This is not the movie you’re looking for: The Star Wars franchise is suffering from a massive identity crisis | film

A A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars was a real movie that people watched. It drew people to movie theaters in droves, largely because it wasn’t entirely embarrassed by being an exciting space adventure about comical wizards and laser swords. Nowadays, it is something else entirely. A TV show about a lovable alien dad and his cute, telekinetic adopted alien son, or perhaps a divisive culture war pioneer who oscillates between trying to destroy himself in the blaze of operatic self-importance and kitschly rebuilding himself.

These days, Star Wars also seems to be press releases and announcements, and passing comments in interviews that point wistfully toward what once was and what might one day be again. Which brings us to Taika Waititi, the Oscar-winning New Zealand director, providing new updates on his installment in the long-running space saga. “I’m just trying to go back and get more fun out of the original movies,” he told Variety, adding of George Lucas’s original trilogy: “The stakes were very high.” [and] There were serious things happening but there was also a lot of fun in those movies. That’s what I was trying to get back.”

This seems like a perfectly reasonable way forward, until we remember that Waititi was first nominated for making one of these films six years ago, and not much has happened since. Most of us only remember that the New Zealander once signed on to this thing because outgoing Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy described the proposed film as “still fairly live” in an “exit” interview earlier this month with Deadline. Other projects that were apparently once mooted and could still make it to production one day include Donald Glover’s idea for a Lando Calrissian movie and a potential new trilogy from Simon Kinberg. Kennedy even suggested that Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh’s mysterious “Hunt for Ben Solo” script, which caused a minor stir when the actor revealed its existence last year, might have a shot at success “if someone is willing to take a risk.”

Much has been said about the New Jedi Order movie announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023, which was directed by Charmaine Obaid-Chinoy and had a central character played by Daisy Ridley. Reports this week indicate that Ridley will not be returning for next year’s Star Wars: Starfighter, which Ryan Gosling is set to headline. Screenwriter Jonathan Tropper told Screenrant that the film contains no “old characters,” adding, “You won’t see any of the characters you’ve seen in other films.”

This could of course be typical Hollywood smoke and mirrors, although a few fans are clamoring for the return of this film any Of the characters from the sequel trilogy. The last entry of 2019, The Rise of Skywalker, was so terrible and misguided that the idea that Star Wars could bring out Rey, Finn, or Poe Dameron (or anyone else from the recent films) to gasps of wonder is laughable.

Instead, next in the saga is The Mandalorian & Grogu, a spin-off of a big-screen TV series that almost everyone loves. However, even here there are opponents, pointing out that director Jon Favreau and new Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni could have presented a fourth season instead. The show has everything Star Wars fans want: nostalgia, expansion of lore, magic, magic, and yet bringing it to the big screen feels a bit like a cheat, as if theatrical relevance is now something that has to be reverse-engineered from streaming success.

Maybe the problem is that Lucasfilm went too long without having any idea what Star Wars was supposed to be, and where it should be headed. Some might, inexplicably, prefer to see the driver shoot the cross-haired lightsaber again; Others want something completely new, provided it also looks exactly like the old thing they loved.

What this leaves Star Wars, once again, is less a creative crisis than an identity confrontation: a franchise paralyzed by its audience, oscillating endlessly between comfort, novelty, and outrage, and somehow managing to disappoint people even when it gives them what they asked for.