Sunday, 31 January 2021 04:00

Kevin Feige Can Apply these Lessons From The MCU To Star Wars

Written by Jillian Unrau
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The Marvel producer has enough movies under his hat now to know what makes a franchise great. What can he bring to Star Wars to make it even better?

With the upcoming Disney Plus MCU show releases, and with a film for Star Wars in the works, it seems as though Kevin Feige will be keeping busy for the foreseeable future. Fans of both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars franchise are looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table.

Feige obviously has a lot of experience producing big and beloved franchise movies with his work on the MCU, and so it's likely that he'll be applying a lot of that experience to his work on Star Wars, especially due to how successful the MCU has been so far. It will be interesting to see if Feige's Star Wars will have similarities to his Marvel films, or if he'll try something in a completely different direction. There are a lot of strategies that the MCU employed that would work well for Star Wars, and it might be to the benefit of the franchise for Feige to implement some of the lessons he learned from Marvel into his production of a Star Wars film.

RELATED: Other Marvel Directors That Should Make The Jump To Star Wars

Currently, Feige is only slated to work on one Star Wars movie, but presumably if it does well, Feige might have a hand in more Star Wars stories. If this becomes the case and he assists Star Wars in moving towards a Marvel-like cinematic universe, it would be great to see him bring in the kind of pre-planning that set the MCU up for success.

One big complaint lobbied against the Star Wars sequel trilogy was that every movie felt disconnected from the others because of the change of directors with each film, and how each director wanted to take the story in their own direction without a plan for what the overall story arc should be. It makes the movies feel disjointed, even though they are all supposed to be telling parts of the same story.

Feige could give the teams behind his Star Wars movie some direction as to how to plan years ahead or set up an overarching plotline in the way that the MCU has done. Part of what made Avengers: Endgame so exciting to watch was that it was the culmination of ten years of Marvel movies, and every story and plot had led up to and connected to this moment. Star Wars doesn't necessarily need to set up for anything quite as ambitious as their own form of Endgame, but in general, it might suit the franchise to have a plan and direction for where their story is going. At the very least, in the future, it would be good for them to plan ahead for their movie trilogies and series to avoid another sequel trilogy situation.

Another success of Marvel's has been that their movies are infinitely watchable - and very fun to watch - because a lot of them stick to a lighter tone with comedic elements inserted, as opposed to anything that's overly serious or too dark and gritty. Star Wars movies aren't known for being dark by any means, but while they have their comedic moments, it often feels like Star Wars films are quite self-serious.

With Feige's hand in Star Wars, he might be able to steer the franchise towards something that embraces the fun of Star Wars more than the seriousness of it. There are so many elements of Star Wars that are inherently fun, and yet the films tend to treat them with so much gravity that you can lose some of that fun. With huge space battles, and quippy characters, and Force powers, and laser sword fights, it would definitely be to the benefit of Star Wars to lean into how truly wacky and fun a lot of these elements are and take the lighter tone that a lot of Marvel films embrace.

Of course, this isn't to say that they can't also have their serious moments, as part of what makes the MCU movies so engaging is that even fun movies have their serious and important moments, which gives a lot of weight to both kinds of situations. The levity gives a break from the high stakes that the heroes are fighting for, but those stakes and emotional moments are what help us connect to the characters and their struggles even more. If Feige's influence can bring Star Wars towards a tone that resembles Marvel's it could make their stories even more engaging.

On a similar note, part of what makes the MCU so memorable is that the heroes are interesting characters, and have a lot of their own personality quirks. The protagonists in particular are often well-rounded and interesting for the viewer to engage with. While Star Wars has plenty of engaging characters, often the most interesting ones are the side characters, and the protagonists are often the characters that the viewer is least connected to, because they simply fall into a hero trope rather than having a really interesting personality.

For example, Luke and Rey and great characters and there are plenty of people who love them, but most would cite their absolute favorite character as one of the side characters with quirks, like Han Solo or Yoda, or even a villain with interesting motivations, like Kylo Ren. Feige could help Star Wars get to a point where the heroes of their stories are just as interesting as the side characters, in a similar way to Marvel, where fans will often have a favorite character like Captain America or Tony Stark.

The MCU's success means that Kevin Feige clearly knows how to make a franchise work. Even if it's just for one movie, his experience at Marvel means that he'll be able to take Star Wars in some interesting new directions.

MORE: Will The Disney Plus MCU Shows Set The Standard For The Superhero Genre Again?

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