Even Creative Collaboration Needs Someone in Charge

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I watched a documentary on Mystery Science Theater 3000 on a set of DVDs.  Something it answered was why after the first season on local TV the credits always listed Michael J Nelson as the "Head Writer."  Sometimes watching it I'd think, "Well ooh la la, he's the 'Head Writer.'"  As Ron Burgundy would say, "I'm kind of a big deal."

But there was actually a good reason for it.  The show had a group of six or seven writers and the way it worked was that generally every week the writers would each watch the movie on their own in their office or at home or whatever.  Then they'd come together and decide which jokes to use and which to throw out--and obviously a lot of them got thrown out with so many people doing it.  So they decided early on they needed someone to herd the cats, hence the need for someone to be "Head Writer."

The thing this highlights is that even when you have a bunch of creatives collaborating, you still need someone to be in charge.  True democracy doesn't really work because it invites chaos.  And especially when you have a tight deadline, you need a firm hand on the tiller to make sure things get done and people aren't just goofing off and passing the buck.

And in a roundabout fashion this brings me to Star Wars.  Recently they came out with the first trailer for Episode IX:  The Rise of Skywalker.  And my brother and I both noticed that JJ Abrams seemed to be literally trying to repair some of the damage Rian Johnson caused.  For instance Rey's lightsaber is back together--or she made a new one that looks mostly the same.  And Kylo Ren's helmet is pieced back together.  Maybe there will be some other corrections in the story itself.

The problem this seemed to highlight is with Disney taking over Star Wars.  Since they spent billions of dollars to acquire it from George Lucas, they wanted to recoup their investment as quickly as possible.  Thus almost immediate production of a new trilogy and the separate "story" that became Rogue One.

But part of the problem is to get these movies out quicker they decided to use the same approach that worked for Marvel's movies by assigning a separate filmmaker for each movie.  JJ Abrams was only supposed to direct the first one, Rian Johnson the second, and Colin Trevorrow the third one.  This division of labor is fine for separate but connected superhero franchises, but it doesn't work for a trilogy, especially not when you have someone like Rian Johnson involved.  Look at all the things he broke:  Rey's lightsaber, Kylo's mask, Poe's X-Wing, the mystery of Rey's past, the Resistance, Luke Skywalker...

Sometimes in writing groups they do collaborative stories where like one person starts a story and another person picks it up and and so on and so on.  It can be fun--unless you get a Rian Johnson who decides to just break everything or otherwise try to radically alter things if not end it altogether.  Then it's annoying if it doesn't outright lead to infighting and bickering.

The reason you get a Rian Johnson is because there's no one in charge, or at least no one with a strong enough hand on the tiller.  For better or for worse the first six movies the buck stopped with George Lucas.  That's why you could have three different directors for the first three movies and they still turned out pretty well.  They also took 3 years between movies, not 2 years, which gave them more time to work on everything.

But when Disney took over you lost that central authority.  They basically seem to have a committee running it.  (Cue the I am NOT a committee joke!)  Between that and trying to put one out every two years they wound up with The Last Jedi and Solo.  And they lost Colin Trevorrow and then had to scramble to rehire JJ Abrams to clean up Johnson's mess.

What really brought it home for me was the end of The Last Jedi showing the little kids who might one day become a resistance.  It was so dumb because hello, it's the end of the SECOND movie in a TRILOGY!  You still have a whole other movie and it's not going to wait 10-20 years for these kids to grow up so what's the point?!  Didn't anyone tell Johnson he wasn't writing the end of the story?  Stuff like that really made me think either no one was really paying attention when this was being made or they just didn't know what they were doing.  And it makes me question whether anyone here had a real vision beyond dollar signs.  Clearly they needed to tap someone the "Head Writer" to herd the cats.

BTW, this isn't the first time this has happened with Star Wars.  In the novels back in the 90s there was a similar situation.  Timothy Zahn wrote the first trilogy of books but after that they started farming them out to a bunch of different authors.  About 1998 Zahn wrote a duology of books and it was kind of clear that he wanted to put some things right, most notably the relationship between Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade.  Zahn had set the stage towards hooking them up but the writers after him broke them up and basically by '98 had them totally separate.  So a central focus of Zahn's books was getting them back together.  Another part of it was in Zahn's books Luke's Force powers were pretty consistent with to what at that point was in the movies, but authors after him had Luke flying and beaming himself across the galaxy or some bullshit like that.  So Zahn had Luke decide to dial back the Force use out of fear that he would go over to the dark side because he no doubt felt things had gotten a bit out of hand.  It definitely seems like Abrams is doing the same thing.  That's what happens when you don't have one strong hand on the tiller--you end up going in circles.