The Fail of Skywalker

by Craig Calcaterra

Just saw this:

I’ve loved Star Wars since I was a little kid and I will always go see a Star Wars movie when one comes out. But, my God, if you have to issue press releases about what was going on in the movie you put out a couple of months ago, you did not, actually, make a good movie and in fact you sort of missed the point of what a movie is.

Was that in the script but didn’t make the screen? Then the director and editor messed up. Was that not in the script but it was necessary to the story? Then your screenwriter(s) messed up. Movies are narrative stories that should stand on their own. Even Star Wars movies. I mean, Imagine an author saying, two months later, that there was a great plot twist in chapter 17 that wasn’t on the page. Imagine a band saying, two months after their album came out, that there was actually supposed to be a wicked guitar solo at the 2:45 mark of track 8.

Another recent example:

No, I did not know that. How on Exegol could I have known that? Nothing in the movie even suggested it.

I get Star Wars and Marvel and other franchises like that have entire expanded universes that fans enjoy. I’m not knocking the existence of that stuff. But that stuff should flow from the movie and enhance it, not patch the movie’s holes. A movie cannot depend on an expanded universe to be coherent. The tail can’t wag the dog.

Craig Calcaterra

Craig is the author of the daily baseball (and other things) newsletter, Cup of Coffee. He writes about other things at Craigcalcaterra.com. He lives in New Albany, Ohio with his wife, two kids, and many cats.