Ever since being crushingly disappointed by “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” my interest in “Star Wars” has been on a nearly uninterrupted downslide. There have been no movies in the ensuing five years, and with one exception, the Disney+ TV shows have become so wrapped up in linking story threads to Dave Filoni’s animated projects that they’ve completely alienated me. Even “The Acolyte,” the one show that was promised to be a fresh start that wasn’t tied to any major lore or characters, ended up eventually succumbing to that same fate.
The one exception has been “Andor,” the exceptional series from Tony Gilroy that’s returning soon for its second and final season, and now there’s a new-ish video game that seems to operate in similar territory. Star Wars Outlaws, which arrived less than two months ago, is an open-world, third-person adventure game where you play as a thief named Kay Vess, who is trying to get off her home planet and build a better life for herself. I’ve only been playing for a few hours so far, but it seems to me like the game provides an excellent template for new “Star Wars” stories set in a galaxy far, far away — one that would satisfy Lucasfilm’s primary obsession while also not alienating the casual fans the company desperately needs in order to keep “Star Wars” as valuable as possible in the years to come.
No lightsabers, no Force, just a thief pulling heists on various planets
Again, I haven’t even come remotely close to finishing the game, so things could change on this front, but a few hours in, the primary dynamic seems to be that you pull various heists and jobs, and your actions have ripple effects across various crime syndicates across the galaxy. If Kay steals something from someone, perhaps the Hutt syndicate (led by Jabba, who still has Han Solo frozen in carbonite at this point on the timeline) is not thrilled about that because that victim was one of their allies. Or if you cross the wrong person, you could find yourself running afoul of Crimson Dawn, the crime syndicate overseen by Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra character from “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” so now it’s dangerous for Kay to operate in territory that Crimson Dawn controls. The game allows you to choose which syndicates you screw over and which you align yourself with, and it becomes a tightrope walk as you navigate multiple planets and criminal groups to try to stay alive while making enough credits to buy yourself a new life. It’s a cool approach, and while the dialogue isn’t nearly as crackling as it is in “Andor” (and honestly, few things are as good as Tony Gilroy firing on all cylinders), Outlaws shares a protagonist who is not a Jedi, doesn’t wield a lightsaber, and lives under the oppressive regime of the Galactic Empire.
On the TV front, Lucasfilm has proven stubbornly incapable of creating a truly new “Star Wars” story that has zero narrative ties to anything that’s come before. Disney, the company’s corporate overlord, clearly thinks the iconography of some of this franchise’s most recognizable characters is too valuable to push to the side, so practically every project has featured familiar characters being shoved into the narrative. You can almost feel Disney sweatily, desperately lunging into these shows to drop this iconography in, looking at you expectantly with wide eyes and psychotically nodding while saying, “This is what you wanted, right?” It’s a condescending strategy, one that assumes the worst of audiences; by constantly shoehorning in elements like the Witches of Dathomir, the Darksaber, Loth cats, and probably a dozen other things I could name (even Grogu/Baby Yoda, who you know, in your heart of hearts, just plain sucks), the company is not trusting viewers can enjoy new stories told in this universe without having their hands held.
Will Lucasfilm learn the right lesson from Star Wars Outlaws?
I could whine all day about Disney refusing to take a big risk with a “Star Wars” show, but since that clearly won’t happen any time soon, I’ll instead offer a suggestion for something that actually might happen in the real world. I’m not saying Lucasfilm should literally adapt Star Wars Outlaws into a show, but there is a template here that could result in the type of thing that could get people excited about “Star Wars” again. The game features some familiar locations (Canto Bight, Tatooine) and characters (Jabba the Hutt) that should satisfy Disney’s requirement to shove something recognizable in viewers’ faces and a cute little sidekick character that can sell plenty of toys, while also providing a lead character who (hopefully) doesn’t have any connection to the Skywalker family and feels like a real person wandering through this incredible, expansive universe George Lucas created all those years ago. That’s a broad enough outline that the company should be able to iterate on it, in a variety of genres, until the end of time. Instead, it’s chosen to quadruple down on its own lore, creating a krayt dragon that’s eating its own tail. (Yes, I had to look that up.) I don’t expect anything at Lucasfilm to change now that Dave Filoni has been elevated to an even higher position of power, but it’s good to know that if they’re ever looking to shake things up, they don’t need to search very long to find a possible solution.
I spoke a bit about the (very fun!) game, along with a bunch of movies I’ve seen recently, on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast:
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