Star Wars Spinoff Movies Need New Heroes

It was recently announced that the third instalment in the Star Wars spinoff anthology series would potentially focus on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Not much is known about the project yet -- it’s still in a very early development stage; there’s not even a script. The only real information we have is that Billy Elliot and The Reader director Stephen Daldry is in talks to helm the film.

Now it’d take cartoonish levels of cynicism to completely write off a film that doesn’t even exist, and conceptually a film focused on Obi-Wan’s exile isn’t an inherently bad idea -- it’ll most likely focus on Obi-Wan’s exile on Tatooine between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Daldry knows how to make mature drama films and seems like a good fit for the exiled Jedi. Kenobi is a man who has spent his entire life doing good and helping others, but now has to ignore his altruistic nature. How do you do good when any degree of attention you draw to yourself is dangerous?

While it isn’t a bad idea, it is an incredibly safe move, and therein lies the problem. In such an expansive galaxy full of different characters and potential stories, why are they confined to the same dozen characters? If Lucasfilm wants to make an expanded universe, it has to actually expand the universe.

From A Certain Point of View

An Obi-Wan-centric spinoff feels like an exercise in brand recognition as opposed to wanting to tell a unique story from a new perspective. There’s an argument to be made that the film needs to focus on a recognizable character like Obi-Wan Kenobi to bring in an audience, but it’s an argument that also downplays that fact that Star Wars is one of the definitive and immediately recognizable pieces of pop culture of the last century. A film about Obi-Wan has the potential to bring in an audience as much as any film under the Star Wars banner.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of Obi-Wan-focused stories, either -- there's the Original trilogy, the Prequel trilogy, The Clone Wars animated series, and he even briefly appeared in the most recent season of Star Wars Rebels. In addition, the current ongoing Star Wars comic has been shedding light on Kenobi’s time on Tatooine in brief interludes.

While The Force Awakens draws a lot of influence from the original trilogy, the characters feel new and unique. They possess some familiar traits but aren’t characters we’ve seen before. Even on the small screen, the animated Star Wars Rebels series is full of original characters; legacy characters like Princess Leia only appear in cameos. Even Rogue One, while not a perfect film, introduced us to new characters. Admittedly, they were mostly one-dimensional, but they had more potential to explore new points of view.

It’s the same inherent problem with the concept of a young Han Solo: over-explaining a character’s backstory and history when it doesn’t need to be. We don’t need to see Han Solo completing the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, we don’t need to see Lando bet and lose the Millennium Falcon. We don’t need to know the reason why Chewbacca swore a life-debt to Solo; the specifics aren’t essential to understanding the characters and their relationship. Some things are better left to the imagination. I don’t want to see the entirely possible scene where a young Luke Skywalker accidentally runs into Obi-Wan in Mos Eisley, and then everyone in the theater whispers, “Oh my god, that was Luke! That was Luke Skywalker!”

The insistence on explaining every minute detail was one of the biggest weakness of the pre-Disney expanded universe and falling back into that habit seems like a waste. It's not creative writing, it's pandering. We've seen Obi-Wan's story, we know Obi-Wan's story. In a universe full of unique stories and possibilities, it'd be a laserbrain move to not branch out and explore them.

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My Kind of Scum: Fearless and Inventive

A day after the Obi-Wan announcement was made, news broke that a Jabba the Hutt spinoff is also in early development. Is Jabba the Hutt a more interesting character than Obi-Wan Kenobi? No, but a Jabba the Hutt movie does have more potential to expand the Star Wars universe and give us something we haven’t seen before. Kenobi’s story possibilities are limited. He’ll be watching over Luke, while silently protecting the Lars homestead from Jabba the Hutt’s men and Tusken Raiders.

No matter what happens in Obi-Wan’s movie, it ends with him in his hermit shack counting down the days until he can finally show Luke his true potential. It’s the same problem with the Star Wars ongoing comics that are set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. There’s no dramatic tension when you know the main characters will be perfectly fine because their stories have to align with the continuity of the films.

A spinoff where Jabba the Hutt is the lead character seems unlikely -- a film focused on a vile gangster doesn’t seem like it would mesh with the family-friendly Star Wars brand -- but a film based around Jabba’s criminal empire is an interesting concept. The crime lord can be used as a springboard into an exploration of the Star Wars universe’s seedy underbelly.

Boba Fett was hired to bring in Han Solo, so it’d make sense that Jabba would be hiring other bounty hunters to bring in people to pay their debts. It could be a setup as simple as Jabba offering a huge reward for the first bounty hunter to locate and retrieve a package or persons for him. It could be set in the underground city of Coruscant known as Level 1313 or one of the Outer Rim planets. Hell, you could bring in Boba Fett and give him a chance to be the cool badass that everyone thinks he is.

Considering Lucasfilm’s propensity to pick and choose pieces of the old, pre-Disney buyout expanded universe to be reintroduced into continuity (eg. Admiral Thrawn in Rebels), it could be the perfect place to make fan-favorite Mara Jade canon again. She doesn’t have to be the Emperor's Hand, but can still retain her history as an assassin.

Rogue One leaned in hard on the war side of Star Wars, embracing the tropes that come with the genre and gave the film a personality distinct from the space operatics of the Prequel, Original and New trilogies. We haven’t seen a full-blown crime film set in the Star Wars universe. It’d be something new that can dip into the rich universe of the Star Wars, taking us to places and introducing us to characters we’ve never seen before and fleshing out characters we barely know.

An Expanded Universe

Apart from Obi-Wan and Jabba, Lucasfilm is also considering films centred on Jedi Grand Master Yoda and bounty hunter Boba Fett. Focusing on the purposefully mysterious history of Yoda would be a waste; the mystery is more interesting than any possible explanation. George Lucas purposefully chose to keep Yoda's backstory a secret, right down to his species being completely unknown. A film based around Boba Fett definitely has potential, but considering the character’s cult of personality it could come across as an excruciating exercise in fan pandering.

The proposed Obi-Wan film is still in the very early stages of development, so it’s still incredibly early days to cast judgment. Stephen Daltry may not end up directing it. It’s also one of apparently several potential anthology film concepts currently being considered, so it might not even be made at all. But in such a vast universe full of interesting characters and the potential to tell unique, untold stories dedicating a film to Obi-Wan’s exile feels like a wasted opportunity.

Lucasfilm need to move past the usual suspects and try something new. They could explore the tumultuous period during fall of the Empire and rise of the New Republic, or have a film set in the wake of Order 66 where a group of Padawan has to escape a planet while being hunted by Clone Troopers. Expand the universe instead of retreading the same characters we've seen plenty of times before. A Jedi may not crave adventure and excitement, but Star Wars fans sure do.