Force Ghosts Officially Dead As Disney Panders To China
Kiss your favorite Force ghosts goodbye — the blue specters of deceased Jedi are being phased out, and you can thank China for it.
To date, Disney’s efforts to court the lucrative Chinese box office have had marginal success. While The Force Awakens may have earned $124 million in China, Disney’s subsequent Star Wars films have followed a downward trend; franchise spinoff Rogue One made $69 million in 2017, The LastJedi banked $42.6 million, and Solo (renamed Ranger Solo) completely flopped with only $16 million in earnings.
Disney is hoping to reverse the trend by pandering to China’sFilm Bureau, which does not allow movies with ghosts in them. If you’re wondering how The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi made it past censors, theBureau is free to make exceptions, and at the time, the organization gave Disney preferential treatment in hopes the films would be smash hits. Now that Star Wars has proven to be box office poison in China, however, its Film Bureau is no longer willing to look the other way when it comes to Force ghosts. In fact, China has outright banned all Force ghosts.
Our sources tell us Disney attempted to use a loophole in Chinese regulations to get around the “No Ghosts” rule. Unfortunately, Chinese officials did not believe that the on-screen characters seeing Force ghost Luke and Yoda were crazy or on narcotics. As a result, the forthcoming Episode IX will not feature any Force ghosts or distinctly spiritual content.
We’re told if the epic finale to the Star Wars saga manages to be very profitable in China, Disney may release new “ghost-free” cuts of Episodes 1-6 over the next few years. While this may strike many Western fans as a slap in the face, there is a silver lining.
Luke Skywalker would need to be a living, breathing Jedi master in Episode IX, since Mark Hamill has already shot several scenes for the film. Unless, of course, Disney simply shelves the footage and cuts Hamill out of the film entirely.
What do you think? Would the erasure of Force ghosts from the Star Wars films be a good or bad move? Will it move the needle at all in China? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on social.
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