frumfrumfroo:

I mean, anything is possible, but I doubt it.

So far, for all the noise about TLJ supposedly taking big risks and cutting against expectations, they are actually on the safest, most well-trodden possible ground in terms of theme. If you look at the ST as a narrative model and ask what it is saying vs what the OT was saying, absolutely nothing about the current direction of the story should be surprising. It’s only surprising if you don’t look at it that way. It only seems risky because people think in terms of individual characters and stand-alone films rather than archetypes and three-act structure. Killing Han and Luke seems crazy if you think of it in terms of ‘sequel kills off Han Solo and Luke Skywalker!!’ but if you think of it as a new trilogy with a new hero’s journey and them as ‘the Father’ and ‘the Mentor’ it’s basically a forgone conclusion.

And, to me, I just don’t believe smart business executives and creatives who understand SW alike are going to look at the flagship film which is supposed to stand as the grand culmination of the entire saga and leave us with the final word on what SW is about and think ‘this is the time and place to fuck with the audience’. That’s a terrible idea. The place for a twist is the second act, not the climax (which we did get in TLJ). And, as I’ve said before, twists in SW are character twists which serve the overall theme, not bullshit to shock the audience (the Luke/Leia sibling reveal ass-pull was bad writing, but it’s a side-plot which exists to tie up loose ends and doesn’t undermine the narrative, so it doesn’t really matter).

As much as the esoteric theory enthusiasts lose sight of this, SW is a simple adventure franchise about the triumph of love. The overwhelming majority of the audience wants and (absolutely justifiably) expects a feel good happy ending. Disney and Lucasfilm know this. Failure to deliver on a positive, uplifted feeling about the whole Skywalker saga as people leave the cinema is guaranteed to hurt their bottom line.

Anyway, in the current media climate, it seems to me like staying true to the SW message of hope and radical forgiveness is more ‘edgy’ and counter cultural than some retribution=justice revenge fantasy or half-assed ‘realism’. Hope was considered cheesy and unfashionable in late seventies cinema, too, and I think serving up some of that old-1930s-serial optimism is actually part of why people loved Star Wars so much in the first place.