Star Wars' galaxy far,All Out with AJ Raval (2025) far away contains endless possibilities for adventure -- and that presents a problem. The first person to run into this problem was George Lucas, several days after he started writing about it.

Lucas' first-ever scribbled notes on his space fantasy project followed a "Jedi-Bendu" character, then called Mace Windy, as he hopped from starship to planet to starship to planet. The potential scenery was limitless. But with no understanding of Mace's motivation, Lucas stopped writing on page 2. He had the Jedi; he just hadn't nailed down a compelling why. Why did this story have to exist? What was it trying to say?

I've been thinking about the Mace Windy false start during what is already the most intense week of reveals in Star Wars history, and it's only Tuesday.

First we got the teaser trailer for the spin-off movie Solo, launched with great fanfare with a teaser trailer for the teaser trailer during the Super Bowl. Just over a day later, Disney and Lucasfilm respectively revealed that there were now multiple Star Wars TV shows in development, and that Game of Thronesshowrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff would be writing and producing a new "series" of movies. All this while the ink is hardly dry on Last Jedidirector Rian Johnson's notes for his forthcoming trilogy.

None of these projects have a compelling reason to exist in the Star Wars filmed universe other than "more Star Wars" or "these guys did this other cool thing." I'm simultaneously excited for Soloand concerned that this by-the-numbers backstory is not a tale worth telling. Increasingly, there's a danger that we're just hopping from starship to planet to starship to planet here; that the bespoke production of compelling stories is starting to give way to the cookie cutter Star Wars factory.

Sure, it's great that Lucasfilm is collecting and nurturing proven talent like Johnson, Weiss and Benioff. It would be even greater if the company reached out beyond a limited pool of white male storytellers -- although none of these projects, save for Johnson's first, have a director announced yet, so there's still time for Lucasfilm president Kathy Kennedy to do the right thing on that score.

My question is this: Why shoehorn all your creative talent into a Star Wars setting? Lucasfilm used to be a company that tried to grow more than one franchise; that's why we have Indiana Jones. Even if you just want to stick to space fantasy, what about an entirely new space fantasy? Would all this content be more innovative if it wasn't weighed down by the hefty legacy of lightsabers, blasters, the Force and loud explosions in space?

Don't get me wrong -- I love lightsabers, blasters, the Force and loud explosions in space as much as the next nerd. But I also believe (heresy ahead!) there is such a thing as too much Star Wars, and that maybe George Lucas was on to something when he applied a scarcity model to his most sacred franchise. It wasn't just about waiting three or more years between installments, it was about being on a quest for something new under the sun.

Lucas could have continued his series directly after Return of the Jediin 1983. But he shut down even the toy company and (at first) book publisher requests to continue the Star Wars saga on his behalf. He made the prequels when he and the technology he wanted were good and ready, and clearly imposed a, well, differentvision on them, but even then he seemed restless. Offering a young filmmaker advice at a Revenge of the Sithpremiere in 2005, he whispered: Don't get stuck making the same movie for 30 years.

Obviously Lucas knew what was in store when he sold the franchise to Disney: a distinct ramping up of Star Wars production. But there are different ways of ramping up, and the current situation of a movie a year (plus an ongoing TV show) seems a pretty sweet spot. We have no way of knowing what happens to the quality at a faster pace than that.

There was certainly a reduction of quality a few years after Lucas allowed Star Wars novels to return in the 1990s. Initially, the plan was for a book-a-year event, the literary equivalent of a blockbuster movie. But the publishers got greedy, the books flooded out, the plots became ever more desperate, and eventually the whole haphazard mess had to be moved into a separate storytelling universe called "Legends."

To apply a fairy-tale metaphor to a fairy-tale franchise, if you're forcing the golden goose to lay eggs more frequently, at a certain point, you're factory farming.

And the thing about factory farming is: the more stuff you churn out, the more it looks the same. As successful as Star Wars has been under Disney, there are still troubling signs of sameness. Gareth Edwards' handheld war documentary style of directing Rogue Onedidn't pass muster with Lucasfilm's style police and had to be heavily re-edited. Phil Lord and Chris Miller wanted to do Soloas improvisational comedy, and again Kennedy decided when she saw the results that it wouldn't work for the golden goose.

I've noted before the problem with Lord and Miller's arrogant, entitled approach to a franchise that wasn't theirs. At the same time, had they simply received the remit to do a space fantasy comedy under the Lucasfilm umbrella, they'd still be there right now. The religious weight of the Star Wars name is what got the duo fired. So instead of making money out of their substantial intellectual capital, Lucasfilm made an expensive do-over with Ron Howard directing.

Rogue Onewas a good movie regardless. Solomay yet still be a good movie regardless. With The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson proved you can still find risky new directions within the contours of a Star Wars story.

But as the galaxy far, far away gets more and more crowded -- with two new TV shows, two ongoing series (one from a duo who made their name doing an adaptation), plus whatever comes after Episode IX -- how long can that streak last? Especially when the financial hunger for new movies begins to outpace the storytelling necessity.

To paraphrase a quote from Benioff and Weiss' show: In the game of cinematic thrones, you don't win if you don't ask why.