J.J. Abrams Announced as Director for Star Wars Episode IX

On Sept. 12, Lucasfilm announced that J.J. Abrams will return as the writer and director for Star Wars: Episode IX after his debut in the Star Wars universe directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After this announcement, there were mixed reviews from fans fearful that Abrams had regurgitated A New Hope, and that Episode IX would be a rehash of Return of the Jedi.

While some of these points are valid, Lucasfilm was playing it safe while shooting The Force Awakens after the prequels some fans believe “ruined the Star Wars universe.” With that being said, The Force Awakens did take some risks. Having Luke Skywalker not show up until the very end of the movie, as well as not having him say a single word the entire movie was a risk in the sense that it separated the original trilogy and the new sequel trilogy. Another Hollywood risk was having the two main characters of the movie being female and black, respectively. While these shouldn’t be “risks” in the world of Hollywood, they are.

By the time Episode IX comes around, there will be four Star Wars movies that have come out previously from Disney, who owns Lucasfilm, and they will have made back all of the money that they spent in purchasing the franchise.  At this point in time, Lucasfilm should be willing to give more creative control to the directors and writers of the movies instead of forcing the directors to fit into the company’s specific creative vision; this has happened in the past with Rogue One and now with the Han Solo film.

Episode IX hits theaters on May 24, 2019.