'Solo: A Star Wars Story,' starring Woody Harrelson as Beckett, left, and Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo. Photo / Supplied
'Solo: A Star Wars Story,' starring Woody Harrelson as Beckett, left, and Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo. Photo / Supplied
Star Wars fans are extremely opinionated.
You only had to absorb a small part of the reaction to the franchise's most recent film, The Last Jedi, to figure that out. The debate kept going for weeks.
Well, brace yourself for more nerd wars, because there are a gazillion more Star Wars movies coming.
A new stand-alone film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, will be released this May. People are already arguing over Alden Ehrenreich's performance as Han Solo, and they haven't even seen it yet, reports News.com.au.
Next year, we will get the conclusion to the main sequel trilogy, which is currently seen as either too similar or too different to the original trilogy, depending on who you ask.
"We are honoured by the opportunity, a little terrified by the responsibility, and so excited to get started as soon as the final season of Game of Thrones is complete," the pair said when the news was announced.
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy sounded similarly thrilled.
"David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today. Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting," she said.
But the fan response has been mixed at best.
While Benioff and Weiss have undoubtedly proven themselves to be talented showrunners with Game of Thrones, fans have two huge concerns about them taking on a Star Wars series.
First, they argue, Benioff and Weiss are overrated as writers. And second, they represent a cultural step backwards from the progressive sequel trilogy.
Are those claims fair? Let's examine them.
1. ARE THEY OVERRATED AS WRITERS?
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Photo / Getty
For its first five seasons, Game of Thrones was a fairly faithful adaptation of author George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire book series. In fact the early seasons often lifted entire scenes worth of dialogue straight from the pages of those books.
Then the source material ran out.
With the last two novels yet to be written, Benioff and Weiss faced a far more challenging task — having adapted the first two-thirds of Martin's story, they had to write the rest of it from scratch, with only minimal guidance.
Many Game of Thrones fans feel that despite the show's continued success, its quality of writing has deteriorated from that point onwards.
"It has become clear that Benioff and Weiss are much better at adapting than they are at steering the writerly ship," wrote Den of Geek.
"The writing is the weakest part of season seven (Thrones' most recent season), with the series coasting along on its incredible production values, talented cast and the narrative momentum built up from its stronger seasons."
Benioff and Weiss obviously deserve a heap of credit for so successfully transforming Martin's novels — which most people assumed were simply too big and complex to adapt — into a TV show. In lesser hands such a project would have gone embarrassingly wrong.
However it is true that the show's overall quality has dropped off. While the first four or so seasons were consistently excellent, the more recent ones have fluctuated.
Solo star Emilia Clarke has managed to score jobs in both Game of Thrones and Star Wars. Her film could be just as controversial. Photo / Screengrab
Some episodes are masterpieces — "Hardhome" and "The Winds of Winter" are among the best hours of television you'll see — and some are painfully mediocre.
In that context, giving Benioff and Weiss Star Wars is undoubtedly a gamble. But they do have a proven record of putting epic moments on screen — and when you think about it, Star Wars' writing has never been its strongest point anyway.
We should perhaps expect the pair to deliver a film similar to Rogue One, with a fairly average first two-thirds building towards a jaw-dropping climax. That would fit their recent Game of Thrones formula.
Alternatively, instead of writing their own original story, they could latch onto a Star Wars plot that already exists in another medium.
I must confess I don't know much about that series, so it is difficult to judge the idea, although it's worth noting that as a rule, every attempt to turn a video game into a film crashes and burns.
Rogue One's last act was exactly the sort of sequence Benioff and Weiss tend to excel at. Photo / Supplied
2. ARE THEY A CULTURAL STEP BACKWARDS?
Last year Benioff and Weiss were at the centre of another storm when their next TV project, Confederate, was announced.
The show was intended to portray an alternative version of American history in which the pro-slavery Confederate states successfully seceded in the Civil War.
The backlash was fierce and immediate. In a New York Times piece, noted writer Roxane Gay went so far as to call the idea "slavery fanfiction".
We haven't heard much about Confederate since the backlash, and while it is theoretically still a thing, realistically Benioff and Weiss's new Star Wars commitments will lead to it being quietly shelved.
The misguided project appears to be at the front and centre of people's minds as they consider Benioff and Weiss's new gig — particularly when it's coupled with Game of Thrones' tendency to go overboard in its portrayal of violence against women.
Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian in a scene from 'Solo: A Star Wars Story'. Photo / Supplied
"Creatively, Benioff and Weiss seem to represent a step away from the more progressive, representative path the Star Wars franchise appeared to be heading in with Rogue One and The Last Jedi," said Den of Geek, again summing up the argument rather well.
"Benioff and Weiss are not known for their subversive narratives, and why should they be? They are telling their stories from the same perspective as most of the rest of Hollywood and TV: that of a straight, white man."
It is difficult to say how accurate this critique is. Game of Thrones' source material is itself often violent and disturbing — Martin makes a point of not glossing over the harrowing parts of warfare or the mistreatment of women in medieval-style society.
It would be unfaithful of Benioff and Weiss to scrub those aspects of the story from their adaptation, but you can certainly argue Game of Thrones is too attached to gratuitous sex and violence.
How is that relevant to Star Wars? It probably isn't. We can be confident the pair won't insert things like rape and graphic torture into a Disney franchise that is largely aimed at children. They might be straight white men, but they aren't idiots.
Photo / Twitter
Having said that, there is another, very genuine problem with Star Wars.
Variety recently crunched the numbers and discovered 96 per cent of Star Wars' writers and directors have been white men.
Given how many talented female writers and directors there are in Hollywood, that is a shameful figure, and giving jobs to the likes of Benioff and Weiss will do nothing to help.
