Star Wars seems to be in flux at the moment. Sure, plenty of shows, games, an immersive theme park land, and other types of media are being released yearly. However, there hasn’t been a new movie in theaters since 2019, and there’s a general sense of fatigue with the brand, even with its financial success as of late. A lot of it, at least from my perspective, seems to be how almost all of recent Star Wars media has been focused on nostalgia. The approach of the series has been to double dip into old characters and stories that only exist as fan service rather than establishing a new direction for the series. However, while many would be able to point this trend out, I will argue that this approach of nostalgia over new ideas was sown with the first big project Disney made when they acquired Star Wars, The Force Awakens.

Going back to 2015, I was as excited as everyone else was with the announcement and buildup towards the release of The Force Awakens. It was a huge event at the time and would be the first time I would see a new Star Wars film in theaters. I enjoyed my experience watching the movie, but in hindsight, it felt like it took the wrong steps in establishing a new trilogy. After the prequels, so much of the fan demand surrounding Star Wars was to go back to what worked with the original trilogy. I feel that the creative team at Lucasfilm and the studio as a whole took this too seriously since The Force Awakens is a soft remake of A New Hope. The basic setup, many locations, and the overall dynamics and story structure are the same as in the old film. While the story does have differences, and the film does make an effort to present new ideas, like the basic character ideas for Rey and Finn, the film mostly just sets them up rather than placing new developments for them or other characters. This is embodied in the movie when Han asks Lupita Nyongo’s character where she got Luke’s old lightsaber, and she responds with “a good question for another time.” Bringing forward a new development but only leaving it at a hanging thread to be answered next time. Outside of what the film doesn’t specifically explain, it doesn’t set up why there is a reason for The First Order outside of needing a new Empire or not using the new Republic at all in the story outside of demonstrating the violence of The First Order. While it’s expected to leave elements unanswered at the start of a narrative, and the original Star Wars trilogy was molded as it went along, the beginning of the sequels being far more reliant on setup rather than execution is concerning.

What the film does focus on, however, is reminding people that Star Wars can still be like the old days and that it only does lip service to set up its original ideas. The entire discussion of the film focused on bringing back the classic aesthetic, that the old actors are back, and that they would avoid the pitfalls of the prequels. In retrospect, however, it feels like focusing on these elements and making the film a loose remake rather than something drastically different means it doesn’t establish much of what this trilogy is about. Yes, there are elements between the lines about how characters are measured up to the past or want to either go back to it or move on from it, but it feels more surface level and is more set up and foreshadowing than concrete aspects. More importantly, however, it feels like Abrams never really had an idea of the narrative of this trilogy and what it was going to say. Even with its flaws, George knew what the ideas and themes of the prequels would be even if the execution didn’t work out. Here, it feels like the narrative, and the next steps were secondary to the idea of bringing Star Wars back in a way people remembered. I’m not saying having nostalgic elements would be bad per se, but it doesn’t feel like they thought what story or themes they would use in this sandbox they built. The film is either set up or nostalgic and ends without establishing what the new movies were trying to say.

Since a lot of The Force Awakens was set up, it meant that The Last Jedi, the second film in the sequel trilogy, had to do a lot of the leg work in establishing the dynamics and direction of the characters further. However, it feels more disconnected than anything because of this. Now, I believe that the basic ideas Rian Johnson had with his film that it should subvert what people expected a sequel trilogy should be and use it to comment on the tropes and characters while evolving them differently was a great idea. Too many people wanted Luke and his friends to be the exact way they used to be or be the mentors we expected, so I feel like doing something different and evolving Star Wars is needed. However, my problem is that it is introduced in the middle of a trilogy, so, like I said before, it feels disconnected. With that said, I don’t blame Johnson here. While I don’t particularly love his film, I also feel that Abrams placing such a vague first step that didn’t establish much of what direction to take didn’t help in terms of making a seamless narrative. Also, because Abrams leaned into what Johnson would criticize, giving fans the exact thing they perceived the sequels should be, which is being the old films again but with aged actors, it does explain some of the backlash since The Last Jedi is a movie directly opposed to the type of film The Force Awakens is. It’s a film that rings up the old iconography and ideas of the old days, but only for fanfare and not really for any sort of development. Honestly, if The Force Awakens was a loose remake that subverted elements of the original film rather than playing it straight, then it not only would have justified itself more as a film but started the trilogy stronger in terms of narrative identity and direction. Since The Last Jedi directly contrasts The Force Awakens, it creates further dissonance and detachment in terms of the trilogy being a connective story.

After the mixed fan reception to The Last Jedi and the departure of the original director for the 9th film, Collin Trevorrow, Abrams was brought back at the last minute and had to cobble together an ending to the series. So, he brings back Palpatine out of nowhere because he is a fan-favorite villain, retcons Rey’s backstory because fans didn’t like that she was not related to anyone important in the Star Wars universe, and ends with Rey choosing to become a Skywalker. So much of The Rise of Skywalker is reactive to fans disliking the changing narrative from the previous film, so not only does it try to revert many of the elements, but it does it in a way similar to Awakens by focusing on the old rather than the new. Kylo was set up as the main bad guy in a different way to Vader in Jedi by killing his master and taking over The First Order. Here, he becomes subservient to the old villain and goes through the same redemption arc Vader did in Return of the Jedi. It circles back to the old tropes and ideas, and it doesn’t feel like there is much of a satisfying narrative or feel for these new movies. Not knowing what they wanted initially made them change gears too much until they fell off. The reliance on nostalgia in the first place caused many of the initial issues for the trilogy, and now it would be the band-aid used to try and bring it home. Unfortunately, many consider this to be the worst Star Wars film, and there’s an underlying sense of dissatisfaction with the whole affair, not just with this film but with the sequel trilogy as a whole, because of how haphazard it felt.

While the trilogy ended up becoming a mess, the basic approach to nostalgia persisted since it seems to be the only aspect that has remained consistent. There were plans to make spinoff films focused on other characters. Still, after the production fiasco and financial failure of Solo, this aspect was transitioned into the streaming shows, including ones focused on new characters. Take The Mandalorian, for example. The first season was heavily praised for being different and disconnected from the main films by focusing on new ideas or expanding on lesser-seen concepts. However, the following seasons focused on bringing back old characters such as Ashoka Tano and Luke and shifting the narrative more towards being a follow-up to the Clone Wars cartoon. It says a lot about the mentality being displayed that Luke shows up in the finale of season two precisely in the way fans upset about The Last Jedi wanted: being an action hero destroying machines and being a badass. It feels that both the success of The Force Awakens and the mixed reception to the new ideas being brought forward have resulted in the franchise trying harder to double down on fan pleasure rather than moving in a new direction out of fear that it would be the only thing that would get an audience. The continual release of projects like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ashoka, and The Book of Boba Fett reinforce this since they are just continuations of previous well-loved characters and stories. Few of the ideas seem to be moving the series forward in a new direction, and even the present ones feel rushed out and hollow to a degree (though that has to do with a whole other conversation about the production flow of Disney projects in general as of late, that’s another conversation). Trying to establish a new identity didn’t pan out due to multiple circumstances, so Star Wars had simply gone back to the well since it seemed like it was the only solution the studios knew in terms of solving what to do with the series.

It also doesn’t help that the element of nostalgia was the only lesson other studios took from the success of The Force Awakens either. Films like Ghostbusters Afterlife and Jurassic World: Dominion only seemed to take the elements of making a loose remake of the first film and making a big deal about bringing the characters back. Worse yet, nostalgia has taken the business over as it’s basically what most studios want to greenlight for projects, which has created even more fatigue, with most of the films and shows being subpar and hollow. Like with The Force Awakens, nostalgia not only becomes a major part of these films, but they substitute the narrative reason for their existence with it, only to a worse degree.

After all of this, Star Wars feels like it has an uncertain future in terms of what it will do with its films. Part of me does think that if The Force Awakens tried harder to establish what the new trilogy was going to be about in the first place, then maybe the series would be in a different place. As is, though, I do feel detached from the brand at the moment because of how much of a mess it’s been and how it just feels like it’s spinning its tires until something unexpected comes along. Part of me knows that something exciting will come again from this series since it has happened before. I guess it’s a matter of patience until then. Then again, waiting between projects is true to Star Wars far more than one would expect, isn’t it?