Is Daisy Ridley's Rey Movie Doomed to Become the Next 'The Marvels'?
Image Sources: CultureSlate (Love exalted, Adobe Stock)
Disney's executives had hoped for a quiet and successful 2023. But the box office hasn't been too kind to the mouse-house in its 100th anniversary year.
Movies like Haunted Mansion and Wish completely tanked while others like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny or the live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid struggled or failed to break even.
Even the franchise that was believed to be not prone to failure had to take two serious blows this year, first with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and now with The Marvels, which became the lowest-grossing movie of the MCU with a global gross of just above $200 million.
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While Marvel reacted by stretching its release schedule and internally questioning new projects at all, following Bob Iger's "quality over quantity" mantra, Lucasfilm has finally committed to at least three new Star Wars films in the coming years. After the disappointing box-office results of Solo and The Rise of Skywalker, Disney's other big franchise likewise struggled to come up with a sustainable plan on how to continue the saga on the big screen.
The first new Star Wars movie since 2019 will likely be the yet-untitled Rey/New Jedi Order film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. The film will reportedly go before the cameras in April of next year, with a release in May 2026.
Image Source: CBC
The intention to make this movie the "comeback release" for Star Wars on the big screen is at least curious, as there are some alarming similarities between the circumstances of the release of the Rey movie and The Marvels, causing the risk of the former becoming a similar box-office disaster as the latter.
The Burden Of The Past
When Captain Marvel premiered in 2019, it became the first female lead movie to gross more than one billion dollars globally. But after Infinity War and Endgame, fans started to mourn that one of the mightiest beings in the universe was massively underused in the fight against Thanos. Carol Danvers has also been notably absent from the other MCU projects of phases 4 and 5 so far.
Unlike the first film, The Marvels also requires some prior preparation as the new movie is closely linked to the Disney+ shows WandaVision and especially Ms. Marvel, which introduced the character of Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel. Unfortunately, this show wasn't regarded too well (and we will come back to this later on), so The Marvels already had to carry quite a burden, even before its release.
Image Source: Looper
This situation is not too different from that of the Rey movie. Although Lucasfilm will most probably not market the film as Episode X or the next chapter of the Skywalker saga, there is no denying that it will be regarded as a continuation of the Sequel Trilogy, which still leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many Star Wars fans.
Toxic Fandom And Anti-Feminism
Sadly, the MCU is now in a state that Star Wars has been in for some years now, with a relatively small but very vocal and very loud part of the fandom instantly condemning nearly every new project if it doesn't meet their expectations. Add to this a growing opposition against female-led projects, like She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel, leading to the mockingly used term "M-She-U".
Image Source: Collider
Again, this situation is similar to that of Star Wars, after The Last Jedi didn't turn out to be the movie that fans had hoped for, and the backlash even grew after Episode IX. The character of Rey was heavily criticized for being a Mary Sue, able to wield the Force without proper training, and daring to take the name Skywalker, although being a descendant of Palpatine.
The decision to make Sabine Wren a Jedi at the end of the recent Ahsoka series, despite her low Force abilities, didn't necessarily help to soothe the moods of those who claim that that saga is now ruled by wokeness and too much female representation under Kathleen Kennedy's leadership.
So, the decision to make Rey the lead of the next Star Wars film could further infuriate this group and hurt the box office gross.
Still, the massive success of this year's Barbie proves that there is still a market for female lead movies, and there is of course still a chance that the loud minority might quiet down until 2026, but right now, it seems that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's film might face quite some opposition from the get-go.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The Marvels' fate was to some extent already sealed when the first teaser dropped last April, and the video quickly became the most disliked trailer of the MCU. The public perception never quite recovered from this backlash. The fact that the actor's strike went on until shortly before the movie's premiere and the main cast had practically no opportunity to promote their work didn't help to turn the opinion of many moviegoers that this is a film not worth paying the price of admission.
It will be months until the first rumors of reports from the filming of the next Star Wars movie hit the internet and even more time before the release of a first teaser, but there hasn't been a lack of drama around Lucasflim's cinematic strategy (or the lack thereof) in recent years.
Officially announced in 2020 and slated for a release around the time of writing this article, Petty Jenkin's Rogue Squadron was shelved, as was the Michael Waldron-written, Kevin Feige-produced Star Wars film. And there are just two of the many announced or at least rumored Star Wars projects that will never happen.
Image Source: Bullfrag
All this doesn't necessarily encourage trust in Lucasfilm's cinematic strategy going forward and might spoil the expectations for the Rey film even before the first take. Understandably, Lucasfilm wants to take its time to "do it right", but the baseline for the Rey film is probably not the best.
Dave Filoni's recent promotion to Chief Creative Officer - making him a kind of Kevin Feige for Star Wars - could of course help to turn this perception around, as he will be responsible for all creative decisions regarding new Star Wars content going forward.
Public perception can of course also massively work in favor of a movie. The Super Mario Bros Movie quickly became a must-see this spring, as did the aforementioned Barbie: If everyone was saying how great these movies were, everyone had to go out and see it for themselves.
It's The Story, Stupid
The cinematic Star Wars has always been primarily story-driven, and the films were best when they were epic. So, the rise or fall of the Rey movie will largely depend on the quality of the story. Every hero is only as good as the villain, so Steven Knight, who has taken over writing the script after Damien Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson left the project more or less involuntarily, has to come up with a strong and believable opposition for Rey and her new Jedi Order and better not resurrect Darth Sidious once more.
Image Source: Screenrant
If the current timetable holds, Star Wars will be one year before its golden jubilee when the movie premieres. The hype then surely won't be the same as in 1999 (before The Phantom Menace) or in 2015 (before The Force Awakens) and the landscape of (home) cinema will likely have changed again by then, but it would be a pity if the first new Star Wars film in six and a half years wouldn't be able to compete in the race for the biggest blockbuster of movie summer 2026.
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