Disney's future STAR WARS plans again uncertain

Disney are going into the new decade with a very big and unexpected headache regarding Star Wars. In 2012 Disney purchased Lucasfilm and all its properties (including Star Wars and Indiana Jones) and subsidiaries (including Industrial Light & Magic) from George Lucas for a cool $4 billion. They have since made some solid bank, going into profit on the deal. However, the recent performance of the Star Wars franchise has caused some frantic rethinking of how to handle the property moving forwards.

The first films released under the new regime were extremely successful: The Force Awakens (2015) grossed over $2 billion worldwide, whilst Rogue One (2016), a side-project which Disney were expecting not to top $1 billion, instead made a respectable $1.05 billion at the global box office.

The first signs of problems came with the release of The Last Jedi (2017). The film had a rapturous critical pre-release period, but the post-release response was much more mixed. The film topped out at $1.3 billion, still securing a healthy profit but the $700 million drop from The Force Awakens was a nasty surprise for Disney who'd been projecting a more modest drop and a final gross of $1.5-1.7 billion, more in line with the drop between their first two Avengers films.

Worse was to come with the second Star Wars spin-off movie, Solo (2018). A change of director and extensive reshoots on the film pushed its budget well above $300 million. Lucasfilm, who at one point were hoping to release two to three Star Wars films a year to match Marvel's performance, also refused to listen to theatre chain requests to hold the film back until a December release and insisted on a May release. The result was a box office bomb: Solo grossed $394 million worldwide when it needed well north of $800 million to just break even. The film will eventually make a profit from streaming and media sales, but it's going to take years.

Disney's response was swift. Several additional Star Wars spin-off movies were outright cancelled (such as one about Boba Fett) or moved to television (the long-gestating Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone). It was also decided to bench the franchise for three years, with the next Star Wars movie not expected until December 2022. Disney also tapped Game of Thrones showruiners David Benioff and Dan Weiss to write and direct that movie - expected to be the first in a series in a new (at least to cinema) part of the Star Wars universe (possibly related to Laeta Kalogridis' Knights of the Old Republic script) - following their success at HBO. Last Jedi director Rian Johnson was also attached to write and potentially direct a new trilogy, but after The Last Jedi's performance Johnson's new project appears to have been sidelined whilst Lucasfilm reconsidered (Johnson was also due to direct his own stand-alone movie, the successful and well-received Knives Out).

A (potentially ill-advised) $200 million payday from Netflix led Benioff and Weis (still smarting from the poor reception to the ending of Game of Thrones) to quit Star Wars in October, abruptly leaving Disney without a film for release in three years' time. This has left Disney's future plans in tatters and they are now reconsidering their options.

At the same time, The Rise of Skywalker has launched to a further disappointing set of financial results. Eight days into release, The Rise of Skywalker is batting far below The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. It is doing much better than Solo (thankfully) and tracking ever so slightly higher than Rogue One. Assuming the same kind of long tail holds up, The Rise of Skywalker should take home around $1-1.1 billion at the end of its run, a comfortable profit (the break-even point for the film is estimated at $825 million). A sharp drop-off in performance could reduce that significantly, and at much below $900 million Disney will be left with some very big, awkward questions to consider going forwards.

At the moment, the only Star Wars movie officially still in development is the first in Rian Johnson's trilogy, which appears to have originally been scheduled for 2023. Whether this will remain the case or be moved up to the 2022 slot is unclear. This would be tight if Johnson indeed (as he is apparently considering) does another smaller-scale film before returning to the Galaxy Far Far Away. Disney will have to start pulling triggers soon if it does want to get a Star Wars movie on screen for 2022, and will now be asking how much money they want to invest in it.

All of that said, Star Wars does seem to be doing well in the first stage of a hard pivot towards television. The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars show, has been a critical and commercial success on Disney+ and helped drive the new streaming service's boisterous launch in the United States (it arrives in Europe, including the UK, in the spring). A second season of The Mandalorian is already in production and two further Star Wars TV shows are in development, one focusing on the morally dubious Rebel intelligence agent Cassian Andor from Rogue One and the re-tooled Obi-Wan project, with Ewan McGregor already on board.

With Star Wars no longer annihilating the box office as it used to, the future for George Lucas's franchise may be on the small screen rather than the large.

Note: a modern tentpole AAA movie needs to make approximately 300% of its production budget to break even, once marketing, advertising and third-party costs are factored in.

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

The Resistance has destroyed Starkiller Base but has failed to prevent the First Order from toppling the Republic. The new rebels are now on the run. On a distant planet Rey has found Luke Skywalker and asks for his help for the Resistance and for herself, as her Force powers are growing exponentially. But Luke has been broken and demoralised by the betrayal of Kylo Ren. Rey and the Resistance both face their lowest ebb as Supreme Leader Snoke himself arrives to oversee the final battle...but there is still the possibility of hope.

Back in 2015, The Force Awakens had the unenviable task of resurrecting a Star Wars franchise that had been let down by three disappointing prequel movies. It succeeded mainly by creating and developing an intriguing new cast of characters, all played by great young actors, whilst furthering the themes of the Force, heroism and self-sacrifice and adding an interesting major new theme of redemption in the shape of Adam Driver's new villain, Kylo Ren. Unfortunately, the film was also highly derivative of what came before, with a new Death Star and a few too many nods at the previous Star Wars movies that were less homages and more re-stagings. Still, it was fun, pacy and energetic and this overwhelmed many of the movie's weaker moments.

The Last Jedi is, fortunately, not as derivative of The Empire Strikes Back as its forebear was of A New Hope, although there are some similarities. It has a similar underlying structure - our Force novice hero (or heroine, in this case) is off training up as a Jedi whilst our other characters are on the run from the Empire - but these plots go in very unexpected directions. A battered, post-traumatic Luke is reluctant to train Rey following his own failure with Kylo Ren and the movie delves deep into this relationship and backstory, as well as expanding on Ren's fascination with Rey and Snoke's desire to train Ren as his heir apparent. This dynamic is compelling, fantastically well-acted (Driver and Daisy Ridley holding their own against a never-better Mark Hamill and another astonishing digital performance from Andy Serkis) and takes several turns which are surprising, refreshing and fascinating. We're light-years from the simplistic "corruption of Anakin" story from the prequels here, and we get several outstanding lightsabre battles along the way.

This is handy, because of the rest of the film is a little bit more variable in quality. It's good to see Finn (John Boyega) back on his feet and he's soon off on a solo adventure with Resistance mechanic Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), who is a breath of fresh air in the franchise. Their story is fun and - rather unexpectedly - taps into weighty issues like capitalist exploitation of disenfranchised workers (although we still don't get any discussion of why enslaving sentient droids is okay). Benicio Del Toro shows up and does vaguely Benicio Del Toro things before abruptly disappearing from the narrative. It's all okay and vaguely amusing but at the end of the movie you realise that Finn's entire story could have been jettisoned from the film without losing anything (other than a couple of dozen minutes from the film's overlong running time) other than a few discussions about the value of friendship and family which, whilst nice, aren't exactly revelatory.

The biggest problem lies in the movie's core chase sequence, where the First Order fleet relentlessly hunts down the last remaining Resistance warship. This creates a rather major plot hole where the storyline could have been resolved at any moment by a couple of the First Order ships making a micro-hyperspace jump ahead of the Resistance and cutting them off, which they don't do because...well, it's never explained. Later on the Resistance use a hyperspace manoeuvre in battle which is, as established in the previous movies, physically impossible (and, if it was possible to do it by tweaking a ship's drives somehow, it would have been used frequently before). Given that this storyline forms a large chunk of the movie's running time and is where Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaacs) and General Leia (Carrie Fisher), along with Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), are hanging out, along with a welcome expanded role for Lt. Connix (Billie Lourd, Fisher's daughter), it's quite a big issue for established Star Wars fans who know the background and canon quite well. Casual viewers likely won't care.

The film brings all the characters back together for a surprisingly twisty climax, complete with at least two stand-out musical homages to the original trilogy and some moments of real humour. Much has been made of the "surprises" in the movie and there are a few things that definitely don't go the way people will be expecting. But ultimately this is Star Wars and there are limits to Lucasfilm's conceptual boldness, even if they do press up against them from time to time.

The Last Jedi (***½) is, once again, energetic, well-directed and has some great dialogue and fantastic performances. Also once again, the central storyline is more than a little stupid and there are plot holes big enough to pilot Supreme Leader Snoke's 60km-wide Super Duper Star Destroyer through, which grate a little bit more this time around (since I think Rian Johnson is a better writer and director than Abrams, but he doesn't knock it out of the park here). The best Star Wars movie since Empire? No. The best once since Rogue One, and that's still entertaining enough for now. But Episode IX will really need to up its game. The film is on general release now.

Three new STAR WARS movies and a live-action TV series announced

If you like Star Wars, then you'll no doubt be pleased to know that everything is now Star Wars from now until the end of time. If you don't like Star Wars, prepare to spend the next decade or so emitting long-suffering sighs.

First up, Disney are really happy with how The Last Jedi turned out. How happy? They've given director Rian Johnson the helm of a full new Star Wars trilogy of movies. That's three new films to launch after Episode IX is released in 2019. The three new films will not be part of the numbered "Skywalker Saga" but will instead explore a "new corner of the Star Wars galaxy not previously touched on by the lore", which seems a bit vague.

Johnson is in control of the new trilogy and will executive produce and co-write all three movies. I'm guessing he will also direct at least the first one, but maybe all three (or possibly the first and third ones, as if Disney stick to their two-year turn-around times that may be too fast for him to direct all three).

This is in addition to the less-formalised plan to have additional movies that will continue to explore the story of Rey, Poe and Finn even after Episode IX is released. It's unclear if these hypothetical movies will constitute Episodes X-XII or will be more self-contained adventures for the characters.

Arguably even more intriguing is the news that Lucasfilm are finally bringing a live-action Star Wars TV series to the screen. This will be one of several shows - alongside a Monsters, Inc. ongoing series and a new, high-end Marvel live-action series - that will launch Disney's new streaming service in 2019. This service will compete directly with Amazon and Netflix, and to bolster it Disney are also moving every single show and movie that they control over to it (including all previous Star Wars movies and animated series, plus their enormous catalogue of animated films, Pixar movies and content from other channels they own, like ABC). They are also currently pursuing a deal to buy 20th Century Fox outright, that would give them a staggering amount of content to transfer to the new service.

Nothing is known at all about the time period, setting and concept for the TV series. It's unlikely that the bounty hunter-focused TV show set in Coruscant's underworld that George Lucas was developing in 2005-10 will be revisited.

This makes the current Star Wars schedule look something like this:

December 2017: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
May 2018: Star Wars: Solo
December 2019: Star Wars Episode IX, new live-action TV series
May 2020: Untitled Star Wars Anthology Film (possibly the Obi-Wan Kenobi movie)
2021?: New Star Wars Trilogy Movie #1

So, if you like Star Wars, your face probably currently looks like this:

If you hate it, your face currently looks like this:

Rian Johnson's first Star Wars film, The Last Jedi, lands in cinemas on 15 December.

First trailer for STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI released

Lucasfilm have released the first trailer for Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.

The Last Jedi is the direct sequel to 2015's The Force Awakens and picks up where that movie left off. The Resistance has won a victory over the First Order by destroying its Starkiller weapon, but the First Order remains very much intact. Kylo Ren, badly wounded in lightsabre combat, is being healed and tutored by his mentor, the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke. Finn remains badly injured from the same battle.

The film's main narrative thrust, however, appears to centre on Rey and Luke Skywalker. Rey has located Luke on a remote planet and is learning the ways of the Force from him, but Luke appears disillusioned by the Jedi ways, declaring that it may be time for the organisation to disappear.

The Last Jedi will be released on 15 December this year.

Who is the Last Jedi?

Lucasfilm have confirmed that the next Star Wars movie, to be released in December 2017, will be called The Last Jedi. It's an interesting but also slightly confusing title choice because there are more candidates for this role then you'd think.

Who is the Last Jedi?

This is a much more complicated question than it initially appears, mainly because the definition of "Jedi" itself seems to be a bit questionable. Who gets to determine who is a Jedi and who isn't?

One thing that is clear is that not every single Force-user is a Jedi or Sith. During the Clone Wars there were only 10,000 Jedi Knights and Masters, out of a galaxy with a population of quadrillions. Even with only a tiny decimal of a single percentage point being able to use the Force, that's still millions upon millions of potential Force-users at large in the galaxy at any one time. Therefore the suggestion from the original trilogy that Yoda, Luke and Obi-Wan were the only light side Force-users of any significance in the galaxy, and the Emperor and Vader were the only dark side Force users of any significance in the galaxy, was already highly doubtful. What was more likely meant was that Yoda, Luke and Obi-Wan were the last Jedi, or the last of that tradition, and Vader and the Emperor were the last Sith. The latter was given more credence in the prequel movies which confirmed that there are only ever two Sith around at one time.

When it comes to the Jedi, there was more of a formal hierarchy in place. The Jedi Council was in charge of promoting people from the rank of Padawan to Jedi Knight, and from Jedi Knight to Jedi Master (and a seat on the council). The Council members therefore had the power to name Jedi. Shortly after the Clone Wars began Obi-Wan Kenobi was promoted to the rank of Jedi Master: more specifically, after the events of Attack of the Clones but by the opening episodes of The Clone Wars animated series, during which time he is already on the Council. Yoda, of course, was already a Master. The entire order of Jedi Knights and Masters was wiped out by Order 66 during the events of Revenge of the Sith, bar only Obi-Wan and Yoda, so as of that time they constituted the entire Jedi Order and the Council.

In Return of the Jedi, after Obi-Wan's death, Yoda is the sole surviving Jedi Master and member of the Council. He officially names Luke Skywalker as a Jedi Knight (although Luke had already been calling himself that to impress Jabba earlier in the movie) mere moments before his death, and that seems as official as things need to be.

What happens after that is less clear, but it appears that Luke tried to train a new generation of Jedi apprentices and these were all murdered by Kylo Ren and his Knights of Ren. As far as we know right now, no other Jedi Knights or Masters were named during this time period by Luke. Based on supplementary material and interviews, it appears that Leia, although Force-sensitive, chose not to explore her Force abilities in favour of her political career and thus never entered the Jedi tradition.

This seems pretty straightforward then: as of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Luke is the last Jedi. Whether or not he trains Rey and eventually names her a Jedi Knight will, presumably, be an important story point in both The Last Jedi and Episode IX.

(Also, yes, the Force Awakens title craw says outright that Luke is the last Jedi. But that would have been a much shorter article.)

Of course, there are some complications with this.

Ezra Bridger, Kanan Jarrus and Ahsoka Tano during the events of Star Wars: Rebels.

There is another. And another. And another.

Lucasfilm and Disney are very, very clear that the animated spin-off series Star Wars: Rebels is 100% canon even in their new continuity, as is its predecessor series, The Clone Wars. Up to a few months ago, people would have taken that with a pinch of salt, but the movie Rogue One has pretty much enshrined the show in the movie continuity. The starship Ghost shows up in the Rebel Fleet in that movie, the psychotic droid Chopper shows up in the Rebel Base, Hera Syndulla (now a general) is name-checked and the Hammerhead corvettes stolen in Rebels show up and play a key role in destroying two Star Destroyers during the Battle of Scarif.

The problem with this is that Star Wars: Rebels features no less than three Jedi - or light side Force users - in central, key roles and working alongside the nascent Rebel Alliance. As Rebels is aimed a younger viewers, the general assumption is that the show is not going to brutally murder its entire cast as the show draws to a close, which leaves the fate of those characters in doubt and how they relate to the title "Last Jedi".

The most established of the three characters is Ahsoka Tano. She was Anakin Skywalker's padawan apprentice during the Clone Wars and became a skilled and brave member of the Jedi Order. However, some months before the end of the war she was framed for a crime she did not commit. She proved her innocence, but was so disgusted with the Jedi Order not believing her innocence (apart from Anakin) that she quit the order and went into self-imposed exile far across the galaxy, completely missing the end of the war, Order 66 and the rise of the Empire. Crucially, Ahsoka was never made a Jedi Knight, so was not officially considered part of the order. Fifteen years later Ahsoka returns to prominence during the formation of the Rebel Alliance, having become a far more formidable Force-wielder. She injures Darth Vader in single combat (after learning he is really Anakin) and escapes certain death at his hands, but was last seen trapped in a Sith temple on a remote planet. Her fate remains to be explored in Rebels.

The next most-established character is Kanan Jarrus. A padawan during the Clone Wars, Kanan watched his mentor and Jedi Master killed in front of him during Order 66. He barely survived and fled into deep exile and cover. As an apprentice with only light experience, he was forced to improvise his own training. Many years later he joined the Rebel Alliance. During a mission to the planet Lothal he met a young man, Ezra Bridger, who was strong in the Force. Despite misgivings, Kanan started training him as a Jedi, taking him as an effective padawan (despite Kanan himself never being given the rank of Jedi Knight). Kanan's attempts to train Ezra were complicated when he was blinded in a lightsabre duel, leaving Ezra to take more training onto himself...rather dangerously, after Ezra came into possession of a Sith holocron containing forbidden knowledge. This storyline remains in play on Rebels.

Given the events of the original Star Wars trilogy and the newly-revealed title, it seems that what fans had been assuming about Rebels is confirmed: Kanan, Ahsoka and Ezra don't make it to the attention of Luke during the original trilogy and they never become Jedi Knights (or, if they do, they're dead by the time The Last Jedi rolls around). Whether they live, die or survive but are cut off from the Force remains to be seen. However, the show itself does give us a possible explanation. In Season 2 of Rebels it is revealed that the Emperor is not only hunting down former Jedi and apprentices, but also children who show Force abilities. In Season 2 Ezra and Kanan rescue two of these younglings and get them to safety. One way of evading the issue is that either or both of our heroes have to take these younglings into a remote part of the galaxy to help them train. If this is the case, they may have an excuse to sit out the sequel trilogy and may even show up afterwards to help Luke found the nascent new Jedi Order. Another possibility is that Ezra himself turns to the Dark Side and has to be taken down, but this would again be quite dark for a kid-oriented show.

Time will tell where the story goes, but this title of the new movie certainly does not bode too well for our Rebels heroes.

STAR WARS EPISODE VIII gets a name

Lucasfilm have confirmed that the next Star Wars movie will be called The Last Jedi.

Lucasfilm broke the news this morning. Director Rian Johnson has said that the film actually had that title on its very first script draft, delivered two years ago, and there hadn't been much discussion about it (whilst apparently both The Force Awakens and Rogue One had a bit more discussion to them).

The title sounds ominous, but it's been pointed out that "Jedi" is both singular and plural, so it can refer to Luke Skywalker or his presumed new apprentice Rey, or both.

The new film picks up at the precise moment The Force Awakens ends and will see Luke helping Rey gain control of the Force whilst Supreme Leader Snoke helps heal and (presumably) train his apprentice Kylo Ren, who was seriously wounded at the end of the previous movie. In the meantime, Leia continues to lead the Resistance in its battle against the First Order, presumably aided by Poe Dameron and his plucky X-wing pilots, as well as ex-stormtrooper Finn.

The film will feature the final appearance of Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa (unless material is held back for Episode IX), as she had completed filming for the movie before she passed away last month. Leia had been scheduled to play a larger role in Episode IX, but Lucasfilm and director Colin Trevorrow have already met to decide on how to proceed. It is understood that CGI of the type used to briefly resurrect Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One will not be employed.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi will be released on 15 December this year. Episode IX is pencilled in for release two years later, with a "young Han Solo" prequel movie slated for release inbetween.