towards an expandable universe

 so star wars is garbage now but its also a forever franchise that theyre allowed and required to keep telling new stories in, and i have the same nostalgic longing for new star wars junk as everybody else has, but wheres the space for these stories to exist in, what new star wars thing can there even be

characters in star wars are thin on the ground to start with... the main ways you can be interesting in star wars are
-being force sensitive, being even stronger with the force than we've seen before
-secretly having some relationships with established characters, that can be ominously revealed
-reminding us of something weve seen before
-turning from good to evil or vice versa

this pattern is established, breaks from this pattern are not star wars, which sucks because adding new things to star wars becomes difficult. the new thing has to 'feel like' star wars but also surprise us, but theres nothing surprising left within this space. the force is completely played out, but it's central and we have to use it, but it usually attaches itself to central characters and replaces good character development with stark and unneccessary moral dichotomies and power plays. theres never been a good character in a star wars movie who swapped from being light side to dark side or vice versa. the idea of 'what would you turn evil for' could be an interesting story that reveals the inner struggles of interesting characters, but historically it hasnt been that, because the characters... dont have interesting drives that can be subverted, and the force stuff fills up the space where those interesting drives might be. the last good reveal of one character's secretly being related to another was when darth vader was lukes father, and it never once needed to happen again, but instead we have... this complex map of familial relations between human characters, which makes star wars feel very self centred and insular, about a few specific humans rather than sprawling and occuring on many worlds and being about everything

and star wars is a piece of serial fiction that develops over time, so the people who make star wars keep adding new characters or new aspects of existing characters and abandoning these in response to fan response or out of apparent disdain for or disinterest in the existing characters and storylines

adding a new character... means that the story has to either highlight and become about this character, in a star wars way, meaning that they get drawn into the star-wars-interesting machine and become interesting only in the ways that star wars can manage, or they fail to do so, lose focus, and fall out of the story

adding onto a character... can only, become force sensitive, become more force powerful than some previous guy, reveal a unknown relationship with a known star wars character, or become a new instance of something weve seen before, or otherwise be the best at soemthing or even more of something weve seen before than weve ever seen before, but like, still being star wars

and star wars is a story were told over and over again, so we keep getting new takes on the same source material, repeated and mangled arcs for the same characters, new cruft on existing characters, all of which must neccessarily point back to star wars, but there are so many star warses now that 'what is the good and central core of star wars' can be difficult to pinpoint, anyone can say, star wars has gone off the rails, but its hard to say, when were we still on the rails, how many layers do you have to peel back to find a good star wars to build on, how far back to you have to go that star wars once again feels like a story that can be expanded