preface
In 2012, Walt Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion and announced the reboot of the "Star Wars" film series. Subsequently, from 2015, the sequel trilogy and two derivative films of the "Star Wars" series were released one after another, opening a new stage of the series. As a highly influential theme in European and American culture, the reboot of the postquel trilogy has indeed gained great attendance and attracted the attention of audiences across the United States.
In the process of changing the media characteristics of theatrical films from "cold" to "hot", Hollywood blockbusters that are highly dependent on scoring websites and social media word-of-mouth to drive box office performance after the premiere face a huge and divided audience crowd, and conservative narrative strategies are still criticized by "awakened" social media and become discourse material for ideological confrontation. The narrative strategy of the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy cannot avoid the "hijacking" of its text by the "polarized" discourse, which is precisely the manifestation of the general weakening or even ineffectiveness of its ideological function.
Background: From "political correctness" to discursive fragmentation
After Disney acquired Lucasfilm, it abolished the previous huge and complex spin-off stories, replanned the "True History Universe", and launched a new cross-media brand strategy: the new theatrical film trilogy is used as a big signboard to absorb new fans and recall old fans, and new derivative animations, series and gaiden movies are used as a last trick to enhance stickiness.
However, under the aesthetic discourse of "polarization", the evaluation of the postquel trilogy is polarized. On major online rating sites, word of mouth has been declining. From the 7.9 score of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, released in 2015, to the 6.9 score of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the last installment of the trilogy released at the end of 2019, the rating of the innovation trilogy is the lowest.
Under the influence of word of mouth, the box office of the trilogy has also gone all the way down. In addition to the lack of innovation in the story, the two changes of directors and screenwriters before and after the plot caused by the unsmooth connection of the plot, excessive display of visual special effects but difficult to win the plot and other problems caused audience dissatisfaction, with the trilogy released one by one in theaters, the female setting of the absolute protagonist and the racial diversity of the positive characters, in recent years, the anti-"political correctness" discourse in American society has been intensifying, and the division and opposition of social public opinion has gradually changed from a bonus to a highly controversial content in the context of mass consumption literary and artistic works such as movies.
Star Wars fans' demand for the film's deep polarization reflects the conflict between American audiences over "political correctness" issues, with many fans taking to social media to demand that Disney "stop creating politically correct narratives." The new trilogy oscillates between satisfying the emotional consumption needs of traditional fans for Star Wars' traditional narrative and conforming to "political correctness", creating an unflattering situation on both sides.
To explain how Star Wars' narrative strategy cannot avoid falling into the unflattering "polarization" of social media and rating websites, it is necessary to analyze the "polarization" of Hollywood's aesthetic discourse, that is, the "polarization" of American ideology. For example, the countercultural movement, the long-term impact of cultural pluralism, and the identity politics derived from it, these eventually became a set of "political correctness" logic that regulated American political and cultural life.
Under this set of norms, "cultural radicalism such as feminism, egalitarianism, and globalization is gaining momentum", and its demands are constantly advancing and gradually deviating from reality, playing an oppressive force in American social life. The increasingly radical liberal demand for "diversity" also influenced the Oscar, which announced in 2020 that from 2024 onwards, the actors, crews and distribution companies of films participating in the Academy Award for Best Film must adopt a certain percentage of ethnic and sexual minorities.
As the most influential film award in the United States and even the world, the Academy Awards have become an important symbol for defending American "political correctness" in the process of constantly catering to mainstream American values for many years. In recent years, the cognition of the Oscars has gradually been linked to the labels of "niche" and "elite", and its best film selection has also caused more and more controversy, and the audience's evaluation has become differentiated.
At the beginning of 2020, the Golden Globe Awards, known as the "Oscar weather vane", awarded Best Film to "1917", which is known for its technical and graphic performance, which also heralded the end of the era of criticism of American films "political correctness" first. Whether it is the production of a film or a TV series, it is necessary to avoid falling itself into this unsolvable controversy vortex, to avoid the discussion of the work becoming a vicious confrontation of political opinions, and to attract the audience with a better production level and ingenious narrative, and to hide the reality of the conflict at the ideological level of the audience as much as possible.
The failure of narrative strategy and ideological functioning
The postquel trilogy consciously avoids a narrative strategy that is explicit and biased towards a particular culture or ideology. On the one hand, as part of a cross-media audiovisual product, it is driven by the demand for commercial success, and the obvious tendency will bring commercial risks; On the other hand, because the entire creative process is very different from the Lucasfilm period, the prequel trilogy period is deeply influenced by Lucas's personal creative philosophy.
The sequel trilogy tells the story that continues after the trilogy: after the defeat of the Galactic Empire, its remnants retreated into the marginal star region to accumulate strength, while the "New Republic" formed by the righteous side adopted a policy of reducing the army and weakening the central power, which led to the rise of the successor of the Galactic Empire, the "First Order", and the development of new powerful weapons, which eventually severely damaged the New Republic and tried to rebuild the empire.
The protagonist of this trilogy continues to appear in the story and establishes the "Resistance Organization", which resists the First Order in isolation and repeatedly falls into desperate situations. Several young protagonists experience their own "heroic path", discover their potential and responsibility, join the resistance, visit the reclusive master, learn the power to fight evil, and learn their identity - the hero who is tasked with saving the world, and finally defeats the evil forces.
Analyzing the narrative context of the postquel trilogy, one of the clearest clues of the story is the mystery of the identities of each protagonist. The two main characters, Finn and Rey, both face the ambiguity of their identities and backgrounds for a long time in the story, and struggle to find identification with their own position. The establishment of this narrative thread echoes the mystery of the identity of the protagonist in this trilogy, and caters to the market of the "Star Wars Fan" fan community.
But unlike the treatment of identity clues in this biography trilogy, as a "baggage" "shaken" in a specific plot process, resulting in the usual dramatic effect in court drama plots - the protagonist Luke Skywalker is the son of the villain Darth Vader, this setting was not revealed until the end of the second part of the trilogy, in the father-son battle, the scene and lines of "I am your father" became a cultural meme that had a long-term impact on American Internet culture.
After the release of the sequel trilogy, Abrams, the director of two of them, and co-screenwriter Chris Terrio answered some hot topics about the film, one of which was the explanation of the mystery of the protagonist's identity. The screenwriter noted that the film is about the question of identity, "people do not discover their own identity, but create their own identity".
The film's character development does revolve around this main thread, thus responding to Hollywood's requirements for the creative norms of "political correctness" and "identity politics" discourses. In fact, Hollywood has become a tool for the reproduction and normalization of this discourse as left-wing liberalism continues to polarize and "politically correct" discourse becomes the mainstream discourse.
Taking the discourse conflict around "identity politics" as an example, for the identities of several main characters, the film binds its excavation of its own identity with the "bright side" of the Force, forming a narrative logic from identity to "justice identity". Although this bridging treatment is highly integrated into the dramatic conflict of the plot setting, and also has a certain credibility under the blessing of the image spectacle, it has become a textual resource used by both "polarized" parties to refute each other's values.
An ideological extension of The Mandalorian
Before "The Mandalorian", Walt Disney launched a number of "gaiden" and spin-off series as a supplement to theatrical films, constantly enriching the richness of works beyond the big screen. Because the show is the first live-action series in more than 40 years of the "Star Wars" series, the audience has been waiting for a long time, coupled with the wave of upgrades in the American TV drama industry, Walt Disney's investment in the show has exceeded $10 million per episode, so the series has received a high degree of attention since its launch.
In the process of the narrative paradigm flow of the Western genre, the object of action gradually transforms from the moral goals of justice and equality to the realization of individual demands, marking the collapse of the core of individualism and the collapse of the heroic image in the United States. In "The Mandalorian", the protagonist's object of action is vividly reflected in the first episode - lying down and tasting courage, taking money to do things, regardless of whether the reward object is innocent or not, the sentence "Whether dead or alive, I will take you to receive the bounty money" expresses the ruthlessness of the bounty hunter.
When he discovers that the target of his bounty is a child, and the task of other bounty hunters is to kill the child directly, he decides to protect the child's life on his own. At this point, the object of action begins to change, the bounty is no longer the only purpose, and the call of conscience begins to affect the Mandalorian.
The packaging and setting of the protagonist's action object is also a clever response to the anti-"political correctness" discourse of The Mandalorian. Analyzing the role of "child" from the perspective of Prop's scope of action, when the Mandalorian used him as a reward target to pursue, he was a contested "princess" role, lacking self-preservation and autonomy, and when the Mandalorian was in danger, he became an "assistant" role, helping the Mandalorian get out of danger with great strength.
Through different plots, the variation of the characters makes the child no longer just the object of the protagonist's actions, but also gives rich meaning. Over fifty years old but because of his long lifespan and in fact just a faltering child, but even so, he can master great power, such a character setting suggests that the child's future strength may far exceed the protagonist, and can also save the protagonist from fire and water in many critical moments in the future, and its role meaning is far beyond "protected" or "assistant", thus departing from the narrative character paradigm of Westerns.
Although the new theatrical trilogy of Walt Disney's "Star Wars" failed in word of mouth due to its difficulty in coping with the divided fan base, the series "The Mandalorian" launched at the same time accurately grasped the audience's demands, and found a unique path to commercial success through the return to the traditional "Star Wars" narrative mode and the ingenious shaping of the characters in the gap between the principle of "political correctness" and the anti-"political correctness" discourse.
summary
High-concept Hollywood works can often play the effect of bridging the "secular myth" effect of ideological division, but this requires appropriate narrative strategies and creators' full understanding and accurate grasp of their own social and cultural conditions. The core element of mainstream Hollywood film and television works is commercial success, and in the face of a domestic market with highly differentiated ideological discourse, although the "conservative" strategy adopted by Walt Disney ensures the box office and reputation of the film, it also reduces the ideological connotation of the film and weakens the ideological function of the film.
In the face of the opportunities brought by the upgrading of the domestic film industry and the rise of online dramas, the broad prospects for better playing the ideological function of the film are waiting to be explored. Domestic film and television producers need to pay attention to the ideological function and cultural connotation of the work while ensuring the commercial success of the film, and avoid the problem of "marginalization of mainstream values, externalization of emotional display, and superficial capture of life" driven by commercial logic.