How Disney killed Starwars
After buying Starwars from George Lucas, Disney has done everything wrong what could be done wrong in terms of innovation and story-telling.
There is a thing that I would like to name the Essence of a brand or any other kind of story. Others might call it DNA, core values or roots. There is the notion that a company should concentrate on its core business. Nowadays this thinking seems to run counter to the most modern concepts of innovation like for instance ‘blue-ocean‘ or ’disruption‘. But Essence has more to do with story-telling and branding than with innovation and therefore according to me‚ breaking out of the mold’ doesn’t necessarily contradict to ‚sticking to core values‘. There are two books that tell a story of how to (re)adhere to the Essence:
In Brick by Brick David Robertson tells how the toy company Lego overcame a downturn that culminated in the year 2003. One of the crucial measures taken was to discover the company’s unshakeable, inviolable core. In order to accomplish this a project dubbed Core Gravity that together with long-term and loyal customers aimed to define the essence of the LEGO play experience and to identify and describe the company’s most valuable customers.
Another book called ‚Die Quandts‘ (only in German) tells the story of an extremely successful German business family. By the end of the 1950s one family member, Herbert Quandt, invested in an ailing Bavarian manufacturer of agricultural machinery (BMW). He instructed the first CEO under his ownership to create automobiles that are always recognizable by a distinctive feature and this way set up the first branding Essence. It turned out to be the two-part, rounded radiator grille known as the BMW kidneys at the front of the car.
This is what the new Starwars storytellers under Disneys flag missed to comply with. The new story didn’t align with the core values of the brand and the overarching Starwars unwritten storytelling-guidelines.
The mysterious and ruthless Darth Vader was feared but respected. The new villain, however, his grandson Kylo Ren is infantile, capricious and choleric. He is not feared but pitied and despised. He wears a mask due to stylish reasons, probably to evoke the same reverence but is only being made fun of by Poe Dameron, the new hero. What is worse is that his motives are not understandable.
This missing understanding leads to yet another storytelling breach. Many circumstances are given and not comprehensible to the ‚old’ audience or long-term fans: After the Emperor’s and Lord Vader’s death in the Return of the Jedi, all of a sudden we have a Supreme Leader called Snoke who is spearheading a new galactic alliance called the First Order. A character never heard of before. The Force, its mysterious powers and religious split between the Good and the Dark side of the Force hardly play a role. These storytelling violations are omnipresent in both of the already broadcasted movies from the sequel trilogy but also in the two anthology films.
That the new story is not coherent and round has to do with the anti-innovation path followed by the producing team. The new story is fraught with plagiarisms from the older trilogies. Snoke is the copy of the Emperor, Kylo Ren is the copy of Darth Vader, Poe Dameron is the new Han Solo, BB8 is a copy of R2D2, Rey is a copy of Luke Skywalker. Starkiller Base is an incremental copy of the Death Star. All of a sudden this weapon cannot only destroy one planet but a few of them with only one beam. But not only characters and elements have been ruthlessly copied but also settings and emotions. BB8, a cute little droid, just like R2D2, on the run on a desert planet with secret and valuable information, joins our new Luke called Rey, a scrap dealer just like the Jawa traders in A New Hope. Rey, just like Princess Leia is being captured and tortured by the new Darth Vader Kylo Ren. The Starkiller Base, just like the Death Star in A New Hope is being destroyed in the last minute before it can cause any damage. Father Han confronts his son Kylo or Ben, just as Dart Vader or Anakin Skywalker confronted his son Luke in a very similar setting: a bridge over a very deep ravine.
One inclined to deduce that the new storytellers have disassembled the old story of the original trilogy into little chunks wrote them on post-its and rearranged them on a board to create the new story ’The Force Awakens’.
The right thing to do would have been to set up a Core Gravity project in which together with hardcore fans the essence of the Starwars is identified and declared as immutable. Departing from there the challenge would have been to craft an innovative story with innovative characters embedded in a comprehensible and well-rounded story that preserved and at the same time evolved, just like BMWs kidneys, the mystery, and fascination of the religious-like Force.
