When Disney officially announced that it was moving forward with the long-anticipated creation of a fully immersive Star Wars land in 2015, it felt like the company might’ve finally found its “Potter Swatter.”
Though Disney had certainly played around with the “Living Land” formula invented by Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter in 2010, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge would be the genre’s height: a land so immersive, so authentic, and so committed to thrusting guests into the Star Wars universe that it would make Hogsmeade look like a county fair.
At a reported cost of around a billion dollars each, the two copies of Galaxy’s Edge (at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios) were indeed on a scale never seen before. All-encompassing. “In-universe.” No music. No meet-and-greets. Literally part of the heavily-studied, academic, official Star Wars canon, with its events tethered to a single day on the centuries-spanning timeline. The problem is… well… it didn’t necessarily land.
There are countless reasons why the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge that we got didn’t quite resonate the way Disney hoped. Let’s list a few of the major ones…
The Issues
1. The Place
Some fans take issue with the idea that – even if for good reason – Galaxy’s Edge doesn’t bring to life a place we’ve “seen on screen,” immediately losing some of the wish-fulfillment that comes from Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, or Cars Land. Instead, it’s set (by necessity of the limitations of a theme park) on a new planet whose existence has been backwards-engineered into Star Wars canon, but never included in a film or television show.
Look, we know it’s not possible or practical for Disney to have recreated a planet we’ve already seen. In all of Star Wars canon, few places are inherently “theme-park-able” in the sense that they’re important, but have bathrooms; habitable, but with ways to hide show buildings.
Since Disney’s messaging around Galaxy’s Edge is all about inviting you to “Live Your Own Star Wars Adventure,” it’s not such a bad thing that Batuu is a planet we don’t necessarily know, especially since by any measure, Imagineers did a good job making it “feel” like Star Wars. But it’s certainly a sticking point.
2. The Timeline
You have to remember that Disney only acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. To be ready to announce a fully fleshed-out billion dollar theme park land based on the franchise three years later shows just what a priority it was for the company. But you can also see why – at that early vantage point – it made sense for Disney to embrace the boundless future of Star Wars. Sure, the original trilogy (the world of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Darth Vader) would always be the roots of Star Wars…
But given the universal critical and commercial praise for the first entry in Disney’s sequel trilogy – 2015’s The Force Awakens – the future of Star Wars looked not just bright, but boundless. Setting a Star Wars land in the timeline of Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren not only served to promote the in-production “sequel trilogy,” but the countless projects that would no doubt take place in its “rebooted” world.
Of course, in 2024, we can see that Disney’s sequel trilogy… well… it sort of petered out, with its two subsequent entries each declining in critical and commercial measures.
To make matters worse, three things happened in 2019: Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened, the sequel trilogy’s final entry – The Rise of Skywalker – bombed, and the Disney+ Original Series The Mandalorian indicated to Disney’s chagrin that perhaps the future of Star Wars was more properly in the past… To rub salt in the wound, as “Baby Yoda” merchandise became the must-have of the 2019 holiday season, Disney found itself with two billion dollar Star Wars lands that weren’t allowed to sell it… Why?
3. The Exhaustive Realism
Unfortunately for Disney Consumer Products, The Mandalorian is set during the series’ “original trilogy,” decades before the locked-in timeline of Galaxy’s Edge. So even as Disney could’ve made millions from “Baby Yoda” plush, merchandise with the character was instead exiled to a cart just outside of the land.
Maybe fans should’ve been proud of that commitment. After all, fans cite it as a point of pride that Universal’s Wizarding World doesn’t sell Coca-Cola, LEGO sets, or DVDs and instead insists on “real,” “in-univese” souvenirs and foods.
Disney took that high water mark and decided to go even further. The problem is, their commitment to showing how “real” they could make Galaxy’s Edge probably went a little too far. The land famously doesn’t play even a custom composition of Star Wars‘ iconic score. Instead, it’s “scored” only by the sounds of arriving and departing ships and other environmental noises. Though you might want to meet Darth Vader, you can’t. He’s been dead for years. And besides, why would he come to some nowhere planet at the farthest corner of the Outer Rim?
Disney Imagineers also cooked up a cockamamie “lingo” for the land where the planet’s alien residents welcome you with “Bright suns” instead of hello, and “‘Til the spire” instead of goodbye. It’s cute… until you ask a Cast Member where the bathroom is and they pretend they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. (It’s a “refresher”.) When’s the parade? Never heard of it. Fireworks? What fireworks? While Cast Members do their best to balance courtesy and show, it all goes to show that “total immersion” might sound good on paper, but isn’t necessarily what guests actually want.
4. The Lack of Action
One of the key selling points of Galaxy’s Edge when it was announced is that this land would be brimming with action and entertainment. Disney’s marketing promised extravagant secret clubs and dinner shows; giant animatronic beasts and “real” Droids roaming freely around the land; alien shopkeepers that would see even small kiosks staffed not by operations Cast Members, but by union entertainers; drones serving as ships that would land and depart from Batuu all day and night; and of course, action, with literal stages built to host battles, fight scenes, and stunt shows that would criss-cross the village’s rooftops in laser battles, Lightsaber fights, and more every day.
Famously, those all… well… failed to materialize. Let’s just say that fans blame the appointment of infamous penny-pincher Bob Chapek to the Parks, Experiences, and Products Chairman position in 2015. Rumors insist that the miserly Chapek (known for seeking optimization and cost-savings in his data-oriented approach to the parks) immediately slashed the land’s entertainment budget, leaving it… well… dull. There’s almost no kinetic energy; no action; no Droids; no battles.
But now, at long last, Disney is started to get some serious work done to make Galaxy’s Edge a more flexible, fan-serving, and maybe even fun place to visit. We’ll explore how on the next page…
The Fix
After lots of waiting, they’re here. We’re finally beginning to see fixes for what ails Galaxy’s Edge – focused on adding flexible, fan-service, and yep, even fun.
First, let’s get this off the table: for now (and probably forever), Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will be set in the timeline of the sequel trilogy. Sure, fans daydream about simply swapping Kylo Ren animatronics on Rise of the Resistance for Darth Vader; Hondo Onaka for Han Solo; and Rey walk-around characters with Princess Leia.
One day, sure, it’s possible. But as of press time, rumors suggest that Disney’s serious about moving forward with Rey-focused spin-off films… So even if Lucasfilm probably privately regrets the way the sequel trilogy concluded, they clearly still see merit in the characters and world it produced.
It’s also worth saying that new generations have re-discovered the highly controversial prequel trilogy from the early 2000s with new eyes, turning the oft-derided set of films focused on Anakin Skywalker into treasured classics… It’s a re-assessment that Disney is no doubt hoping their own sequel trilogy will undergo when the kids who grew up with it become spendy young adults with nostalgia for Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren. Still, it seems that Imagineers have agreed to at least loosen their iron grip on Galaxy’s Edge in a few key ways…
1. Story bubbles
For better or worse, the land’s explicit connection to the sequel trilogy is foundational and baked-in to its two rides – Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. But the land as a whole is gaining a little more flexibility…
We might be able to track this to the 2021 opening of Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure, which has proven the uniquely powerful role of the parks as promotional pieces. On the day that any Marvel Studios project lands on Disney+ or in theaters, you can count on that character appearing in Avengers Campus – a land that’s precisely the opposite of Galaxy’s Edge because it embraces the “multiverse,” allowing characters who are dead in the “MCU” to show up… The mindset? “It’s not that serious.” People want to see Iron Man, even if it doesn’t really make logical, timeline sense that he should exist next to Ms. Marvel.
A bit of that same flexibility is now being practiced and expanded in Galaxy’s Edge, where heroes from the expanded universe of Disney+ Original Series set in and around The Mandalorian’s original trilogy timeline are appearing in Galaxy’s Edge alongside promotion of their respective shows. Imagineers’ excuse here comes by way of “story bubbles,” meaning that as you see Asohka Tano in Batuu as she sneaks around on a mission, the story that she’s engaged with is completely disconnected from the reason that Rey’s making her way through town, and never shall the two meet, cross paths, or interact. At least this gives fans a “best of both worlds,” where they can meet the Mandalorian and Grogu while Imagineers still get to be proud of the land’s immersion.
2. Music
Part of the magic of stepping into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is being swept into the world by way of music. Sure, if Hogsmeade were a real place, it probably wouldn’t have a custom John Williams score drifting through the air… So again, it feels like music was left out of Galaxy’s Edge just so Imagineers could tout how “real” it is… but at what cost?
Music still isn’t coming to Galaxy’s Edge. Well… except…
Disneyland will launch a return of its occasional “Season of the Force” promotional event in spring 2024. As part of the event (which mostly includes banners in Tomorrowland and the return of “Hyperspace Mountain”), Galaxy’s Edge will now begin to play “galactic music” during the park’s fireworks show. Again, Galaxy’s Edge has previously just ignored Disney’s fireworks, so the addition of music (almost certainly, John Williams’ score from the films) will at least acknowledge the fireworks and create something of an emotional Star Wars moment. And more to the point, we can hope this is a test to see how fans react to having music in Galaxy’s Edge…
3. Droids
One particularly stinging aspect of the lack of entertainment inside Galaxy’s Edge was the insinuation – true or not – that such “premium” experiences had instead been held back for the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser project. When that $5,000, two-night, on-land “cruise” experience closed for business in 2023, fans hoped that it would spur Disney to send the additional entertainment back to the land (where, perhaps, it always should’ve been).
While so far that hasn’t happened, Disney was in the field testing a new “free-roaming” walk-around Droid experience in Galaxy’s Edge. A flock of three duck-like “BD-1” Droids caused quite a sensation as they marched through Black Spire Outpost on a test run. Of course, as is typical of Disney’s most extraordinary animatronics, Disney was quick to assert that this was merely a test run of a very early prototype. And like many very impressive animatronics Disney seems to field test for social media coverage, fans feel frustratingly certain that we’ll never see the BD-1 Droids return, much less become a standard part of the experience. But at least we see that Disney is willing to do work here that may evolve down the road…
4. Action on the horizon?
Reportedly, the inner machinations at Disney Parks are indeed churning en route to bringing more action and entertainment to Galaxy’s Edge… if sources are to be believed, internal evaluation and team feedback is working to convince Disney management that if Galaxy’s Edge is given the rooftop stunt shows and action-oriented character encounters it’s designed for, it’ll have a measurable impact on the land’s food and beverage sales as well as retail operations…
(And apparently, the land could use it… Last year, Disneyland jumped the price of the build-your-own Lightsaber experience from $199.99 to $249.99 – a move that must’ve been disastrous for sales since they made the uncharacteristic and rarely-seen move of lowering the price back down to $219.99. Yikes.) If park operations teams can convince leaders that the investment in entertainment will pay off in increased sales, then management’s opinions will do a serious 180 here.
So, what do you think? Is Disney making the right moves in turning Galaxy’s Edge into a place more guests want to visit, that Star Wars fans adore, and that Imagineering fans are proud of? What do you think would set Galaxy’s Edge on the right course? Let us know in the comments below!
