Took too long for the article to mention this. How can she possibly still have a job? It was her call to hire 3 different directors for the sequels (initially, I know Abrams came back) with no agreed upon direction of the plot. Complain about Rian Johnson’s (awful) episode 8, but ultimately it was Kennedy that gave him free reins to do what he wanted.
It’s just mind boggling that the very same company that’s done an amazing job building a unified “universe” with Marvel by Kevin Feige has done such an awful job with Star Wars by Kennedy.
JJ's movies were so derivative of the original trilogy I sometimes wondered if he was messing with us, e.g. the scenewhere a character says, if I recall, "it's just like the death star!" once they've unveiled...another death star.
But yes, the fact that the three movies don't gel whatsoever, in terms of tone or plot, seems like a management issue. Really puts into perspective what the folks at Marvel have pulled off.
The X-Men and DCEU movies seem like a similar story.
> JJ's movies were so derivative of the original trilogy I sometimes wondered if he was messing with us, e.g. the scenewhere a character says, if I recall, "it's just like the death star!" once they've unveiled...another death star.
I liked Abrams' first one best. It had some issues but it at least nailed the epic Star Wars tone and feel, and it's a solid movie and fun to watch.
Johnson's felt ridiculous and contrived, with the fake low-intensity chase, the weird dialog, the space casino, and on and on.
The third one was just an absurd mess, and involved total plot whiplash after the second one went in a different direction.
Well, I hate to ruin it then, but the choreography for that specific scene was widely criticized for having serious mistakes and editing errors.
https://youtu.be/CI-W3BEjRtI (a bit bloated overview, skip to most watched sections)
https://youtu.be/qyzwBWsqqw8 (50 minute investigation on all the mistakes)
The first video doesn't mention it, but the constant red guard spinning, is because stuntmen are trained to quickly add spins and flourishes... when the actors are too slow and behind schedule in the sequence.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/star-wars-micha...
There is also maybe more recycled Arndt ideas scattered through the trilogy than he gets credit for.
https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/michael-arndt-re...
So who is the replacement? She's produced on so many successful series that her Star Wars ineptitude is heartbreaking. You need to find someone with a better resume; and if you can't, what's your criteria for picking a replacement if nobody is qualified replace her on previous merits?
It's about as unified as it's creativity-free. Disney is killing both universes, one is just way more blatant than the other.
(But well, the series aren't going through the same path.)
As someone who has not watched star wars before being adult but is pretty fond of fantasy and sci-fi, I am wondering if the simplest explanation for the constant disappointments is that the universe and source material are not that great in the first place. Is it possible that in 2023, a good chunk of the love for star war movies is due to fond childhood/90's memories that are impossible to recapture? I am hard pressed to find people that became passionated about star wars by discovering them late in their life.
If I am right, then what to do? People are going to be unhappy if the franchise tries to modernize itself and make drastic changes, but they will also be unhappy if they get more of the same because it won't have the madeleine effect.
I do agree there is a lot of rose-tinted fondness for the movies; they don’t hold up well IMO. The problem for new blockbuster movies is that the Campbell “hero’s journey” story style is incredibly cliche these days. In many ways the original Star Wars defined the tropes but you can’t just go back and revisit and do another “it’s your destiny to save the galaxy” arc after the Skywalker saga.
My prescription would be to really lean into the richness of the universe, and tell some truly new stories. Mandolorian was trying to do this but they chickened out and added baby Yoda as a callback to the original storyline, plus there were no Jedi at the point I got bored and stopped watching in S2 - there is a tension here as I think there are interesting non-Jedi stories to tell, but after a while you really want to see the magic. I also think a lead with an inexpressive mask was a tactical error that compounds after a while.
There is a bunch of interesting stuff you could explore in the Old Republic timeline, or you could forge new canon in the post-Skywalker era (maybe go forwards a millennium or so and construct some new power dynamics, perhaps tell some fall of empire / decadence / rise of dark side stories).
I think the new anime series (Visions) is some of the best content to come out of the universe, and it’s certainly fresh. It really showcases how much potential there is to tell interesting stories in the universe, and the shift to anime allows the Jedi to be more over-the-top in a way I find very entertaining. But I acknowledge that it’s just shorts, and so it suggests they really haven’t figured out how to tell a fresh movie/series-length story in that universe.
Perhaps the franchise can benefit by looking for writing talent outside of Hollywood.
Someone like Dan Abnett who has done an amazing job in the Warhammer 40k universe may bring new and compelling narratives to life.
When I was a kid, I saw Star Wars over 10 times in the theater, and I LOVED it. For the time, it was revolutionary science fiction film. But I remember after the first time I saw it with my dad and I excitedly asked him "what did you think?" He said it was over rated. I remember being crushed by that comment, but now.. I dunno. The plot is pretty weak and predictable.
But I think that's why a lot of fans are so disappointed by the new Disney star wars material. Rogue One seemed like such an elevation of Star Wars - Star Wars for grown ups. And the hope, at least of me, was that Disney+ would run with that. But after Boba Fett, I just walked. It was atrocious.
Marvel works because of the endless nerd wrangling in the comics world imposing narrative discipline and critical standards. Plus the crappy stories don't make it to the big screen. Star Wars just doesn't have that: it's a cathedral and there's no bishop, vs. the much more bazaar and bizarre comic book processes.
Needs a genius at the helm or it flounders. Where's Marcia Lucas these days?
Good point.
For non-comic book readers, Marvel has published dozens of issues of various titles *every single month* since 1961. Those stories (plus selected issues from the late 1930s to 1961) are the gigantic mine of ideas that the MCU draws upon. Not all the stories are good, of course, but there have been six decades for public sentiment to manifest and identify the best/coolest/funniest/most touching moments, characters, and—well—memeable points. The memorable way a villain redeems himself at the end of the third Thor film? That's straight out of the comics.
Star Wars had a corpus of its own to draw upon, the Expanded Universe of novels/TV shows/comics/toys/etc. Zahn's Thrawn novel trilogy basically saved the franchise in the early 1990s, after the first set of movies ended with nothing else in sight. I've not read them, but fans have gushed over them ever since and I presume that they could have made a good set of post-RoTJ films. Disney explicitly disavowed the Expanded Universe after acquiring Lucasfilm, but recently published another Thrawn trilogy to bring the super-popular villain into mainstream continuity. But instead of anything like that, we got the sequel trilogy, with the dubious accomplishment of turning the $2 billion box office of the first film into $1 billion for the third.
Any attempt to rein that in would ossify, fossilize the franchise. It's not about some particular famous characters or planets. It's about constantly seeing new stuff.
The Rise of Skywalker grossed over a billion dollars at the box office. The current crop of TV shows are some of the most popular things on TV. That isn't what I'd call "desertion". Disney can milk Star Wars for years to come.
It wouldn't surprise me if they've already made back their investment. The five Disney Star Wars movies have made over $4 billion gross. That's not accounting for the parks or merchandising.
I don't see any doom and gloom here for Disney. Things are bad for the moviegoing public, sure, but Disney is doing fine.
It ain't high science fiction, it ain't some coherent canon of beautiful authentic story telling.
Apart from Rogue One and Andor, it's space shows for kids. The plots never made total sense, the acting was always corny, the writing wasn't exactly tight. All the way back to A New Hope.
It's pew-pew-pew blasters in space, bad guys vs good guys, etc.
I hated the sequels, they were awful, each in their own unique way. Abrams makes garbage stories from whatever he touches these days. But he makes garbage that makes money, and that's really what it's about.
Public hands over $$, gets to see shiny space battles with a dose of nostalgia. That's what they're paying for, whether the true fans complain or not.
Myself, I hated the prequels, too, but I rewatched them recently with my adolescent son, though, and he was fine with them and, yeah... because as cheez and corny and incoherent as they were, that's what Star Wars is.
I'll save my purism for Dune.
This puts the cart before the horse. What do you expect to get when the whole context of the article is about how Disney could milk more money using some acquired intellectual property? The endless sequels are meant to make money, not be good movies with creative new ideas - those are risky. Whatever wokeness you find in the movies is just a calculated attempt at mass appeal.
Frankly if that were true they would be in a lot better position.
I don't care about the supposedly woke stuff, I'm talking about the direction of the plot. Everything that made the critics love that movie hurt the franchise.
I am not entirely sure that matters. Pissed-off fans undoubtedly want to see metaphorical blood for what, to their eyes, was a forced, ideologically-driven tarnishing of their childhood memories. At the end of the day, the buck stops at the top. Chapman was already punted as a general scapegoat, but is it enough?
I'm sure there is a minority that believes this, but the majority know that there is no ideological drive, only a greed one. Alignment with current social issues happens based on calculations of profit, not based on sincere ideological commitment.
Making good movies is hard, making movies following current social issues is easy. Both bring money, one is a lot more consistent - and the negative press keeps the properties in the media far longer than they usually would.
In other words, it's not like an unwoke version of those films would have been good. Like, they resorted to bringing Palpatine back. That's not being fixed by changing Finn's race, Rey's gender, or that one chick's hair color or whatever else people are upset about who stole the Picard Maneuver.
Every popular movie gets leveled with some criticism about its politics. But just like most of my computing tools, I really care more about whether they work than whether the company posts a logo I agree or disagree with.
Here the second two especially were just trash movies that put the elements of the universe in a blender.
I guess they need to do a better job with their market research. Because destroying Luke Skywalker and redefining the Mary Sue trope doesn't seem like what the public wanted.
Yeah, Bud Light was just “calculating profit” when it alienated its customer base.
Makes me wonder if they are objecting to something else but don't want to say that part loud.
* I'm (obviously) not saying all online critics are like that: it's really easy to hate these movies, they're a total mess.
https://en.as.com/latest_news/how-much-did-george-lucas-sell....
I'm assuming they expect a lot of money.
(I actually couldn't believe what that dead comment said, so I googled it).
Both of these were created in the spirit of serials, but then the series stopped unceremoniously.
Other entries like Willow weren’t main stream hits and Lucasfilm just stopped making movies for about 10 years. By the time George Lucas directed again it had been 22 years since he had directed a movie.
A lot of wonderful things have come out of Lucasfilm, but it was pretty much abandoned by the 90s.
Both the Star Wars and Indy universes are great, but let new creators make new things. I’d much rather see a mediocre original concept than yet another mediocre franchise movie.
Oh, lord. I really hope they don't follow this playbook. The hero's journey is SO played out. I honestly think there is a huge market for stories that do NOT revolve around saving the world/galaxy/universe.
Certainly after 3000 years it’s finally played out?
Nope, I think it will power stories for thousands more.
There is also the idea about why Disney and these other big companies are buying franchises in the first place. I read somewhere (probably here on HN) that these media companies realized that people like to get invested in a particular story universe. They don't want to have to keep getting used to new universes, they want to see the universe that they like from different angles. So in that regard I think this strategy makes strategic sense as well.
the sequels are what happen when you don't.
They are purposely taking a hit on box office sales, to drive Disney+ subscriptions.
Turning Red, Soul, and Luca were all movies that dropped on Disney+ the same day they hit theaters.
How can you gauge the "success" based solely on box office sales, when Disney's strategy is using this content as a loss leader strategy to drive subscriptions to Disney+?
Which is why Hollywood is cutting back on writers pay, actors pay, etc ... and hence the guild strikes.
There's also GAAP accounting issues as well on timing of match those expenses to revenue.
I had read that most of that cancellation was due to Disney+ losing the rights to Cricket matches in India. Was that not the case? I think I only saw it in threads here and Twitter, so I don't know if it is true or not.
Edit: Hmm, that seems to be true: https://qz.com/disney-is-losing-subscribers-with-the-loss-of... claims that the loss from Cricket is 4.6 million.
Rogue One was not that bad. And Andor was actually good, much better than I expected.
It's crystal clear progressive propaganda over took good decision making. The 'force is female' marketing was incredibly dumb and alienating to my young sons, who would have been the perfect target for Star Wars type stuff. The 'force is for everyone' would have been so much better.
Then ruining the legacy of Luke, Han, and Leia was the final touches on destroying the brand. Even Mark Hamill was so surprised by the direction Luke Skywalker took that he had to justify the performance to himself by claiming he played another character named "Jake Skywalker." https://comicbook.com/starwars/news/star-wars-the-last-jedi-...
The Mandalorian is another example of suddenly pushing progressive politics by switching main characters in the later seasons, where it's clear the audience just wanted a cowboy in space series. (I didn't watch it, but my Husband did)
* The Mandalorian is some of the best Star Wars content ever produced, period. They really need to get Jon Favreau at the helm of all things Star Wars. By the way, if you've watched Friends, look up his face. You'll recognize him as the late 90s software entrepreneur that dated Monica.
* They need to step away from the cliche hero's journey stuff (as I mention in another comment on this thread). The Mandalorian is great and refreshing precisely because Mando is not really trying to save the world and it's not following that super boring and predictable narrative arc. The Rey saga sucked because they stuck to the playbook too much.
* Visions is pretty cool. Of course it's kind of jarring to see so many different intrepretations of the Star Wars universe, but I respect what they're doing there.
So yeah, I could keep going, but you get the gist: they're doing fine. It hasn't crashed into the ground.
And lately is "Sasquach Starwars Body Soap" comeon, how pathetic.
I've seen interviews with the directory of She-Hulk where she seems to revel in the fact that the "fandom" was crapping all over her show...
"this will piss off all the right people!" is not a business strategy
they really did kill Star Wars
Marvel too
its probably too late to save either, as Disney thinks more bad, woke content is the answer to too much bad, woke content
its not clear to me why they can't replace Kennedy...its like she has an envelope with compromising photos and can't be fired or something...they should have exited her out long ago but keep protecting her
Their Star Wars movies consistently make >$500M, and that says nothing of the merchandising, amusement parks, and other tie-ins.
I think they're going to be okay.
And then they can't even practice what they preach, removing black actors from posters to placate countries like China. Disney needs to fail.
Stop it. Just stop it. You know that's not true. All they care about is the money. Ever wonder why everything in entertainment is as bad as it is? Because all they care about is money, not quality.
That's part of what makes Star Wars movies, and not films.
you sound like someone has never read a Marvel comic book in their life.
And I don't care what your politics are, but when you insert politics into a story, your gonna alienate a major part of your audience OR you're going to the ruin the product experience of consuming TV. When people sit down to watch TV, they just want to relax and escape. Inserting politics, pulls people out of that and gets their blood pressure up. Who needs that?
We don't need a "very special episode of.." every week.
