this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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I think we can look at the Marvel shows to see some good examples of what works and doesn't work. Star Wars, like Marvel and in some ways moreso, also has the problem of being expensive. Exotic locations, costumes, CGI--these shows cost as much as $250 million a season. You'll probably make your money back, but the production on something that feels like it "fits" in the bigger SW canon can easily carry a lot of risk.
And I think that's the real issue: for the price tag, I want Andor--a show that has something to say about the human condition and says it in a way that's beautiful--but it's very easy to just get "just more Star Wars" instead (and see also: superhero fatigue).
There's room for light sabers in good stories, but the stories have to be good themselves. I think there's an incentive to start from light sabers and then try to fit a story in, and that's working backwards. Some stories are going to want space wizards--but a lot aren't.
That's an excellent point about front-loading a light saber into the story is not a guarantee. Andor's prison break arc - we only get to reap the the excellent tension and planning and loss because there's no deus ex machina. Adding a light saber or even force-sensitivity to that story beat would take that juicy tension and make it, "super easy, barely an inconvenience."
There's a conversation I've seen in tabletop RPG circles and had with my table about this: "the Jedi problem", that you simply can't tell a story that has both Jedi and non-Jedi in it (and on screen together) without a great deal of contrivance to explain why the Force can't immediately solve a lot of problems that could otherwise empower character development. The original Star Wars films really only work because Luke is a student and the other Jedi are either dispatched (Obi-Wan) or too old to hand-wave anything (Yoda). As much as I love watching Ian McDiarmid chew the scenery, the other two trilogies both suffer from having competent (sometimes) Force users basically making everyone else irrelevant by their mere presences. The power levels just aren't compatible.
I prefer to call it the Sokka problem.