Nine years ago next month, I was standing in line with hundreds of other members of the press before an early screening of “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.” Andy Cohen was there on 68th Street to watch what happens taped, and I spotted at least one panelist from “The View” — TV types who go into hair and makeup lumped in with we critics who cower in cubicles.The energy was nuclear.It had been a decade since “Revenge of the Sith” capped off Hayden Christensen’s sand-hating stint, and nerds were strapped in and ready to go.“A long time ago…” The room explodes.
Every throwback and original-trio cameo gets thunderous applause.The crowd walks out buzzing, and their readers and viewers catch the bug, too.
The film grosses $2 billion worldwide.Imagine that.Well, it’s nearly 10 years later, and I have not had to line up for a “Star Wars” movie ever since.
No evening Andy or Joy sightings anymore.(That bit’s fine.) The truth is, we’ve been force-fed so much Force that nobody cares now.
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of that galaxy far, far away.The four films that followed “Awakens” — “Last Jedi,” “Rise of Skywalker,” “Rogue One” and “Solo” — ranged from intriguing (“Last Jedi”) to war crime (“Solo”).They generated less anticipation than a new Wegmans.And yet, over five years since the last flick, it has been reported that another “Star Wars” trilogy is already in development. Please, freeze me in Carbonite until this vacuous exercise in Hollywood greed is over.Think of Disney, which snatched up Lucasfilm in 2012, as the Empire.
They have taken one of the greatest brands in all of American cinema and plundered it into a nuisance.They’re a corporate Death Star, vaporizing good ideas into dust like poor old Alderaan. Fear the IP-gobbling wrath of Darth Iger.
He and Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy have overseen overkill.I could write an entirely separate column on how they trotted out 80-ye...