‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

This is interesting to me because it's so at odds with how I took in the new trilogy. I thought only Johnson showed any vision at all, and I also thought his sense of small scale combat choreography was way better, e.g. the scene where Adam Driver and Rey fight those guys in the red suits.

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.

I agree the buck stops with Kennedy BUT the original story was that Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) was hired to write a trilogy. He didn't write fast enough (for Iger?), and Abrams replaced him and his story. What we can deduce, is that ad hoc unconnected movies wasnt plan A.

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...

The problem is that her resume of successful productions is strangely amazing for how she's run Star Wars. Gremlins; E.T.; Indiana Jones; Jurassic Park; Twister; Schindler's List; Back To The Future; etc. Presumably, it's partially because she hitched along as Producer for almost all Spielberg films and it did her career wonders by association.

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?

> an amazing job building a unified “universe” with Marvel

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.)

I think it’s the exact opposite. The universe is one of the most compelling around. There is so much fiction (cannon and non-canon), and there was even a pen&paper RPG back in the day that was great fun. There is an enduring love for the universe because it’s a great tapestry for many types of story.

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.

It pains me to say this, especially since I saw Star Wars in the theater over 10 times when it first came out, but you have a point.

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.

I think Star Wars is great today for what it accomplished at the time. I enjoy it to a large extent because it is legendary. If you view it in isolation, without the background, knowledge of the era and what impact it had on society, you lose a lot of the feeling watching it. It is like a time machine. Just a fact like that Reagan's strategic defense initiative was called the Star Wars program in the press says tons about the impact the movie had on its audience at the time. This cannot be repeated 40 years later.

This is absolutely part of it. Your favorite Star Wars movies are the ones you saw as a child.

This is my feeling as well, but I find that going up against Star Wars fans is a pointless and unrewarding endeavor.

I also watched star wars as an adult. I find the source material average.

>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.

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.

Not sure SW was ever about anything but style and setting. A constant science fiction Gulliver's Travels with new people, civilizations, institutions cropping up rapid-fire.

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.

Exactly, people need to stop pretending Star Wars is something it isn't.

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.

The star wars hotel is a billion dollar loss.

If that were true they would have reined in Rian Johnson in episode 8.

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 think Bud Lite proves liberal executives are supremely out of touch.

> a forced, ideologically-driven tarnishing of their childhood memories

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.

I have no love for the extravagant dumpster fire that is the sequels, but "forced, ideologically-driven tarnishing of their childhood memories" could equally (or even better) describe the bunch of loud online critics who were strangely invested in attacking poorly-envisioned black/Asian/female characters, when the arcs of white male characters were honestly no better. (They were made by the same creators, duh.)

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.

Andor was good. It didn't need Star Was as its universe, but it is perhaps the best Star Wars anything in the last two decades.

I went from being a lifelong fan, especially of the EU, to not caring at all. I’m now a Trekkie.

Andor was decent

I think it's more that Disney noticed they were losing momentum with Star Wars and decided to delay or cut theatrical projects planned for 2020 - 2024. "Too much too fast" was the line from Bob after Solo was released. "We will take a pause, some time, and reset... there will be a bit of a hiatus." Covid probably had a role too, and the success of the Mandalorian. The Boba Fett film became a streaming series, the Kenobi film became a streaming series.

Disney acquired Lucasfilm, the production company founded by Lucas, on October 30, 2012 for a reported $4.05 billion

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).

Considered they paid 4 billion for the franchise alone, I think they wanted more.

> The hero's journey is SO played out.

Certainly after 3000 years it’s finally played out?

Nope, I think it will power stories for thousands more.

Perhaps but would the Star Wars universe be the right setting for them? Probably not.

Compare those numbers to Marvel and you’ll see what a wasted opportunity they created.

Force Awakens had a lot fewer of the glaring plot holes and forced social activism of the second two.

it is, but it's also an example of what a wasted opportunity the rest of the star wars franchise has been. The mandalorian is what happens when you have a solid plan for the story you want to tell and how to tell it, and you execute that plan.

the sequels are what happen when you don't.

It's lost alot of drive in the plot though. Seems to be losing alot of steam after this last season concluded.

Yeah but its fun is done. They already spent the last season setting up Mando's departure from the show.

Perhaps because, as the article cites, the streaming platform has lost $9 billion dollars since it launched.

How do you race swap a skeleton?

Very easy to do a shamble in the eyes of fans, very hard to attract other people who didnt play the games.

She-hulk is a comedy series on a streaming-only platform.

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.

She's 70, so she'll be able to retire and never have to face the fact that she's an Adam Neumann-sized net loss to the world.

> They care more about pushing progressive ideologies than making a return on investment.

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.

> They're ruining Marvel properties as well. They care more about pushing progressive ideologies

you sound like someone has never read a Marvel comic book in their life.

Didn't Stan Lee push for lots of progressive change, often through his work?