The Skywalker Saga, once thought wrapped up with the conclusion of 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, appears to be alive and well after The Hollywood Reporter reported that a brand new Star Wars trilogy is in the works. The latest trilogy, which has still not been officially greenlit by Disney and Lucasfilm, is set to be written by Simon Kinberg, with the first film being directed by the same man who brought us the Spider-Man Home trilogy, Jon Watts. Not much is known about the movies, of course, but there is one bit of encouraging news: it will (presumably) be written by one person.
The Last Trilogy Turned Into A Hot Mess
Like all Gen Xers, I was excited when Disney released Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. I, like many Gen Xers, was mostly disappointed by the movie, and even more by the movies that followed, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. It’s not that the movies were bad, and it’s unfair to compare anything to the first trilogy, but it was still a bummer, mostly. That said, I think the biggest mistake that Disney made was not allowing one voice to tell the whole story.
I won’t get into every detail about the production of Star Wars VII, VIII, and IX, but a lot was going on behind the scenes. The Force Awakens was written basically by committee, with Michael Arndt taking the lead at first. Once J.J. Abrams was hired to direct. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan took over and completed the script. The problem is, neither Abrams nor Arndt nor Kasdan would be writing the scripts for the following two movies. Rian Johnson wrote and directed The Last Jedi, and later Abrams replaced Colin Trevorrow as the director of the concluding film in the trilogy, which Abrams then also co-wrote, changing the original plan again.
The result, in my opinion, is a jumbled mess of a plot that feels like too many cooks in the kitchen pushing and pulling for their own ideas over who the characters are at their core. Plot ideas are introduced, then abandoned, then changed and re-introduced. There is no cohesion at all, and it’s really frustrating. I hope Disney has learned their lesson. Star Wars is big enough to confidently greenlight a full trilogy if the story is worth it, so here’s to hoping the story Kinberg writes is worth it. Telling with one voice and one person’s vision would make a world of difference here.
There isn’t much upcoming for the franchise at the moment, with only one new upcoming Star Wars project on the books: Star Wars: Starfighter, with Ryan Gosling. That is scheduled to hit the 2027 movie schedule in May. The Mandalorian and Grogu, this year’s big release, is currently available with a Disney+ subscription. A new trilogy could be the best thing to happen in a long time, but I’ve been burned by Star Wars before. I remain cautiously optimistic.
