When Marvel Works Where Star Wars Doesn't

Joel: In an interview last month, Bob Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney company made a not very shocking, but treated as shocking, statement that the Disney company was taking a look at their plans for the Star Wars franchise and would likely be slowing down on their output for Star Wars movies, and saying that a movie every year might be too much. This of course caused a giant reaction, with reports of this interview concluding that this meant every Star Wars spinoff movie was canceled, including Rian Johnson’s planned trilogy, since it’s his fault that the franchise went off the rails in the first place.

Ok, so obviously this is a situation that is once again, much more complicated than that. Yes, Star Wars, has hit a bump in the road over the past several months and changes are being made behind the scenes to correct that, but obviously, Disney didn’t spend $4.5 billion on Lucasfilm to make one last trilogy and two spinoff movies before calling the whole thing quits. So let's take a quick look at what Disney most likely wants from Star Wars, why it hasn't happened yet, and the most likely course correction at this point in time.

First of all, Disney wants Star Wars to be Marvel. I mean that in the sense that the Marvel Cinematic universe puts out two to three movies every year, and every movie makes at least half a billion dollars worldwide, not to mention the money made off of DVD sales, along with toys, t-shirts, and other merchandise. Think about that. Marvel as a brand reliably grosses $1.5 billion every year for Disney, and thats their slow years. In 2018, Marvel had their first year where two movies grossed more than $1 billion each (Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War) and Avengers: Infinity War was the first Marvel movie to gross over $2 billion all on its own. In two movies, Disney had brought in over $3 billion in ticket sales, so the additional half a billion from Ant-Man and The Wasp was just icing on the cake.

When Disney takes a look at these numbers, the conclusion is that there’s no reason that the Star Wars brand shouldn’t be just as successful as the Marvel brand. If Marvel can reliably bring in $1.5 billion every year with some years passing $3.5 billion, why shouldn’t Star Wars be able to do the same thing? I’m not here to say that this is an impossible dream. Star Wars as a franchise is just as much of a household name as Marvel, probably more so. It’s well loved by multiple generations of fans at this point and by some points of view it’s even more successful than Marvel is. Domestically, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is still the highest grossing movie by a wide margin. And while it can be tricky to try and monetarily calculate the success of an entire media franchise (including movies, tv, books, video games, merchandise, etc.) A rough estimation suggests that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has grossed around $28 billion in total, which comes nowhere close to the approximately $65 billion that the Star Wars franchise has grossed in its lifetime. So why isn’t Disney’s Star Wars franchise operating on the same level as their Marvel movies?

It seems crazy to think about now with everyone in the world trying to get their own Marvel-like expanded universe, but ten years ago, this style of storytelling was not one that Hollywood was interested in. If you remember the first Marvel movie, Iron Man is a complete standalone movie that has no reference to a greater movie universe, other than a single moment after the credits introducing Nick Fury and the idea of an extended Marvel Universe. Plus, this was before everyone knew to stay after the credits at a Marvel movie so a huge portion of the audience missed this cameo. The second movie The Incredible Hulk is also a stand alone movie that doesn’t have any real connection to any other Marvel movie other than a tacked on scene at the end featuring Tony Stark that plays like a repeat of the Nick Fury cameo. It’s not until Iron Man 2 came out two years later, that the “Cinematic Universe” concept was really addressed in the meat of the movie itself with both Black Widow and Nick Fury having major roles in the movie.

The point of bringing up the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is to show that the franchise was built from the ground up, one piece at a time. The MCU wasn’t adding on to the existing Marvel canon, that already existed in the comics or other movies. It was adapting the material from the comest but was creating its own timeline. When Disney bought Star Wars in 2012, it came with 35 years of story that had been told through movies, tv shows, books, comics and every other medium that you can imagine. Disney couldn’t start from scratch with Star Wars the way they did with Marvel, but at the same time, they couldn’t work with the massive amount of Star Wars content that already existed. So, Disney tried to have it both ways, by declaring some of Star Wars no longer counted while some of Star Wars was still cannon. However, in doing this Disney has made the Star Wars timeline remarkably linear.

Think of the MCU like a massive spider web. You can follow the thread of any one character through the Marvel timeline. Sometimes these threads intersect and the characters will meet up, and sometimes they’ll split apart. Then there are points where all of these multiple threads come together for a major moment ( Avengers movie) before shooting out in different directions again.  However each of these timelines work independently of one another while still being part of a bigger timeline. You can see examples of this throughout the movies. It’s clear that Thor: Ragnarok is happening out in space around the same time that Captain America: Civil War is happening on earth. We get a nice moment in Infinity War where Bruce Banner finally gets back to earth and has to play catch up to everything he’s missed out on and you realize that he’s been somewhere out in space for the entiretiy of Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and a whole host of movies. By building a universe this way you can get three movies a year that all work independently of each other that are still contributing to the same overall franchise.

Compare that to the Star Wars timeline as it exists right now. You have ten movies. Eight of them are numbered I-VIII so you know exactly what order they are on the timeline. The two spin offs that exist right now may not have roman numerals to order them but you can still easily tell where they are in the timeline. Compared to Marvel’s Spider-Web of storytelling, Star Wars is a much more linear, straightforward story. The feeling of a dozen franchise forming together to create one mega franchise isn’t there, at least not yet. There is obviously a push for this. The Clone Wars tv show has become a franchise in its own right, with a big deal being made about the show coming back for a new season when it was announced several months ago. Solo was clearly structured in a way, that a sequel and probably a trilogy were being planned at one point in the production. But right now, every movie feels like another installment in the Star Wars timeline.

In 2018 we had three Marvel movies Black Panther, Avengers Infinity War, and Ant-Man And the Wasp. While these were technically the 18th-20th movies in the MCU, they’re also the second movie in the Ant-Man franchise, the third movie in the Avengers series, and the first movie in a brand new Black Panther franchise. This is how Marvel can put out three movies every year while keeping each one feeling new and exciting, while a Star Wars movie every year has people talking about Star Wars fatigue.

So can Disney do anything about this? Obviously they’re trying. But it takes work, and it takes time. Remember, the MCU started in 2008, and in 2009, there were zero marvel movies released. Then one in 2010. DC has given us a great example of what happens when an expanded universe mega franchise is forced to quickly into existence without any sort of plan. But does Disney have a plan for Star Wars? Well, sort of. The plan was always to have episodes VII-IX to make up the long awaited third Star Wars trilogy, and for spin off movies to fill in the gaps between episodes. But while this is “extending” the Star Wars universe shall we say, it’s not exactly expanding it. The first sign we have of that is the promise of two new trilogies that take place in different parts of the galaxy with all new characters, one helmed by Rian Johnson director of The Last Jedi and one by Dan Weiss and David Benioff, the creators of the Game of Thrones tv show. (tiny note: Technically the announcement of Dan Weiss and David Benioff’s involvement in the Star Wars universe didn’t specify a trilogy but only said a “series of films,” however Hollywood’s love of trilogies, especially Star Wars trilogies leads to the assumption that they’re probably working on a three movie story.)

Ironically, the Star Wars expanded universe that Disney wants is pretty much the exact canon that they got rid of when first purchasing Lucasfilm. At the time, the Star Wars cannon was expanding rapidly through books, comics, etc. There were new characters that were introduced in the novels that had become as big a part of Star Wars as anyone introduced in the films. There were side stories that took place all over the galaxy, oftentimes never involving Luke, Leia, or Han. The series even had franchises within franchise making up even bigger franchises, just the way the Marvel movies work today.

This isn’t to say that Disney was wrong to get rid of the massive Star Wars universe, and strip the cannon back down to a handful of movies and tv shows. Just like Marvel not expecting its viewers to know the convoluted comic history of every superhero, Star Wars couldn’t keep elements of the story that only made sense to the longtime dedicated fans. But if you look at the success of the Star Wars expanded universe, it’s easy to see that it’s possible and if Disney has the right amount of patience and vision, it’s possible to create a Star Wars universe again. But it will take time. Remember It took Marvel ten years to get to where it’s at. The blueprint is out there if studios are willing to follow it.