Yahoo Movies The new Star Wars trilogy must learn these lessons for success
Simon Kinberg faces the daunting task of bringing Star Wars back to the big screen. He can learn some obvious lessons from the Disney era.
We've had false alarms before, but it looks as if Star Wars might be coming back to the big screen. Simon Kinberg — best known for his work on the X-Men franchise — has been hired to write and produce a new Star Wars trilogy, along with franchise boss Kathleen Kennedy. It's a big job, but Kinberg certainly has the tools to handle a massive blockbuster.
The question now becomes: what will these movies be? Deadline's report suggested that Kinberg's films will continue the Skywalker Saga, while insiders disputed this and suggested the films will stand on their own alongside other new Star Wars movies and TV shows, such as The Mandalorian & Grogu in 2026. The galaxy far, far away continues to grow in terms of development, without any of these possible new films ever making it to cinemas.
But the hiring of Kinberg is a positive step in getting George Lucas's world back to the multiplex in a way that honours the past while ushering in the future. The stakes are high, though, and there are lessons Kinberg and his team should learn.
Use the past sparingly
Star Wars has an enormous ensemble of characters from across its near-50-year history on the big screen. It's all too easy for new Star Wars projects to lean heavily on these characters, relishing the nostalgic burst of fan service these moments bring. Sometimes, it works, like when Luke Skywalker made a triumphant appearance in the second season of The Mandalorian. Occasionally, though, something like Yoda's appearance in the finale of The Acolyte lands like a lead balloon.
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This new Star Wars trilogy would be wise to break with the past as much as possible. Star Wars has so much nostalgic weight in and of itself that it can sustain a trilogy of movies without a Skywalker showing up every few minutes to ignite a lightsaber. There's nothing wrong with a smattering of fan service every now and then, but there's more to Star Wars than that.
Make the most of the galaxy
On that note, Kinberg's films should acknowledge the clear scope of the galaxy far, far away. These stories are supposed to take place in a vast galaxy, so it's bizarre that we continue to revisit the same handful of planets and families over and over again. We don't need to see Tatooine or Coruscant again any time soon.
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This is a franchise in which everyone always seems to be related to someone. It just makes the galaxy feel smaller and traps filmmakers in the shadow of what has come before. Star Wars is currently wrangling with its own legacy, so it's best to simply focus on telling amazing sci-fi stories while using the Star Wars brand for its name value alone.
Ignore the most vocal fans
This is perhaps the most important lesson that anyone making a Star Wars project should keep in mind when approaching their story. There are various factions of fans online who believe that Star Wars stories should be told in particular ways and with particular characters. Some of those people are hyper-fixated on ideas around "canon" — witness the strange war over Ki-Adi Mundi's cameo in The Acolyte — while others are driven by the bizarre belief that women and people of colour being centre stage is a bad thing. The less said about these people the better.
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Star Wars is at its best when creatives are allowed to drive the narrative. Whatever you think of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, elements of its story seemed to be designed around the polarised fan response to The Last Jedi. This compromised the movie and, in the end, The Last Jedi's fans and haters were united in thinking The Rise of Skywalker was a disappointment.
The best way for Kinberg's trilogy to avoid falling into this trap is for the series' most devoted fans to be kept well away from any creative decisions. A recent Variety story spoke about movie studios setting up focus groups of franchise fans, but this sort of approach has no place with Star Wars.
Head back to basics
Star Wars, at its core, was constructed as a very simple story. Obviously, the connections between Lucas and old samurai tales or Joseph Campbell's famous "hero's journey" are well-known. This was, to borrow a quote from another Disney property, a tale as old as time — with added laser swords. With the prequel series and its embrace of trade blockades and taxation, we lost sight of that somewhat.
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Of course, Star Wars can and should be a canvas for complex characters and interesting stories. We've seen plenty of that on the small screen in recent years. But this franchise is also often at its best when it paints with broad strokes and primary colours as a sci-fi morality play. It would be great to see new movies return to this.
There lies the secret sauce of Star Wars at its best. Give one character a red lightsaber. Give another a blue one. Have them fight each other. It just works.
The new Star Wars trilogy does not have a release date. The rest of the saga is streaming on Disney+.
