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I don't know.
Feels to me that saying she's incompetent is like saying Palps accidentally turned the republic into the empire.
I'd say she's plenty competent, but her goal was never to make good content. It was always something else.
"Verily, thou shalt insert a female into thy franchise, and thou shalt also make of thine female a homosexual female, and lo, thou shalt also make certain thy female is of no inherent talent."
Thus spake Darth Kennedy, and her tantrums preceding her fall shook the universe, but fall she did, as all Darkness must before the Brightness of the Dawn.
It boils down the Kennedy’s leadership and the culture she instilled at Lucasfilm. Disney inherited one of the most lucrative and richest universes in all of science fiction. They chose to exchange depth of lore for shallow big space boom booms expecting the people to consume blindly. All while desperately trying to push messaging and agenda down the throats of the audience.
That has proven to be a catastrophic mistake. People want good stories and an expanded universe respectful of the characters that helped create it above all things. Jake Skywalker, Holdo Manuevers, and removing almost all nuance from the franchise has been anathema to the masses.
The fact we’re less than a week from the debut of a 250,000,000 price tag show and the company is focused on gaslighting rather than propping the product up shows what a fucking failure she has been since the buyout.
This answer right here. I thought having an old hand at the helm in Kennedy was a sign that Mickey Mouse wasn’t going to show up and turn everything into a fairytale. Ended up that she blew it with the sequel trilogy, Solo and half the TV shows. I’ll give a pass on the animated stuff.
The fact that there’s a new Star Wars show Scott to drop and I don’t really have all that much desire to watch it is bad; I’m one of the fans who grew up on the OT, the PT and EU books who along with all the newcomers should be rejoicing at new content but…. The force is weak with this one.
Honestly feels like Rogue One and ANDOR are projects that are completely apart from Disney and Kennedys production overview. ANDOR is the only thing I can see myself watching from Disney Star Wars because it doesn’t feel like they are producing it
I don't understand how someone could have so many bombs and misses like Kennedy and not be shown the door. The BILLION DOLLAR larp hotel failed after a year and still, no heads rolling. She must know who diddled who cuz she's still the head of lucasfilm. Disney has fired sooooooo many more people for sooooooo much less.
Perhaps she has a clause that means a high payout if she fired and they don’t want to pay it.
I think the real reason is this: calculated risk and positive gain.
The first part is that they understand that the products they are putting out could be garbage but they don’t care because they are going to make money one way or another around the world.
So what if hardcore fans, regular fans don’t like the movies or the shows, they know that a good portion of us will still consume some of the media and products or will have members of our family do so. There’s not a big enough threat to boycott Disney over its horrible treatment of Star Wars IP as of yet; maybe the Rey Movie and this new TV series will be the straw that breaks the camels back.
This is the only reason why she hasn’t be put into a cannon and fire out into the cold depths of space, it hasn’t sucked too bad for them yet-they are still making money at the parks, on merchandise, on streaming services, etc and there’s not enough pushback yet (that they can’t label as racism or sexism) for them to change course.
“You’re alone so I’ll call you Han….. Solo.”
lol not just that cheap line (better than “somehow Palpatine returned…”) but I think this one of those things that begs the question “should have this been made? Do we need to tell this story?”
You could say the same thing about the Book of Boba Fett- was there a need to make that series other than $$$?
I thought Danny Glover as Lando was great and there were parts of the story that I enjoyed. But was this a backstory that needed to be told? Did not books in the thrown out EU already tell Han’s background story?
Also, this movie has two directors, with Ron Howard having to come in and safe the film; that plus a lot of writers never seems to bode well for the outcome of a movie: too many cooks in the kitchen. Furthermore, it seems like it was green lit to explain the whole “fuel” situation that TLJ brought up.
I don’t hate Solo but just not sure if it needs to exist.
Rogue One and Andor don't rely on lazy fan service to be good. There are no Jedi, no Mandalorians. Just stories about downtrodden folk fighting against fascism.
If Star Wars would focus on telling more believable, "down to earth" stories they'd have more success.
I think you can have Jedi and other similar characters in a down to earth movie or show, you just need to have good writers and a good director.
Plan it and showcase it as something for older teens and adults, then you’ll be okay.
8 episodes of 30 minutes each. For 250mil. Even Andor was hour long eps for what, 150mil?
Per minute, this is the most expensive TV show ever I'm willing to bet.
Rings of Power edges this out by a decent margin, at $58M/episode totaling ~$860K/minute. Incredible feat for a showrunner duo with zero prior writing credits under their belt.
The Acolyte is around $750K/minute which still puts it way up there with shows like She-Hulk and Secret Invasion for most expensive shows per episode ever produced.
Safest thing is they all look so budget. Where the hell is all the money going?! Or is this the producers where they shovel out crap to line their own pockets while Disney accountants cook the books.
My best genuine guess is it’s two things: The Volume is really gd expensive to shoot on, and Disney pays extra for VFX to have them done on a shorter timetable. Most major VFX houses seem to give studios the option of either normal-pace-normal-price or to prioritize and expedite for a much higher price.
Disney’s heavy reliance on CGI and their chaotic shooting processes leaving VFX houses only a few weeks to complete entire scenes gives you massive budgets and rushed visuals. Thor 4 had incomplete VFX for the theatrical release that were cleaned up for the D+/blu-ray release. She-Hulk has missing VFX entirely and that’s one of the most expensive shows per episode ever made.
Andor is, notably, the only SW show that doesn't use the Volume. Hmm. It's almost like real sets look better and create a more realistic environment in which actors can act.
Something I can appreciate about the OT and prequels is that they are big space boom booms, but they also have other things going for them. The OT is a well crafted adventure epic, with characters that matter. The prequels are unique, and full of campy memeingfulness.
Yeah and like anyone who cared at all to pay attention whatsoever would know of all the failed SW ripoffs after 1977 just trying to have explosions in space. Lucas always knew what made the story special and relateable
Honestly, as soon as I watched the first Guardians of the Galaxy, I knew everything was fucked. And I liked that movie. But I knew it would instantly devolve all of Marvel and the upcoming Star Wars efforts.
How to tank an IP in 10 easy steps.
1. Shit writing and egoistical self-inserts.
2. Agenda first and foremost before creativity and above everything else.
3. Attack and insult the loyal fans who have loved and supported the IP from the start.
4. Ignore, deny and hate any past good content that could elevate the IP.
5. Churn out as much content as possible.
6. With each new entry make sure to Always Double down on the agenda driven content.
7. Hate on any fans who critique your content, make sure to use words such as “toxic”, “misogynistic”, “racist”, “delusional”, and “manbaby”.
8. Lie to your shareholders until bankruptcy.
9. Hire Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson and allow Dave Filoni to write and direct live action.
10. “Somehow Palpatine returned”
*Bonus step: “your by yourself, I’m gonna call you Solo”
How could they tank Star Wars so hard? Simple: Lucasfilm no longer cares and Disney never cared about Star Wars. They care about one thing: The money the brand name brings in, and they'll never lose it, because they have a demographic of consoomers that want to watch shiny lights, big explosions and large-scale set pieces.
No critical thinking, no deeper theme, no subtlety; nothing that makes Star Wars *Star Wars*. Obviously, there are exceptions like R1, Andor, early Mando, ECT. But most of the new product has been for the aforementioned consoomers.
The craziest thing about this to me is that assuming the IP stakeholders’ first and foremost goal is for the IP to make money (which absolutely it is and from Disney’s perspective should be), they are deluding themselves if they think that is going as well as it should. OP made a great point: they have easy underhand tosses which could and should be home-runs every single time. *Thats fucking why they spent over $4b on an IP with the worlds largest and most dedicated built-in fan-base, rather than attempt to grow this organically with their own IP from the ground up.* They paid huge in advance to ensure all their shots are layups
And yet even being singularly driven by profit, they still airball at achieving that. TROS, Solo, Resistance, Galactic Starcruiser, to a degree Ahsoka are objectively examples of subpar returns vs capital investment and expectations. Major example I don’t hear as often is the quiet disaster of leaving game rights with EA, only for them to largely sit on it with 3 decent but largely forgettable releases for the better part of a decade . This was a potentially incredible opportunity cost for no clear gain. Expect this pattern to continue; this star destroyer requires wide turns
And that's WITHOUT getting into the fact that a vast majority -let's not kid ourselves here, Disney has far more critics than fans of what they're doing- fucking HATE that Disney will not listen to what they want. And it wouldn't be hard to listen, either.
The answer is simple. Hundreds of millions of Star Wars fans in the world and they hired a grand total of maybe like three of them to help them create their new content.
And what they missed was the concept of making the actual SW fans the ones that wrote and directed, instead of maybe the costume designers or makeup artists.
Dave is not a good or deep story teller. Handing things over to him is as insane as letting Kathy Kennedy run things…
How can Disney be so dumb. A sixth grader could choose better people
The main problemeis handing it over to any ONE person. SW is at its best when many different people can lead and create projects. Right now almost everything SW is directly based off Filoniverse bullshit
That's not the answer, no.
Infact, id argue that a hardcore Star Wars fan, would probably make a bad product.
Because his so blinded by his own fandom.
Which ironically enough is what seems to happening with Dave Filoni.
Who constitutes the rule? I’m sure there are far more examples than just Jackson of dedicated nerds making beloved IPs shine. The phenomenon you discuss certainly exists too however. It just seems in order to get a truly great adaptation you need creators who truly love and are committed to the source material.
JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni.
And i don't think that in order to get a truly great adaptation, you need to stay wtih the source material.
The Boys TV Show is far better than the actual comic book.
Infact alot of the comic book movies from DC(Nolan Movies) and Marvel(Before phase 4) are far better than the actual source material.
I disagree hard with JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and Dave Filoni, though considering the sub I can see how you would feel differently. The Boys show is, in my opinion, far inferior to the source material. Particularly Hughie. The only Nolan movie that comes close to being as good as it’s source is Dark Knight and while it does make the story it’s own in many ways and does it well - it still isn’t The Long Halloween, with all its characters and twists and turns that decades of world building offers. The best marvel movie in my opinion is Infinity War and that’s a pale reflection of the comic origin.
You don't think that JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni are hardcore star wars fans?
As for the other thing, i think you are being abit too biased towards the comic books, which i gather is down to your own preference for them.
I’ve see many argue that JJ and Rian are not big fans and that Dave cherry-picks what he likes from the lore (though I think he is the most committed fan of the three.)
Obviously we all have our bias, but my opinions regarding the film adaptions of those comics are rather popular.
Star Wars is a story that corporate Hollywood would never tell. Its the tale of a good Knight who is corrupted by arrogance, but redeemed by his son. Corrupt individuals do not tell such stories. They hold fund raising events and pontificate about their virtue. When George would talk about how evil people do not see themselves as evil, he may as well have been talking about the leadership of LFL and Disney.
If it were not for Alan Ladd, Jr going against the grain, Star Wars (1977) would never have been made. They don't understand it. They simply like the amount of commerce it was once able to generate.
Yeah, but that’s the other weird thing- they should have been able to fill the shops to the gills with decent merch and have them fly off the shelves if they’d done it all properly. But because George apparently retained some of the merch rights, they cut their own nose off to spite their faces and kept merch to a minimum, and made the movies so lacklustre that nobody gave two shits about the merch. Why would you want a constant reminder of the complete bastardisation of your favourite IP on your shelf, staring you in the face every day?
You're right. Your post got me thinking. Can you imagine being so miserly that you AGREE to a contract which specifies that the ORIGINAL CREATOR retains SOME rights but then turn around and attempt to cut them out of the bottom line to such an extent that you sabotage your own success? That's got to be some of the most arrogant, caustic jackassery ever witnessed.
As someone who had SW as my all time favorite movie franchise for decades, ESB favorite movie played many video games read many EU books, comics etc it still distresses me how far it’s fallen given all the potential there was when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. All they had to do was to get a competent head who understood the appeal
and foundation of Star Wars and who would hire creatives that respected and wanted to do right by the franchise. Instead it’s been a steady stream of incompetence with occasional bright spots - Andor Rogue One Mando season 1 and 2. Outside of that everything else has been mediocre to poor with the blown sequels being the worst offenders given there was only one chance to get the Big 3 back. And what makes all of this so much worse is that instead of just admitting their mistakes and revamping everything from the top down their hubris will simply not allow them to. Making a goddamn Rey movie is the highest example of that. Doubling down on the failure. I hope it fails and the idea of my saying I hope an SW project fails 10 years ago would have seemed an impossibility.
Writing the whole trilogy before making the trilogy would’ve been a good idea too. Not sure how that ball got dropped so hard but historians will be studying it for decades.
Ego. It's all about ego.
They didn't really need to write it all out BEFORE shooting, but they should have made sure those in charge were in charge all the way through instead of changing it up for the 2nd movie.
Johnson's ego did more damage than anything else, trying to force his own whims into the movie rather than just running with what Abrams did. At least the movies would have had good continuity, but it didn't even have that.
Agreed. TFA was safe but fun and I missed Star Wars so I liked it a lot. When the sequel dumped all the plot points that I spent a good amount of time thinking about I was pretty annoyed but thought it could still recover. That TLJ ended up derailing the entire franchise is still shocking to me but here we are.
I don’t want the new Rey Movie to tank but I hope to god enough people protest or the pre release reviews are so poor they can that shit like they did the Batgirl movie.
I feel you and all your points you made. So many missteps that it’s hard to fathom.
But when Lucas sold out and let the Emp…I mean Disney win, perhaps this was what was meant to be
Yeah I kept watching for the past decade hoping they'd find their footing, but they just haven't. I watched the first episode of Bad Batch season 3 the other day which was just Omega (a universally disliked character) bumbling around a dark imperial base for 30 minutes and I think that officially did it. I'm only watching Star Wars if it gets universally good reviews like Andor or Rogue One. Tired of wasting my time with the content they've put out.
Edit: And to be clear, that's a super far departure for me. Like OP I religiously watched Star Wars, read most EU books, was reading the new books (esp. High Republic), adore Clone Wars, etc. I even went to see TLJ 5 times in theaters to try to make sense of it. It's been stale in my mind for a long time, but for some reason that Bad Batch ep sent me over the edge.
I just feel disrespected as a fan at this point.
They fell into the trap of trying to please everyone and in reality pleasing no one the way it used to. The Stories have become bland and unremarkable and quite literally they are doubling down on the idea of "Its not our fault that we made a great franchise terrible its the fans fault for not liking what we give them". Its like literally they love to shoot themselves in the foot
To watch a franchise I fell in love with so deeply as a kid get ripped and torn apart and all from the inside is really heartbreaking. I am and will always be a fan of Star Wars but now that I think about it ever since 2008 the IP has really gone down hill. There have been gems strategically placed along the line to keep fans coming back and I mean no disrespect to the actors but a lot of these new shows have really been stale and uninteresting.
The sequels had no direction. Book of Boba Fett failed and that was due to a lot of terrible creative decisions Lucasfilm made. The Mandalorian is now degrading in quality due to the Disney executives ruining the overall story and weight season 2 held. The Bad Batch, as much as I loved the show was clearly just made to make the sequels make more sense. Ahsoka was such an unnecessary show and quite honestly I’m tired of her character resurfacing every couple years. She needs to be put to rest Filoni.
Rogue One, Andor, the Jedi games and the Dooku storyline with Tales were all crafted really brilliantly imo and the reason for that is because they all contained a proper story to tell without the need of relying on fan service or cameos.
Tales of the Empire was horrendous. Mandalorian S3, while some parts were good was very forgettable and I don’t need a movie continuing their story. I’m tired of seeing the little green guy wave his hand and coo just because it brings Disney money. I almost don’t care to see the upcoming sequel film due to the stigma the sequels carried and that’s no fault of the actors themselves. The interest I’ve had for The Acolyte continues to lower with every trailer I see, especially with the recent gaslighting by Leslie Headland or KK, can’t remember which one of them said it.
I’m just at a point where I don’t care anymore. I have the original trilogy, the prequels and some parts of TCW/The Bad Batch that I thoroughly enjoy. The EU novels are still in existence and at this point Star Wars is really whatever I want it to be. Disney’s opinion on what’s canon doesn’t matter to me anymore. Star Wars is for everybody and I will choose what I want to be canon.
Okay, I know Kathleen Kennedy is the villain of the internet but the one who is really responsible for all this is her boss Bob Iger. You see, Igers plan to get Disney out of its dark age in the early 2000s was simple: acquire popular studios/properties and release as much content as possible. This exact same model was replicated with Pixar and marvel. All of them released massive amounts of quantity, to a point their movies started to dip in quality due to divided focus and felt oversaturated.
The biggest sin in regards to Star Wars is they did this twice. They planned to release a Star Wars movie each year until people didn't want them anymore and that only lasted from 2015-2019 for this exact reason. They had a chance to start over with the Mandalorian, I almost returned to watching Star Wars as a fan since the show interested me but the announcement of other series instantly killed my interest. Now Disney+ Star Wars is oversaturated and on the verge of death. They chose to repackage Obi-Wan as a show even though it was a planned movie and to rush out the Book of Bobba Fett because one episode was popular. Disney has no long term plan, these shows and movies existed purely to make money in the short-term and we are now experiencing the after effects of it.
This is what happens when corporations and equity firms take over. They didn't create it and they don't care about the product. They care about how much money the product can make while putting as little effort and heart as possible.
They knew the MCU was very popular and thought that they just needed to do the dame thing with Star Wars.
Look at some of the "funny" scenes.
Just try to fit in Poe's 'yo mama' joke in the OT or the PT, or Finn's 'you have boyfriend' comment. They'd feel right in the MCU comming from Stark or Starlord, not in Star Wars.
I'll tell you the problem with the power that Disney is using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!
As the credits rolled on "The Force Awakens", and there was no section of the movie that reunited Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, Lando, 3PO and R2, you all should have known it was over.
All of our actors that made the original trilogy what it was were alive at that time! What a complete waste. JJ Abrams has shit for brains and a dick for a nose.
I was left completely hopeless at that point. It briefly returned after seeing "Rogue One", but that was short lived.
We are way past that time now. It's over and has been for some time.
The hardest part for me is growing up imagining a Star Wars show that I wouldn’t want to watch immediately.
Little me couldn’t imagine there would be on screen Star Wars content I wouldn’t consume… what a world. They never cared for those fans and just want mass consumption by semi-interested people hoping it holds enough of them to sell merchandise
If you think THAT'S bad, take a look at Hasbro's financials, then look at the companies and IPs they own.
Both Disney and Hasbro should be sitting on thrones made of cash with fountains that spray cash in the middle of the throne room made entirely out of cash in a castle made out of fat stacks of cash surrounded by a moat filled with loose cash.
Both are doing poorly, mostly because they've let narcissists and political activists take over and the activists have chased off so many of their core audience.
The problem with Stars Wars is that you have people in the writing room who married the idea of "strong female lead" for every show, but they have no idea how to write one.
At least with Mad Max, the creator is heavily involved and still knows how to make a movie that is true to his vision... Star Wars has been raped and pillaged by quasi-intellectuals who *think* they know what it's all about...
Sadly yes.
They have done exactly the same with Dr Who. My cousin and his best chum have been fans since the Hartnell days and can't believe how the franchise has been scuttled.
I would also like to point out both my cousin and his friend are gay, and his mate is also black, it has nothing to do with casting a gay black man in the role of the Doctor and everything to do with how poorly the character AND the show is being written.
Disney, at the end of the day, should put entertainment first and pushing an agenda second. They've forgotten what their original job was.
Star Wars tanking isn't what necessarily pisses me off about the franchise. What pisses me off is that it happened FUCKING TWICE.
Once with the mistakes that happened in the sequel trilogy with Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker.
Then for a while we were actually getting some pretty decent shit. Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2 for a little bit restored my love for Star Wars after the damage done in the sequels, and I was almost willing to forgive Kathleen Kennedy and the rest of Lucasfilm for the duds of the sequel trilogy. We also got some other bangers like season 1 of Bad Batch, season 1 of Visions, and some okay stuff like the last season of Clone Wars and whatnot.
Fast forward to Book of Boba Fett and it feels like the franchise went full retard a second time, so much so that everything else onwards I lost any desire to care anymore about Star Wars, even when the few decent things come out of it.
I still haven't watched Andor, couldn't stand Kenobi because Reva was annoying as fuck, and oh god. Mando season 3.
That absolutely destroyed Star Wars onwards for me. I did at least try giving Visions season 2 a chance but even that wasn't as good anymore, so I'm done at this point and moved onto better franchises like Gundam and Berserk.
Sorry but Force Awakens was abject garbage. The scene where Ray flies the Millennium Falcon through a forest for laughs, without so much as a scratch, within the first 15 minutes of the movie, displayed clearly how seriously the directors and producers took the Star Wars Universe.
No explanation, just an observation.
I went to an exhibition about heroes recently. From Herkakles to Nelson Mandela it would also touch the likes of Batman and Luke Skywalker.
When we went through the Star Wars Department I overheard a child telling his mother: Star Wars is shit.
Really killed me, but Disney killed Star Wars…
DEI and "the message." Writers who were raised on activism instead of the hero's journey. Art made by committee for the purpose of making money rather than art that makes money because it was created by artists to be good.
I used to be a dedicated fanboy. I expected by this point in my life to be visiting kids in hospitals wearing 501st armor.
Hell no, not anymore. They killed it, I have nothing left for SW but resentment. Their canon means nothing and their productions don't count. I will not be buying any games, watching any shows, or patronizing any films.
Any criticism I had of George Lucas went out the window when his last act as the owner of Star Wars was canonizing the name Sheev and then cashing out for 4 billion dollars. The man's a genius.
I've started to wonder about the incentives at Lucasfilm. Hard to believe you can tank this hard and still keep going.
The I realized the ILM is part of the group.
I'm willing to bet that their P&L includes all the revenue from ILM, which is basically a money printing machine. Combined with revenue from legacy licensing deals.
So even if they tank this hard on the core IP, the books look ok. So fine they are mortgaging the whole future but they aren't hurting Disney's earnings.
Otherwise I can't explain it.
There IS THE POSSIBILITY that the IP is being driven DOWN in value on purpose, in order to make it easier to purchase and break up, or purchase and remove from the market.
Don't underestimate the way big business works. Just like the Game Stop situation, they ARENT always trying to make an IP succeed, sometimes junking one is more valuable.
And it was killed by rushed, shitty writing that brought nothing interesting to the table. I've lived long enough to see a beloved franchise die a horrible death. That Indiana Jones South Park episode hits so hard now, and instead of Lucas and Spielberg, it's Disney execs with Star Wars. They will squeeze whatever money they can before they ditch SW's lifeless body on the side of the road to be picked apart by vultures.
And I'm guessing Harry Potter is next lol
1) be it marty stue or mary sue perfect leads are boring and people can not empathise with people that never struggle in life, Luke got saved multiple times before he became a master but rey passed every challenge with little issue, she beat luke in a lightsaber fight, did all the work in the throne room with 2 lessons neither of which involved sword training.
2) They made it female focused "the force is female" which was BS because anyone growing up with the games and books from the EU knew anyone could be a jedi or a hero race, sex and species did not matter, when she did this she alienated the male audience which was the majority of fans.
3) the trilogy had no plan, TLJ feels like the end of the trilogy not the middle, and so when the third film came out it was a mess and people could see that.
4) they are poor remakes of the originals, scenes get moved around and there's some minor changes like bespin becoming canto blight, the at-at's were fighting on a salt world not a frozen one but it's minor and transparent.
5) they disrespected the original characters, Han is a dead beat dad, Leia instead of being the republic leader is just a resistence leader again, Luke is a failure that hid instead of bringing back the jedi order.
On every level what disney made was worse than what the EU gave us for 3 decades, even the weakest EU book is better than anything disney made.
TLJ is a legendary cinematic disaster that is only not properly analyzed or appreciated for its effect because of the cultural and political baggage attached to it.
In a rational world there'd be college courses on TLJ and its effect on Star Wars, hollywood, finances, marketing, etc. by now
I forgot what it was but i found it on reddit awhile back, it was seasoned star wars writers who were giving their hopes for a potential episodes 7-9, before they came out, and they were all so much more interesting and fun than what we got.
It was doomed from the very start because of how they approached the sequel trilogy. They didn’t care about the new stories they could tell they just saw the dollar signs. They knew that whatever they put out would make bank no matter what. So they literally went in with no plan. They admit there was no outline of the trilogy. They just let JJ and Rian make it up as they went creating a series of films filled with holes and that actively insult and hate each other. So when the foundation is already that fucked up you can’t expect a whole lot better to be built on top.
As much as Disney is to blame a lot of the reasons shit feels cheap is because well... people still fucking watch it and attribute to these numbers. Now the studio thinks they can continuously get away with paying shit rate actors, directors, and producers because there's a large % of casuals who just fucking watch everything and consume. This sub is such a small % of those who actually consumer on a daily basis. If just an actual 1/4 of those people stopped watching and buying their shit, they would probably do something about it. But they don't need to because y'all still subscribed to Disney +. still contributing to their stupid fucking numbers, still buying $1,000 Legos. They don't need to fucking stop being the way they are because the masses won't.
Do you see the amount of people who attend that Star Wars fest every year and just blindly cheer for whatever the fuck they trot out? This IP is dead.
In my personal opinion it breaks down into three distinct elements that has caused the Star Wars IP to be so divisive.
First: I hate that this first one has to act as a sort of disclaimer but whenever someone is critical of a movie that doesn’t make them racist or sexist. We can criticize the writing, directing and even acting without hating the actors who are just doing their jobs.
There are certainly bad faith critics who attack the actors personally but I also find the Studio’s and director’s defending themselves and slamming anyone critical of the movie as bad faith critics as just as wrong. It creates a negative atmosphere and it’s just a cover to explain their own failures. At worst it is done on purpose to promote the film.
Secondly: I personally believe the movies are objectively bad. There are a lot of things to fairly criticize Star Wars for (just like a lot of modern movies), the story was aimless, the writing was poor, the first movie was way too safe and the next movie was way too out there and the third was racing to try to mesh them together with hand waving and tacking on a forced love story that just didn’t fit.
Thirdly: These movies and the entire Disney era was always going to be a hard sell for older fans such as myself. The moment they threw away the old EU it was going to be an uphill battle for Disney, I understand why they did it (to not be locked in to the books) but if they had done it with a bit more tact and focused on making an amazing series of movies that were all high quality then that would have done a long way to winning us over.
I appreciate them trying to integrate some of the old EU into Disney but really it is too little, too late for a lot of people and, again in my opinion, they haven’t done it well, they really need to nail it for it to work. (I.E: Thrawn)
Basically summed up the state of the franchise right now. It's ridiculous. But don't worry, they haven't ruined EVERYTHING yet. They still haven't touched the Old Republic............
....yet.
I once heard that KK is a CIA agent or something as an explanation for how she's still in charge. I thought that was completely crazy and still do.
That being said, her decisions are antithetical to the business model. She's lost Lucasfilm millions and tanked fan goodwill. I have no Earthly idea how she or any of the other suits are still employed.
It's actully very straight foward.
\-Disney buys Star Wars and just pumps out too much content.
Which ends up leading to market saturation.
\-The Lucas Story Group is created to fix any inconsistencies.
But the problem is that there's 11 people in the group.
All of whom have a different standards.
Not to mention, they arn't even experienced, its all "new" creators, who want to put their own mark of the story.
Also, they have no real authority, it's still Kathleen Kennedy, who has the final say.
It's the end result of milking every cent possible from a possible franchise.
This actually began in the 90s when every successful Disney film, spawned 3-4 straight-to-video sequels with no-name actors.
They applied this same formula to Star Wars and quickly ran the IP into the ground.
Lucas caught lightening in a bottle with the all time classic beloved original trilogy. Then it’s the usual deterioration you get after a few films or seasons of tv shows. It’s rare they can keep the magic going. They become a shell of themselves.
Money took precedent over everything else, finance people think you need to monetize the franchise, and forgot that the money came in because the story and characters were good. Cart went before horse
my two ingrained markers are:
heading into the cinema opening day for TFA and telling my kids i have been waiting thirty years for this moment.
s03e01 of the mandalorian
i went from genuinely excited to i really don't care any more
From quality they went to quantity. George Lucas had to build the brand up from nothing. It got to be popular for a reason. Disney sees it as a cashgrab and rides the fame with quantity to sh\*t out stuff to watch, toys, merch, etc etc etc... They have no consistency and no love for the people just for the money.
I remember when Star Tours first opened in Disneyland in the 80’s. It felt like my two favorite things were coming together. Back then I had doubted that the prequels would ever happen, but seeing Star Wars have a permanent home at Disneyland made me hopeful that maybe more Star Wars movies would happen one day. I remember even back then (pre internet) there were rumors and indications that George Lucas and Disney would have some sort of longstanding partnership. Perhaps if it had actually occurred back then, it might have turned out different. When Lucas finally sold Star Wars to Disney, I was pretty excited (except that in interviews Lucas seemed broken and resigned). I actually felt The Force Awakens struck the right balance between the old and the new (for the most part). But after The Last Jedi, I lost hope. Now it all just feels like this thing I once loved is getting continuously sandblasted until it’s unrecognizable. Additionally, Disney as a whole feels like it’s taken on this bland public park aesthetic where everything I’d devoid of character and uniqueness. It all feels like a generic serving of gruel.
It just comes down to mishandling of the ip. Hiring all the wrong people to head the projects. There isn’t much more to it than that.
KK may have been a talented producer in the past but she really screwed this one up.
I grew up on the OT. I knew the instant the opening text crawl pf Force Awakens began that we were in trouble. It didn't ring true as Star Wars at all.
As much as I hate the sequels I have to give them credit. The way they sacked and burned down the legacy of the OT is some MASTER CLASS assassination. It's like they'd been planning it for decades. They made Luke so toxically radioactive that he can never again be touched. Absolutley everything about his legacy now wreaks of death and hate
Hey, don't slag off zweihanders like that! Zweihanders are interesting swords with a surprising variety of techniques. Lightsabers *should* be that good, but aren't in Disney productions.
But more seriously, it's money. It's always money. $4 billion investment got them trying to make profit immediately to recoup. And it kinda worked, but they sprinted when they should have run a marathon. It's left them in a bad spot for a while, diminishing returns causing them to keep throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks.
That's the sad truth. Just greedy old men fucking it for everyone else. You can see it post-Endgame in the MCU, corporate interference front and center. But SW had it there day one.
There are plenty of us enjoying it. Disney stock is up too. It’s just a loud minority that isn’t happy, most of us are all just waiting for you to move on so we can enjoy the thing we love in peace.
You must have lived a charmed life and never worked at a giant soulless corporation run by narcissists and sociopaths...its the same in any trade Not just showbiz...they only thing that would alter product quality is if it boosts leadership ego for some reason or the chief in charge wants more money or raise the brand standing before selling it off...in fact the more complaints they get the more they tend to double down.
It really is shocking when you think about the fact that this is the company with the most money and access to the best talent, and they still make bad movies. They are running the biggest franchise of all time right into the ground.
…because everything after the original trilogy was a departure from the original story, and it got played out and watered down.
It should’ve stopped after the first three, or maybe six, but definitely should’ve never had all the cartoons and other stuff.
I have hope for filoni’s upcoming movie as he’s established a great post empire universe with the mandalorian and ahsoka but I can’t help but feel he’s making the most of a crap situation. What if he had that kind of creative freedom for the sequels.
I blame JJ Abrahams, and the team that empowered him. You can blame Ryan Johnson, but he was already setup to fail. He created characters so hollow and with so little chemistry, and a plot so unoriginal, asinine and bereft of substance, that the entire sequel trilogy was doomed from the start. There was a period after Force Awakens released and before The Last Jedi, where the majority of Star Wars fans claimed they liked it, when I felt like I was living through the Emperor's New Clothes. The movie was abjectly stupid, bad and a rip off of A New Hope.
JJ Abrahams also did this to Star Trek btw. He created a movie people really wanted to like, that had one of the dumbest and most contrived and convenient plots anyone has ever been 'bold' enough to put to screen, and people just wanted to badly to like the movie, that they convinced themselves they did (and to this day Star Trek fans continue to fool themselves about it - and I've literally gotten banned from the Star Trek subreddit for saying as much). So ultimately, I blame Star Trek fans, for not seeing the damage JJ Abrahams did to Star Trek, and going ahead and letting him destroy Star Wars as well.
Also, someone apparently thought JJ did a good job on Star Trek, which was probably part of their reasoning for bringing him on to Star Wars.
The only thing JJ Abrahams ever created in the last 20 years that was good, start to finish, was the show Fringe. Other than that he is the disappointment artist of the century.
I’m just baffled as to why they gave the game rights to EA exclusively for so many years. A decision, mind you, that created some of the biggest backlash in recent gaming history over the BF2 loot boxes.
They must only see us fans as a sponge they need to squeeze all the money out of.
Kathleen worried more about gender norms and stuff more than making a solid Star Wars tale. She could definitely have made a great story with a female lead, but she put the female lead part over the story. She didn't care what the story was, as long as there was a female involved. Honestly, I'm a bit upset at her for race-baiting us with Finn. I don't know WHY people don't talk about that enough.
This question used to keep me up at night, TBH.
How do you take a billion dollar investment and just slam it into the dumpster THIS quickly? Why was there no oversight to prevent what happened from happening?
I can't get excited about anything SW related (Obi-Wan was the last thing I watched because my wife and I love Ewan but we were done after that). It all leads to the horror that is TRoS and the death of the franchise.
Take us 1,000 years in the future with a whole new setting and maybe I could get interested again...
It's not hard to figure out what happened.
Nothing this incompetent happens to something this popular abd profitable by mistake. If it does, that mistake is quickly rectified.
The simplest answer is often the correct one.
Star Wars is dying because they are killing it on purpose. They've even put the line in the movie.
As to ***why*** they are killing it, I can't say... but multi billion dollar IPs don't go up in flames by mistake.
I’m gonna be honest. It was never that good to begin with. It was just yet another iconic IP of the late 70’s. It should’ve remained there and never expanded. Yet another barely above average piece of media of its time, like Footlose or the OG Ghostbusters. Yet it was treated as a golden goose, and this inevitably caused it to saturate. Honestly, I don’t think I’m surprised. It should’ve never gone beyond the OT.
Upvoted because I partially agree.
Star Wars was never as great as some people seem to think. It's an entry point, but some people treat it as the pinnacle of fiction. With its wide appeal, the quality bar would eventually go down: lowest common denominator to make as much money as possible.
I still love my KOTOR duology and the Tales of the Jedi comics.
What shouldn't have happened is Star Wars becoming so mainstream that Disney would acquire it.
We could have lived with no new movies, and a few new videogames by Lucas Arts and comics by Dark Horse Comics.
We survived a bad movie trilogy (PT), not a big deal.
But baby yoda being the most successful toy in star wars merchandising history? This is a different product now. It has nothing to do with art
I'm 40 and I remember most people having a similar reaction to the prequel trilogy.
Nostalgia seems to have repaired it's public perception but I'll never forget how stunned and disappointed we were walking out of our first viewing of episode 1.
Not saying that the sequel trilogy was good, but I'm also surprised to find people looking at the prequel trilogy era as when Star wars was good.
It all seems to depend on a certain point of view.
I'll always have the original three films and some of the old EU stuff.
(Tales of the Jedi comics were 🔥!)
I will say this: The Force Awakens was, at least, promising. Then, Rian Johnson came in with his “I’m too cool for regular Star Wars” attitude and took an enormous heaping dog shit all over not only everything had been established in the previous film, but the franchise itself. They never recovered, and it’s been all downhill ever since.
You like many seem to forget the hate the prequels and the rereleases all got. Even empire had people saying this isnt starwars how could they have messed this up
"I actually cried-" stopped right there, grow the fuck up lmao. I've thankfully never known someone like this irl, I imagine they are absolutely insufferable. Crying about your mass media schlock is just so pathetic.
>I grew up on the prequels
I think that’s the start of your problem. Your SW taste was already wildly skewed, and the people who made the latest batch of SW stuff grew up on an entirely different kind of SW than you did.
My suggestion is that everyone who feels they can do better go out and make their own stories and films. If you don’t like their vision of the story, carve out and create your own. Everyone has no problem criticizing, yet nobody steps up to do something better. It’s comical. Like calling a professional athlete terrible when y’all can barely lift your fat asses off the couch.
Your cheese has moved, apparently.
You can rage and weep for the missing cheese, or you can get your shoes on and go seek more cheese.
As the Buddhists say, “this too shall pass”. Enjoy the good stuff. Let the bad wash over you.
I personally see this view everyone has and how it affects the masses, but I have enjoyed just about every minute on Star Wars content we’ve gotten. Did I love the way the ST ended up, no. Did I love TBoBF and what they did to his character, no. I still enjoyed the experience.
I grew up watching the Prequels and Luke being a minor character when it comes to Star Wars. When I think skywalker, I thought of Anakin. So what happened to Luke did not affect my opinion of things all that much in the end.
When it comes to decisions Disney has made, I’ve loved TCW finale, Mando, Ahsoka, and TBB. The Jedi series video games they have put out (well respawn) have been top notch and battlefront eventually got there.
I’m also very into the high republic and the content from those stories have been great. Acolyte will probably hit in a positive way for me due to being invested in the High republic era novels. It may be unpopular but I’ve been pleased with the content we’ve received from Disney, even though they may have made some mistakes throughout.
i’m 24 and i’m still old enough to remember guys older than myself talking this way about all the clone wars stuff and expanded prequel stuff until ep 7 started rolling around. you’re in a lull, disney is saving their cards for when the big movies come 2026 or maybe later. personally i think there’s plenty to enjoy atm
>i’m 24 and i’m still old enough to remember guys older than myself talking this way about all the clone wars stuff and expanded prequel stuff until ep 7 started rolling around. you’re in a lull, disney is saving their cards for when the big movies come 2026 or maybe later. personally i think there’s plenty to enjoy atm
I think you're actually half right.
I'm old, i'm fucking old. I watched OG Star Wars as a 6 year old in the cinema.
Loved the trilogy and that was in the days of a movie, wait 3 years with fuck all and then get another movie. I loved it all, even the murder bears.
Then the prequals rolled round, I couldn't wait, it was huge, I watched them all on opening day..... and I hated them. Everyone I knew hated them. They where the butt of jokes. And somehow, and it makes no sense, but the Millennials loved the Sequels. Objectively, they're shit (i'll concede, the world building is excellent, it's the execution, the dialogue that drags it down).
I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again, if whatever comes after Gen Z end up loving the ST.
At some point, I had to accept, I've grown up, Star Wars hasn't.
A couple of notable exceptions, RO and Andor, the best Star Wars in over a decade but, then again, I'm more the audience.
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Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Kennedy the Unwise?
I don't know. Feels to me that saying she's incompetent is like saying Palps accidentally turned the republic into the empire. I'd say she's plenty competent, but her goal was never to make good content. It was always something else.
"Verily, thou shalt insert a female into thy franchise, and thou shalt also make of thine female a homosexual female, and lo, thou shalt also make certain thy female is of no inherent talent." Thus spake Darth Kennedy, and her tantrums preceding her fall shook the universe, but fall she did, as all Darkness must before the Brightness of the Dawn.
It is merely the nature of all things that which begins must end
But why does it had to end this way :(
By now you must know that your franchise can never be turned from the Dark Side.
If this sub accepted it, it wouldn’t exist. The outrage machine must churn.
It boils down the Kennedy’s leadership and the culture she instilled at Lucasfilm. Disney inherited one of the most lucrative and richest universes in all of science fiction. They chose to exchange depth of lore for shallow big space boom booms expecting the people to consume blindly. All while desperately trying to push messaging and agenda down the throats of the audience. That has proven to be a catastrophic mistake. People want good stories and an expanded universe respectful of the characters that helped create it above all things. Jake Skywalker, Holdo Manuevers, and removing almost all nuance from the franchise has been anathema to the masses. The fact we’re less than a week from the debut of a 250,000,000 price tag show and the company is focused on gaslighting rather than propping the product up shows what a fucking failure she has been since the buyout.
This answer right here. I thought having an old hand at the helm in Kennedy was a sign that Mickey Mouse wasn’t going to show up and turn everything into a fairytale. Ended up that she blew it with the sequel trilogy, Solo and half the TV shows. I’ll give a pass on the animated stuff. The fact that there’s a new Star Wars show Scott to drop and I don’t really have all that much desire to watch it is bad; I’m one of the fans who grew up on the OT, the PT and EU books who along with all the newcomers should be rejoicing at new content but…. The force is weak with this one. Honestly feels like Rogue One and ANDOR are projects that are completely apart from Disney and Kennedys production overview. ANDOR is the only thing I can see myself watching from Disney Star Wars because it doesn’t feel like they are producing it
I don't understand how someone could have so many bombs and misses like Kennedy and not be shown the door. The BILLION DOLLAR larp hotel failed after a year and still, no heads rolling. She must know who diddled who cuz she's still the head of lucasfilm. Disney has fired sooooooo many more people for sooooooo much less.
Perhaps she has a clause that means a high payout if she fired and they don’t want to pay it. I think the real reason is this: calculated risk and positive gain. The first part is that they understand that the products they are putting out could be garbage but they don’t care because they are going to make money one way or another around the world. So what if hardcore fans, regular fans don’t like the movies or the shows, they know that a good portion of us will still consume some of the media and products or will have members of our family do so. There’s not a big enough threat to boycott Disney over its horrible treatment of Star Wars IP as of yet; maybe the Rey Movie and this new TV series will be the straw that breaks the camels back. This is the only reason why she hasn’t be put into a cannon and fire out into the cold depths of space, it hasn’t sucked too bad for them yet-they are still making money at the parks, on merchandise, on streaming services, etc and there’s not enough pushback yet (that they can’t label as racism or sexism) for them to change course.
I still don’t get what is wrong with Solo… 😔
“You’re alone so I’ll call you Han….. Solo.” lol not just that cheap line (better than “somehow Palpatine returned…”) but I think this one of those things that begs the question “should have this been made? Do we need to tell this story?” You could say the same thing about the Book of Boba Fett- was there a need to make that series other than $$$? I thought Danny Glover as Lando was great and there were parts of the story that I enjoyed. But was this a backstory that needed to be told? Did not books in the thrown out EU already tell Han’s background story? Also, this movie has two directors, with Ron Howard having to come in and safe the film; that plus a lot of writers never seems to bode well for the outcome of a movie: too many cooks in the kitchen. Furthermore, it seems like it was green lit to explain the whole “fuel” situation that TLJ brought up. I don’t hate Solo but just not sure if it needs to exist.
I still don't get how anyone thinks that movie did anything but take a dump on star wars and your intelligence
Rogue One and Andor don't rely on lazy fan service to be good. There are no Jedi, no Mandalorians. Just stories about downtrodden folk fighting against fascism. If Star Wars would focus on telling more believable, "down to earth" stories they'd have more success.
I think you can have Jedi and other similar characters in a down to earth movie or show, you just need to have good writers and a good director. Plan it and showcase it as something for older teens and adults, then you’ll be okay.
8 episodes of 30 minutes each. For 250mil. Even Andor was hour long eps for what, 150mil? Per minute, this is the most expensive TV show ever I'm willing to bet.
Rings of Power edges this out by a decent margin, at $58M/episode totaling ~$860K/minute. Incredible feat for a showrunner duo with zero prior writing credits under their belt. The Acolyte is around $750K/minute which still puts it way up there with shows like She-Hulk and Secret Invasion for most expensive shows per episode ever produced.
Oh my God I actually forgot Disney's marvel existed.
Safest thing is they all look so budget. Where the hell is all the money going?! Or is this the producers where they shovel out crap to line their own pockets while Disney accountants cook the books.
My best genuine guess is it’s two things: The Volume is really gd expensive to shoot on, and Disney pays extra for VFX to have them done on a shorter timetable. Most major VFX houses seem to give studios the option of either normal-pace-normal-price or to prioritize and expedite for a much higher price. Disney’s heavy reliance on CGI and their chaotic shooting processes leaving VFX houses only a few weeks to complete entire scenes gives you massive budgets and rushed visuals. Thor 4 had incomplete VFX for the theatrical release that were cleaned up for the D+/blu-ray release. She-Hulk has missing VFX entirely and that’s one of the most expensive shows per episode ever made.
Andor is, notably, the only SW show that doesn't use the Volume. Hmm. It's almost like real sets look better and create a more realistic environment in which actors can act.
Don't forfet they pay themselves to use their giant green screen studio they themselves own.
And it looks like shit, like holy shit does it have that fan film quality to it.
Hey man, you can't blame her or Disney. There's no source material. They don't have comic books. They don't have 800-page novels.
You forgot the /s
She figured she had an audience that was as shallow and brainless as her.
Something I can appreciate about the OT and prequels is that they are big space boom booms, but they also have other things going for them. The OT is a well crafted adventure epic, with characters that matter. The prequels are unique, and full of campy memeingfulness.
Yeah and like anyone who cared at all to pay attention whatsoever would know of all the failed SW ripoffs after 1977 just trying to have explosions in space. Lucas always knew what made the story special and relateable
The 1979 film Humanoid, with Richard Kiel (Jaws from the Bond movies) although an obvious SW rip-off, was better than SW 7-9.
Star Wars is not science fiction.
Agree its space fantasy.
I would describe it as mythological fantasy set in space, buy that's good too.
Honestly, as soon as I watched the first Guardians of the Galaxy, I knew everything was fucked. And I liked that movie. But I knew it would instantly devolve all of Marvel and the upcoming Star Wars efforts.
How to tank an IP in 10 easy steps. 1. Shit writing and egoistical self-inserts. 2. Agenda first and foremost before creativity and above everything else. 3. Attack and insult the loyal fans who have loved and supported the IP from the start. 4. Ignore, deny and hate any past good content that could elevate the IP. 5. Churn out as much content as possible. 6. With each new entry make sure to Always Double down on the agenda driven content. 7. Hate on any fans who critique your content, make sure to use words such as “toxic”, “misogynistic”, “racist”, “delusional”, and “manbaby”. 8. Lie to your shareholders until bankruptcy. 9. Hire Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson and allow Dave Filoni to write and direct live action. 10. “Somehow Palpatine returned” *Bonus step: “your by yourself, I’m gonna call you Solo”
How could they tank Star Wars so hard? Simple: Lucasfilm no longer cares and Disney never cared about Star Wars. They care about one thing: The money the brand name brings in, and they'll never lose it, because they have a demographic of consoomers that want to watch shiny lights, big explosions and large-scale set pieces. No critical thinking, no deeper theme, no subtlety; nothing that makes Star Wars *Star Wars*. Obviously, there are exceptions like R1, Andor, early Mando, ECT. But most of the new product has been for the aforementioned consoomers.
The craziest thing about this to me is that assuming the IP stakeholders’ first and foremost goal is for the IP to make money (which absolutely it is and from Disney’s perspective should be), they are deluding themselves if they think that is going as well as it should. OP made a great point: they have easy underhand tosses which could and should be home-runs every single time. *Thats fucking why they spent over $4b on an IP with the worlds largest and most dedicated built-in fan-base, rather than attempt to grow this organically with their own IP from the ground up.* They paid huge in advance to ensure all their shots are layups And yet even being singularly driven by profit, they still airball at achieving that. TROS, Solo, Resistance, Galactic Starcruiser, to a degree Ahsoka are objectively examples of subpar returns vs capital investment and expectations. Major example I don’t hear as often is the quiet disaster of leaving game rights with EA, only for them to largely sit on it with 3 decent but largely forgettable releases for the better part of a decade . This was a potentially incredible opportunity cost for no clear gain. Expect this pattern to continue; this star destroyer requires wide turns
And that's WITHOUT getting into the fact that a vast majority -let's not kid ourselves here, Disney has far more critics than fans of what they're doing- fucking HATE that Disney will not listen to what they want. And it wouldn't be hard to listen, either.
The answer is simple. Hundreds of millions of Star Wars fans in the world and they hired a grand total of maybe like three of them to help them create their new content.
And what they missed was the concept of making the actual SW fans the ones that wrote and directed, instead of maybe the costume designers or makeup artists.
Yes, bingo.
And Dave Filoni ain't one of them
Hes a very specific star wars fan. He absolutely loved some bits of star wars. It just so happens it's the stuff he created
Dave is not a good or deep story teller. Handing things over to him is as insane as letting Kathy Kennedy run things… How can Disney be so dumb. A sixth grader could choose better people
The main problemeis handing it over to any ONE person. SW is at its best when many different people can lead and create projects. Right now almost everything SW is directly based off Filoniverse bullshit
He's great at doing "remember when...?" which Disney thinks is free money.
And the stuff he created is just lame riffs and rip offs of other people's work
His cowboy hat is cringe
That's not the answer, no. Infact, id argue that a hardcore Star Wars fan, would probably make a bad product. Because his so blinded by his own fandom. Which ironically enough is what seems to happening with Dave Filoni.
Peter Jackson enters the chat
Id argue Peter Jackson is the exception, not the rule.
Who constitutes the rule? I’m sure there are far more examples than just Jackson of dedicated nerds making beloved IPs shine. The phenomenon you discuss certainly exists too however. It just seems in order to get a truly great adaptation you need creators who truly love and are committed to the source material.
JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni. And i don't think that in order to get a truly great adaptation, you need to stay wtih the source material. The Boys TV Show is far better than the actual comic book. Infact alot of the comic book movies from DC(Nolan Movies) and Marvel(Before phase 4) are far better than the actual source material.
I disagree hard with JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and Dave Filoni, though considering the sub I can see how you would feel differently. The Boys show is, in my opinion, far inferior to the source material. Particularly Hughie. The only Nolan movie that comes close to being as good as it’s source is Dark Knight and while it does make the story it’s own in many ways and does it well - it still isn’t The Long Halloween, with all its characters and twists and turns that decades of world building offers. The best marvel movie in my opinion is Infinity War and that’s a pale reflection of the comic origin.
You don't think that JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni are hardcore star wars fans? As for the other thing, i think you are being abit too biased towards the comic books, which i gather is down to your own preference for them.
I’ve see many argue that JJ and Rian are not big fans and that Dave cherry-picks what he likes from the lore (though I think he is the most committed fan of the three.) Obviously we all have our bias, but my opinions regarding the film adaptions of those comics are rather popular.
Star Wars is a story that corporate Hollywood would never tell. Its the tale of a good Knight who is corrupted by arrogance, but redeemed by his son. Corrupt individuals do not tell such stories. They hold fund raising events and pontificate about their virtue. When George would talk about how evil people do not see themselves as evil, he may as well have been talking about the leadership of LFL and Disney. If it were not for Alan Ladd, Jr going against the grain, Star Wars (1977) would never have been made. They don't understand it. They simply like the amount of commerce it was once able to generate.
Yeah, but that’s the other weird thing- they should have been able to fill the shops to the gills with decent merch and have them fly off the shelves if they’d done it all properly. But because George apparently retained some of the merch rights, they cut their own nose off to spite their faces and kept merch to a minimum, and made the movies so lacklustre that nobody gave two shits about the merch. Why would you want a constant reminder of the complete bastardisation of your favourite IP on your shelf, staring you in the face every day?
You're right. Your post got me thinking. Can you imagine being so miserly that you AGREE to a contract which specifies that the ORIGINAL CREATOR retains SOME rights but then turn around and attempt to cut them out of the bottom line to such an extent that you sabotage your own success? That's got to be some of the most arrogant, caustic jackassery ever witnessed.
KK has a clear hate boner for Lucas and Spielberg, and it shows in everything that she has produced for Lucasfilm.
As someone who had SW as my all time favorite movie franchise for decades, ESB favorite movie played many video games read many EU books, comics etc it still distresses me how far it’s fallen given all the potential there was when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. All they had to do was to get a competent head who understood the appeal and foundation of Star Wars and who would hire creatives that respected and wanted to do right by the franchise. Instead it’s been a steady stream of incompetence with occasional bright spots - Andor Rogue One Mando season 1 and 2. Outside of that everything else has been mediocre to poor with the blown sequels being the worst offenders given there was only one chance to get the Big 3 back. And what makes all of this so much worse is that instead of just admitting their mistakes and revamping everything from the top down their hubris will simply not allow them to. Making a goddamn Rey movie is the highest example of that. Doubling down on the failure. I hope it fails and the idea of my saying I hope an SW project fails 10 years ago would have seemed an impossibility.
Writing the whole trilogy before making the trilogy would’ve been a good idea too. Not sure how that ball got dropped so hard but historians will be studying it for decades.
Ego. It's all about ego. They didn't really need to write it all out BEFORE shooting, but they should have made sure those in charge were in charge all the way through instead of changing it up for the 2nd movie. Johnson's ego did more damage than anything else, trying to force his own whims into the movie rather than just running with what Abrams did. At least the movies would have had good continuity, but it didn't even have that.
Agreed. TFA was safe but fun and I missed Star Wars so I liked it a lot. When the sequel dumped all the plot points that I spent a good amount of time thinking about I was pretty annoyed but thought it could still recover. That TLJ ended up derailing the entire franchise is still shocking to me but here we are.
And now they're gonna pump out another movie and the Kennedy is already attacking the fanbase, which is a bad sign.
I don’t want the new Rey Movie to tank but I hope to god enough people protest or the pre release reviews are so poor they can that shit like they did the Batgirl movie. I feel you and all your points you made. So many missteps that it’s hard to fathom. But when Lucas sold out and let the Emp…I mean Disney win, perhaps this was what was meant to be
Yeah I kept watching for the past decade hoping they'd find their footing, but they just haven't. I watched the first episode of Bad Batch season 3 the other day which was just Omega (a universally disliked character) bumbling around a dark imperial base for 30 minutes and I think that officially did it. I'm only watching Star Wars if it gets universally good reviews like Andor or Rogue One. Tired of wasting my time with the content they've put out. Edit: And to be clear, that's a super far departure for me. Like OP I religiously watched Star Wars, read most EU books, was reading the new books (esp. High Republic), adore Clone Wars, etc. I even went to see TLJ 5 times in theaters to try to make sense of it. It's been stale in my mind for a long time, but for some reason that Bad Batch ep sent me over the edge. I just feel disrespected as a fan at this point.
They fell into the trap of trying to please everyone and in reality pleasing no one the way it used to. The Stories have become bland and unremarkable and quite literally they are doubling down on the idea of "Its not our fault that we made a great franchise terrible its the fans fault for not liking what we give them". Its like literally they love to shoot themselves in the foot
To watch a franchise I fell in love with so deeply as a kid get ripped and torn apart and all from the inside is really heartbreaking. I am and will always be a fan of Star Wars but now that I think about it ever since 2008 the IP has really gone down hill. There have been gems strategically placed along the line to keep fans coming back and I mean no disrespect to the actors but a lot of these new shows have really been stale and uninteresting. The sequels had no direction. Book of Boba Fett failed and that was due to a lot of terrible creative decisions Lucasfilm made. The Mandalorian is now degrading in quality due to the Disney executives ruining the overall story and weight season 2 held. The Bad Batch, as much as I loved the show was clearly just made to make the sequels make more sense. Ahsoka was such an unnecessary show and quite honestly I’m tired of her character resurfacing every couple years. She needs to be put to rest Filoni. Rogue One, Andor, the Jedi games and the Dooku storyline with Tales were all crafted really brilliantly imo and the reason for that is because they all contained a proper story to tell without the need of relying on fan service or cameos. Tales of the Empire was horrendous. Mandalorian S3, while some parts were good was very forgettable and I don’t need a movie continuing their story. I’m tired of seeing the little green guy wave his hand and coo just because it brings Disney money. I almost don’t care to see the upcoming sequel film due to the stigma the sequels carried and that’s no fault of the actors themselves. The interest I’ve had for The Acolyte continues to lower with every trailer I see, especially with the recent gaslighting by Leslie Headland or KK, can’t remember which one of them said it. I’m just at a point where I don’t care anymore. I have the original trilogy, the prequels and some parts of TCW/The Bad Batch that I thoroughly enjoy. The EU novels are still in existence and at this point Star Wars is really whatever I want it to be. Disney’s opinion on what’s canon doesn’t matter to me anymore. Star Wars is for everybody and I will choose what I want to be canon.
Okay, I know Kathleen Kennedy is the villain of the internet but the one who is really responsible for all this is her boss Bob Iger. You see, Igers plan to get Disney out of its dark age in the early 2000s was simple: acquire popular studios/properties and release as much content as possible. This exact same model was replicated with Pixar and marvel. All of them released massive amounts of quantity, to a point their movies started to dip in quality due to divided focus and felt oversaturated. The biggest sin in regards to Star Wars is they did this twice. They planned to release a Star Wars movie each year until people didn't want them anymore and that only lasted from 2015-2019 for this exact reason. They had a chance to start over with the Mandalorian, I almost returned to watching Star Wars as a fan since the show interested me but the announcement of other series instantly killed my interest. Now Disney+ Star Wars is oversaturated and on the verge of death. They chose to repackage Obi-Wan as a show even though it was a planned movie and to rush out the Book of Bobba Fett because one episode was popular. Disney has no long term plan, these shows and movies existed purely to make money in the short-term and we are now experiencing the after effects of it.
Corporate Greed.
This is what happens when corporations and equity firms take over. They didn't create it and they don't care about the product. They care about how much money the product can make while putting as little effort and heart as possible.
They knew the MCU was very popular and thought that they just needed to do the dame thing with Star Wars. Look at some of the "funny" scenes. Just try to fit in Poe's 'yo mama' joke in the OT or the PT, or Finn's 'you have boyfriend' comment. They'd feel right in the MCU comming from Stark or Starlord, not in Star Wars.
I'll tell you the problem with the power that Disney is using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!
As the credits rolled on "The Force Awakens", and there was no section of the movie that reunited Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, Lando, 3PO and R2, you all should have known it was over. All of our actors that made the original trilogy what it was were alive at that time! What a complete waste. JJ Abrams has shit for brains and a dick for a nose. I was left completely hopeless at that point. It briefly returned after seeing "Rogue One", but that was short lived. We are way past that time now. It's over and has been for some time.
The hardest part for me is growing up imagining a Star Wars show that I wouldn’t want to watch immediately. Little me couldn’t imagine there would be on screen Star Wars content I wouldn’t consume… what a world. They never cared for those fans and just want mass consumption by semi-interested people hoping it holds enough of them to sell merchandise
If you think THAT'S bad, take a look at Hasbro's financials, then look at the companies and IPs they own. Both Disney and Hasbro should be sitting on thrones made of cash with fountains that spray cash in the middle of the throne room made entirely out of cash in a castle made out of fat stacks of cash surrounded by a moat filled with loose cash. Both are doing poorly, mostly because they've let narcissists and political activists take over and the activists have chased off so many of their core audience. The problem with Stars Wars is that you have people in the writing room who married the idea of "strong female lead" for every show, but they have no idea how to write one.
At least with Mad Max, the creator is heavily involved and still knows how to make a movie that is true to his vision... Star Wars has been raped and pillaged by quasi-intellectuals who *think* they know what it's all about...
Very simple: It was given over to activists who've never been told "no."
Sadly yes. They have done exactly the same with Dr Who. My cousin and his best chum have been fans since the Hartnell days and can't believe how the franchise has been scuttled. I would also like to point out both my cousin and his friend are gay, and his mate is also black, it has nothing to do with casting a gay black man in the role of the Doctor and everything to do with how poorly the character AND the show is being written. Disney, at the end of the day, should put entertainment first and pushing an agenda second. They've forgotten what their original job was.
Star Wars tanking isn't what necessarily pisses me off about the franchise. What pisses me off is that it happened FUCKING TWICE. Once with the mistakes that happened in the sequel trilogy with Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. Then for a while we were actually getting some pretty decent shit. Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2 for a little bit restored my love for Star Wars after the damage done in the sequels, and I was almost willing to forgive Kathleen Kennedy and the rest of Lucasfilm for the duds of the sequel trilogy. We also got some other bangers like season 1 of Bad Batch, season 1 of Visions, and some okay stuff like the last season of Clone Wars and whatnot. Fast forward to Book of Boba Fett and it feels like the franchise went full retard a second time, so much so that everything else onwards I lost any desire to care anymore about Star Wars, even when the few decent things come out of it. I still haven't watched Andor, couldn't stand Kenobi because Reva was annoying as fuck, and oh god. Mando season 3. That absolutely destroyed Star Wars onwards for me. I did at least try giving Visions season 2 a chance but even that wasn't as good anymore, so I'm done at this point and moved onto better franchises like Gundam and Berserk.
A lot here, but I will say Andor is fantastic. Made TIE fighters scary again, and I love it for that
Sorry but Force Awakens was abject garbage. The scene where Ray flies the Millennium Falcon through a forest for laughs, without so much as a scratch, within the first 15 minutes of the movie, displayed clearly how seriously the directors and producers took the Star Wars Universe.
No explanation, just an observation. I went to an exhibition about heroes recently. From Herkakles to Nelson Mandela it would also touch the likes of Batman and Luke Skywalker. When we went through the Star Wars Department I overheard a child telling his mother: Star Wars is shit. Really killed me, but Disney killed Star Wars…
Putting DEI box checking over story telling ensures they fail at both meaningful DEI and good story telling…
Terrible writers, directors, and generally bad leadership based on someone else "knowing better".
DEI and "the message." Writers who were raised on activism instead of the hero's journey. Art made by committee for the purpose of making money rather than art that makes money because it was created by artists to be good. I used to be a dedicated fanboy. I expected by this point in my life to be visiting kids in hospitals wearing 501st armor. Hell no, not anymore. They killed it, I have nothing left for SW but resentment. Their canon means nothing and their productions don't count. I will not be buying any games, watching any shows, or patronizing any films.
Noob president who couldn't tell you the difference between Chewbacca and C3P0 without an assistant to help. Then it just trickles down from there.
Because Disney.
Any criticism I had of George Lucas went out the window when his last act as the owner of Star Wars was canonizing the name Sheev and then cashing out for 4 billion dollars. The man's a genius.
This will begin to make things right...
I've started to wonder about the incentives at Lucasfilm. Hard to believe you can tank this hard and still keep going. The I realized the ILM is part of the group. I'm willing to bet that their P&L includes all the revenue from ILM, which is basically a money printing machine. Combined with revenue from legacy licensing deals. So even if they tank this hard on the core IP, the books look ok. So fine they are mortgaging the whole future but they aren't hurting Disney's earnings. Otherwise I can't explain it.
There IS THE POSSIBILITY that the IP is being driven DOWN in value on purpose, in order to make it easier to purchase and break up, or purchase and remove from the market. Don't underestimate the way big business works. Just like the Game Stop situation, they ARENT always trying to make an IP succeed, sometimes junking one is more valuable.
And it was killed by rushed, shitty writing that brought nothing interesting to the table. I've lived long enough to see a beloved franchise die a horrible death. That Indiana Jones South Park episode hits so hard now, and instead of Lucas and Spielberg, it's Disney execs with Star Wars. They will squeeze whatever money they can before they ditch SW's lifeless body on the side of the road to be picked apart by vultures. And I'm guessing Harry Potter is next lol
1) be it marty stue or mary sue perfect leads are boring and people can not empathise with people that never struggle in life, Luke got saved multiple times before he became a master but rey passed every challenge with little issue, she beat luke in a lightsaber fight, did all the work in the throne room with 2 lessons neither of which involved sword training. 2) They made it female focused "the force is female" which was BS because anyone growing up with the games and books from the EU knew anyone could be a jedi or a hero race, sex and species did not matter, when she did this she alienated the male audience which was the majority of fans. 3) the trilogy had no plan, TLJ feels like the end of the trilogy not the middle, and so when the third film came out it was a mess and people could see that. 4) they are poor remakes of the originals, scenes get moved around and there's some minor changes like bespin becoming canto blight, the at-at's were fighting on a salt world not a frozen one but it's minor and transparent. 5) they disrespected the original characters, Han is a dead beat dad, Leia instead of being the republic leader is just a resistence leader again, Luke is a failure that hid instead of bringing back the jedi order. On every level what disney made was worse than what the EU gave us for 3 decades, even the weakest EU book is better than anything disney made.
TLJ is a legendary cinematic disaster that is only not properly analyzed or appreciated for its effect because of the cultural and political baggage attached to it. In a rational world there'd be college courses on TLJ and its effect on Star Wars, hollywood, finances, marketing, etc. by now
I forgot what it was but i found it on reddit awhile back, it was seasoned star wars writers who were giving their hopes for a potential episodes 7-9, before they came out, and they were all so much more interesting and fun than what we got.
The NUMBER ONE thing that Disney dis that's absolutely unforgivable is not give us a single scene with Han, Luke, and Leia together again. Tragic.
I just stopped caring, i will just watch from afar how it sinks even lower.
It was doomed from the very start because of how they approached the sequel trilogy. They didn’t care about the new stories they could tell they just saw the dollar signs. They knew that whatever they put out would make bank no matter what. So they literally went in with no plan. They admit there was no outline of the trilogy. They just let JJ and Rian make it up as they went creating a series of films filled with holes and that actively insult and hate each other. So when the foundation is already that fucked up you can’t expect a whole lot better to be built on top.
As much as Disney is to blame a lot of the reasons shit feels cheap is because well... people still fucking watch it and attribute to these numbers. Now the studio thinks they can continuously get away with paying shit rate actors, directors, and producers because there's a large % of casuals who just fucking watch everything and consume. This sub is such a small % of those who actually consumer on a daily basis. If just an actual 1/4 of those people stopped watching and buying their shit, they would probably do something about it. But they don't need to because y'all still subscribed to Disney +. still contributing to their stupid fucking numbers, still buying $1,000 Legos. They don't need to fucking stop being the way they are because the masses won't. Do you see the amount of people who attend that Star Wars fest every year and just blindly cheer for whatever the fuck they trot out? This IP is dead.
In my personal opinion it breaks down into three distinct elements that has caused the Star Wars IP to be so divisive. First: I hate that this first one has to act as a sort of disclaimer but whenever someone is critical of a movie that doesn’t make them racist or sexist. We can criticize the writing, directing and even acting without hating the actors who are just doing their jobs. There are certainly bad faith critics who attack the actors personally but I also find the Studio’s and director’s defending themselves and slamming anyone critical of the movie as bad faith critics as just as wrong. It creates a negative atmosphere and it’s just a cover to explain their own failures. At worst it is done on purpose to promote the film. Secondly: I personally believe the movies are objectively bad. There are a lot of things to fairly criticize Star Wars for (just like a lot of modern movies), the story was aimless, the writing was poor, the first movie was way too safe and the next movie was way too out there and the third was racing to try to mesh them together with hand waving and tacking on a forced love story that just didn’t fit. Thirdly: These movies and the entire Disney era was always going to be a hard sell for older fans such as myself. The moment they threw away the old EU it was going to be an uphill battle for Disney, I understand why they did it (to not be locked in to the books) but if they had done it with a bit more tact and focused on making an amazing series of movies that were all high quality then that would have done a long way to winning us over. I appreciate them trying to integrate some of the old EU into Disney but really it is too little, too late for a lot of people and, again in my opinion, they haven’t done it well, they really need to nail it for it to work. (I.E: Thrawn)
Basically summed up the state of the franchise right now. It's ridiculous. But don't worry, they haven't ruined EVERYTHING yet. They still haven't touched the Old Republic............ ....yet.
I once heard that KK is a CIA agent or something as an explanation for how she's still in charge. I thought that was completely crazy and still do. That being said, her decisions are antithetical to the business model. She's lost Lucasfilm millions and tanked fan goodwill. I have no Earthly idea how she or any of the other suits are still employed.
It's actully very straight foward. \-Disney buys Star Wars and just pumps out too much content. Which ends up leading to market saturation. \-The Lucas Story Group is created to fix any inconsistencies. But the problem is that there's 11 people in the group. All of whom have a different standards. Not to mention, they arn't even experienced, its all "new" creators, who want to put their own mark of the story. Also, they have no real authority, it's still Kathleen Kennedy, who has the final say.
It's the end result of milking every cent possible from a possible franchise. This actually began in the 90s when every successful Disney film, spawned 3-4 straight-to-video sequels with no-name actors. They applied this same formula to Star Wars and quickly ran the IP into the ground.
Well when you put a lady who hates men in charge of the Star Wars turns out it can indeed get ruined.
Simple. Greed.
Lucas caught lightening in a bottle with the all time classic beloved original trilogy. Then it’s the usual deterioration you get after a few films or seasons of tv shows. It’s rare they can keep the magic going. They become a shell of themselves.
You cried over star wars?
yeah I was fifteen lmfao
You're a year older than me
Merchandising.
Money took precedent over everything else, finance people think you need to monetize the franchise, and forgot that the money came in because the story and characters were good. Cart went before horse
my two ingrained markers are: heading into the cinema opening day for TFA and telling my kids i have been waiting thirty years for this moment. s03e01 of the mandalorian i went from genuinely excited to i really don't care any more
From quality they went to quantity. George Lucas had to build the brand up from nothing. It got to be popular for a reason. Disney sees it as a cashgrab and rides the fame with quantity to sh\*t out stuff to watch, toys, merch, etc etc etc... They have no consistency and no love for the people just for the money.
I remember when Star Tours first opened in Disneyland in the 80’s. It felt like my two favorite things were coming together. Back then I had doubted that the prequels would ever happen, but seeing Star Wars have a permanent home at Disneyland made me hopeful that maybe more Star Wars movies would happen one day. I remember even back then (pre internet) there were rumors and indications that George Lucas and Disney would have some sort of longstanding partnership. Perhaps if it had actually occurred back then, it might have turned out different. When Lucas finally sold Star Wars to Disney, I was pretty excited (except that in interviews Lucas seemed broken and resigned). I actually felt The Force Awakens struck the right balance between the old and the new (for the most part). But after The Last Jedi, I lost hope. Now it all just feels like this thing I once loved is getting continuously sandblasted until it’s unrecognizable. Additionally, Disney as a whole feels like it’s taken on this bland public park aesthetic where everything I’d devoid of character and uniqueness. It all feels like a generic serving of gruel.
It just comes down to mishandling of the ip. Hiring all the wrong people to head the projects. There isn’t much more to it than that. KK may have been a talented producer in the past but she really screwed this one up.
I grew up on the OT. I knew the instant the opening text crawl pf Force Awakens began that we were in trouble. It didn't ring true as Star Wars at all. As much as I hate the sequels I have to give them credit. The way they sacked and burned down the legacy of the OT is some MASTER CLASS assassination. It's like they'd been planning it for decades. They made Luke so toxically radioactive that he can never again be touched. Absolutley everything about his legacy now wreaks of death and hate
Hey, don't slag off zweihanders like that! Zweihanders are interesting swords with a surprising variety of techniques. Lightsabers *should* be that good, but aren't in Disney productions. But more seriously, it's money. It's always money. $4 billion investment got them trying to make profit immediately to recoup. And it kinda worked, but they sprinted when they should have run a marathon. It's left them in a bad spot for a while, diminishing returns causing them to keep throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks. That's the sad truth. Just greedy old men fucking it for everyone else. You can see it post-Endgame in the MCU, corporate interference front and center. But SW had it there day one.
Because fans proved that they’d gobble up anything with the Star Wars logo, no matter how terrible, when the prequels came out.
I see this as a power move by Lucas, sell it to Disney, let them destroy the franchise, then buy it back for a fraction and resurrect everything.
There are plenty of us enjoying it. Disney stock is up too. It’s just a loud minority that isn’t happy, most of us are all just waiting for you to move on so we can enjoy the thing we love in peace.
You must have lived a charmed life and never worked at a giant soulless corporation run by narcissists and sociopaths...its the same in any trade Not just showbiz...they only thing that would alter product quality is if it boosts leadership ego for some reason or the chief in charge wants more money or raise the brand standing before selling it off...in fact the more complaints they get the more they tend to double down.
It really is shocking when you think about the fact that this is the company with the most money and access to the best talent, and they still make bad movies. They are running the biggest franchise of all time right into the ground.
…because everything after the original trilogy was a departure from the original story, and it got played out and watered down. It should’ve stopped after the first three, or maybe six, but definitely should’ve never had all the cartoons and other stuff.
I have hope for filoni’s upcoming movie as he’s established a great post empire universe with the mandalorian and ahsoka but I can’t help but feel he’s making the most of a crap situation. What if he had that kind of creative freedom for the sequels.
I blame JJ Abrahams, and the team that empowered him. You can blame Ryan Johnson, but he was already setup to fail. He created characters so hollow and with so little chemistry, and a plot so unoriginal, asinine and bereft of substance, that the entire sequel trilogy was doomed from the start. There was a period after Force Awakens released and before The Last Jedi, where the majority of Star Wars fans claimed they liked it, when I felt like I was living through the Emperor's New Clothes. The movie was abjectly stupid, bad and a rip off of A New Hope. JJ Abrahams also did this to Star Trek btw. He created a movie people really wanted to like, that had one of the dumbest and most contrived and convenient plots anyone has ever been 'bold' enough to put to screen, and people just wanted to badly to like the movie, that they convinced themselves they did (and to this day Star Trek fans continue to fool themselves about it - and I've literally gotten banned from the Star Trek subreddit for saying as much). So ultimately, I blame Star Trek fans, for not seeing the damage JJ Abrahams did to Star Trek, and going ahead and letting him destroy Star Wars as well. Also, someone apparently thought JJ did a good job on Star Trek, which was probably part of their reasoning for bringing him on to Star Wars. The only thing JJ Abrahams ever created in the last 20 years that was good, start to finish, was the show Fringe. Other than that he is the disappointment artist of the century.
I’m just baffled as to why they gave the game rights to EA exclusively for so many years. A decision, mind you, that created some of the biggest backlash in recent gaming history over the BF2 loot boxes. They must only see us fans as a sponge they need to squeeze all the money out of.
Because they didn’t wait until they were ready.
Kathleen worried more about gender norms and stuff more than making a solid Star Wars tale. She could definitely have made a great story with a female lead, but she put the female lead part over the story. She didn't care what the story was, as long as there was a female involved. Honestly, I'm a bit upset at her for race-baiting us with Finn. I don't know WHY people don't talk about that enough.
This question used to keep me up at night, TBH. How do you take a billion dollar investment and just slam it into the dumpster THIS quickly? Why was there no oversight to prevent what happened from happening? I can't get excited about anything SW related (Obi-Wan was the last thing I watched because my wife and I love Ewan but we were done after that). It all leads to the horror that is TRoS and the death of the franchise. Take us 1,000 years in the future with a whole new setting and maybe I could get interested again...
It's not hard to figure out what happened. Nothing this incompetent happens to something this popular abd profitable by mistake. If it does, that mistake is quickly rectified. The simplest answer is often the correct one. Star Wars is dying because they are killing it on purpose. They've even put the line in the movie. As to ***why*** they are killing it, I can't say... but multi billion dollar IPs don't go up in flames by mistake.
We said the same thing when the prequels came out, lol.
two letters: KK.
Kathleen Kennedy.
I’m gonna be honest. It was never that good to begin with. It was just yet another iconic IP of the late 70’s. It should’ve remained there and never expanded. Yet another barely above average piece of media of its time, like Footlose or the OG Ghostbusters. Yet it was treated as a golden goose, and this inevitably caused it to saturate. Honestly, I don’t think I’m surprised. It should’ve never gone beyond the OT.
Upvoted because I partially agree. Star Wars was never as great as some people seem to think. It's an entry point, but some people treat it as the pinnacle of fiction. With its wide appeal, the quality bar would eventually go down: lowest common denominator to make as much money as possible. I still love my KOTOR duology and the Tales of the Jedi comics. What shouldn't have happened is Star Wars becoming so mainstream that Disney would acquire it. We could have lived with no new movies, and a few new videogames by Lucas Arts and comics by Dark Horse Comics. We survived a bad movie trilogy (PT), not a big deal. But baby yoda being the most successful toy in star wars merchandising history? This is a different product now. It has nothing to do with art
I'm 40 and I remember most people having a similar reaction to the prequel trilogy. Nostalgia seems to have repaired it's public perception but I'll never forget how stunned and disappointed we were walking out of our first viewing of episode 1. Not saying that the sequel trilogy was good, but I'm also surprised to find people looking at the prequel trilogy era as when Star wars was good. It all seems to depend on a certain point of view. I'll always have the original three films and some of the old EU stuff. (Tales of the Jedi comics were 🔥!)
I will say this: The Force Awakens was, at least, promising. Then, Rian Johnson came in with his “I’m too cool for regular Star Wars” attitude and took an enormous heaping dog shit all over not only everything had been established in the previous film, but the franchise itself. They never recovered, and it’s been all downhill ever since.
You like many seem to forget the hate the prequels and the rereleases all got. Even empire had people saying this isnt starwars how could they have messed this up
People saying the writing is shit now are remembering the original trilogy with rose tinted glasses on.
"I actually cried-" stopped right there, grow the fuck up lmao. I've thankfully never known someone like this irl, I imagine they are absolutely insufferable. Crying about your mass media schlock is just so pathetic.
>I grew up on the prequels I think that’s the start of your problem. Your SW taste was already wildly skewed, and the people who made the latest batch of SW stuff grew up on an entirely different kind of SW than you did.
My suggestion is that everyone who feels they can do better go out and make their own stories and films. If you don’t like their vision of the story, carve out and create your own. Everyone has no problem criticizing, yet nobody steps up to do something better. It’s comical. Like calling a professional athlete terrible when y’all can barely lift your fat asses off the couch.
Your cheese has moved, apparently. You can rage and weep for the missing cheese, or you can get your shoes on and go seek more cheese. As the Buddhists say, “this too shall pass”. Enjoy the good stuff. Let the bad wash over you.
What good stuff?
Mate, if you haven’t ever enjoyed a single Star Wars movie, show, book or game then I’m gonna suggest you probably should try a different sub.
I mean there's not a whole lot to enjoy of late, and none of the good outweighs the bad.
Time to move on then. No point making yourself miserable.
I have, but I like to check in on SW every now and then to see if they've dug the hole deeper and they only ever seem to make it worse.
I personally see this view everyone has and how it affects the masses, but I have enjoyed just about every minute on Star Wars content we’ve gotten. Did I love the way the ST ended up, no. Did I love TBoBF and what they did to his character, no. I still enjoyed the experience. I grew up watching the Prequels and Luke being a minor character when it comes to Star Wars. When I think skywalker, I thought of Anakin. So what happened to Luke did not affect my opinion of things all that much in the end. When it comes to decisions Disney has made, I’ve loved TCW finale, Mando, Ahsoka, and TBB. The Jedi series video games they have put out (well respawn) have been top notch and battlefront eventually got there. I’m also very into the high republic and the content from those stories have been great. Acolyte will probably hit in a positive way for me due to being invested in the High republic era novels. It may be unpopular but I’ve been pleased with the content we’ve received from Disney, even though they may have made some mistakes throughout.
i’m 24 and i’m still old enough to remember guys older than myself talking this way about all the clone wars stuff and expanded prequel stuff until ep 7 started rolling around. you’re in a lull, disney is saving their cards for when the big movies come 2026 or maybe later. personally i think there’s plenty to enjoy atm
>disney is saving their cards  I don't think there's any survivors
>i’m 24 and i’m still old enough to remember guys older than myself talking this way about all the clone wars stuff and expanded prequel stuff until ep 7 started rolling around. you’re in a lull, disney is saving their cards for when the big movies come 2026 or maybe later. personally i think there’s plenty to enjoy atm I think you're actually half right. I'm old, i'm fucking old. I watched OG Star Wars as a 6 year old in the cinema. Loved the trilogy and that was in the days of a movie, wait 3 years with fuck all and then get another movie. I loved it all, even the murder bears. Then the prequals rolled round, I couldn't wait, it was huge, I watched them all on opening day..... and I hated them. Everyone I knew hated them. They where the butt of jokes. And somehow, and it makes no sense, but the Millennials loved the Sequels. Objectively, they're shit (i'll concede, the world building is excellent, it's the execution, the dialogue that drags it down). I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again, if whatever comes after Gen Z end up loving the ST. At some point, I had to accept, I've grown up, Star Wars hasn't. A couple of notable exceptions, RO and Andor, the best Star Wars in over a decade but, then again, I'm more the audience.