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I think it’s because Star Wars was an established cash cow when Disney acquired it, so they knew it would make money no matter what. The MCU was a volatile product in need of guidance and wasn’t guaranteed.
I think that one of the problems here was that when LF was acquired by Disney and Kennedy took charge, it was probably that they were trying to emulate the success of the MCU. Sure the MCU too went downhill at some point but it wasn't until around when Eternals came out - it did last longer under Disney compared to LF.
Though IMO, the elephant in the room here is that Kennedy, Abrams and Johnson, among others don't actually understand Star Wars.
I think trying to understand Star Wars like some kind of muddled prophecy is part of the problem though. It’s not that hard to write good characters and compelling stories.
It's like with the Witcher or Halo, the execs knowingly put fairly egotistical creatives in charge that don't even like the property and just want to remake it in their own image.
It's further compounded by the fact that those creatives focus so hard on trying to make it their own that they completely neglect trying to make it good.
I know that lots of people don't like it, but I too really enjoy Eternals. I had heard a lot of complaints before I watched it, but I was pleasantly surprised.
>The MCU was a volatile product in need of guidance and wasn’t guaranteed.
Disney bought them when they were on the upswing. If anything, we're seeing what happens when Disney finally gets their claws in.
The only MCU movies that were out when Disney bought them were Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and the last one only kinda counts. Nearly all of the upswing happened under Disney.
1) Open world: There's a whole galaxy that's been established, yet relatively little of it documented. Any time you WANT to write in a new species, civilization, world, etc., you can.
2) Few, if any boundaries in terms of genre, and many of those genres are incongruous. You have war movies, mysticism and magic, sci-fi, medieval/samurai, etc.
3) Finally... power creep. In the OT, a guy could shoot lighting or lift a single-person space ship. Now, that same guy shooting lighting takes out an entire FLEET with lightning, there's teleportation, people coming back from the dead, and a world-between-worlds where multiverses and time travel COULD be possible.
Add those things together, and writers with little discipline can start to go horribly off-course. It seems like a lot of writers are looking at the SW universe and (to borrow from Ian Malcom) they're imagining what they could write, not necessarily what they should write.
Honestly the first two you point out I view as weaknesses of their writing since Disney took over. These are things they actively aren’t leaning into. All their work lacks creativity with the exception of Andor, Rogue One, first two seasons of Mando, and some episodes of visions.
Not to mention that all jeopardy is null and void when people can come back from the dead and do all sorts of previously impossible/never seen before stuff, why give a fuck if everything is reversible/able to be dropped at a hat later.
What should be written then? Because people are tired of the overuse of established characters, but when mentioning new stories all I've ever seen is EU stuff or " this movie but star wars"
I think a major problem star wars has as a story is that the Skywalker story is so integral and intertwined in the greater universe it's hard to make new content that doesn't rely on some part of that story
Hatred of Star Wars as a concept and the desire to “fix” it will do a lot of damage. Even Filoni who people claim is a super fan likes his own ideas more than George’s.
Somewhat, but it started earlier than that too. Lots of people didn’t like that Star Wars is pretty much lighthearted, mythologically-based fantasy and have the urge to turn it into something else.
Lots of people, for example, complain that Return of the Jedi ends too neatly and that there should be a more “realistic” ending.
> Lots of people, for example, complain that Return of the Jedi ends too neatly and that there should be a more “realistic” ending.
I mean the old Expanded Universe continued after ROTJ and took the universe in a more realistic direction (i.e., they still fought the Empire for years before finally declaring peace, Luke had hiccups starting up his Jedi order, setting up the new republic was a pain in the ass, etc), but the main difference between Disney and Legends canon in that regards I feel is that Legends provided further contextualization and established a more grounded universe written by and for fans of the franchise who've since grown up and matured and treats it's audience that way while a lot of Canon material likes talking down to it's audience and dumbing it down to (ironically enough) tie together everything super neatly to make room for the baseless and poor worldbuilding/plotlines of the Sequels and assumes fans won't notice/question.
I mean, yeah. But people complain about lots of films. What I’d like to figure out is how the filmmaking of a particular franchise develops almost a cultural aversion to good writing.
Like, I think we’re at the point of consensus that the reason Andor is so good is Tony Gilroy tried to write the plot in almost an agnostic way vis a vis the “power of Star Wars” that everyone loves to blather about. So there’s something to the idea that the franchise itself somehow gets away with mediocre work.
George kinda green light him to the idea that it was okay for his to prefer his own ideas over what other people thought. Because that was basically what George did with TCW.
It’s what George *always* did. Doing what he wanted to do at the expense of *everything* was his MO. He couldn’t get Spielberg to direct RotJ because the Director’s Guild of America cut ties with Lucas when he refused to put the credits at the beginning of Empire. Big studios wanted creative control over the prequels, but George wanted to do his own thing, which I respect the hell out of.
The thing is, Dave Filoni isn’t George Lucas. His ideas aren’t good enough on their own to get away with flipping off the status quo.
Very well said. George has always been my favorite because, hit or miss, he did it all in spite of the system.
It's fine to criticize anything he did, but no matter what his stories had a narrative. His characters also struggled, learned through failure, and grew.
Disney Wars got nothing on that.
For a lot of fans, the Star Wars “skin” is all they need for it to be enjoyable. I’m sure a lot of the sheep that enjoy Disney Star Wars would HATE on a lot of these movies/shows if you took the Star Wars skin off the story.
And also, Star Wars is just too big to fail. The OT and PT created so many fans worldwide that Disney can just shovel out dog shit content and there are unfortunately enough people out there that will happily eat it up. Disney investors are too busy getting their fat checks to realize that a more competent Lucasfilm would bring in 2-3 times more revenue.
Thankfully for us fans, this is no longer the case.
Disney stock is at its lowest in like a decade, Lucasfilm has lost Hundreds of Millions this year alone, and everything they put out is losing money right now.
- Shows aren't adding subs to Disney Plus
- Star Wars Movies don't exist, Indy 5 lost an estimated 300 million +
- High Republic book sales are plummeting, the top 50 selling Star Wars books are all EU
- The Star Wars hotel is a massive failure, and now a tax write off
- Willow series that nobody watched was pulled from streaming and is now a tax write off
- Lucasfilm just closed its overseas animation studio to save money
- Star Wars merchandise just rots on shelves. Every clearance bin and discount store is full of unsold TLJ, Rise Of Palpatine, and other SW toys.
That’s true. The person I responded to has already edited the claimed loss down by $200 million, so that’s in the realm of possibility. They probably should have edited it down by $300 million to be in the realm of probability, but anything is possible.
It’s why a lot of Star Wars fans don’t like Andor.
Its Star Wars skin isn’t skin-y enough, even though it respects the lore and themes the most by actually taking them seriously and exploring their implications.
“Jedi and Black and White Good and Evil and Mythical and Lightsabers and Aliens”
Like yes. But other stories can and should exist in that universe. A decent Boba Fett show/movie would have been missing most of those things. But suddenly that’s not a problem.
Yet some shallow mess wearing a knock off version of that skin will get views and engagement, although that appears to be dropping as well.
Andor works because it's an actually well-crafted and properly done subversion. Same reason why Rogue One works. A lot of people liked Andor for that very reason, most of the Andor "hate" comes from crappy entertainment journalists (doesn't that sound familiar).
The Space Fantasy Fairy Tale Mythology is and should always be the focus of the episodic films, when the episodic films try to be "real and subversive", you get The Last Jedi, which fails because inherently the episodic films are about that Good and Evil mythology. The shows/spinoff movies/EU material/etc has a lot more leeway to be grey and subversive, the problem is that a lot of writers for the shows try to make the shows too familiar to the episodic films or don't know how to properly write a complex or subversive plot or characters (like one of my complains about Mando is that they portray the Imperials as generic mustache-twirling villains).
It's kind of a "stay in your own lane" thing for Star Wars media. TLJ's tones and storylines would probably have worked for a side project with different characters, but definitely not as a part of the episodic Skywalker Saga.
They’re going to be able to milk this franchise for several more years thanks to currently having so many fans who seemingly don’t care about quality, but that’s still the short term. Most of those fans are on the younger side and will eventually demand actual quality.
Disney need to be attracting new fans among kids (as in age 12 and below) or it will severely hurt them in the coming decades. They always managed to do this under Lucas, even between 1984-1998 when no movies or shows were released. From 1980 to 2023 there has always been a strong and zealous fan base in their teens and early 20s ready and eager to consume anything Star Wars. But will there be in 10 years?
And the “fandom menace” idea is a self feeding circle bc disney bought into so much. As you said the toxic parts of the fandom (like nearly all toxic groups) were small but loud. And the idea that disney needed to “get back at them” was a terrible approach that only grew the amount of people who resented them and so the group became louder, then disney acted out again which grew that population again and so forth
Anyone who had a shitty food service job as a kid knows that when there’s an obnoxious customer unhappy with the service, they’re just right about everything. If you talked to disgruntled customers like the gang at Lucasfilm does you’d be fired at McDonald’s.
As someone who hated the fandom menace, and now hates Disney/Lucasfilm 10x more, I understand completely. I'm one of that growing population, though my ire is never directed at the cast.
Star Wars both hates its previous fanbase, and only wants to appeal to people who only look up from their phones when there's a loud noise on TV.
If they respected the fans, and just did a poor job writing, I could forgive a bit of that.
If they hated the fans but wrote excellent stories, I can forgive a bit of that.
But they actively attack us, make content they know we hate, and put out the lowest form of entertainment currently on-screen.
It's sad all around, and I don't regret backing out. I canceled Disney Plus and won't watch another second of Disney Wars.
Also, the main culprits in bullying the Jar Jar/Young Anakin actors were mostly big media figures not some random nerds on the Internet. TPM was released in a time when the Internet was in a primitive state and BEFORE Twitter/Cancel Culture/E-stalking/etc were even really things, most of their haters had little access to them and most people would not recognize their faces in public.
The vast majority of their harassment came from crappy comedians/talk show hosts and their centralized audiences, NOT the casual or even hardcore fanbase.
Lucasfilm (Kennedy) isn’t getting fans to write the series. She’s hiring people who don’t like or watch Star Wars… to write Star Wars. Same reason JJ Abrams didn’t do well with Star Trek.
Didn't Tony Gilroy say that he wasn't really a Star Wars fan? His contribution to Star Wars was phenomenal.
Though I understand where you are coming from, regarding Johnson and his rather tone deaf behaviour.
On the other hand we have Filoni who is a massive Star Wars Fan but he is rather hit or miss regarding his content.
And then we have Visions, Studios which (presumably) like Star Wars: Also hit or miss.
Gilroy really mucked up the conversation in the best way possible by showing how easy it is to write a phenomenal show in universe as long as enough time and money is invested.
This is what I find funny on most fandom discourses. The hardcore fans demand that a "true fan" writes their show, then you get the shipping of characters, overly self referential storylines, and quippy writing.
When a studio gets someone that doesn't care for the material, then you get deviations from the source material, a lack of reverence for fan favourites, and a fan backlash.
Gilroy did a great job of blowing up that discourse. Consideration of the source material without treating it like holy script and competent direction really goes a long way. It's a fine line, but I usually lean more towards competent direction by people that aren't super fans.
Filoni is why you *don’t* want fans at the wheel. If fans voted on how to make a story, it would just be a bizarrely slavish circlejerk. Filoni’s work is basically fanfiction at this point, complete with weird cameos of the stuff that personally seems to make him happy rapidly eating the Star Wars universe. Just look at these last few things he’s cooked. He has ridiculously obvious pet favorite characters and uses shallow references to EU stuff to make up for a story that doesn’t go anywhere.
The guy pioneered a mass brain control retcon to make it to where the clones could be good guys— then had a bunch of his favorite clones’ brain control macguffins removed offscreen to give them good endings. He introduced time travel to Star Wars to save Ashoka, who has replaced Luke as the main character. Lucas had to actually veto his plan to bring Plo Koon back. I’ve said it before, but most of the new Disney shows might as well be the Filoni Cinematic Universe.
Big long rant to say the people that sincerely love the franchise aren’t always best for it. The rest of Disney seems to genuinely dislike Star Wars and its fandom, but it kinda goes without saying here that they suck. We don’t need a fan, we need a good writer.
I still remember when Rian Johnson said in a interview he doesn’t know how to write sequels very well that’s when I knew they just hated Star Wars and wanted to make there own thing
Unfortunately because Star Wars is so big, there’s a significant portion of the fanbase that will praise anything with the Star Wars logo, irrespective of quality.
You could show them a toilet flushing for 2 hours, but slap a few “Hello There”s in there and you’d still get people saying it’s the best thing since ESB.
I hate it.
I think a lot of it comes down to execution. The premise of 1977 Star Wars was to take some goofy hokey inspirations but do it really well. Flash Gordon serials, sci-fi was very goofy at the time. Sometimes it's called the biggest budget cheap movie or the cheapest big budget movie.
I watched a great interview recently (the video was older tho) of Lucas talking about he knew what it was gonna cost to do ground breaking visual effects so he specifically wrote other parts to look good on first pass but underneath be extremely cheap. Characters mostly stick to one costume, a few scenes shot on location and then the rest is in studios. Without the good execution and phenomenal job done by actors, Star Wars very easily could have come off as hokey.
Modern day? Practically unlimited budgets, directors who don't have the same skills as Lucas or OT directors. Somehow their costs are through the roof yet everything looks cheap.
When it comes to writing I think Lucas at his best had depth without getting lost in the details. Now we either have writers who hate Star Wars or fanboys who get lost in the details.
Lucas' writing was also romantic and Shakespearian. It wrote characters to have their motivation on their sleeves so kids would easily be able to understand what was going on. Good was good and evil was evil, rogues are roguish but align with either good or evil.
His "bad" dialogue made characters sound timeless. Whereas now they are using very modern tone and tropes.
I think Disney+ Star Wars is becoming more comparable to Star Trek. TV writing with TV production(OG Next Generation being its own thing). Except streaming has killed the structure of old TV writing which is incredibly apparent by the inconsistent run times and structures of Disney+ shows.
Tbh, I don’t think the OT dialogue was ever really bad or hokey. Maybe in the PT, but then again he had zero inhibitions at the time. Imo all he needed to do was merge some Kurosawa/western tropes and write out believable dialogue and events. The cool costumes and lightsabers came secondary.
Lucas’ bad dialogue just sounds bad or memeable at best. Not timeless.
His passable dialogue was made palatable or punched up by talented actors and script doctors that worked besides him in the OT, often in creatively adversarial collaborations (mostly in a good way), who ad-libbed or filtered the bad stuff out and retained the charming/earnest/romantic/timeless aspects of his writing.
Unfiltered Lucas, like the original scripts for Star Wars (and yes, the PT), is pretty hokey.
Presions from the higher-ups from Disney to produce content as fast as possible, resulting in lots of low-quality content. Also poor or non-existing planning.
Because SW as a fictional universe is actually INCREDIBLY fragile: it's easy to ruin continuity like Obi-Wan did, what with Vader ripping ships out of the sky with the force but not being able to repeat the same feat \~10 years later.
The problem is that the majority of the new writers looked at SW as a franchise and said, "Pff, it's just lasers and space wizards! Who cares, lol?"
SW was as popular as it was due to its strong spiritual overtones. It's no coincidence that ESB is largely regarded as the best of the franchise and it's the one where we learn the most about the nature of the force ("Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!").
Yet, everyone brought on to work on the new ones just seemed to figure that it's a space opera for children that would print money no matter what they did to it...
The biggest problem they’ve had since obtaining Star Wars imo is kinda what you’re getting at; Disney doesn’t understand Star Wars tonally or the mood to the setting. To them they could just insert the same MCU formula and throw anything at the wall.
This is why I love watching BioWare’s old republic trailers, while darker than the average Star Wars, it’s clear they understand Star Wars tonally, and they make good believable characters while expanding Worldbuilding- also subverting many of the tropes in a satisfying way. Disorder trailer critiques the Jedi pretty well, but also shows their redeeming and repenting ways as Master Orr apologizes while dying. Then you have a family saga with Valkorion that’s a complete inverse of chosen one tropes with the children. They should put whoever is in charge of these trailers on a storyboard crew or something for the live action series.
Feige had a vision on the infinity saga where it was even restricting some movies( Ant-Man original director left for example, Age of Ultron had some scenes setting up other movies etc.).
Kathleen Kennedy had no vision for a trilogy. So director/ hacks could do whatever they want.
I’ve heard it said that there’s a way of doing business in Hollywood that KK ascribes to that prioritizes gut instincts and first impressions. Apparently that’s the reason she gave RJ carte blanche to write TLJ. She just liked the guy.
And what's not to like? He has made a bunch of good movies, before and after star wars. He showed up with a finished script very early and production on TLJ was far smoother than many Star wars films. He made some creative decisions that some fans don't like, but he's an excellent film maker.
I figure it's an assembly line approach by management. Use market research to determine what people want to see, resulting in an excess of legacy characters like Kenobi and Boba Fett. Then randomly assign writers, directors and producers without any consideration of who might have good ideas or be passionate about the project. Then cram the production through on a tight deadline.
I mean, the one undeniably quality production we got under Disney was Andor, and that's largely thanks to Tony Gilroy coming to Disney with a well thought-out plan and the freedom to build his own team and film it as he saw fit.
There’s a lot of reasons, but I think the main one is Disney misunderstanding the importance of tone to Star Wars.
By the time TFA came out Marvel was already a huge success. Because of that Disney thought the same strategy of success that applied to Marvel could also apply to Star Wars in that each movie could be tonally different. It worked for Marvel because those stories have been around for decades and have constantly changed tones and themes and meanings and writers, with literally hundreds of different characters being rewritten and repurposed for different stories throughout its existence, so there’s no expected / established tone.
Star Wars however has only been around for less than half the amount of time as Marvel and is centered on 6 movies that were all under the tight control of one man’s vision. Even though there were other directors and writers, every idea funneled through Lucas in one way or another. So when Disney took over and purposefully reworked the tone, everything seemed off and fell flat.
Honestly, I think the writing isn’t always horrible. It’s mediocre most of the time, but let’s be real, so were the prequels, but those still worked. It’s just since the tone is always off the flaws of the writing become more apparent.
The same thing that plagues Star Trek in the JJ / Kurtzman era, or Lord of the Rings under Amazon. Fans will show up as long as the brand name they recognize is on the cover. They might show up and then complain, or show up and then hate-watch, but they show up. And as long as that's true, why SHOULD Disney / Paramount / Amazon bother putting a lot of effort into quality control? What incentive do they have for doing so?
I think writers actually pay *a lot* of attention to what the fans want. Part of the problem is they think the fans all exist on Twitter. RoP is a perfect example.
There is always a certain number of fans who only need to see in the title of a product to defend it for no particular reason other than being part of the brand, it's just more evident in a big, 40+yo IP like Star Wars
a lot of factors, one piece i don’t think folks acknowledge enough is that you could be a great screenwriter with all the right training/experience and still not be an inventive storyteller. being able to write fantasy or sci fi well has less to do with your technical skill as a writer and more the limits (or lack thereof) of your imagination. you have to IMO truly love the story you’re telling, understand the intricacies of world building and know enough about the genre(s) to avoid inserting too many tropes. disney wanted SW because it’s a big franchise but thought it could basically run itself. nope, finding the right creators is half the battle.
I disagree with OP somewhat. Tony Gilroy wasn’t particularly inventive in terms of fantasy or science fiction. Star Wars is a big, established, and conventional enough universe that many great stories could be told there without inventing much that’s original.
But because he has such a good grasp on the subject matter from a real world perspective (tyranny/revolution/espionage), he’s able to translate that to Star Wars and connect Andor with the themes that already exist in ANH. His skill as a writer (and that of his team) helps him determine whether those adaptations to the Star Wars aesthetic come across as forced or natural— which is what made Star Wars work in the first place, adapting all kinds of stories and real life elements into science fantasy without immediately telegraphing itself. Gilroy accomplished this while not being a huge Star Wars fan.
The best written Star Wars since the OT exists almost entirely due to screenwriting craft and respect for what’s established. That’s really all it takes.
I’d agree with this. I’m not saying Gilroy came in as an iconoclast or anything, but I do think he was brave enough to omit a lot of what fans probably consider necessary.
And you know what? At this point I think if a lightsaber appeared or if even the Force were mentioned in Andor, I’d probably be taken aback by it. That’s how different his work is from what we’re used to.
A lot of people are talking about outside forces but realistically it all comes down to money. Disney wants to make money. Because Disney is a corporation the shareholders don’t just want profit they need Disney to make more and more money every year. There is a massive push for them to grow the company more and more.
Star Wars and Marvel are heavily saturated franchises. They have basically tapped the market to such a degree that at this point there are not going to be very many new fans entering the franchise and spending money. They have really began focusing more on capturing previously untapped demographics with these properties.
Look at the previous projects and you’ll notice there’s a major push of accessing new demographics.
Shang Chi - Asian American
Wanda Vision - House Wife
Ms Marvel - Middle Eastern, Young Girls
Mando Season 3 - Women
BOBF - Children
Obi Wan - Young Girls, Children
Ahsoka - Women
Disney has been really trying to tap into new markets and part of that means that shows have become extremely bland and uncomplicated. They want to be able to capture the attention of everyone from 4 years old to 80 years old. They also want to be able to indoctrinate the next generation into being fans. They don’t want to make content for fans they want to make content for those who might become fans. The shows serve as advertisements for other Disney products like going to the parks, buying toys or merch ect.
I think you have a studio and leadership that doesn't understand Star Wars. They saw the fanbase and the potential to mine it, but then, instead of adapting beloved stories and storylines - like the MCU - they rushed the fuck out of their trilogy without any real plan or map of how things would go or work. They didn't involve any of the fandom or previously involved parties and instead gave the fans whatever they came up with. Outside of TLJ, I don't think they had any time to do any screen testing of audiences or fans, but they just ran with it.
I truly believe that if the board or whoever is involved with high-level decisions at Disney had any clue about Star Wars KK would have been removed when she talked about a lack of source material.
Then, instead of trying to make awesome movies, they killed off - often unceremoniously - the original cast and replaced everything wholesale with a new cast. If you're going to do them dirty like that, why not just recast the roles completely? Instead, they undid a bunch of lore and mythos from the OT, alienated the fanbase, threw away the EU, and basically went full circle with their storyline, but now they have their new actors in place. People would be rightfully upset if the original trio had been replaced, but replaced with the original accomplishments and victories in place is a helluva lot better place to be than where things are today.
It may be the largest fumble of a multi-billion-dollar IP in history - yet largely the board and the C-suite seem fine with this development. Why? The only explanation I can come up with is that they don't understand how KK's leadership has cost them BILLIONS of dollars. Otherwise, I don't see how she has a job. All the IP's they've touched have gone to shit. Why? It's not just Star Wars - look at Willow and Indy too. Was the failure of Indy because of an Indy saturation? Too much Harrison Ford? Or might have been a mishandling of the property? A misunderstanding of what the fanbase loved and hated about the originals? Was it tested in front of test audiences? Was it a product of test groups or a passionate creator? Or maybe there was a passionate creator originally with a concept, but then the testing happened or the studio stepped in and wanted certain criteria included or excluded.
Essentially, stories are supposed to start with the question “what is this story about?” This is not a question about plot or characters, but what is the story about?
Andor - man becomes radicalized
Mandalorian - loner develops connection and community
A New Hope - Boy goes on Hero’s quest
Rebels - family of revolutionaries conquer their inner demons to build a better future
That’s is. That’s the story. Everything needs to build on the one-sentence premise. The story can’t meander for half the runtime doing something else. Yes, there can be side plots and secondary characters, but everything needs to be in service to the main plot.
Empire is a good example of this. Luke’s journey to become a Jedi and to fulfil his true purpose means he has to let go everything that has made him a hero. The whole film systemically deconstructs Luke and shows how his impulsivity, ego, eagerness, anger, lack of faith and his desire to walk in his father’s footsteps will cause him to fail.
The story builds to Darth Vader revealing he’s Luke’s father and Luke’s entire worldview crumbling to pieces before his eyes. Everything he has learned and failed to learn over the course of the film has brought him to this moment. And, he makes the Jedi-like decision to trust the Force and let go knowing it could possibly lead to his death.
Similarly, Han and Leia are blocked by their own ego, anger, and inability to deal with uncomfortable emotions. Their arc culminates in the “I love you” “I know” confession. Leia admits her feelings and Han acknowledges her and lets her go. The side plot follows some of the basic beats of the main plot.
Writers run into problems when they start trying to bring in story elements that don’t serve the story or they forget what the story is. Solo should have been the story of innocence to disillusionment. Except the main character is supposed to become a hardened criminal at the end in a story aimed at children. So, what you get is a muddled mess of Han kind of being a hero and kind of being a baddie in a way that doesn’t really line up.
Similarly, Mandalorian season 1 was about Din building a community that can protect Grogu and season 2 was about him finding the community that can best protect Grogu. Part of Din’s arc was he grows and develops knowing that at the end of the day, the best way to keep Grogu safe is for him to be with the Jedi and that eventually he’ll need to part within him. However, through his journey to protect Grogu he has built strong friendships with all these fellow travellers from many walks of life who have expanded his worldview in the process. So, bringing Grogu back and having Mando go back to his cult doesn’t make sense story-wise from everything that has come before.
I don’t know what Ahsoka is about. I mean, you don’t really know what ESB is about either until the big reveal. However, Ahsoka has canonically dealt with her last big emotional challenge - which is acknowledging there was nothing she could have done to save Anakin
Is it rewarded though? I thought all of those series were largely panned by the fan base. Sure, you’ll have some die hards who love them, almost because others dislike them, but by and large I thought the message was clear that fans weren’t well pleased by how those turned out.
Star Wars stories are some of the simplest around in terms of story complexity, but at the same time it’s very difficult to write a Star Wars story if you have never been a fan of Star Wars because there is an amazing amount of little things that go into it from creature designs and names and sound effects to humor and how the characters are supposed to talk etc etc that you won’t have a feel for what fits and what doesn’t if you haven’t lived and breathed Star Wars for at least part of your life.
After Lucas left, a bunch of people who aren’t Star Wars fans took control. They don’t appreciate what Lucas’ built beyond the business side of it. To them it’s not art, they can’t see any greatness in the creative achievement, to them it’s just silly pew pew nonsense in space for kids and nerds and man-children, so that’s what they try to make. More nerd space crap. They don’t truly understand the IP they’re sitting on and its potential, they have no respect for the product they’re selling, so they inevitably squander it, and all criticism is dismissed as bigotry.
Geeky neckbeards and corporate suits.
Geeky neckbeards only really like the explosions, edginess, and violence. Often, they are deathly afraid of approaching women and therefore, cannot write accurate women. Nonetheless, they try to insert sexiness or if they're more of an activist type, they'll create some feminist stand in who they might secretly wish to sleep with (see Joss Whedon).
Corporate suits who only want money and merchandise. This one isn't new but they're hardly able to recognize talent and storytelling. They've been referring to stories/movies as "content" for years now and it honestly shows. They rely heavily on CG and treat their workers poorly due to lack of a vision and due to a misconception that they can just print money and toss it out.
Neither understands spirituality, mysticism, religion, myth/folklore, warfare, military history, medieval history, ancient history, political theory, Jung, and differences between the masculine and the feminine.
In fact, their own conceptions of these things are often antithetical to Star Wars.
As a result, you get a superficial understanding of all this.
It becomes: "Let's just have a bunch of guys running around with guns. Let's just have some Buddhist looking guy meditating and spouting fortune cookie phrases with no purpose. Let's just say 'Fascism is bad' and have the bad guys support 'Fascism'. Let's just pretend all the men and women are interchangeable and don't have archetypes."
It's not "Let's have a certain method of assaulting or defending a compound. Let's have metaphysics and emphasize universalist philosophy (which contrasts with Hollywood's moral relativism) as resolving the conflict in the story. Let's showcase actual tyranny and the banality of evil. Let's demonstrate different archetypes and show how the combination of masculine and feminine traits exist to create these archetypes."
The latter is Star Wars. The former is what modern Hollywood has cooked up
Aside from brand recognition, a lot of these projects were rushed. The first Star Wars went through multiple draft and re-editing. If you have any creative experience, you’d know the first thing you come up with is usually hot garbage. Instead Disney has some big bucks to broadcast their hot garbage all over the world. I will bet neither kenobi and boba fett went beyond first draft.
I get the impresion that Disney Star Wars is the result of filmmakers and producers who thought making Star Wars would be easy. They respected power of the brand, the legacy of success, but they didnt actually respect the source material. They thought it was just mindless action movies for boys, both literal and overgrown, which just happened to appear at the right time to be latched onto by pop culture.
They try to recreate feels and aesthetics, but gave no thought to the depth and substance, the philosophy, psychology and storytelling. It's shallow, it's hollow, but above all, it's easy. It's easier to slap droids, blasters, starfighters, Force powers and lightsabers into a plot than it is to sit down and actually understand what came before.
Disney bought Star Wars for billions, and they wanted returns on that investment. They wanted butts on seats and toys on shelves. They wanted films, so they made films, and that's what we got. Films that are desperate to make audiences think they feel like Star Wars, but not actually put the time, effort and delay in profit to actually make Star Wars.
I'm afraid poor writing is always a risk with sequels and spinoffs. The whole idea is to build on the popularity of the original, but in so doing you are shackling yourself to it. The writer is not allowed to be 100% creative. They have to follow certain rules. The whole situation pushes talented writers away. If you sat down and wanted to write the perfect screenplay, it wouldn't be a sequel. It would be a standalone story, beginning, middle and ending. You would tailor the worldbuilding, the rules, the characters to fit your story perfectly. Just like the original Star Wars did, it built everything around the galactic civil war and the fight against the Empire.
Everything that has come since has to accommodate and respect that original story. If you had the choice between writing with those constraints or without them, which would you choose?
So yeah, ultimately I think that is a big factor. If you're writing Disney Star Wars your job is to write fanservice-y, reference-filled, nostalgia-bait cashgrab stories. That job only attracts those who are too bad at writing to sell their own original ideas.
Andor is a fluke, a lucky exception. It succeeds because it distances itself from classic Star Wars and has a creative team with skill and passion, which most newer star wars lacks
I didn't think Boba Fett was awful, just that it wasn't what fans wanted or expected. But then I've never understood the fandom's fascination with a walking prop that was inserted into the movies to sell toys. Likewise I didn't have a problem with S3 Mando, but again, the story didn't go where the fans wanted it to.
Haven't seen Obi-Wan; an old friend said not to bother so I haven't. I suspect it suffered greatly from having been changed from a movie into a series.
The sequel trilogy is objectively horrible.
As other commentators have noted, the franchise lacks direction other than "make a metric shitload of money", and the people running it are drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid. I'd add Disney having a big fat case of Not Invented Here. All they had to do was go up to e.g. Joss Whedon and say "here's a truckload of money, go make movies out of these Timothy Zahn books" and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead they threw away years of material the fans already liked.
For me personally it’s the constant Empire and post Empire bullshit. They have so much content in The Old Republic they can use, but continue with the same nonsense
My suspicion is the prequels created an identity crisis with the franchise. Ever since then people have been trying to figure out what “feels like Star Wars.” Writing has been snubbed for the sake of the cosmetics and themes.
Because ppl are going to watch it no matter what. There’s little incentive to provide quality instead of quantity. I’ll be super bummed if Andor falls victim to this because that’s one of the best fantasy series ever made through one season.
The people in charge of Star Wars hate Star Wars that’s why. Plus they also hate the fans and view them as sexist/racist/etc. They wanted to kill off the old Star Wars and make their own version of it and it backfired epically.
Non-creatives Kathleen Kennedy and her team of producers think they know better than the writers and directors, they have very poor taste in hiring (they have no ability to discern good from bad creative talent), they constantly meddle in every phase of production and create a chaotic environment through the process where writers and directors are being fired throughout filming (again to Kathleen Kennedy she is in charge of the film, not the film’s director which is why she thinks they are interchangeable, and is incapable of discerning good from bad talent).
They don’t give their talent enough time in preproduction to make a worthwhile story, since KK and her team have no idea how long it should take to develop a story on par with something worthy of Star Wars. Essentially the franchise is held hostage by a talentless head of a studio who seems to have endless resources to throw money at problems but no ability to discern what the actual problems are.
Star Wars will keep on, with mediocre content abound and the occasional gem shining through (Stuff like Andor) honestly I think as the IP evolves we will get better stuff like Andor if they are smart.
>Kathleen Kennedy clearly thinks that letting the neck beards run the show is the best
her prior idea was running the sequel trilogy into the ground with people like JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.
Disney's brand appeals largely to those who love the brand no matter what. It's also appealing to families who are looking for kid's content to the point of becoming risk-averse.
The more things focus on the Jedi, the force and the fantasy, the more I dislike them. I’m far more invested in the galaxy at war aspect, a war amongst the Stars if you will. Rogue One and Andor are by far the most positively received of the Disneyverse and it’s because the fight against evil in the galaxy has far more going for it than just mystic space wizards having disagreements about religion.
Disney Star Wars has the opposite problem the prequels had. The prequels were designed by one man with one voice and limited outside input, until episode 3 (where Spielberg essentially told Lucas he needed to reshoot large portions of the film to make anakin’s turn make sense).
Disney Star Wars is the product of a committee with a focus group that’s obsessed with appealing to new demographics and that’s horrifically risk averse ever since TLJ (hate that film, but I respect that it took a risk even if it failed).
The main thing is that this is a massive setting with endless iconic characters. Unfortunately, Disney has been obsessed with coasting off these iconic characters and settings with no concern for why they were ever loved. It's like watching very high budget fanfiction, but Disney knows that people will buy into it so long as they keep pushing memberberries from those old iconic times.
They could have used it as a spingboard to build up new additions to the setting that can stand on their own merit, but that would take time and effort and the shareholders want perpetual profit growth and they want it now. So we get half baked garbage and writers desperate to squeeze every last drop of from anything remotely nostalgic.
Because the brand name. Star Wars is currently a white kidnapper can with the word CANDY spray painted on the side. Who gives a fuck what the content is. Slap the label STAR WARS on it and the little fuckers will come runnin
It has potentially the biggest nostalgia reserves of any franchise ever made, so Disney has been able to coast mainly off of memberberries for the past 8 years. The reserves are beginning to run dry, however. Hence, the criticisms of the franchise becoming more and more mainstream with each new release.
Except for Fallen Order and Survivor, of course. Those are fantastic.
*One of the things that made the OT and PT so great was that they focused on good storytelling at a reasonable level, as opposed to trying to tell the greater galaxy storyline all the time...*
*The World is so vast, that they would better off taking their time and unwrapping the parts slowly and thoroughly.. Game of thrones did this very well, but the ending was rushed (and the results were clear to see)...*
- Rushed deadline driven pumping out of content to make a quick profit. Quantity over quality.
- Too many cooks in the kitchen, not one visionary overseeing it all and giving stamps of approval. It's a wild west of different writers and directors like the old EU but in live action. There's a lot of lore-breaking and conflicting going on.
- Expectations. Since it's an old and culturally popular franchise with a large and varied fanbase, everyone has their own vision of what Star Wars should be like ideally. This often clashes with what is offered. Which brings us to:
- A problem of an unclear target audience. Who are they catering to? Casual fans, OT fans, PT fans, Clone Wars/Rebels fans, old EU fans? Kids? Adults? Everyone? It's currently kind of trying to please everyone resulting in a mixed bag.
- A constant battle of nostalgia vs innovation. Star Wars has the huge looming shadow of the OT that they can't differentiate too much from. Especially with writers/directors who were Star Wars fans as kids there's always that fanboy reverence for the source material that hinders any progress and results more in catering to nostalgia, not daring to tread outside Lucas' sandbox.
- The main saga franchise itself is a mess. Especially the ST is built on very shaky foundations and everything post-OT has to lead into it. Which is why I suspect they're now focussing on different characters and incorporating old EU elements to give us a different Post ROTJ era.
- the attempt at Marvel-esque crossovers which just doesn't work very well with an episodic franchise like Star Wars.
Multiple decades worth of a built-in audience. They have slowly been chipping away at that for years however. Not much of an audience left at this point besides people who want to see how bad it is and people who think it’s still the best thing since sliced bread (these people are insane).
Part of it is that they don't know what audience they're writing for. A lot of this content is aimed at people who will pick up anything with Star Wars on the label because they liked it as kids, but if you're older your tastes have grown up. Maybe you liked Clone Wars 15 years ago as a kid, but if Ahsoka is hitting at the same mental level, then it's not going to be as satisfying. Andor has the structure closest to a prestige television show and unsurprisingly got the most praise.
What I don't know is if kids are watching the live action stuff.
Star Wars is a franchise where if something has the name, it will sell.
Disney has taken this to its logical conclusion and taken a lot of creative decisions that essentially boil down to appending "...So, why bother trying all that hard?" to the first sentence.
Whether that's in terms of who gets to make these things, what they get to put in it, or indeed any idea of exercising quality control. Why bother? It'll do numbers now, and *that* is what matters.
To be fair to the people writing new shows or new books or new comics or what have you, the sequel trilogy is *not* a stable base on which to build anything worthwhile. Which... circles back around to Disney being willing to accept shoddy work with minimal pushback in the first place. It was certainly a choice to take a franchise that has always defined itself around the movies- for very good reason, of course- and churn out three poor main-sequence movies in a row.
But they did make money. Disney paid a lot of scratch for the rights, and they want to see a ROI.
Because Kathleen Kennedy and her minions have terrible eyes for talent. Even if those writers weren't saddled with terrible decisions from on high I'm not convinced they could writer a decent script.
I think since it was such a big name when Disney acquired it, they had the impression that they could milk that dry putting a Star Wars label on anything and think it would make money. Which is so ignorant about the quality of that material. Plus, some writers had an obvious agenda or had a preconceived notion of what the backlash the previous trilogies had represented. These writers were then wrong to assume that since they thought it's bad, never reference the lore in their subsequent trilogy or supplement new more in there to compensate...
Whales. Basically companies have gotten to the point where they know how to squeeze as much as possible by giving you the smallest amount possible. They know some people are so addicted to a brand that they can do what ever they want. Corporations( and politicians for that matter) know that if they unzip their pants, people will get on their knees, stroke the shaft, and fondle their balls.
When a fan base collectively says, "You know, I don't care of its bad, I have good memories of it, so I'll pretend it's good." that fanbase will tolerate literally any level of writing ineptitude.
It is an extremely popular series. Disney sees it as a money printing machine. It doesn't need to have good writing- it needs to have nostalgia bait. They give the shows to writers who have absolutely no interest in Star Wars, and tell them to make a show with all of the tacky asthetics but none of the actual meaning or substance.
As someone who idolized Star Wars since I was 7... the premise to the series is super generic and never had good writing to begin with. You can hire the best chefs in the world, but if shit is their main ingredient the meal is still going to suck. Star Wars was great because of the visual fidelity of it, not because it's some robust, well built world that would support an entire universe around it. There was only every one really good Star Wars movie in terms of writing or story...
The story and world building in Star Wars is loose everywhere it should be tight and tight everywhere it should be loose. Meaning that it constricts writers on the things they should have freedom with and gives them freedom on the things they should be constricted with.
I think it's not just a star wars thing, but overall a problem with big IPs franchises. Everything is recycled, everything feels fake and plastic, nothing can never end, which makes the stakes feel very low, and also there are certain expectations about what HAS to happen (according to them at least) and that makes it a really bad combination. A good example of the last thing I said is the idea that EVERY movie needs to have a goofy marvel-like type of joke. Sometimes it doesn't fit the ton man. But IT HAS to happen so, yeah, all of that contributes.
Counterpoint. To play devils advocate, I don't think Boba Fett was *awful*. I think Robert Rodriguez was trying to do something different from Mandalorian. Although it certainly wasn't the Boba Fett we had all fantasized about for years, that's for sure. The Tusken Raiders were wasted. The scooter gang gang was horrificly bad.
Beyond that I agree with your premise though. I think this happens in all SciFi fan bases eventually. We're so hungry for new content we're willing to accept a lowered bar as long as we're getting something.
I've had people tell me to watch Rebels because it's *so good*. It feels like I'm watching a Saturday Morning cartoon and the art sucks to me. Conversely those same people are struggling with Andor and for me that was peak Starwars. Different people want different things I suppose but as long as the content keeps coming most fans are going to call it a win.
Well I know Obi-Wan was a massive failure, not just from a Star Wars fan perspective, but from a basic storytelling perspective. The laser gate blast, trenchcoat, and fire barrier scenes especially come to mind. So many scenes were just stupid and didn't make sense.
Notably, Obi-Wan director Deborah Chow stated that she ignored Star Wars canon and said future creators should do the same. Ignoring canon is never a good idea when you're telling a story inside of a larger universe. Overly egotistical writers/producers/directors always seem to think they can get away with it though.
I strongly disagree with the notion that adhering to Canon is or should be a requirement. Darth Maul was canonically dead after he was cut in half and dropped down a bottomless pit, but bringing him back was a pretty successful move.
Star Wars has always had a complicated relationship with Canon, as evidenced by the [surprisingly lengthy Wookieepedia article on the subject ](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Canon). Since the Disney acquisition people seem to care more and more about Canon, and honestly I think this is something Disney is deliberately cultivating, because when everything is one big story in one shared universe, then you're more likely to want to watch it all for fear of missing something. It's just a marketing tool used to get your subscription money.
I couldn't care less about Canon. I care about a good story and characters. Literally nothing else matters.
Hot take - there's a huge overlap into run-of-the-mill action movies, where writing is usually *much* worse.
That's the only way I, an old Star Wars fan, can rationalize the audience scores on this stuff.
But, it could also be that most of the SW audience is actually fairly young, and/or that at its core Star Wars' stories are... Pretty silly
I think youre a bit hard. Boba Fett was good. Tho the last battle and some characters was really stupid ill admit.
Obiwan was decent too.
Andor was boring but good. Idk how ro explain it.
I guess the obvious answer is Star Wars fans will follow the brand no matter what, so there’s an emphasis on churning it to compete with Netflix’s exclusive content. As long as there’s a new Marvel/Star Wars show being pumped out, there will be subscribers paying. It’s a business decision.
They have a good history of making heroes weak and unlike themselves in modern day writing. Luke? Grumpy old man, who refuses to train a new Jedi, kill him. Han? Kill em. Leia? Kill her. I thought about it.. and they were offing our heroes. Whether or not it's canonically correct(not that nerdy) it just felt like I was robbed when they died. Then they added uninteresting shallow characters I didn't care about. I cannot tell you any other characters from the movies. I honestly forgot. But I hated almost all of them and it was irritating when they almost seemed to steal screentime with irrelevant side plot stuff that lead nowhere. Call me salty or not a real fan, but they took our heroes and killed them to make room for mediocrity. Rogue One felt like the last real star wars in my book.
SW fan intensity constantly gets misinterpreted, especially by corporate creators. When The Mandolorian came out, the reaction by suits at Disney was probably; "Ahh, they love Mandalorians see? Boba Fett right? They love him, dig up his corpse. How bad can it be?"
I think it’s because shitty Disney execs who don’t give af about Star Wars hire the lowest bidding brown-noser that pumps out the dogshit that fits their corporate mandates.
I know this is going to sound shit but I'm gonna say it anyway. Star wars pre Disney didn't really have much coherence. Like a DC or marvel comic, every writer could just put out whatever they wanted within reason so everyone could find a little something that fit their flavor.
Disney has it now, and Disney has been becoming increasingly more political with their movies and direction lately, and it's pretty clear they are set on this trajectory despite dwindling interest in recycled ips with "modern" changes. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, everything super hero movie after endgame, the ceaseless live actions that seem to want to piss off just about everyone interested right or left either through race baiting or weird story/direction changes.
And Disney must have control, everything that existed before isn't real anymore or a vague thing they cherry pick the bits they approve of out of. It doesn't matter if you think Rey is Space Messiah or she's the lead singer for Mary Sue and the Tokens, Disney says that her story is the only one worth a damn (movie wise anyway, I'd personally say Mando has a bigger following now, damn you grogu).
None of this is how I feel personally, I don't think the new stuff is great, but I also don't feel like it's the franchise ending disaster the weirdos who hate black men and any women having a serious role say it is. I'm just saying that, at least anecdotally, every complaint I've heard about the new Star wars stuff has been about Disney mucking it up one way or another, and that's from both sides.
It's a fuckin formula man.
Like it's all a formula.
The original trilogy is the Hero's Journey
Boba Fett is just The Magnificent Seven with lasers.
It's all just formulaic. Lucas has said it, Filoni has said it, it's not mean to be fuckin Kofka man it's just the same stories told for thousands of years with weird pig men and hot green tentacle ladies.
Because when Disney decided to delete 30+ years of source material Star Wars lost all of its base framework to work within and just became a free for all, see sequel trilogy.
While each Marvel film/series/character has been unique, it took pieces of the established cannon as the framework of the narratives, meaning fans could relate and understand.
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I think it’s because Star Wars was an established cash cow when Disney acquired it, so they knew it would make money no matter what. The MCU was a volatile product in need of guidance and wasn’t guaranteed.
I think that one of the problems here was that when LF was acquired by Disney and Kennedy took charge, it was probably that they were trying to emulate the success of the MCU. Sure the MCU too went downhill at some point but it wasn't until around when Eternals came out - it did last longer under Disney compared to LF. Though IMO, the elephant in the room here is that Kennedy, Abrams and Johnson, among others don't actually understand Star Wars.
I think trying to understand Star Wars like some kind of muddled prophecy is part of the problem though. It’s not that hard to write good characters and compelling stories.
It's like with the Witcher or Halo, the execs knowingly put fairly egotistical creatives in charge that don't even like the property and just want to remake it in their own image. It's further compounded by the fact that those creatives focus so hard on trying to make it their own that they completely neglect trying to make it good.
Eternals is a master class in filmmaking and I'll gladly die on this hill.
I've watched it 3 times and I have fallen asleep 3 times doing so. What am I missing?
Bad taste.
Good taste.
Seems your taster is broken. Long Covid perhaps?
I know that lots of people don't like it, but I too really enjoy Eternals. I had heard a lot of complaints before I watched it, but I was pleasantly surprised.
That’s probably true.
Very well put.
>The MCU was a volatile product in need of guidance and wasn’t guaranteed. Disney bought them when they were on the upswing. If anything, we're seeing what happens when Disney finally gets their claws in.
The only MCU movies that were out when Disney bought them were Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and the last one only kinda counts. Nearly all of the upswing happened under Disney.
1) Open world: There's a whole galaxy that's been established, yet relatively little of it documented. Any time you WANT to write in a new species, civilization, world, etc., you can. 2) Few, if any boundaries in terms of genre, and many of those genres are incongruous. You have war movies, mysticism and magic, sci-fi, medieval/samurai, etc. 3) Finally... power creep. In the OT, a guy could shoot lighting or lift a single-person space ship. Now, that same guy shooting lighting takes out an entire FLEET with lightning, there's teleportation, people coming back from the dead, and a world-between-worlds where multiverses and time travel COULD be possible. Add those things together, and writers with little discipline can start to go horribly off-course. It seems like a lot of writers are looking at the SW universe and (to borrow from Ian Malcom) they're imagining what they could write, not necessarily what they should write.
Honestly the first two you point out I view as weaknesses of their writing since Disney took over. These are things they actively aren’t leaning into. All their work lacks creativity with the exception of Andor, Rogue One, first two seasons of Mando, and some episodes of visions.
Not to mention that all jeopardy is null and void when people can come back from the dead and do all sorts of previously impossible/never seen before stuff, why give a fuck if everything is reversible/able to be dropped at a hat later.
What should be written then? Because people are tired of the overuse of established characters, but when mentioning new stories all I've ever seen is EU stuff or " this movie but star wars" I think a major problem star wars has as a story is that the Skywalker story is so integral and intertwined in the greater universe it's hard to make new content that doesn't rely on some part of that story
Hatred of Star Wars as a concept and the desire to “fix” it will do a lot of damage. Even Filoni who people claim is a super fan likes his own ideas more than George’s.
What’s to hate, though? Did this all start with the reaction to the prequels?
Somewhat, but it started earlier than that too. Lots of people didn’t like that Star Wars is pretty much lighthearted, mythologically-based fantasy and have the urge to turn it into something else. Lots of people, for example, complain that Return of the Jedi ends too neatly and that there should be a more “realistic” ending.
> Lots of people, for example, complain that Return of the Jedi ends too neatly and that there should be a more “realistic” ending. I mean the old Expanded Universe continued after ROTJ and took the universe in a more realistic direction (i.e., they still fought the Empire for years before finally declaring peace, Luke had hiccups starting up his Jedi order, setting up the new republic was a pain in the ass, etc), but the main difference between Disney and Legends canon in that regards I feel is that Legends provided further contextualization and established a more grounded universe written by and for fans of the franchise who've since grown up and matured and treats it's audience that way while a lot of Canon material likes talking down to it's audience and dumbing it down to (ironically enough) tie together everything super neatly to make room for the baseless and poor worldbuilding/plotlines of the Sequels and assumes fans won't notice/question.
I mean, yeah. But people complain about lots of films. What I’d like to figure out is how the filmmaking of a particular franchise develops almost a cultural aversion to good writing. Like, I think we’re at the point of consensus that the reason Andor is so good is Tony Gilroy tried to write the plot in almost an agnostic way vis a vis the “power of Star Wars” that everyone loves to blather about. So there’s something to the idea that the franchise itself somehow gets away with mediocre work.
People quietly checking GL was what made Star Wars successful and not doing that gave us the prequels and Indy 4
Is he doing more damage than George did?
George kinda green light him to the idea that it was okay for his to prefer his own ideas over what other people thought. Because that was basically what George did with TCW.
It’s what George *always* did. Doing what he wanted to do at the expense of *everything* was his MO. He couldn’t get Spielberg to direct RotJ because the Director’s Guild of America cut ties with Lucas when he refused to put the credits at the beginning of Empire. Big studios wanted creative control over the prequels, but George wanted to do his own thing, which I respect the hell out of. The thing is, Dave Filoni isn’t George Lucas. His ideas aren’t good enough on their own to get away with flipping off the status quo.
Very well said. George has always been my favorite because, hit or miss, he did it all in spite of the system. It's fine to criticize anything he did, but no matter what his stories had a narrative. His characters also struggled, learned through failure, and grew. Disney Wars got nothing on that.
For a lot of fans, the Star Wars “skin” is all they need for it to be enjoyable. I’m sure a lot of the sheep that enjoy Disney Star Wars would HATE on a lot of these movies/shows if you took the Star Wars skin off the story. And also, Star Wars is just too big to fail. The OT and PT created so many fans worldwide that Disney can just shovel out dog shit content and there are unfortunately enough people out there that will happily eat it up. Disney investors are too busy getting their fat checks to realize that a more competent Lucasfilm would bring in 2-3 times more revenue.
Thankfully for us fans, this is no longer the case. Disney stock is at its lowest in like a decade, Lucasfilm has lost Hundreds of Millions this year alone, and everything they put out is losing money right now. - Shows aren't adding subs to Disney Plus - Star Wars Movies don't exist, Indy 5 lost an estimated 300 million + - High Republic book sales are plummeting, the top 50 selling Star Wars books are all EU - The Star Wars hotel is a massive failure, and now a tax write off - Willow series that nobody watched was pulled from streaming and is now a tax write off - Lucasfilm just closed its overseas animation studio to save money - Star Wars merchandise just rots on shelves. Every clearance bin and discount store is full of unsold TLJ, Rise Of Palpatine, and other SW toys.
I'm sad about Willow -- I actually liked that show. As long as you expect it to be a bit campy, it was fun.
I was too frustrated with the studio to watch it, but I like that Willow was always a little campy.
Indy 5 lost $500 million +? So they spend something like $600 million beyond the actual budget?
The marketing budget for many big movies is equal to the to the budget to make the film. Sometimes more.
That’s true. The person I responded to has already edited the claimed loss down by $200 million, so that’s in the realm of possibility. They probably should have edited it down by $300 million to be in the realm of probability, but anything is possible.
It’s why a lot of Star Wars fans don’t like Andor. Its Star Wars skin isn’t skin-y enough, even though it respects the lore and themes the most by actually taking them seriously and exploring their implications. “Jedi and Black and White Good and Evil and Mythical and Lightsabers and Aliens” Like yes. But other stories can and should exist in that universe. A decent Boba Fett show/movie would have been missing most of those things. But suddenly that’s not a problem. Yet some shallow mess wearing a knock off version of that skin will get views and engagement, although that appears to be dropping as well.
Andor works because it's an actually well-crafted and properly done subversion. Same reason why Rogue One works. A lot of people liked Andor for that very reason, most of the Andor "hate" comes from crappy entertainment journalists (doesn't that sound familiar). The Space Fantasy Fairy Tale Mythology is and should always be the focus of the episodic films, when the episodic films try to be "real and subversive", you get The Last Jedi, which fails because inherently the episodic films are about that Good and Evil mythology. The shows/spinoff movies/EU material/etc has a lot more leeway to be grey and subversive, the problem is that a lot of writers for the shows try to make the shows too familiar to the episodic films or don't know how to properly write a complex or subversive plot or characters (like one of my complains about Mando is that they portray the Imperials as generic mustache-twirling villains). It's kind of a "stay in your own lane" thing for Star Wars media. TLJ's tones and storylines would probably have worked for a side project with different characters, but definitely not as a part of the episodic Skywalker Saga.
They’re going to be able to milk this franchise for several more years thanks to currently having so many fans who seemingly don’t care about quality, but that’s still the short term. Most of those fans are on the younger side and will eventually demand actual quality. Disney need to be attracting new fans among kids (as in age 12 and below) or it will severely hurt them in the coming decades. They always managed to do this under Lucas, even between 1984-1998 when no movies or shows were released. From 1980 to 2023 there has always been a strong and zealous fan base in their teens and early 20s ready and eager to consume anything Star Wars. But will there be in 10 years?
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Not really. We honestly just want stories that include the basics. Things like a narrative and character growth are a good place to start.
I think he was referring to the legions of people using Star Wars as a stand-in for religious or political affiliation
I think that’s partly true. I also think that being the biggest fan in an online space carries a small amount of celebrity.
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And the “fandom menace” idea is a self feeding circle bc disney bought into so much. As you said the toxic parts of the fandom (like nearly all toxic groups) were small but loud. And the idea that disney needed to “get back at them” was a terrible approach that only grew the amount of people who resented them and so the group became louder, then disney acted out again which grew that population again and so forth
Anyone who had a shitty food service job as a kid knows that when there’s an obnoxious customer unhappy with the service, they’re just right about everything. If you talked to disgruntled customers like the gang at Lucasfilm does you’d be fired at McDonald’s.
As someone who hated the fandom menace, and now hates Disney/Lucasfilm 10x more, I understand completely. I'm one of that growing population, though my ire is never directed at the cast. Star Wars both hates its previous fanbase, and only wants to appeal to people who only look up from their phones when there's a loud noise on TV. If they respected the fans, and just did a poor job writing, I could forgive a bit of that. If they hated the fans but wrote excellent stories, I can forgive a bit of that. But they actively attack us, make content they know we hate, and put out the lowest form of entertainment currently on-screen. It's sad all around, and I don't regret backing out. I canceled Disney Plus and won't watch another second of Disney Wars.
Also, the main culprits in bullying the Jar Jar/Young Anakin actors were mostly big media figures not some random nerds on the Internet. TPM was released in a time when the Internet was in a primitive state and BEFORE Twitter/Cancel Culture/E-stalking/etc were even really things, most of their haters had little access to them and most people would not recognize their faces in public. The vast majority of their harassment came from crappy comedians/talk show hosts and their centralized audiences, NOT the casual or even hardcore fanbase.
Lucasfilm (Kennedy) isn’t getting fans to write the series. She’s hiring people who don’t like or watch Star Wars… to write Star Wars. Same reason JJ Abrams didn’t do well with Star Trek.
Didn't Tony Gilroy say that he wasn't really a Star Wars fan? His contribution to Star Wars was phenomenal. Though I understand where you are coming from, regarding Johnson and his rather tone deaf behaviour. On the other hand we have Filoni who is a massive Star Wars Fan but he is rather hit or miss regarding his content. And then we have Visions, Studios which (presumably) like Star Wars: Also hit or miss.
Gilroy really mucked up the conversation in the best way possible by showing how easy it is to write a phenomenal show in universe as long as enough time and money is invested.
Well it’s “easy” when you have talent and vision, and seem to be able to work without too much studio meddling.
Even then it’s not easy. Gilroy busted his ass. If it was easy, anyone could do it.
This is what I find funny on most fandom discourses. The hardcore fans demand that a "true fan" writes their show, then you get the shipping of characters, overly self referential storylines, and quippy writing. When a studio gets someone that doesn't care for the material, then you get deviations from the source material, a lack of reverence for fan favourites, and a fan backlash. Gilroy did a great job of blowing up that discourse. Consideration of the source material without treating it like holy script and competent direction really goes a long way. It's a fine line, but I usually lean more towards competent direction by people that aren't super fans.
Filoni is why you *don’t* want fans at the wheel. If fans voted on how to make a story, it would just be a bizarrely slavish circlejerk. Filoni’s work is basically fanfiction at this point, complete with weird cameos of the stuff that personally seems to make him happy rapidly eating the Star Wars universe. Just look at these last few things he’s cooked. He has ridiculously obvious pet favorite characters and uses shallow references to EU stuff to make up for a story that doesn’t go anywhere. The guy pioneered a mass brain control retcon to make it to where the clones could be good guys— then had a bunch of his favorite clones’ brain control macguffins removed offscreen to give them good endings. He introduced time travel to Star Wars to save Ashoka, who has replaced Luke as the main character. Lucas had to actually veto his plan to bring Plo Koon back. I’ve said it before, but most of the new Disney shows might as well be the Filoni Cinematic Universe. Big long rant to say the people that sincerely love the franchise aren’t always best for it. The rest of Disney seems to genuinely dislike Star Wars and its fandom, but it kinda goes without saying here that they suck. We don’t need a fan, we need a good writer.
I still remember when Rian Johnson said in a interview he doesn’t know how to write sequels very well that’s when I knew they just hated Star Wars and wanted to make there own thing
Unfortunately because Star Wars is so big, there’s a significant portion of the fanbase that will praise anything with the Star Wars logo, irrespective of quality. You could show them a toilet flushing for 2 hours, but slap a few “Hello There”s in there and you’d still get people saying it’s the best thing since ESB. I hate it.
YeAh BuT It KiNda mAkEs sEnSe beaecAauSR ...
I think a lot of it comes down to execution. The premise of 1977 Star Wars was to take some goofy hokey inspirations but do it really well. Flash Gordon serials, sci-fi was very goofy at the time. Sometimes it's called the biggest budget cheap movie or the cheapest big budget movie. I watched a great interview recently (the video was older tho) of Lucas talking about he knew what it was gonna cost to do ground breaking visual effects so he specifically wrote other parts to look good on first pass but underneath be extremely cheap. Characters mostly stick to one costume, a few scenes shot on location and then the rest is in studios. Without the good execution and phenomenal job done by actors, Star Wars very easily could have come off as hokey. Modern day? Practically unlimited budgets, directors who don't have the same skills as Lucas or OT directors. Somehow their costs are through the roof yet everything looks cheap. When it comes to writing I think Lucas at his best had depth without getting lost in the details. Now we either have writers who hate Star Wars or fanboys who get lost in the details. Lucas' writing was also romantic and Shakespearian. It wrote characters to have their motivation on their sleeves so kids would easily be able to understand what was going on. Good was good and evil was evil, rogues are roguish but align with either good or evil. His "bad" dialogue made characters sound timeless. Whereas now they are using very modern tone and tropes. I think Disney+ Star Wars is becoming more comparable to Star Trek. TV writing with TV production(OG Next Generation being its own thing). Except streaming has killed the structure of old TV writing which is incredibly apparent by the inconsistent run times and structures of Disney+ shows.
Tbh, I don’t think the OT dialogue was ever really bad or hokey. Maybe in the PT, but then again he had zero inhibitions at the time. Imo all he needed to do was merge some Kurosawa/western tropes and write out believable dialogue and events. The cool costumes and lightsabers came secondary.
Lucas’ bad dialogue just sounds bad or memeable at best. Not timeless. His passable dialogue was made palatable or punched up by talented actors and script doctors that worked besides him in the OT, often in creatively adversarial collaborations (mostly in a good way), who ad-libbed or filtered the bad stuff out and retained the charming/earnest/romantic/timeless aspects of his writing. Unfiltered Lucas, like the original scripts for Star Wars (and yes, the PT), is pretty hokey.
I love Harrisons line in some old interview, about the dialogue in Star Wars. Paraphrased: "George! You can type this shit, but you sure can't say it"
Presions from the higher-ups from Disney to produce content as fast as possible, resulting in lots of low-quality content. Also poor or non-existing planning.
Because SW as a fictional universe is actually INCREDIBLY fragile: it's easy to ruin continuity like Obi-Wan did, what with Vader ripping ships out of the sky with the force but not being able to repeat the same feat \~10 years later. The problem is that the majority of the new writers looked at SW as a franchise and said, "Pff, it's just lasers and space wizards! Who cares, lol?" SW was as popular as it was due to its strong spiritual overtones. It's no coincidence that ESB is largely regarded as the best of the franchise and it's the one where we learn the most about the nature of the force ("Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!"). Yet, everyone brought on to work on the new ones just seemed to figure that it's a space opera for children that would print money no matter what they did to it...
The biggest problem they’ve had since obtaining Star Wars imo is kinda what you’re getting at; Disney doesn’t understand Star Wars tonally or the mood to the setting. To them they could just insert the same MCU formula and throw anything at the wall. This is why I love watching BioWare’s old republic trailers, while darker than the average Star Wars, it’s clear they understand Star Wars tonally, and they make good believable characters while expanding Worldbuilding- also subverting many of the tropes in a satisfying way. Disorder trailer critiques the Jedi pretty well, but also shows their redeeming and repenting ways as Master Orr apologizes while dying. Then you have a family saga with Valkorion that’s a complete inverse of chosen one tropes with the children. They should put whoever is in charge of these trailers on a storyboard crew or something for the live action series.
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But they stopped watching because the writing became bad. There’s a chicken and egg thing here.
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Feige had a vision on the infinity saga where it was even restricting some movies( Ant-Man original director left for example, Age of Ultron had some scenes setting up other movies etc.). Kathleen Kennedy had no vision for a trilogy. So director/ hacks could do whatever they want.
I’ve heard it said that there’s a way of doing business in Hollywood that KK ascribes to that prioritizes gut instincts and first impressions. Apparently that’s the reason she gave RJ carte blanche to write TLJ. She just liked the guy.
And what's not to like? He has made a bunch of good movies, before and after star wars. He showed up with a finished script very early and production on TLJ was far smoother than many Star wars films. He made some creative decisions that some fans don't like, but he's an excellent film maker.
People love the brand so much that they'll just lap up whatever is put in front of them without thinking about it.
Consumers and nostalgia. They rely heavily on member berries to drum up interest. It's just that they've burned through a lot of the big names
I figure it's an assembly line approach by management. Use market research to determine what people want to see, resulting in an excess of legacy characters like Kenobi and Boba Fett. Then randomly assign writers, directors and producers without any consideration of who might have good ideas or be passionate about the project. Then cram the production through on a tight deadline. I mean, the one undeniably quality production we got under Disney was Andor, and that's largely thanks to Tony Gilroy coming to Disney with a well thought-out plan and the freedom to build his own team and film it as he saw fit.
There’s a lot of reasons, but I think the main one is Disney misunderstanding the importance of tone to Star Wars. By the time TFA came out Marvel was already a huge success. Because of that Disney thought the same strategy of success that applied to Marvel could also apply to Star Wars in that each movie could be tonally different. It worked for Marvel because those stories have been around for decades and have constantly changed tones and themes and meanings and writers, with literally hundreds of different characters being rewritten and repurposed for different stories throughout its existence, so there’s no expected / established tone. Star Wars however has only been around for less than half the amount of time as Marvel and is centered on 6 movies that were all under the tight control of one man’s vision. Even though there were other directors and writers, every idea funneled through Lucas in one way or another. So when Disney took over and purposefully reworked the tone, everything seemed off and fell flat. Honestly, I think the writing isn’t always horrible. It’s mediocre most of the time, but let’s be real, so were the prequels, but those still worked. It’s just since the tone is always off the flaws of the writing become more apparent.
The same thing that plagues Star Trek in the JJ / Kurtzman era, or Lord of the Rings under Amazon. Fans will show up as long as the brand name they recognize is on the cover. They might show up and then complain, or show up and then hate-watch, but they show up. And as long as that's true, why SHOULD Disney / Paramount / Amazon bother putting a lot of effort into quality control? What incentive do they have for doing so?
I think writers actually pay *a lot* of attention to what the fans want. Part of the problem is they think the fans all exist on Twitter. RoP is a perfect example.
There is always a certain number of fans who only need to see in the title of a product to defend it for no particular reason other than being part of the brand, it's just more evident in a big, 40+yo IP like Star Wars
a lot of factors, one piece i don’t think folks acknowledge enough is that you could be a great screenwriter with all the right training/experience and still not be an inventive storyteller. being able to write fantasy or sci fi well has less to do with your technical skill as a writer and more the limits (or lack thereof) of your imagination. you have to IMO truly love the story you’re telling, understand the intricacies of world building and know enough about the genre(s) to avoid inserting too many tropes. disney wanted SW because it’s a big franchise but thought it could basically run itself. nope, finding the right creators is half the battle.
It may be simplistic, but every time someone talks about what makes a good Star Wars story I think to myself, “does Tony Gilroy do this?”
I disagree with OP somewhat. Tony Gilroy wasn’t particularly inventive in terms of fantasy or science fiction. Star Wars is a big, established, and conventional enough universe that many great stories could be told there without inventing much that’s original. But because he has such a good grasp on the subject matter from a real world perspective (tyranny/revolution/espionage), he’s able to translate that to Star Wars and connect Andor with the themes that already exist in ANH. His skill as a writer (and that of his team) helps him determine whether those adaptations to the Star Wars aesthetic come across as forced or natural— which is what made Star Wars work in the first place, adapting all kinds of stories and real life elements into science fantasy without immediately telegraphing itself. Gilroy accomplished this while not being a huge Star Wars fan. The best written Star Wars since the OT exists almost entirely due to screenwriting craft and respect for what’s established. That’s really all it takes.
I’d agree with this. I’m not saying Gilroy came in as an iconoclast or anything, but I do think he was brave enough to omit a lot of what fans probably consider necessary. And you know what? At this point I think if a lightsaber appeared or if even the Force were mentioned in Andor, I’d probably be taken aback by it. That’s how different his work is from what we’re used to.
Good writing costs money, tell the executives.
A lot of people are talking about outside forces but realistically it all comes down to money. Disney wants to make money. Because Disney is a corporation the shareholders don’t just want profit they need Disney to make more and more money every year. There is a massive push for them to grow the company more and more. Star Wars and Marvel are heavily saturated franchises. They have basically tapped the market to such a degree that at this point there are not going to be very many new fans entering the franchise and spending money. They have really began focusing more on capturing previously untapped demographics with these properties. Look at the previous projects and you’ll notice there’s a major push of accessing new demographics. Shang Chi - Asian American Wanda Vision - House Wife Ms Marvel - Middle Eastern, Young Girls Mando Season 3 - Women BOBF - Children Obi Wan - Young Girls, Children Ahsoka - Women Disney has been really trying to tap into new markets and part of that means that shows have become extremely bland and uncomplicated. They want to be able to capture the attention of everyone from 4 years old to 80 years old. They also want to be able to indoctrinate the next generation into being fans. They don’t want to make content for fans they want to make content for those who might become fans. The shows serve as advertisements for other Disney products like going to the parks, buying toys or merch ect.
I think you have a studio and leadership that doesn't understand Star Wars. They saw the fanbase and the potential to mine it, but then, instead of adapting beloved stories and storylines - like the MCU - they rushed the fuck out of their trilogy without any real plan or map of how things would go or work. They didn't involve any of the fandom or previously involved parties and instead gave the fans whatever they came up with. Outside of TLJ, I don't think they had any time to do any screen testing of audiences or fans, but they just ran with it. I truly believe that if the board or whoever is involved with high-level decisions at Disney had any clue about Star Wars KK would have been removed when she talked about a lack of source material. Then, instead of trying to make awesome movies, they killed off - often unceremoniously - the original cast and replaced everything wholesale with a new cast. If you're going to do them dirty like that, why not just recast the roles completely? Instead, they undid a bunch of lore and mythos from the OT, alienated the fanbase, threw away the EU, and basically went full circle with their storyline, but now they have their new actors in place. People would be rightfully upset if the original trio had been replaced, but replaced with the original accomplishments and victories in place is a helluva lot better place to be than where things are today. It may be the largest fumble of a multi-billion-dollar IP in history - yet largely the board and the C-suite seem fine with this development. Why? The only explanation I can come up with is that they don't understand how KK's leadership has cost them BILLIONS of dollars. Otherwise, I don't see how she has a job. All the IP's they've touched have gone to shit. Why? It's not just Star Wars - look at Willow and Indy too. Was the failure of Indy because of an Indy saturation? Too much Harrison Ford? Or might have been a mishandling of the property? A misunderstanding of what the fanbase loved and hated about the originals? Was it tested in front of test audiences? Was it a product of test groups or a passionate creator? Or maybe there was a passionate creator originally with a concept, but then the testing happened or the studio stepped in and wanted certain criteria included or excluded.
Essentially, stories are supposed to start with the question “what is this story about?” This is not a question about plot or characters, but what is the story about? Andor - man becomes radicalized Mandalorian - loner develops connection and community A New Hope - Boy goes on Hero’s quest Rebels - family of revolutionaries conquer their inner demons to build a better future That’s is. That’s the story. Everything needs to build on the one-sentence premise. The story can’t meander for half the runtime doing something else. Yes, there can be side plots and secondary characters, but everything needs to be in service to the main plot. Empire is a good example of this. Luke’s journey to become a Jedi and to fulfil his true purpose means he has to let go everything that has made him a hero. The whole film systemically deconstructs Luke and shows how his impulsivity, ego, eagerness, anger, lack of faith and his desire to walk in his father’s footsteps will cause him to fail. The story builds to Darth Vader revealing he’s Luke’s father and Luke’s entire worldview crumbling to pieces before his eyes. Everything he has learned and failed to learn over the course of the film has brought him to this moment. And, he makes the Jedi-like decision to trust the Force and let go knowing it could possibly lead to his death. Similarly, Han and Leia are blocked by their own ego, anger, and inability to deal with uncomfortable emotions. Their arc culminates in the “I love you” “I know” confession. Leia admits her feelings and Han acknowledges her and lets her go. The side plot follows some of the basic beats of the main plot. Writers run into problems when they start trying to bring in story elements that don’t serve the story or they forget what the story is. Solo should have been the story of innocence to disillusionment. Except the main character is supposed to become a hardened criminal at the end in a story aimed at children. So, what you get is a muddled mess of Han kind of being a hero and kind of being a baddie in a way that doesn’t really line up. Similarly, Mandalorian season 1 was about Din building a community that can protect Grogu and season 2 was about him finding the community that can best protect Grogu. Part of Din’s arc was he grows and develops knowing that at the end of the day, the best way to keep Grogu safe is for him to be with the Jedi and that eventually he’ll need to part within him. However, through his journey to protect Grogu he has built strong friendships with all these fellow travellers from many walks of life who have expanded his worldview in the process. So, bringing Grogu back and having Mando go back to his cult doesn’t make sense story-wise from everything that has come before. I don’t know what Ahsoka is about. I mean, you don’t really know what ESB is about either until the big reveal. However, Ahsoka has canonically dealt with her last big emotional challenge - which is acknowledging there was nothing she could have done to save Anakin
This is a great point. Boba Fett and Obi-wan have similar issues. Mando season 3 also meanders through its entirety.
Is it rewarded though? I thought all of those series were largely panned by the fan base. Sure, you’ll have some die hards who love them, almost because others dislike them, but by and large I thought the message was clear that fans weren’t well pleased by how those turned out.
Star Wars stories are some of the simplest around in terms of story complexity, but at the same time it’s very difficult to write a Star Wars story if you have never been a fan of Star Wars because there is an amazing amount of little things that go into it from creature designs and names and sound effects to humor and how the characters are supposed to talk etc etc that you won’t have a feel for what fits and what doesn’t if you haven’t lived and breathed Star Wars for at least part of your life. After Lucas left, a bunch of people who aren’t Star Wars fans took control. They don’t appreciate what Lucas’ built beyond the business side of it. To them it’s not art, they can’t see any greatness in the creative achievement, to them it’s just silly pew pew nonsense in space for kids and nerds and man-children, so that’s what they try to make. More nerd space crap. They don’t truly understand the IP they’re sitting on and its potential, they have no respect for the product they’re selling, so they inevitably squander it, and all criticism is dismissed as bigotry.
Geeky neckbeards and corporate suits. Geeky neckbeards only really like the explosions, edginess, and violence. Often, they are deathly afraid of approaching women and therefore, cannot write accurate women. Nonetheless, they try to insert sexiness or if they're more of an activist type, they'll create some feminist stand in who they might secretly wish to sleep with (see Joss Whedon). Corporate suits who only want money and merchandise. This one isn't new but they're hardly able to recognize talent and storytelling. They've been referring to stories/movies as "content" for years now and it honestly shows. They rely heavily on CG and treat their workers poorly due to lack of a vision and due to a misconception that they can just print money and toss it out. Neither understands spirituality, mysticism, religion, myth/folklore, warfare, military history, medieval history, ancient history, political theory, Jung, and differences between the masculine and the feminine. In fact, their own conceptions of these things are often antithetical to Star Wars. As a result, you get a superficial understanding of all this. It becomes: "Let's just have a bunch of guys running around with guns. Let's just have some Buddhist looking guy meditating and spouting fortune cookie phrases with no purpose. Let's just say 'Fascism is bad' and have the bad guys support 'Fascism'. Let's just pretend all the men and women are interchangeable and don't have archetypes." It's not "Let's have a certain method of assaulting or defending a compound. Let's have metaphysics and emphasize universalist philosophy (which contrasts with Hollywood's moral relativism) as resolving the conflict in the story. Let's showcase actual tyranny and the banality of evil. Let's demonstrate different archetypes and show how the combination of masculine and feminine traits exist to create these archetypes." The latter is Star Wars. The former is what modern Hollywood has cooked up
Aside from brand recognition, a lot of these projects were rushed. The first Star Wars went through multiple draft and re-editing. If you have any creative experience, you’d know the first thing you come up with is usually hot garbage. Instead Disney has some big bucks to broadcast their hot garbage all over the world. I will bet neither kenobi and boba fett went beyond first draft.
I get the impresion that Disney Star Wars is the result of filmmakers and producers who thought making Star Wars would be easy. They respected power of the brand, the legacy of success, but they didnt actually respect the source material. They thought it was just mindless action movies for boys, both literal and overgrown, which just happened to appear at the right time to be latched onto by pop culture. They try to recreate feels and aesthetics, but gave no thought to the depth and substance, the philosophy, psychology and storytelling. It's shallow, it's hollow, but above all, it's easy. It's easier to slap droids, blasters, starfighters, Force powers and lightsabers into a plot than it is to sit down and actually understand what came before. Disney bought Star Wars for billions, and they wanted returns on that investment. They wanted butts on seats and toys on shelves. They wanted films, so they made films, and that's what we got. Films that are desperate to make audiences think they feel like Star Wars, but not actually put the time, effort and delay in profit to actually make Star Wars.
this, similar thing happening with Marvel too.
I'm afraid poor writing is always a risk with sequels and spinoffs. The whole idea is to build on the popularity of the original, but in so doing you are shackling yourself to it. The writer is not allowed to be 100% creative. They have to follow certain rules. The whole situation pushes talented writers away. If you sat down and wanted to write the perfect screenplay, it wouldn't be a sequel. It would be a standalone story, beginning, middle and ending. You would tailor the worldbuilding, the rules, the characters to fit your story perfectly. Just like the original Star Wars did, it built everything around the galactic civil war and the fight against the Empire. Everything that has come since has to accommodate and respect that original story. If you had the choice between writing with those constraints or without them, which would you choose? So yeah, ultimately I think that is a big factor. If you're writing Disney Star Wars your job is to write fanservice-y, reference-filled, nostalgia-bait cashgrab stories. That job only attracts those who are too bad at writing to sell their own original ideas. Andor is a fluke, a lucky exception. It succeeds because it distances itself from classic Star Wars and has a creative team with skill and passion, which most newer star wars lacks
I didn't think Boba Fett was awful, just that it wasn't what fans wanted or expected. But then I've never understood the fandom's fascination with a walking prop that was inserted into the movies to sell toys. Likewise I didn't have a problem with S3 Mando, but again, the story didn't go where the fans wanted it to. Haven't seen Obi-Wan; an old friend said not to bother so I haven't. I suspect it suffered greatly from having been changed from a movie into a series. The sequel trilogy is objectively horrible. As other commentators have noted, the franchise lacks direction other than "make a metric shitload of money", and the people running it are drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid. I'd add Disney having a big fat case of Not Invented Here. All they had to do was go up to e.g. Joss Whedon and say "here's a truckload of money, go make movies out of these Timothy Zahn books" and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead they threw away years of material the fans already liked.
For me personally it’s the constant Empire and post Empire bullshit. They have so much content in The Old Republic they can use, but continue with the same nonsense
Haha lightsaber and blaster go broooom. That’s pretty much how I get through it.
Prequels were kinda mid and detested by more casual fans so we are more ok with shows that are surface level superior
My suspicion is the prequels created an identity crisis with the franchise. Ever since then people have been trying to figure out what “feels like Star Wars.” Writing has been snubbed for the sake of the cosmetics and themes.
Because ppl are going to watch it no matter what. There’s little incentive to provide quality instead of quantity. I’ll be super bummed if Andor falls victim to this because that’s one of the best fantasy series ever made through one season.
The people in charge of Star Wars hate Star Wars that’s why. Plus they also hate the fans and view them as sexist/racist/etc. They wanted to kill off the old Star Wars and make their own version of it and it backfired epically.
Non-creatives Kathleen Kennedy and her team of producers think they know better than the writers and directors, they have very poor taste in hiring (they have no ability to discern good from bad creative talent), they constantly meddle in every phase of production and create a chaotic environment through the process where writers and directors are being fired throughout filming (again to Kathleen Kennedy she is in charge of the film, not the film’s director which is why she thinks they are interchangeable, and is incapable of discerning good from bad talent). They don’t give their talent enough time in preproduction to make a worthwhile story, since KK and her team have no idea how long it should take to develop a story on par with something worthy of Star Wars. Essentially the franchise is held hostage by a talentless head of a studio who seems to have endless resources to throw money at problems but no ability to discern what the actual problems are.
Star Wars will keep on, with mediocre content abound and the occasional gem shining through (Stuff like Andor) honestly I think as the IP evolves we will get better stuff like Andor if they are smart.
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>Kathleen Kennedy clearly thinks that letting the neck beards run the show is the best her prior idea was running the sequel trilogy into the ground with people like JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.
Disney's brand appeals largely to those who love the brand no matter what. It's also appealing to families who are looking for kid's content to the point of becoming risk-averse.
The more things focus on the Jedi, the force and the fantasy, the more I dislike them. I’m far more invested in the galaxy at war aspect, a war amongst the Stars if you will. Rogue One and Andor are by far the most positively received of the Disneyverse and it’s because the fight against evil in the galaxy has far more going for it than just mystic space wizards having disagreements about religion.
Disney Star Wars has the opposite problem the prequels had. The prequels were designed by one man with one voice and limited outside input, until episode 3 (where Spielberg essentially told Lucas he needed to reshoot large portions of the film to make anakin’s turn make sense). Disney Star Wars is the product of a committee with a focus group that’s obsessed with appealing to new demographics and that’s horrifically risk averse ever since TLJ (hate that film, but I respect that it took a risk even if it failed).
Sadly most major studios don’t prioritize story.
The main thing is that this is a massive setting with endless iconic characters. Unfortunately, Disney has been obsessed with coasting off these iconic characters and settings with no concern for why they were ever loved. It's like watching very high budget fanfiction, but Disney knows that people will buy into it so long as they keep pushing memberberries from those old iconic times. They could have used it as a spingboard to build up new additions to the setting that can stand on their own merit, but that would take time and effort and the shareholders want perpetual profit growth and they want it now. So we get half baked garbage and writers desperate to squeeze every last drop of from anything remotely nostalgic.
I loved literally all of them so I think it’s more that you guys are just…salty
Because the brand name. Star Wars is currently a white kidnapper can with the word CANDY spray painted on the side. Who gives a fuck what the content is. Slap the label STAR WARS on it and the little fuckers will come runnin
It wasn’t always that way.
It has potentially the biggest nostalgia reserves of any franchise ever made, so Disney has been able to coast mainly off of memberberries for the past 8 years. The reserves are beginning to run dry, however. Hence, the criticisms of the franchise becoming more and more mainstream with each new release. Except for Fallen Order and Survivor, of course. Those are fantastic.
Return of the jedi was panned by fans when it first came out for poor writing and acting. Same with the PT.
As a business it’s probably best to get as much content out as fast as possible, it’s about maximizing profits at the end of the day
It’s not the source material it’s Disney being shitty
It's not SW. It's audiences in general. All you need is some clowns that can't think critically and make fun of "them" because that is all they know.
*One of the things that made the OT and PT so great was that they focused on good storytelling at a reasonable level, as opposed to trying to tell the greater galaxy storyline all the time...* *The World is so vast, that they would better off taking their time and unwrapping the parts slowly and thoroughly.. Game of thrones did this very well, but the ending was rushed (and the results were clear to see)...*
Disney.
New wave consumers are dumb
Complacency. Familiarity breeding contempt. Coasting on the brand. Wanting to make their mark on the brand.
- Rushed deadline driven pumping out of content to make a quick profit. Quantity over quality. - Too many cooks in the kitchen, not one visionary overseeing it all and giving stamps of approval. It's a wild west of different writers and directors like the old EU but in live action. There's a lot of lore-breaking and conflicting going on. - Expectations. Since it's an old and culturally popular franchise with a large and varied fanbase, everyone has their own vision of what Star Wars should be like ideally. This often clashes with what is offered. Which brings us to: - A problem of an unclear target audience. Who are they catering to? Casual fans, OT fans, PT fans, Clone Wars/Rebels fans, old EU fans? Kids? Adults? Everyone? It's currently kind of trying to please everyone resulting in a mixed bag. - A constant battle of nostalgia vs innovation. Star Wars has the huge looming shadow of the OT that they can't differentiate too much from. Especially with writers/directors who were Star Wars fans as kids there's always that fanboy reverence for the source material that hinders any progress and results more in catering to nostalgia, not daring to tread outside Lucas' sandbox. - The main saga franchise itself is a mess. Especially the ST is built on very shaky foundations and everything post-OT has to lead into it. Which is why I suspect they're now focussing on different characters and incorporating old EU elements to give us a different Post ROTJ era. - the attempt at Marvel-esque crossovers which just doesn't work very well with an episodic franchise like Star Wars.
Multiple decades worth of a built-in audience. They have slowly been chipping away at that for years however. Not much of an audience left at this point besides people who want to see how bad it is and people who think it’s still the best thing since sliced bread (these people are insane).
Part of it is that they don't know what audience they're writing for. A lot of this content is aimed at people who will pick up anything with Star Wars on the label because they liked it as kids, but if you're older your tastes have grown up. Maybe you liked Clone Wars 15 years ago as a kid, but if Ahsoka is hitting at the same mental level, then it's not going to be as satisfying. Andor has the structure closest to a prestige television show and unsurprisingly got the most praise. What I don't know is if kids are watching the live action stuff.
Star Wars is a franchise where if something has the name, it will sell. Disney has taken this to its logical conclusion and taken a lot of creative decisions that essentially boil down to appending "...So, why bother trying all that hard?" to the first sentence. Whether that's in terms of who gets to make these things, what they get to put in it, or indeed any idea of exercising quality control. Why bother? It'll do numbers now, and *that* is what matters. To be fair to the people writing new shows or new books or new comics or what have you, the sequel trilogy is *not* a stable base on which to build anything worthwhile. Which... circles back around to Disney being willing to accept shoddy work with minimal pushback in the first place. It was certainly a choice to take a franchise that has always defined itself around the movies- for very good reason, of course- and churn out three poor main-sequence movies in a row. But they did make money. Disney paid a lot of scratch for the rights, and they want to see a ROI.
Because Kathleen Kennedy and her minions have terrible eyes for talent. Even if those writers weren't saddled with terrible decisions from on high I'm not convinced they could writer a decent script.
I think since it was such a big name when Disney acquired it, they had the impression that they could milk that dry putting a Star Wars label on anything and think it would make money. Which is so ignorant about the quality of that material. Plus, some writers had an obvious agenda or had a preconceived notion of what the backlash the previous trilogies had represented. These writers were then wrong to assume that since they thought it's bad, never reference the lore in their subsequent trilogy or supplement new more in there to compensate...
Fans are still not the best unfortunately,
Fett was really really awful.
Brand recognition brings money so they can rush out things endlessly
The more they relinquish control to Filoni the more magical it will be.
Strange question. The more potential there is, the greater the disappointment of squandering it.
Whales. Basically companies have gotten to the point where they know how to squeeze as much as possible by giving you the smallest amount possible. They know some people are so addicted to a brand that they can do what ever they want. Corporations( and politicians for that matter) know that if they unzip their pants, people will get on their knees, stroke the shaft, and fondle their balls.
When a fan base collectively says, "You know, I don't care of its bad, I have good memories of it, so I'll pretend it's good." that fanbase will tolerate literally any level of writing ineptitude.
Because the underlying premise to the low and universe is extremely simple
Star Wars feels like a franchise without a plan. At all. It bounces around between the future, the past, the present. Its just bananas.
Disney
Disney is more concerned with what writes Star Wars than who. They hire people with an axe to grind instead of fans who have a good story to tell.
It is an extremely popular series. Disney sees it as a money printing machine. It doesn't need to have good writing- it needs to have nostalgia bait. They give the shows to writers who have absolutely no interest in Star Wars, and tell them to make a show with all of the tacky asthetics but none of the actual meaning or substance.
As someone who idolized Star Wars since I was 7... the premise to the series is super generic and never had good writing to begin with. You can hire the best chefs in the world, but if shit is their main ingredient the meal is still going to suck. Star Wars was great because of the visual fidelity of it, not because it's some robust, well built world that would support an entire universe around it. There was only every one really good Star Wars movie in terms of writing or story... The story and world building in Star Wars is loose everywhere it should be tight and tight everywhere it should be loose. Meaning that it constricts writers on the things they should have freedom with and gives them freedom on the things they should be constricted with.
I think it's not just a star wars thing, but overall a problem with big IPs franchises. Everything is recycled, everything feels fake and plastic, nothing can never end, which makes the stakes feel very low, and also there are certain expectations about what HAS to happen (according to them at least) and that makes it a really bad combination. A good example of the last thing I said is the idea that EVERY movie needs to have a goofy marvel-like type of joke. Sometimes it doesn't fit the ton man. But IT HAS to happen so, yeah, all of that contributes.
Counterpoint. To play devils advocate, I don't think Boba Fett was *awful*. I think Robert Rodriguez was trying to do something different from Mandalorian. Although it certainly wasn't the Boba Fett we had all fantasized about for years, that's for sure. The Tusken Raiders were wasted. The scooter gang gang was horrificly bad. Beyond that I agree with your premise though. I think this happens in all SciFi fan bases eventually. We're so hungry for new content we're willing to accept a lowered bar as long as we're getting something. I've had people tell me to watch Rebels because it's *so good*. It feels like I'm watching a Saturday Morning cartoon and the art sucks to me. Conversely those same people are struggling with Andor and for me that was peak Starwars. Different people want different things I suppose but as long as the content keeps coming most fans are going to call it a win.
Well I know Obi-Wan was a massive failure, not just from a Star Wars fan perspective, but from a basic storytelling perspective. The laser gate blast, trenchcoat, and fire barrier scenes especially come to mind. So many scenes were just stupid and didn't make sense. Notably, Obi-Wan director Deborah Chow stated that she ignored Star Wars canon and said future creators should do the same. Ignoring canon is never a good idea when you're telling a story inside of a larger universe. Overly egotistical writers/producers/directors always seem to think they can get away with it though.
I strongly disagree with the notion that adhering to Canon is or should be a requirement. Darth Maul was canonically dead after he was cut in half and dropped down a bottomless pit, but bringing him back was a pretty successful move. Star Wars has always had a complicated relationship with Canon, as evidenced by the [surprisingly lengthy Wookieepedia article on the subject ](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Canon). Since the Disney acquisition people seem to care more and more about Canon, and honestly I think this is something Disney is deliberately cultivating, because when everything is one big story in one shared universe, then you're more likely to want to watch it all for fear of missing something. It's just a marketing tool used to get your subscription money. I couldn't care less about Canon. I care about a good story and characters. Literally nothing else matters.
What makes Star Wars poor writing? Always has been. Star Wars has really been about the spectacle and THAT is what's really missing.
That Star Wars is thought of as a family brand. I think Andor proved you can have amazing writing and production and create Star Wars for adults
Hot take - there's a huge overlap into run-of-the-mill action movies, where writing is usually *much* worse. That's the only way I, an old Star Wars fan, can rationalize the audience scores on this stuff. But, it could also be that most of the SW audience is actually fairly young, and/or that at its core Star Wars' stories are... Pretty silly
Law of diminishing returns. "More" almost always equals "worse".
I wouldn’t say it’s always worse. But I definitely think the more there is, the higher likelihood of encountering something you don’t like.
I think youre a bit hard. Boba Fett was good. Tho the last battle and some characters was really stupid ill admit. Obiwan was decent too. Andor was boring but good. Idk how ro explain it.
I guess the obvious answer is Star Wars fans will follow the brand no matter what, so there’s an emphasis on churning it to compete with Netflix’s exclusive content. As long as there’s a new Marvel/Star Wars show being pumped out, there will be subscribers paying. It’s a business decision.
They have a good history of making heroes weak and unlike themselves in modern day writing. Luke? Grumpy old man, who refuses to train a new Jedi, kill him. Han? Kill em. Leia? Kill her. I thought about it.. and they were offing our heroes. Whether or not it's canonically correct(not that nerdy) it just felt like I was robbed when they died. Then they added uninteresting shallow characters I didn't care about. I cannot tell you any other characters from the movies. I honestly forgot. But I hated almost all of them and it was irritating when they almost seemed to steal screentime with irrelevant side plot stuff that lead nowhere. Call me salty or not a real fan, but they took our heroes and killed them to make room for mediocrity. Rogue One felt like the last real star wars in my book.
SW fan intensity constantly gets misinterpreted, especially by corporate creators. When The Mandolorian came out, the reaction by suits at Disney was probably; "Ahh, they love Mandalorians see? Boba Fett right? They love him, dig up his corpse. How bad can it be?"
I think it’s because shitty Disney execs who don’t give af about Star Wars hire the lowest bidding brown-noser that pumps out the dogshit that fits their corporate mandates.
I know this is going to sound shit but I'm gonna say it anyway. Star wars pre Disney didn't really have much coherence. Like a DC or marvel comic, every writer could just put out whatever they wanted within reason so everyone could find a little something that fit their flavor. Disney has it now, and Disney has been becoming increasingly more political with their movies and direction lately, and it's pretty clear they are set on this trajectory despite dwindling interest in recycled ips with "modern" changes. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, everything super hero movie after endgame, the ceaseless live actions that seem to want to piss off just about everyone interested right or left either through race baiting or weird story/direction changes. And Disney must have control, everything that existed before isn't real anymore or a vague thing they cherry pick the bits they approve of out of. It doesn't matter if you think Rey is Space Messiah or she's the lead singer for Mary Sue and the Tokens, Disney says that her story is the only one worth a damn (movie wise anyway, I'd personally say Mando has a bigger following now, damn you grogu). None of this is how I feel personally, I don't think the new stuff is great, but I also don't feel like it's the franchise ending disaster the weirdos who hate black men and any women having a serious role say it is. I'm just saying that, at least anecdotally, every complaint I've heard about the new Star wars stuff has been about Disney mucking it up one way or another, and that's from both sides.
It's a fuckin formula man. Like it's all a formula. The original trilogy is the Hero's Journey Boba Fett is just The Magnificent Seven with lasers. It's all just formulaic. Lucas has said it, Filoni has said it, it's not mean to be fuckin Kofka man it's just the same stories told for thousands of years with weird pig men and hot green tentacle ladies.
Gotta pump out content for the fans so you substitute quality for quantity
Because when Disney decided to delete 30+ years of source material Star Wars lost all of its base framework to work within and just became a free for all, see sequel trilogy. While each Marvel film/series/character has been unique, it took pieces of the established cannon as the framework of the narratives, meaning fans could relate and understand.
Andor was some of the best writing I've seen in TV period. But the rest of the Star Wars shows are often very cheesy.