Does George Lucas Deserve Another Shot At Star Wars?

Star Wars is in a bit of a predicament.

I think it’s clear that Lucasfilm has no idea what they’re doing and their long term plans don’t seem to be working out.

There are also hushed rumors that there might be changes in creative leadership as The Mouse isn’t happy with the return they are getting for the substantial investment they made when they bought the franchise from George Lucas.

The Force Awakens made 2 billion dollars. It looked like Star Wars was unstoppable.

Rogue One made a substantial amount of money, which was good as it was the first movie in the “Star Wars Story” concept. It also did well despite numerous re-shoots and story problems (which in hindsight was a sign.)

Then The Last Jedi came out. It was a little over a billion dollars. And for anyone else, this would be great, but it was almost 50 percent less than the previous movie. Mostly because Rian Johnson his best to personally insult everyone who's ever liked Star Wars.

Solo then lost money. It was plagued by problems from the start and the directors Lord and Miller were fired halfway through.

And now Rise of Skywalker is continuing the trend of not making nearly the money Disney wants.

Plus, you add the tepid response to Galaxy’s Edge they have to be a little angry.

Also, there are reports that Star Wars toys aren’t selling. This is the mechanism that drove Star Wars to become the giant mega-franchise that it is. It’s why Disney wanted to buy it in the first place.

There are some reasons for this.

Some of it could be fatigue. Star Wars has been around for over 40 years. Toys are also under competition with video games and smartphones.

But, I would argue the biggest reason is that there aren’t creative beloved characters that everyone loves. Kids in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, grew up loving Han, Luke, and Leia, and, a large portion of the people buying Star Wars are nostalgists and older fans that buy to add to collections. This poses a problem as Lucasfilm has seemed intent on insulting its core audience in favor of a new audience. And the new movies aren't making the impact the older ones were.

Now all of this is to raise a point.

It’s looking more and more like there will be a change in creative direction, with Disney bringing in someone to oversee the whole movie universe similar to Marvel did with Kevin Feige.

Likely candidates would be John Favreau, Dave Filoni, or perhaps even Leeland Chee, the man who oversees all of the new Star Wars lore.

Many fans would like Kathleen Kennedy fired, but I doubt that will happen. I’m sure she remains as head of Lucasfilm, but I believe Disney will put someone else in charge

George Lucas has reportedly expressed interest in returning to Star Wars.

This could be interesting.

The report says:

It was reported this weekend that George Lucas himself would return to work on Star Wars if Disney gave him the green light to do so — and only if Disney said that Lucas could have full creative control over the films. Disney (and the rest of the fandom) is well aware of the fact that Lucas took issue with Star Wars films that Disney has released since the company acquired Lucasfilm. And Lucas isn’t alone in his disapproval with “Disney’s Star Wars” — there are plenty of fans who think that the franchise pre-acquisition was much better. And according to some sources, it looks like Disney and Lucas are willing to set aside their differences to make movie magic happen…or at least, to let Lucas make movie magic happen.

Now, I doubt that Disney would ever give him total creative control.

But, if he came on to help oversee the creative side of things I think it could be an improvement.

I mean it can’t get any worse at this point.

Now, George is at his best when someone reins him in a little. The Original Trilogy was made with other creative minds helping out.

By the time he made the Prequel Trilogy, George Lucas was far too big to be told no and he had absolute control over everything.

To make things better, he wants Dave Filoni to help him. I could see this working out. George Lucas is a great idea guy and loves building worlds, and then he could have Filoni execute his vision.

They worked side by side on a lot of The Clone Wars and that made for some of the best Star Wars content yet.

So, does Lucas deserve another chance?

Would Disney ever let him back in?

Who knows, but anything will be better than what they’ve been doing and if they don’t make a change soon, the last thing people will have to remember Star Wars is The Rise of Skywalker and no franchise deserves that.