Is Star Wars Even “Disney” Enough?

Sorry about the clickbait-y title up there. What with the opening of Galaxy's Edge mere weeks away and May the Fourth having just been with us recently, I've been thinking about Star Wars a little more than usual. I've never made any secret of my misgivings about the union of the Lucasfilm franchise and Disneyland, but only recently have I started to put my finger on the cause(s) of them.

I just don't think Star Wars is very “Disney.” Not that the company hasn't done right by the franchise—for the most part, the new films are quite good—but it doesn't sit well alongside what you might call Disney's more traditional fare.* The Platonic ideal of “a Disney movie” is an animated fairy tale, or maybe an adventure story with animal characters. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions, but that's the baseline most people think of.

And that is not Star Wars. It may be a fantasy, but it's no fairy tale. The main difference is one of size. Disney fairy tales (and fairy tales in general) tend to be pretty small. The stakes are low, with the protagonists trying to save themselves, or their families, or at most a small kingdom (and not necessarily from something as dire as literal destruction). Their actions have little to no effect on the larger world and the larger world does not intrude upon their stories. Moreover, for most of them, the main plot takes place within a relatively small area and/or a compressed timeframe. And finally, they are self-contained stories. You start the movie, and 90 minutes or so later, they all live happily ever after, The End. What happened next is left to the realm of justly loathed direct-to-video sequels. Or fanfiction.**

None of this describes the Star Wars saga, a claim which can be handily proved by the fact that you aren't questioning my use of the word saga. The scale of it is huge—it's a story that spans generations and star systems, that's been being told for over forty years, via ten theatrical movies (and counting!), several TV series, and an inestimable number of novels, comic books, video games, and other supplemental media.

I mean, that is nuts. Do you have any idea how nuts that is?

My point is that Star Wars is vast. They could give it its own entire Epcot-sized theme park, and still only have room to explore a fraction of what makes it so compelling to audiences of all ages. And they decided the best thing to do with it is stick it on the back end of Frontierland? I'm sure Galaxy's Edge is going to be monstrously popular and remain so for the foreseeable future. I am also sure that it represents missed opportunities. A remote corner of Disneyland Park, Anaheim, CA is not the optimal location for this sort of concept.

From the point of view of the park as a whole, Galaxy's Edge represents a major departure from the kinds of themes that have historically been assigned to lands. (Note here that I am talking about lands, not individual attractions. Nor am I talking about any other parks.) Better bloggers than I have spent hours and pages trying to pin down the overall theme of Disneyland Park, but however you choose to phrase it, there has always been a sense that no matter how wacky and wonderful the environment was, you can get there from here. This is our history, our future, our shared imagination, our world.

Star Wars is decidedly not our world. Does it take place a long time ago from where we sit, or from the perspective of someone even farther in the future? The answer is that it doesn't matter, because it takes place in a galaxy far, far away. We, ourselves, are entirely out of the picture. Earth might not even exist in the Star Wars setting, and the “human” characters might actually be aliens that look indistinguishable from humans à la Superman.

Is it just me, or is there something inherently...askew about this? Disneyland has always been about the best aspects of the world we know. The tropics are full of adventure! The Wild West was a time of heroes! Fairy tales can come true, and so can cartoons! The future is bright! Spinning Star Wars into its own land kind of feels like...giving up. Like saying “Actually, the world sucks and always has. Our history is full of irredeemable villains, our mythology is pointless, and it's only going to get worse from here no matter what we do. Our only possible comfort is in the prospect of running away to another universe entirely.”

And isn't that uncharacteristically bleak for the company that gave us “it's a small world”, the Carousel of Progress, and all those Happily Ever Afters?

Just some things to think about.

* The same is true of the MCU, for similar reasons. This is not meant as a knock against either film franchise in and of itself.

** This is why I feel that even though the trailer looks okay, Frozen 2 may be a mistake.