Return of the movie menace: ‘Star Wars’ franchise joins the dark side
“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”
That is the first thing we ever see in a “Star Wars” movie before fading out to the title card with that infamous theme composed by John Williams and diving into all the fun and action of the iconic series.
Over many years, “Star Wars” has gained popularity for its stories, characters and action-filled space escapades.
I remember watching all six movies, from the three prequels to the Luke Skywalker trilogy, with my dad when I was a kid. I was always so excited to see where the story would go, and the fight scenes hyped me up to the point where I was on the edge of my seat with every lightsaber duel. However, little did anyone know that the death of Darth Sidious would not spell the end for the time-honored saga.
In 2015, a new “Star Wars” movie called “The Force Awakens” was released, continuing the story many years later. This movie starts off a new story with new characters, a new villain and some special returning characters such as C3PO and Chewbacca.
However, these new movies may have not been so well received by the fandom. Many think that to keep the series going is just like beating a dead horse, pushing the series on and on with all these sequels.
While these movies are still enjoyable with the usual space-escapade fun, I must say that lately the producers truly have been beating a dead horse, and that Star Wars has been going on for longer than it ever should have.
There are a lot of things wrong with making a series such as “Star Wars” continue for so long. For one, some of the actors may someday pass away, like Carrie Fisher, and they would have no way of continuing the story but to resort to the strange use of CGI.
But if there’s one trope that I wonder how they’re going to continue in future movies, it’s the new main character generation. In other words, who’s going to be the new main hero after Rey?
In the first three “Star Wars” movies, Anakin Skywalker was the main hero of the franchise until many things such as the death of his mother and some misguided words from the Emperor turned him into Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker was then the main hero in the next three movies, and was almost turned to the dark side but thankfully proved stronger than that.
Then enters our current hero, Rey, who teams up with some of the original characters such as Princess Leia to stop the new wave of evil brought with Kylo Ren, the new antagonist of the series. With this infamous trope from the franchise, light versus dark, the Jedi versus the Sith, it’s a very curious notion who might take the mantle as our shining protagonist.
While I personally enjoyed some of the new “Star Wars” movies that have been released over the past few years, I still think that these producers have been beating a dead horse keeping the franchise alive as much as they have.
The more they try to keep something that’s probably already dead alive, the more they’re killing the franchise and what’s left of its stories and characters. It just goes to show that some things don’t last forever, and they come to an end eventually.
Editor’s note: This story originally was published in Volume 106, Issue 6 of The Guilfordian on Nov. 15 2019.
