Lessons from Star Wars

What the Star Wars Sequels Can Teach You About Your Project

24 January 2020

A long time ago, to a company far, far away, George Lucas sold his pop-culture ziggurat for 4 billion dollars.

Seven years later, the third movie of a new Star Wars trilogy came out. And it came out with a resounding “eh?” That isn’t to say that there aren’t people who enjoyed the new movies - each of the films has a remarkable number of defenders, as anyone who’s ever strolled the comment sections of the internet has discovered.

But it is to say that Star Wars as an intellectual property doesn’t feel terribly sturdy at the moment. The sense of optimism that accompanied the news that there would be new movies has degraded into a blasé cynicism among many of the most passionate fans.

Now, there are probably sociological forces at work here, but today I’m going to focus on the purely creative side of franchise management. After all, the Marvel movie universe, even with its flaws, has tremendously healthy cultural cachet, so there is clearly room for growth with Star Wars.

So let me pull some observations about the shortcomings of franchise management in Star Wars, and highlight some generally applicable lessons that you might even be able to apply to your own projects! Or not… this is mostly a fun exercise after all.

Understanding Your Current Users

One of the biggest challenges that the makers of Star Wars face is that the core audience for these movies has aged tremendously since the originals were made. They simply aren’t the same people they were when they were introduced to the franchise. Their tastes have changed, and their expectations from entertainment have developed. Like it or not, an adult audience that’s been through Breaking Bad won’t be able to recreate their love of the ewoks in Return of the Jedi very easily.

And so, you have to survey the group and split the difference. Balance the joy and vitality that inspired the culture in the 70s, with the need for a touch of maturity. Let Star Wars become a new kind of product instead of trying to keep it squarely in the 5-16 year old marketing demographic. This is the reason most comic books written in 2020 are written for adult audiences rather than the pre-teens comics from the 1950s were: the audience grew up, the medium matured, and it proved to be broad enough to allow the mainstream Batman to be written for people in their mid-20s. Along side this, both a kid-friendly version of Batman, as well as the R-rated Frank Miller nihilist warrior Batman, are allowed to exist.

Take your audience where they are, not where you want them to be. Let them be your advocates. Turns out, if they like the product, others will follow.

Take Overarching Themes Seriously

Working on a seven year project that produces three serialized movies is hard to do well. Each of the films needs to work on its own, as well as build on the work presented by the previous, with the final one wrapping it all up. In the case of the Star Wars sequels, they also were the third of a trilogy of trilogies, so there was in principal extra pressure to tie the whole thing up in a satisfying union, and bring an end to the first maxi-Star-Wars story.

In order to do this well, you have to come up with a core skeleton of the new trilogy. A thematic tentpole, with some loose plot specifics, that the directors of each of the individual movies can weave into their works. Ideally, this tentpole should flow naturally from the themes the audience understands in the first two trilogies. This may require a few retcons for cleanliness, but it is more important that the themes feel unified and flow from one to the other.

Without putting too fine a point on it, here’s my take on the thematic arcs of Star Wars:

The prequel trilogy - a stagnant order is easily corrupted. This is reflected in the transition from the Republic to the Empire, the proud Jedi being impotent against the Sith, and the fall of Anakin Skywalker. The original trilogy - Youthful idealism can bring good from evil. The pompous, self-assured Empire falls to the plucky rebellion, the humbled Jedi raise up Luke, and Luke’s faith in redemption leads Anakin to kill the Emperor.

Now, on its own, that feels like a complete arc. Imperfectly executed for sure, but extending it further poses a challenge. Can you come up with a theme that follows naturally from the previous two?

That core theme is more important because of the age of the franchise, and the predicate movies. You don’t have the option of the improvisational approach the original Star Wars movies took. And the last thing you’d want is to have your directors promote entirely contradictory themes in each of the films, letting solid movies feel lesser when taken together.

If you end up in that situation, you’ll likely need a “fixer” story, that cleans up the continuity, recasts the themes of the work, and lays groundwork for more cohesive stories to come. Call Geoff Johns, that’s his whole bag.

Additionally, there’s good reason to believe its easier to create story cohesion if some of the films are actually being shot at the same time, or back to back. It can be a nightmarish workload, but letting the directorial team actually share their work as it evolves helps keep them on the same page. Integrate, let them give each other script notes, come to compromises, and make them enumerate the themes.

Oh, it seems I forgot something:

The sequel trilogy - Well, I’ll let the reader determine this. Suffice to say, I find it unclear.

Its O.K. to Delay

Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and innumerable other successful Nintendo properties) is quoted as having said: “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” And he’s lived up to that commitment: no matter how high profile the release is, the Nintendo business team has been willing to delay for years, and in some cases entirely cancel projects that don’t live up to their standards.

By following this rule, they’ve created some of the most beloved franchise properties in the world. When these games get delayed, their customers don’t feel betrayed… they feel grateful. Quality has been defended, and their trust sustained.

To be sure, budgeting for a Nintendo game is very different from a movie property. But even so, there’s a lot to learn here. Since high-budget special-effects-driven movies have extremely low costs during the planning phase, and extremely high costs during the shooting phase and post-production phases, you target the places where iteration is cheaper.

In the case of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, that was probably while the trilogy was being planned out before the first film was shot. Give yourself enough time to strengthen the underlying, overarching plan, get all the directors committed to a common vision, and then set them loose.

Don’t Try to Control Everything

Planning is frequently misunderstood as needing to be exhaustive. This is not only a misnomer, it is a profound mistake. Your plan needs substantial room for improvisation and correction. This is a lesson the software industry has to keep relearning over and over again: a perfectly complete plan is fragile, and doesn’t account for the human touch that on-the-ground contributors produce.

Which means, keep your plans macro and thematic. Big, thick, strong guidelines, with wide open spaces for doodles. Some of the most beloved aspects of all art have come from these moments of inspiration, or personal dedication to a tiny aspect. In a real way, Robert Downy Jr’s improvisation on Iron Man ended up setting the house style for all Marvel movies to this day. Creations that have these little detail touches give the audience permission to pour over them and find their own thing to love. Think of the Dark Crystal, either the original movie or the new Netflix series: an army of passionate artists make a quilt of tiny, personal touches that make a world feel real.

So give them some space! You have access to the greatest talent in the world, take advantage of them. Let them make your world lush.

Prefer Myth To Fan-Service

On a long running franchise like this, terms like “fan-service” get thrown around a lot. Here’s a distinction I find useful: if you’d like to reference something from franchise history that you think people will enjoy, it will likely cause these two reactions:

• Oh! Its the thing! I remember the thing. Man I loved the thing back in the day. I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!
• Whoa, if we’re seeing that now, that means… things have changed. Where is this going?

I consider the prior fan-service, and the latter mythology building. Whenever possible, try to bend content in the prior category to the latter. This creates wonderful opportunities for speculation, and possibly future writers to fill the gaps.

And sometimes you’re going to have to answer these sort of questions, or at least have hints toward the answer. Especially in a franchise with long running history, you’re not starting from zero: the audience is starting with their understanding in one place, and you have to provide them with breadcrumbs on how you arrived at the new story from the old ones.

This seems especially important when dealing with a series that has a plot wrapped around the overthrowing of governments… if there’s no sense of place, it becomes more difficult to connect with the work. And then all the references and fan-service start to feel more like… fan-fiction.

Wrapping it all up

Wait, what does this have to do with software? Well, hey. Every single one of these rules can be applied to everybody’s work. It turns out most software products are not disposable - they’re intended to be used for at least a few years… much like a franchise, they need to be nurtured and maintained.

So let’s recap!

1. Meet your users where they are now, not where they were before. And watch for how they’re likely to change in the future.
2. Keep your themes (in software, this means user-facing language and interfaces) clear and consistent. When it needs to evolve, evolve it slowly in a way that maintains consistency. And that means… plan!
3. Be willing to delay if the user experience doesn’t meet your standards. You can only make a first impression once, after all, and its harder to regain reputation than it is to start strong. And that means reducing the number of fixed dates in your plan as much as possible.
4. Give a lot of freedom to your team, so that they can influence and bring their best to your product. Keep your plans lightweight, meaningful, and trustworthy.
5. Take moments intended to give bursts of humor to your users, and fill them with value. Sometimes a joke in the UI can become a design motif that’s beloved by your users. Clarus the dogcow says hi, by the way.

Any-who, that’s that. Hopefully it gave you a laugh, and if it helped you think a tiny bit, that’s great too. If it makes you angry in some way, just say to yourself its just a column, and relax. Its only Star Wars.