Seeking an escape to worlds far away and powers unimaginable, I was drawn to the genre of fantasy from almost as early as I could read and consume other forms of stories. Fantasy provided a diversion from some of the harder moments of childhood and hooked me as a fan.

 

The brilliant stories and worldbuilding I encountered within them kept bringing me back long after I should have “grown out” of them. I enjoyed getting lost in not just someone else’s problems, but an entirely different universe's problems. Furthermore, as I reflect on my interests it becomes apparent that I may subconsciously find my own reality limiting and be looking for a way to expand it into something I find more desirable or intriguing.

 

I continued to read and consume fantasy media that in some ways evolved and in other ways stayed rather familiar. I developed new, perhaps more mature fantasy interests as I grew older. The adult themes and harsh realities of war explored in A Song of Ice and Fire were welcome; however, I never let myself get too detached from the stories I had grown up with, most specifically Star Wars. 

 

The attachment to the Star Wars stories in particular stems from my nostalgia, their rich lore, and my extensive background considering it. Star Wars being present under the same corporate umbrella as another of my favorite fantasy franchises, Marvel, provides a unique opportunity to analyze the stories from these universes that I enjoy the most.

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In some ways I found myself walking away from these stories more and more as they continued to be developed. I wasn't sure that they had the same soul or maybe I didn't relate to them in the same ways I did when I was younger.

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The pandemic created an opportunity for me to reignite a passion that had been snuffed out mainly by lackluster projects.

 

The primary antagonist being the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The Force Awakens was released with much fanfare. However, I left the theater  pissed at the lack of originality and deemed it a far worse A New Hope with WAY more CGI.

 

I was so dejected by the film and its lack of ambition that I completed avoided the fiasco that ended up being The Last Jedi.

 

That changed as I couldn't help but feel a little curiosity for how Star Wars would 'end' as Disney was marketing it. I felt discouraged and alienated that something I had held so high could have fallen as far as it did in The Last Jedi and then The Rise of Skywalker.

 

However, in getting ready to watch those movies I was able to dive into the rest of the content fully and afterwords found that I enjoyed a lot of it. Solo left me presently surprised. Despite the ninth episode's invariable let down in theaters, I had rekindled a passion that has yet to be sated.

 

 

This passion has led me to look at what I love about Fantasy and in particular this type of massive multi-media fantasy conglomerate.

 

This was important for me because I began to focus on not just what, but why I liked certain Star Wars narratives and appreciated how Marvel Studios has handled the development or progression of its overarching narrative and world through different directors and characters.

 

This is opposed to Star Wars because the first time that they had to overcome substantially different or new creators was the sequel trilogy and it was a poorly planned nightmare from the start.

 

After I critically and negatively dissecting those projects in my mind for years to the point I didn't want to watch Star Wars ever again. I felt it was important to turn over a new leaf and use my knowledge to reaffirm (hopefully) my belief that the future of my nerdy interests is secure by analyzing how the best parts of the Disney Star Wars era hold true to what worked best within George Lucas' time at the helm. 

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For that reason alone, I feel compelled to put my thoughts to paper and focus on the positives. Through this exploration I hope to demonstrate a positive future of two of the world’s biggest icons through the eyes of an optimistic but still slightly discouraged fan.

 

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My love of Star Wars began when I was a around the age of 6 and rummaging around my grandmother’s old cabinet of video cassette tapes and stumbled upon The Empire Strikes Back.

 

I watched the movie with no context and absolutely loved it.

 

The opening scenes on Hoth were a mix of excitement, wonder, and confusion. I watched as Luke Skywalker, who had seemed unstoppable earlier in the film struggle to understand the complexities of the force and have his ass handed to him by a mysterious villain who finished the movie with a stunning revelation. I was hooked.

 

My joyous surprise at finding out there were four other films and a fifth on the way was massive and with my grandmother’s help we located the rest of the original trilogy. I got my formal introduction into the galaxy far far away thereafter. 

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The original trilogy was fairly black and white in terms of plot. It was immediately clear who the good guys were and who the bad guys were, there was little nuance. Han Solo provided a little moral grey; however, this portrayal has been reduced over time through post release edits (he shot first, period.).

 

The main theme of the original movies was family or identity and the idea that no one is too far gone to forgive and help find redemption. On the other hand, the prequels offered something a little different. They combined the family story of the originals and tied it to the wider geopolitical game that was being played during those years. There were some who felt that the dive into politics in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones detracted from what should have been a “Star Wars” story.

 

However, what is a “Star Wars” story?

 

Critics of the prequels thought that they had it figured out. They thought that for something to be Star Wars it had to align to certain theatrical or narrative themes pioneered in the originals. Furthermore, expansions or explanations of the more mystical lore (specifically the midichlorian revelation) were met with derision despite their work to further flesh out an, in reality, fledgling universe.

 

Without a strong nostalgic tie to the original mysticism of the force and curious by nature, I never had the issue with midichlorians that some others did. To me they were always a part of the Star Wars mythos and something else fantastical to comprehend. They complicated something (the force) that some people thought they understood and I am of the opinion that it unnerved them a bit.

 

All in all, the prequels have aged well in my mind and laid down the groundwork or deeper lore for some of my favorite Star Wars stories of all, The Clone Wars, Rebels, and now hopefully The Mandalorian+ as a continuation of that legacy.

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My introduction to Marvel resembles my introduction to Star Wars in that I was introduced to some early film media (Iron Man) and began to branch off deeper from that. And then discovering the extensive universe of lore. The franchise evolved in perhaps the opposite of Star Wars (1 movie => everything else) and adapted a deep extensive lore of written comics to movies for a somewhat mainstream audience in order to wade them into the Marvel Universe.

 

Without any context from the comics, Iron Man is an immensely watchable and enjoyable film. It plays on common narrative themes of the day (terrorism/counter terror) and was essentially a war movie whose main soldier was a superhero. Furthermore, this superhero had no powers, he was merely a very rich and very smart man. This narrative appealed to a wider audience range than a comic book movie because well it was really a military action movie.

 

Marvel films continued to take larger and larger fantastical or “comic bookie” elements from the literature to the screen as fans became more invested in the building out of the film universe, much like Star Wars. Except that instead of endless expansionary possibility.

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was repainting the Sistine Chapel on a fraction of the space.

 

The MCU movies that delved a little deeper into the comic book lore became the projects I appreciated the most. For instance, The Guardians of the Galaxy were beyond my scope when they debuted in the MCU in 2014; however, they quickly became one of my favorite sets of characters and led me to dive further into the lore of and behind the MCU. 

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The phase one MCU films were mostly earth centric and had a certain “realism” to them in some respects. Even the most magical of the early MCU films, Thor, featured a title character stripped of his powers' for the majority of the film.

 

This was important as general perceptions of super heroes in pop – culture focused on them fighting crime or dealing with otherwise earthly problems of a more whimsical nature (although not Marvel, Batman Returns epitomizes this for me).

 

Perceptions that developed due to their portrayal on film and television in the latter half of the twentieth century. I did not read a lot of comics growing up and therefore had a rather limited perspective on what the ecology of a super hero film could or even should be in reference to the original source material.

 

The point being is, I represent the effectiveness of the slow burn adaption strategy on the surface (despite the obviously problematic nature of confirmation bias and small sample size) in terms of generating new fans. However, I did not become a true Marvel nerd until I was immersed in some of the more magical stories which helped to situate me in the Marvel Universe and move beyond Super Heroes existing in ours. 

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The MCU and Star Wars released content in much of the same way. They started with the most widely appealing stories across communities and began there. However, they were at much different stages along the creative journey.

 

The MCU had a massive cast of characters and general lore to draw from in the form of the vast quantities of comic book stories already published and within the public conscious to some degree.

 

Star Wars was the opposite. The original cast of characters and general lore of the galaxy far far away stems from the original Star Wars: A New Hope, in addition to how The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi add and built off of it. How this affected worldbuilding and later films is fascinating and something that Star Wars has struggled with more at times by virtue of its creationary nature as opposed to adaptationary.