Critics are starting to feel a disturbance in The Force.
Variety‘s Sonia Saraiya is lamenting about the news that Game of Thrones show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been conscripted to write and direct a new Star Wars trilogy. Sure, it’s a Lucasfilm accountant’s dream, combining two of the most successful genre franchises of all time. It is also, however, a potential sign of a cynical expansion that could “cheapen” the franchise. Because the rareness of a Star Wars movie release is part of what made each installment feel special — and now Solo will hit theaters five months after the release of The Last Jedi, and two whole new trilogies are in the works. Also, the writer asks, considering the violent, cynical nature of Game of Thrones, are Benioff and Weiss the right choices to be rutting around in that galaxy far, far away?
“Star Wars is not about being jaded. It is about wonder,” Saraiya writes. “It’s about the romance of space travel, the epic scale of interstellar warfare, and the scale of history as measured across not just time but space-time. Game of Thrones is the rebellious teenager of genre franchises — all hormones and death and black clothes. Star Wars is an innocent, naïve adolescent, still fixated on first kisses and weird gadgets and lingering views of the sunset.
That the romance of this series somehow survived what the first franchise did to it is kind of a miracle. Now I wonder how much more it could take.
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