The biggest challenges facing JJ Abrams with Ep9 are the same as he’s faced for the entire Sequel Trilogy, to whit: (1) satisfying fans of the Original Trilogy, and (2) creating the next generation of fans with the new cast/direction. By ‘fan’ I don’t mean someone who just goes and watches each movie dutifully once (like say a typical ‘fan’ of the Mission Impossible franchise might), but someone who watches all the movies multiple times, gets their friends and kids and parents to watch it, and buys into all the merchandise for years or even decades: toys, Halloween costumes, books, comics, TV spin-offs, games, theme park tickets, etc. Ideally Disney/Kennedy/Abrams would want to fulfill both (1) AND (2), but if it comes down to it, they could give up some of (1) if they get more of (2) in return. The worse case scenario would be if they whiffed on both …

Before we get into more detail of what this means, I want to set the record straight on a popular narrative which says that Rian Johnson “ruined” the Sequel Trilogy with TLJ, and JJ Abrams now has to “restore” his original vision with Ep9. That’s codswallop. JJ Abrams is just as responsible as Rian Johnson for TLJ, both as executive producer (with sign-off/veto rights on the script and oversight of the story and production), and because he set up a lot of the questions in TFA which Johnson had to find answers for (with varying degrees of success) in TLJ

(1) Satisfying fans of the Original Trilogy

TFA: On first blush, fans of the OT were seemingly satisfied with TFA, being a big budget high production value rejection of the Prequels and their boring trade deals, midichlorians and poorly drawn and acted characters. Plus Harrison Ford, Chewie and the Millennium Falcon! On closer inspection, problems begin to stand out, especially the lack of creativity or originality. E.g., come on JJ, Death Star 3.0? Having Han Solo joke about it is not even putting lipstick on that pig. And rebooting ANH without doing a “proper” reboot (i.e. attempting to keep the original actors around to monetize nostalgia vs. simply re-filming ANH with a new cast as the old characters, like the umpteenth time we’ve seen the Batman, Spiderman or Superman origin stories) meant having to come up with BS reasons why the entire plot, characters and universe of the OT had to be reset to zero by TFA.

TLJ: Highly divisive, most particularly around the characterization and story arc resolution for Luke, who was the main protagonist of the OT for 3 movies. Some fans loved it. Some fans hated it for immature reasons because they could only fathom the fantasy of Luke as the Jedi God (and are highly visible in their disappointment). My take is there is a “silent majority” who weren’t impressed with it for valid reasons, but feel too “meh” to be vocal, and it has lessened or even killed their enthusiasm for Ep9 (e.g. there was just too much assumed and “told” but not “shown” in Luke’s journey after ROTJ, so his transformation into despairing wannabe nephew-murderer wasn’t credible or relatable, thus breaking the magic story-spinning spell they were under as fans). Circumstantial evidence for that is how much TLJ’s box office dropped from TFA (more than a sequel should, i.e. repeat viewings from super-fans were down), and in how Solo tanked (though of course there can be other factors at play in both).

Ep9: The 3 main characters are now gone – Harrison Ford finally got his wish and Han was killed off in TFA, Carrie Fisher (Leia) passed away, and Luke is also dead and can only return as a ghost. It’s going to be hard to find a way to bring back the OT fans who siphoned away during TFA and TLJ. If I had to put a finger on it, what fans actually wanted to see in the Sequel Trilogy was at least one sequence where the original Scooby Gang were back together, having one last blast of an adventure before riding off to the sunset / handing off to the new cast. It’s technically still possible (e.g. Abrams could do Godfather 2/Back to the Future 2/Mamma Mia 2 style threaded flashbacks to post-ROTJ scenes with a CGI Fisher) but unlikely. Instead, based on the latest Disney announcements, it seems Abrams intends to close out the “Skywalker Saga” via what happens with Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. Making this compelling and appealing to OT fans is going to be a big challenge, since I’d hazard a guess that the number of OT fans who really dig Ben Solo/Kylo Ren (either as a villain, or a potentially redeemable anti-hero) are even fewer than those who loved the Luke arc in TLJ …

(2) Creating the next generation of fans via the new cast

To be blunt, the new cast just don’t cut it. Circumstantial evidence for this would be in the box office take in China for TLJ vs. other Western franchise sequels. China didn’t grow up with the OT, so whether Chinese audiences would see TLJ depends more on whether they were hooked by the new cast. As it happens, TLJ didn’t do so well in China, but other Western franchises (which are just as new to China) have done fine, e.g. The Fast & The Furious 7 & 8 (basically anything with the Rock), Marvel movies (e.g. Avengers 2 & 3), Pixar movies (such as Coco), Transfomers etc. are are all in the top 50 highest grossing movies in China, domestic and international. (Note: This is despite TLJ adding a token Asian supporting character (Rose); let’s just say Asian audiences aren’t stupid and can spot inauthentic money grabbing from a mile off. Come back to me when Kennedy greenlights a SW film with an Asian lead hero(ine)/Force-user who is not a stereotype (unlike poor Donnie Yen as the clichéd Zatoichi blind martial artist monk) – at that point, we will know she genuinely cares about Asian audiences and representation …)

Why don’t the new characters cut it? In general, though they are better acted than the OT and better written than the Prequels, they lack the OT characters’ magic. Each character isn’t as relatable or understandable as their OT counterparts, and don’t have compelling character development arcs. They also didn’t even come together as a Scooby Gang until the end of TLJ, so we have yet to see the fun relational dynamics, witty repartee etc. that made the original cast so endearing and memorable. (Aside: this has nothing to do with whether the characters are minorities or female, and everything to do with how they are written! Genre fans can heartily embrace minority and female characters, e.g. Buffy, Hunger Games, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, etc. Indeed, if anything, Star Wars is behind the curve when it comes to representation and diversity, and far from being an “avant-garde SJW”, Kennedy hasn’t pushed the envelope any further than Lucas did (at the time of selling Lucasfilm, his treatment for the Sequel Trilogy already involved a girl taking over from Luke), and she can be as traditionally conservative as it gets in Hollywood, e.g. how many non-white-male blockbuster-creators like Patty Jenkins, Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler or Jon Chu has she hired to direct SW films, existing or announced? You guessed it: zero.)

The writing flaws are particularly glaring for Rey, who is Luke’s counterpart and successor. Let’s compare her with another recent, strong female Disney character: Elsa from Frozen. Both are meant to appeal to girls, both have magical/Jedi powers and start out in life as outcasts. But Elsa is much more relatable and has a compelling development arc: she makes mistakes (big ones), young kids can relate instantly to why (doesn’t require a PhD in Jungian psychology to describe her motivations), but she nevertheless realizes this, learns and grows, with her heart ultimately in the right place. (In SW parlance, she is tempted by and falls to the Dark Side for understandable yet ultimately selfish reasons, but repents and returns to the Light after encountering her sister’s love, perseverance and sacrifice.) The end result is that my young daughters both love Elsa, can’t get enough of her, and I need to be careful about mentioning that Disney is working on a sequel because they’ll pester me about it for days after. Otoh, they can’t care less about Rey. “We only watch Star Wars because you like it!” Ouch!

So Abrams’ other big challenge is to establish the new cast as characters that the next generation of movie-goers fall in love with and can’t get enough of. He’s already squandered two movies in the Sequel Trilogy, and not accomplished it yet.

Putting it all together …

Abrams’ challenges in Ep9 are the same that TFA and TLJ faced, and have so far not really overcome: (1) satisfying OT fans with an awesome final storyline featuring their favorite characters while also (2) creating a next generation of fans who fall in love with the new cast and their amazing stories. (In hindsight, one might argue Abrams/Kennedy were being too ambitious and they should have split these two goals into two separate trilogies; but that’s water under the bridge.)

That all being said, if Ep9 doesn’t overcome these challenges, I don’t expect it to fail financially. It will probably still make a billion dollars, perhaps less than TLJ or in the same ballpark, but still objectively a nice revenue total that other studios would eye enviously. What’s at stake instead is whether it can be a multi-billion dollar movie (like TFA or Avengers 3), and whether it can spawn off a strong series of follow-on movies and content for decades to come in the Star Wars universe, because it has shepherded and grown a healthy, growing fanbase … Or has Disney’s Star Wars already passed its peak, and Ep9 will just be another stop in its gradual decline, until it peters out with a whimper and/or is sold to another custodian for a song?

Finally, Abrams had better not try to “solve” this by having Rey “redeem” Ben/Kylo/emo genocidal space Hitler by making sweet love and a new less-bureaucratic “Gray Jedi” order together. If Ep9 even hints that it’s going in that direction, I’m walking straight out of that theater! 🙂