of another promise of another promise instead of forming a complete thought with a beginning and an end. servicing the plot before story at all costs. another part still is reverence towards the aesthetic trappings of the source material instead of its themes, trying to nail the exact texture of tatooine's huts and dial in the perfect balance of lightsaber choreography and pay homage to a thousand iconic shots before articulating something true in the text.

And like it's an endless laundry list, this confluence of capital-I Issues both industry-scale and creatively-driven that seem to be flaying the skin off the bones of whatever star wars even "is" nowadays. no one can answer that in the context of billions of dollars made off toys and storylines centering around this one moment in fictional history about sons and fathers and empires and rebellions. so they just keep twisting in the wind filling in any gaps within that period. I don't know nonnie, it's all so bleak. ahsoka and obi wan and even mando tbh. as charming as season 1 was, it truly felt like it coasted on its incredible restraint to avoid muddying its aesthetic with cameos, and lucked into effective storytelling as a result of that utterly unintentional alchemy. that's obviously well and truly gone now as its true optics have reared head.

what star wars is by itself is such a pointless discussion, right? andor argues it's a perfectly functional heightened universe that can support incredibly nuanced and dramatically charged stories of grassroots rebellion and the bureaucratic strain of fascist regimes. visions argues it's a world beholden to the force, an endlessly mutable and elegant metaphor that can support infinite monomyths and fairy tales. both are equally fantastic at executing on their takes, despite being in diametrically opposite extremes of interpreting the source. so it's not really about that at all, why the other stuff sucks this bad.

they're just bad at the craft of it, that's really it. whether it's auteur worship or business decisions rotting that fish down, it still rots all the same. maybe the new writers' guild contracts can shift the winds a little, because I was so securely done with star wars and then the aforementioned 2 shows came and affected me. so, so profoundly that I'm back on the hook again. like a lil sucker!

#long post #anon #asks #boy howdy forgive me mister baby yoda for I have engaged in star wars discourse again #this will definitely not backfire on me as it never before has.