Voices
SUNJEEV
BERY
HUFFINGTON
11.11.12
AVOID THE OTHER CHEAP TRICKS
TOO: The Death Star was the original mega evil device. Since then,
there have been about 84,000
movies with various evil devices
that needed to be stopped/destroyed/stolen/buried forever. You
can’t recreate the Death Star or
anything like it. George Lucas already did that. Skip this plot device, and avoid all variants of it.
STUDY THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE:
When Senator Palpatine became
the emperor, he defeated democracy. When Darth Vader destroyed
Princess Leia’s home planet, he
committed genocide. When the
Rebel Alliance blew up the Death
Star, they smashed a dictatorship.
These are heavy matters. Sure,
we didn’t always understand the
storyline in these terms. But one
reason why the original Star Wars
trilogy lingered for so long in our
minds was that as we climbed
through our childhood years, the
Star Wars universe gave us more
and more to think about. The next
movies must do this as well—but
our minds are now much older, and
much more stuck in their ways.
WRITE A STAR WARS MYTHOLOGY
FOR TODAY: Multiple human societ-
ies are now in the midst of dramatic
and diverse kinds of turmoil. At the
risk of being grandiose,
we need signs and stories to help us navigate
This is
the days ahead. We
both an
don’t all necessarily
opportunity
think we do, but we do. and treacherSomeone will soon
ous territory.
make the movies that
Will a third
help us understand
trilogy make
this global moment.
up for the
As laughable as it now
flimsiness of
sounds, if those movthe second?”
ies have the words
“Star Wars” in the
title, if they can credibly embed
these issues in the Star Wars universe, they will achieve a status that
rivals the original franchise.
Can Disney pull it off? Would
Disney even want to? I’m extremely skeptical. Still, the creatives and executives tasked with
producing the next Star Wars trilogy are going to be held to these
standards, whether anyone realizes it or not. Powerful childhood
experiences are not easily recreated. But that’s what anyone taking on the next Star Wars
trilogy is agreeing to do.