My favorite thing about today is a campaign to remake Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Many people have chimed in on the topic, including director Rian Johnson, author Chuck Wendig, and James Gunn. That this campaign is completely ridiculous should be obvious to everyone, but let’s just pretend, for a moment, what this could look like.
But what is this campaign specifically about? The ‘masterminds’ behind it seem to think that the fans, or what they perceive as fans, don’t like TLJ and someone should ‘fix’ it. They claim to have producers able to provide the budget and now apparently just need Disney’s approval to start pre-production.
Obviously, that’s the funniest thing you will read all week. Nobody would be stupid enough to spend money on a project that doesn’t even have anything resembling a pitch. The trailer on the website, which is absolutely fucking ridiculous, somehow depicts Rian Johnson giving George Lucas a script for a remake (the whole campaign sounds like an idea I had stoned), implying that Lucas should somehow be involved in this. But the thing is, THERE IS NO SCRIPT, not even an idea. The plan seems to be to set up a writers room of fans to come up with a story.
Nevertheless, I really would love to see Disney to give the permission. Just imagine what could happen when fans get to do a movie in their favorite franchise. It would be the most beautiful dumpster fire ever, probably even challenging The Room as the trash legend.
Let’s do a quick game of imagining what this would look like. The tone would be in the vein of a Nolan movie, so edgy that you would cut your eyes while watching. Casting, obviously, would focus on only the manliest of white men, someone could make room for Jared Leto and Mel Gibson in the story after they deleted the characters played by minorities. The directing gig would surely go to Zack Snyder who would have to show every rough cut to the public so no cut gets swept under the rug. The plot would most likely be about an old, but manly and heroic, Luke Skywalker trying to save the damsel in distress, Rey, from Supreme Leader Snoke, who is a total badass with tons of backstory.
And imagine the fans’ reaction. They would be left with the worst shit ever to be projected on a screen because they would be too embarrassed to be exposed as the entitled little shits they are. Everybody not involved could laugh at the stupidity of the losers that actually spent money on it. This would be fandom-criticism’s grave and they would be the ones who dug it.
So, Disney, if you want to go the safe route of ignoring these people that’s fine, but think about what a power move this would be. Think about how you could silence that particular part of your fanbase forever. You could be the ones known as the people who gave fandom the gun to shoot itself. You wouldn’t even have to spend any money. Just give them the IP and let them try to make a movie, let’s see whether they can actually start production.