The Empire Strikes Back Edition

On integrity, Hollywood, and the value of your IP.

Elliot Aronow (EA) is a longtime friend of WITI. He produces dream projects and lifestyles for creatively and professionally stifled men so that they can transform their creative, financial, and spiritual blocks and unlock their minor genius. He is the editor of the minor genius substack and works 1:1 with creators over at minorgenius.xyz. 

Elliot here. As blockbuster storylines go, The Empire Strikes Back is a bit of an outlier.

Our big hero Luke fails physically, spiritually, and psychologically in his training with Yoda. All of his friends get captured by the Empire. His dad chops off his hand. The “happy ending” is just that he and his rebel buddies live to fight another day.  

This is not exactly a recipe for shifting action figures, lunch boxes, and pajamas.

So how did such a dark and psychologically rich sequel to one of the most profitable, kid-friendly movies of all time get made?

Why would a Hollywood  studio green light this? 

Why is this interesting? 

The answer is that they wouldn’t.  No studio agreed to make The Empire Strikes Back as George Lucas had envisioned it, so Lucas bet on himself, kept the merchandising rights, and financed the entire thing on his own.  

The result? The Empire Strikes Back was the highest grossing film of 1980, earning over $400 million worldwide. It won Oscars and Grammys, and is now considered the prime example of a sequel that surpassed its predecessor. Not only has it come to be regarded as the best film in the entire Star Wars series, it’s often included in round-ups of the greatest films ever made. In 2010, the Library of Congress even selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

A key contradiction of corporate creative is that everyone says they want to break through the noise by doing something different, while actually playing it as safe as possible. Because they’re in the business of minimizing risk at all costs, corporations do not want auteurs, they want employees.

George Lucas did not want to be an employee of 20th Century Fox. 

By breaking away from the studio system entirely and retaining the rights to the IP, Lucas arguably saved the franchise. Had he listened to the studio or the focus groups Empire would have most likely been a less good version of the first Star Wars. In other words, a Marvel-style sequel that condescends to its audience rather than challenging them. Instead, we got an all time classic. 

Whatever you do for work, or for pleasure, Empire makes a strong case for trusting in your ideas and investing in your own IP, not just for the financial upside, but for the creative freedom it gives you also. . 

Now more than ever, we need new stories that widen, rather than shrink, our visions of what is possible. 

Invest in yourself! Fight the empire. Save the universe. (EA)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)

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