No Star Wars Fan Realized 10 Years Ago It Was The End Of An Era
If you had asked a Star Wars franchise fan in 2016, it is unlikely that any of them would have predicted that the franchise wouldn’t produce another truly great movie in the decade that followed. Not only is the Star Wars franchise massive, but it is also particularly notable for the many, many forms of media that the series has inhabited over the decades. The first trilogy of Star Wars movies were released between 1977 and 1983, but a deluge of comics, TV specials, video games, and novels followed in the years before the prequel trilogy began in 1999. Then, some of the earlier animated Star Wars TV shows were released before the sequel trilogy started in 2015, and a quartet of standalone movies were released alongside it. The best of these standalone movies was 2016’s epic war story Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, by 2014’s Godzilla director Gareth Edwards. With a screenplay from co-screenwriters Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story tells the tragic but triumphant story of the Rebel Alliance’s attempts to steal the Death Star’s schematics from the Empire. A prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story received a prequel of its own in Gilroy’s acclaimed series Andor.
Rogue One Would Be Star Wars’ Last Truly Great Movie For A Decade
With a stacked cast including Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Forest Whitaker, Donnie Yen, and Riz Ahmed, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was met with near-universal acclaim upon its December 2016 release. Praised as a daring reinvention of the franchise, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was commended for its unexpectedly dark tone and the ways in which its story deepened the plot of the original trilogy. However, the decade that followed wasn’t quite as kind to the franchise’s critical reputation. While many of the small-screen Star Wars projects like Andor were met with outsized praise, the theatrical releases of the series never echoed the heights of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in the ten years since its release. 2017’s The Last Jedi was divisive among the fandom, earning the ire of some viewers for simply subverting audience expectations without adding much in the way of meaningful commentary. 2018’s standalone movie Solo: A Star Wars Story was significantly worse, earning mixed reviews but becoming the franchise’s first outright box office disaster when it earned a mere $393 million on a budget of $300 million. With a buzzy cast that included Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Solo: A Star Wars Story was a profound letdown for fans and a striking failure for the franchise.
Since Han Solo is one of the most beloved characters in blockbuster cinema history, a standalone romp based on his backstory seemed like a guaranteed win for the franchise. However, the movie’s underperformance was only the start of the franchise’s major struggles, with 2019’s final sequel trilogy movie, The Rise of Skywalker, earning even worse reviews than The Last Jedi. The fact that Solo: A Star Wars Story’s budget ballooned beyond reason and the movie’s original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were replaced by Ron Howard during production, hinted at the behind-the-scenes issues that caused the project’s problems. However, it wasn’t until the planned standalone Obi-Wan Kenobi movie was canceled that the franchise’s issues became impossible to ignore.
Even In Rogue One, The Warning Signs Were There
Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures via MovieStillsDB
Like Solo: A Star Wars Story, Rogue One had a troubled production and a massive budget that made it one of the most expensive movies of all time. However, Rogue One’s historic box office success meant that its $1.059 million box office haul dwarfed its $200+ million budget, and overshadowed its production problems. In retrospect, these production issues may have been seen as a warning of things to come, as the movie required extensive reshoots that earned the initially uncredited Gilroy his screenwriting credit on the finished movie. Since Rogue One came together in the end, few viewers took its troubled production as a worrying sign. Of course, that changed a year later when The Last Jedi proved divisive, and news that Solo: A Star Wars Story’s original directors were fired during production made it clearer than ever that things weren’t stable in the studio behind the franchise. By the time The Rise of Skywalker was released, even the most casual fans were familiar with the issues the franchise faced in cinemas.
Starfighter Is Star Wars’ Best Chance To Break The Trend
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace looking at Rocky in Project Hail Mary
The Star Wars franchise returned to the big screen in 2026, with The Mandalorian spinoff The Mandalorian and Grogu, but it was far from the triumphant welcome home that the franchise’s creators likely hoped to receive. Even with a comparatively low budget of only $165 million, The Mandalorian and Grogu underperformed at the box office, earning only $329 million and becoming the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie as a result.
For a frame of reference, director Curry Barker’s viral horror hit Obsession earned $333 million in its first four weeks of release, the same month as The Mandalorian and Grogu, and cost a mere $750,000 to produce. To make matters worse, The Mandalorian and Grogu also earned mixed reviews, with even an impressive cast including Jeremy Allen White, Sigourney Weaver, and Pedro Pascal proving unable to salvage the project’s reputation among reviewers. It is now up to 2027’s Starfighter to save the theatrical Star Wars franchise when the movie arrives on May 28 next year. With Ryan Gosling as its leading man, the movie’s box office performance could go either way, judging by his 2024 flop The Fall Guy and his 2026 hit Project Hail Mary. Matt Smith, Mia Goth, and Lanterns star Aaron Pierre round out the cast, with The Adam Project screenwriter Jonathan Tropper penning the screenplay.
Related
Star Wars Is Officially Reviving Rogue One With a Brand-New Prequel Series After 10 Years
Star Wars is celebrating Rogue One’s 10th anniversary with a new prequel series that fans have every reason to get hyped for.
Since Starfighter director Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine managed to refresh the tired Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is possible that this upcoming theatrical release will be able to get viewers invested in the franchise’s big-screen future when it arrives in 2027. However, there is no doubt that this is a tall order, since the Star Wars franchise hasn’t truly thrilled viewers in cinemas since Rogue One was released almost ten years ago.
Release Date
December 16, 2016
Runtime
133 Minutes
Director
Gareth Edwards
Writers
Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy
Producers
Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Tony To, Allison Shearmur
Diterbitkan : 2026-07-02 13:01:00
sumber : screenrant.com
