‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment
fortune.com> At the heart of this mess is Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> I liked Abrams' first one best. It had some issues but it at least nailed the epic Star Wars tone and feel,
No wonder, given that it was a glorified remake of A New Hope. The sort of film for which the term "remaquel" was created.
Yes. Some of my friends loved it, but I couldn't get past the fact it was literally the same story.
I mean, an orphan who becomes a Jedi, a droid who brings important information and then battles against the Empire who has a deathstar.
Where did I see that before? It wasn't even trying to be original in any way whatsoever. That said, it did a good job of capturing the star wars feel... Which is possibly not surprising.
That’s fair, but I also don’t mind much. It was a solid attempt to return the franchise to its roots, even if the other movies mostly squandered that.
I agree though, I could have done without Deathstar III.
> the red suits is one of my favorite fight scenes, ever.
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.
I watched a bit of the second vid, and I see why some people would have fun making and/or watching this; but to me it totally misses the point of what is magical about cinema.
> I watched a bit of the second vid, and I see why some people would have fun making and/or watching this; but to me it totally misses the point of what is magical about cinema.
Could you expand your point a bit more?
To quote Roger Ailes in 'Bombshells,' "It's a visual medium!" [0] Meaning, whether a scene succeeds or fails on screen is first and foremost about whether it looks good, and this scene looked great.
Obviously visuals aren't everything -- the story should make enough sense to be emotionally engaging, and the mechanics should never threaten your suspension of disbelief -- but they're the main thing.
This video analyzes the fight scene as though it's a text about how people would fight with laser swords, and it's not. It's a visual medium.
[0] https://www.bigissue.com/culture/film/bombshells-telling-of-...
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?
A resume only tells you what she did in the past (or way past in her case), not what she could potentially do in the future. And not to sound ageist (I’m old as well), but she’s almost 70 and at some point she won’t be in touch with what “the kids” want any longer. Feige is 50 for comparison. I know I don’t always understand why my kids like certain things nowadays.
You want the showrunners for Rings of Power instead? Amazon went for the best mix of young, talented and well-rexommended they could find, and they blew it.
The Tolkien estate blew it.
Amazon could only use Silmarillion, NOTHING else. They were seriously hampered on what they could touch without getting sued.
They couldn’t use the Silmarillion, only LotR, including appendices, which Tolkien had sold the film rights for long ago when he was in financial distress.
Christopher Tolkien, his son and close collaborator, hated the movies and likely was not interested in licensing anything, regardless of price. I think he was right. Since he has passed, I expect that will change sooner or later.
Even so, blaming the licensing is absurd. The writers had carte blanch to write a new, original story set in the Second Age, or flesh out the framework in the Appendices - which, by the way, is almost all Tolkien’s writing on the Second Age anyway, so they’re not missing much. They blew it because they can’t write, not because they couldn’t get all the material they needed. They deviated from all the material they did license anyway, keeping basically only character names and the barest outline of plot (magic rings are made), they changed literally almost everything else they “adapted”. Blaming the Tolkien estate is a ridiculous diversion from the utter mediocrities that are running all these major franchises.
> 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 am going to lose some karma over that comment:
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 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.
The Andor series is also well written and produced.
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.
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.
At the end of the day, nobody's left who understands what Star Wars is about. It's a ship adrift.
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?
>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.
>The third Skywalker trilogy started off with a bang in late 2015 with The Force Awakens, only to end with a whimper four years later as fans deserted the franchise.
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.
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.
Only he doesn't make as much money as his employers expected. Star Wars Episode IX should have made Avengers Endame box office, and it barely cracked a billion. Yes, a billion is a ton of money, but I'll bet Disney had projections and Rise of Skywalker fell short. His resume certainly looks pretty slim post-Star Wars.
Well, good, I hate what he did for both Star Trek and Star Wars, and his story telling style to me epitomizes everything wrong with Hollywood. Glib, shallow characters with no depth that I don't care about, and routine plot shortcuts.
But, again, Lucas was hardly a masterful writer, too. The prequels were pretty awful, IMHO, and of the original 3 I only really like "Empire Strikes Back"
The star wars hotel is a billion dollar loss.
Commenters seem upset that the reason the movies suck is that they are somehow ideological, probably "woke".
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.
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.
> “The problem isn’t Kathleen Kennedy.”
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?
> 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.
Definitely some people were put off by the ideological bent to it. I found it slightly grating (and I'm a center-left type), but I could have excused it if there was anything else to the films. The first one seemed promising if finished, but the rest were just sloppy.
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.
Making it less woke would have made it successful with one simple trick . Let Luke be a positive male hero.
I agree that making Luke turn out better would have been one of many keys to its improvement, but I don't think that was done to be woke. If anything it was more regurgitation. They felt like he needed a hermit phase like Obi Wan.
Also, there were supposed to be positive male heroes in it, right? Finn, even Kylo Ren in the end, and the guy whose name I forget that's the pilot.
Having one of the key characters be a female hero goes back to A New Hope so I'm not sure if this is actually a good faith complaint.
What does "less woke" have to do with "positive male hero"? Do you think there is no woke media with positive male heroes? Do you believe all non-woke media has positive male heroes?
The best positive male representation I've seen was on very progressive (what you'd call "woke") shows.
>Alignment with current social issues happens based on calculations of profit, not based on sincere ideological commitment.
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.
Did you read my previous comment? I explained reasonably clearly that they didn't focus on making a good movie. You yourself are saying that destroying Luke Skywalker and redefining the Mary Sue trope doesn't seem like what the public wanted. But I'll guarantee you that there was a lot of market research which determined that:
- strong female leads are popular
- "defying expectations" is popular
- Marvel style humor is popular
And when you put those things together without caring about making a good movie, you will do things like destroying Luke Skywalker, or redefining the Mary Sue trope. These things didn't happen because they wanted them to happen, they happened because they didn't care enough to not make them happen.
Your comments about what Disney thinks is popular amount to nothing but conjecture on your part. Meanwhile, the sequels were not well received by fans. And, while I'm certain you would make the argument about the movies making money, they underperformed with regards to expectations. Merchandise did not sell. Solo lost money because of the bad sequels. Spin-offs were canceled.
So, regardless of market research or whatever, the end result was not good.
> So, regardless of market research or whatever, the end result was not good.
Do you believe I'm trying to say anything different? You're arguing against something that is not my point.
You just seem to think Disney has the absolute worst market research on the planet instead of admitting they are trying to push ideological messaging.
No, I am not. I'm saying they don't care about making good movies, only about putting in what market research is telling them they should. My version of things doesn't rely on a conspiracy to push ideological messaging like yours, it only relies on market forces and big companies coming together to create a lazy and bad product that still sold, albeit under expectations (because, surprise, people care about quality).
Just stop for one second and consider this - is there literally no way to increase the quality of the movies without changing the "ideological messaging"? I think there are tons of ways, e.g. by removing the incredibly annoying slapstick humor overpresent in Episode 8. So why didn't they try to make it better? If they want to push ideological messaging, why not at least put effort into the movies, so your messaging is effective?
> Alignment with current social issues happens based on calculations of profit, not based on sincere ideological commitment.
Yeah, Bud Light was just “calculating profit” when it alienated its customer base.
Yes, they did. They had a calculated marketing campaign where they paid various influencers to market towards their respective audiences. I'm sure they made a risk analysis - and if you look at other transgender influencers paid by other companies who were spared this moral outcry, you'll see that it's more bad luck than anything else that the conserviative media machine focused so much on them.
No, they had one marketing executive making the decisions, who was subsequently thrown under the bus. Get your facts straight.
> No, they had one marketing executive making the decisions, who was subsequently thrown under the bus
What did I write that you think you're disagreeing with here? I didn't specify the amount of marketing executives who made the decision, so what are you trying to say I should get my facts straight on?
>I'm sure they made a risk analysis - and if you look at other transgender influencers paid by other companies who were spared this moral outcry, you'll see that it's more bad luck than anything else that the conserviative media machine focused so much on them.
You're throwing around ridiculous speculation.
Well, there definitely are other transgender influencers paid by other companies who were spared this moral outcry. So what is the ridiculous speculation? That they made a risk analysis?
You're lacking examples
This is the first time you're asking for examples. Given both your way of asking and your previous messages I'm neither interested in continuing this "discussion" with short and snippy responses, nor do I feel safe directing you to any individuals.
You think that it is ridiculous speculation to say that a large company did something with the goal of making money and it just didn't work out how they expected it to?
Several times in a row over multiple years? Yeah.
I don't think so. Gay Marriage bills didn't even pass in California, or 29 other states. The supreme court overturned the will of Americans (btw I'm French).
It's clear American elites are far far more liberal progressive than the American people themselves. The country that had Nixon win in a landslide, brought Trump too.
Luckily that's very easy to disprove, since we have statistics about the amount of Americans supporting e.g. same-sex marriage: in November 2022, 61% of Americans saw it as a net positive. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/15/about-six...
The customer base was alienated because Bud Light made one (1) custom can of beer. Not one kind of custom can, literally only one can.
Strangely, Bud Light has made special cans for pride month for years now and no one much cared. Strangely, people are boycotting Bud Light specifically and Anheuser-Busch is largely ignored. Strangely, major beer companies have had much more prominent partnerships with trans people with no similarly hysterical reaction.
This is not a story that makes sense. Even from the perspective of the modern American right it doesn't make sense. It's just a herd of people freaking out for no reason.
The explanation is that Bud Light is viscerally associated with Dylan Mulvaney, who shot videos promoting the custom can. Bud Light's masculine, blue collar customer base does not want to be associated with Dylan Mulvaney. However, they are not sophisticated enough to extend the association to AB-InBev's other products. It's not hard to understand.
As I said, this doesn't make sense even within the modern American right. Bud Light has been loudly supporting trans rights for years now with no backlash I can remember. Why did associating with a transgender person for a single video result in more outrage than years of deliberate political activism?
It's a random social media outburst. People latched on to one trivial event because that's what happens on the Internet. There is no rational explanation.
The Bud Light controversy is absolutely stunning, and is affecting my job in directional planning.
I don't think any high level executive saw that coming.
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.
The new trilogy killed my interest in the franchise and I was a lifelong fan.
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.
Was it ? My husband was a huge Star Wars fan, and didn't say anything about it. I might get it for him.
I loved it — thought it was some of the best sci-fi TV in the last decade. And I really dislike almost every bit of Star Wars media post original trilogy.
Abandoned it after 2 episodes, because everyone was grumpy, sad and serious all the time. Ridiculous.
Then you missed some incredible television. Everyone is grumpy for a damn good reason, and they do something about it. It's a story of ordinary people pushed to the limit fighting back against an evil that seems impossible to reason about, much less fight.
I went from being a lifelong fan, especially of the EU, to not caring at all. I’m now a Trekkie.
All watchable sci-fi series have "By Grabthar’s hammer..." as their tagline.
Andor was decent
The movies have been quite profitable even after Hollywood accounting. Without even talking about licensing and merchandising, how much more money were the movies supposed to make?
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.
Among other issues at Lucasfilm before the acquisition was they just didn’t make much anymore. Star Wars, one of the biggest series ever created, sat from 1984 to 1999 without any features (outside of Ewoks made for TV entries). The universe was left to novelists and game creators. Indiana Jones was similar.
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.
> “To get the Force back, Lucasfilm needs to reconnect with its Joseph Campbell roots—the inner set of mythologies we’re all hardwired to that motivated Lucas to create Star Wars in the first place,” said Schiffer.
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.
> 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.
I think it can be. There still needs to be drama and adventure and action. The story just doesn't need to always revolve around saving the galaxy. I think this is why the Mandalorian has been so successful and interesting. He is a character that is never really trying to save the world. He gets sucked into it every now and then, but then again a lot of his episodes are just cool adventures of a person living an interesting life.
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 force awakens grossed above $2B, and the next two grossed around $1B each. Their budgets were around $250-300M. They'll be fine.
Compare those numbers to Marvel and you’ll see what a wasted opportunity they created.
I think you’re overestimating how much money reach marvel flick brought in there were huge but also many that didn’t break 1B WW box office revenue. The big difference between Marvel and SW is that Disney was churning out far more Marvel films especially in Phase 2 and 3 https://m.imdb.com/list/ls040671689/
MCU movies have made $29.1B for Disney (revenue). That’s a lot in my book.
$29.1B for 29 films (technically 32 but Disney has bough marvel only in 2009) vs $4.4B for 3 films in the new trilogy, it doesn’t seem to be that much of a difference overall.
Rogue one also grossed over $1B the only SW box office bomb so far was Solo which grossed just under $400M but Marvel movies also had their bombs too.
Force Awakens had a lot fewer of the glaring plot holes and forced social activism of the second two.
The mandelorian is pretty fun in fairness.
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.
Loss leader for Disney+
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+?
Perhaps because, as the article cites, the streaming platform has lost $9 billion dollars since it launched.
The economics of forgoing a $1B movie release for a $10/month subscription instead, that math will never add up.
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.
The casting of Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the new Indiana Jones was a terrible mistake. She doesn't have the looks to pull off the role. What a weird choice. Makes the movie unwatchable tbh
Harvard Business Review will do a case study on Disney on how to best avoid tackling a new customer segment and piss off/insult your core users at the same time
> Now that growth has faltered, with 4 million customers canceling their membership in the three months through March
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.
Even the parks are getting sucked down into the mire.. They stupidly made Ride of the Resistance based on the new trilogy.. teaming up with the worst characters in Star Wars is not a winning ride..
Whatever the process was for Andor, do that for everything else.
Not everything is lost yet.
Rogue One was not that bad. And Andor was actually good, much better than I expected.
I knew the Disney trilogy was bad, when fans started saying the prequel trilogy was like Shakespeare compared to the Disney Star wars.
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)
I'll take the other side of the popular opinion about Disney and Star Wars: I think Disney is doing a fine job with Star Wars. Great? No. Fine? Yes.
* 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.
The Force left Lucasfilm with RotJ. It all sucked decades before Kennedy came in. The only decent movie was Rogue One, and she produced that.
"Somehow, Lucasfilm is struggling."
How about a Grim Fandango movie? Or a Sam & Max or Monkey Island movie?
How do you race swap a skeleton?
Phrenologically. Now both sides are happy!
Times like this I really wish I could downvote people on here
You can, I believe the requirement is 500 karma.
I’m aware, but thank for your sharing the info for anyone who might not be :)
I just meant that I wish that /I/ could downvote people. I don’t comment much, but racebaiting like that should just be greyed out
Very easy to do a shamble in the eyes of fans, very hard to attract other people who didnt play the games.
As a counterpoint, look at the massive cross cultural success of the Last Of Us on HBO. My SO never played the games, nor heard of them, yet loved the show quite dearly, saying multiple times to anyone who would listen that its one of the best TV shows of all time she's ever seen, and it takes alot to get that kind of praise from her.
I don't know anyone under 35 who likes that show
Anecdotal evidence:
Myself and my SO are both under 35. Most of our friends like the show, and they range from 26-41. I know one of my best friends, who's cousins kids watched the show intently, all between 16-20, as he told me.
It was also a weekly discussion point in our friend groups, it was fairly actively engaged.
It was also a gangbuster for ratings[0] and is number 6 on the Nielsen streaming stats[1] with a staggering 837 Million Minutes watched in a fairly short period of time. Willing to bet you don't really "get there" without a healthy amount of people under 35 watching this show.
[0]: https://gizmodo.com/last-of-us-finale-hbo-max-pedro-pascal-h...
[1]: https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-last-of-us-nielsen-stre...
Tucker Carlson hit 700 million minutes watched for his first episode.
Where Starwars lost me: horrible 3D redos of the original movies, but no redo-redo now that 3D doesnt suck.
And lately is "Sasquach Starwars Body Soap" comeon, how pathetic.
its a tired cliche but Disney really did run right into "get woke, go broke"
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
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.
huh? Solo LOST money
Yes, of the 5 modern star wars movies, Solo "only" made $213M. The other 4 made over $500M each.
And Solo lost money because they claimed it was ludicrously expensive. $213M is a solid amount for 99% of movies. Anyways, was it actually that expensive, or is it just Hollywood accounting?
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.
Does anyone actually think the problem stops at LucasFilm? It's Disney. They're ruining Marvel properties as well. They care more about pushing progressive ideologies than making a return on investment. How many bad movies and TV shows are they going to push out and then blame bigots when their propaganda fails to entertain?
And then they can't even practice what they preach, removing black actors from posters to placate countries like China. Disney needs to fail.
> 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.
That's ignorant, I own thousands of both Marvel and DC comics from the 90s and 2000s.
Not as ignorant as claiming Disney is ruining Marvel by "pushing progressive ideologies"
And yet you didn't notice that progressive ideology was a big part of Marvel's entire existence?
Yes, I know because Stan Lee created the X-men, people love to claim Marvel was always super progressive. I'm sorry, but that simply is not the case, and you are wrong. 99% of comic books I own have zero trace of your supposed progressivism.
>Yes, I know because Stan Lee created the X-men, people love to claim Marvel was always super progressive. I'm sorry, but that simply is not the case, and you are wrong. 99% of comic books I own have zero trace of your supposed progressivism.
Correct.
Marvel and DC comics up to a few years ago, and the pre-Discovery Star Trek franchise, shared a broad-church liberal view of the world. Stories that explicitly pushed an agenda for the sake of agenda-pushing were mocked by fans, and other writers would ignore them or explicitly retcon the stories out.
Now we have (no joke) a transvestite member of the Legion of Super-Heroes travel 1000 years to the present day to march in a Pride parade.
What's an example of Disney "progressivism" that didn't exist in Pre-Disney Marvel?
Race and gender swapping every established popular character? Checklist casting? Butchering She-Hulk and The Wasp with this insane "girl boss" fetish (Let's not forget the cringe girlboss moment from Endgame)? Making shows like "Echo" and "Agatha Harkness" that appeal to almost no one for the sake of having female leads?
This isn't even considering the comics, which as an industry, has been dying because of all the same behaviors. Last I heard The Punisher's wife came back from the dead to berate him for killing people and to divorce him.
Who wants to read that tripe? Who wants to listen to Ant-man's annoying daughter lecture people? No one.
> Race and gender swapping every established popular character?
What exactly makes that "progressivism"? Also why don't you consider characters like X-23 a gender swapped Wolverine?
You don't think diversity is progressive? Also, yes of course I consider X-23 to be a gender swapped Wolverine.
wait wait wait - you think that the characters not being all white men is "progressive"? that would mean that reality is progressive, right?
Not only is "diversity" not new for Marvel but X-23 was created prior to the Disney purchase.
One data point does not make a trend. Post-Disney is when the trend started. Also a downward trend... of sales.
> One data point does not make a trend.
How many have to exist before it can be considered "progressivism"/"diversity" then? Also can you provide those examples that occurred post-Disney? As a huge marvel fan it should be easy for you do. As someone who isn't a huge marvel fan I can think of several off the top of my head that occurred pre-Disney.
Miles Morales (Spider-Man), original character: Peter Parker/Spider-Man, first appearance: 2011 Jane Foster (Thor), original character: Thor Odinson, first appearance: 2014 Riri Williams (Ironheart), original character: Tony Stark/Iron Man, first appearance: 2016 Laura Kinney (X-23), original character: Logan/Wolverine, first appearance: 2004 Sam Wilson (Captain America), original character: Steve Rogers/Captain America, first appearance: 2014 Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel), original character: Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel, first appearance: 2012 Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel), original character: Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel, first appearance: 1982 America Chavez (Miss America), original character: Joey Chapman/Miss America, first appearance: 2011 Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), original character: Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel, first appearance: 2013 Kate Bishop (Hawkeye), original character: Clint Barton/Hawkeye, first appearance: 2005 Gwen Stacy (Spider-Woman, aka Spider-Gwen), original character: Peter Parker/Spider-Man, first appearance: 2014> Miles Morales (Spider-Man), original character: Peter Parker/Spider-Man, first appearance: 2011
> Jane Foster (Thor), original character: Thor Odinson, first appearance: 2014
> Riri Williams (Ironheart), original character: Tony Stark/Iron Man, first appearance: 2016
> Laura Kinney (X-23), original character: Logan/Wolverine, first appearance: 2004
> Sam Wilson (Captain America), original character: Steve Rogers/Captain America, first appearance: 2014
> Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel), original character: Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel, first appearance: 2012
> Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel), original character: Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel, first appearance: 1982
> America Chavez (Miss America), original character: Joey Chapman/Miss America, first appearance: 2011
> Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), original character: Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel, first appearance: 2013
> Kate Bishop (Hawkeye), original character: Clint Barton/Hawkeye, first appearance: 2005
> Gwen Stacy (Spider-Woman, aka Spider-Gwen), original character: Peter Parker/Spider-Man, first appearance: 2014
Disney purchased Marvel in 2009(let's be honest 2010 is closer to the real year), only 7 of the 10 you listed occurred under Disney's watch. Big marvel fan indeed. Since you listed 7 times a race and/or a gender was swapped (I won't bother differentiating between swaps vs additions, e.g calling Ghost Spider a swap is a massive stretch.) under Disney as proof of "pushing progressive ideologies" I must assumed that is your threshold for something to be considered a trend. Here are 4 (plus the 3 your listed) times a race and/or a gender swap occurred under the previous Marvel owner's watch.
Michael Clarke Duncan as King Pin
Nick Fury (Ultimate Marvel Team-Up)
Lady Bullseye
Miss Sinister
Its almost as if Marvel did this sort of thing before Disney was involved, interesting.
I googled some of those out of curiosity, many of them had failed solo lines.
It seems Iron Man the movie with Robert Downey Jr (2008) really saved them,and restored them back to cultural relevance beyond the X-men + Spiderman.
Though the overall trend for marvel comics are tanking especially compared to Manga/Manwha.
Didn't Stan Lee push for lots of progressive change, often through his work?
To some extend that's true, but it was always in service of the story. What's happening at Disney is just the opposite - they're randomly inserting ideological stuff which has no relation to the story or they're contorting stories in support of an ideological narrative.
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.
Yes. In many cases, it is the ideology that forces the bad story.
In the last two movies, all the men had to fail, the ideological bent to the story required it. That's why we got Luke as a failure, Han Solo as a failure (he couldn't redeem his son, only Rey could through the power of ambiguity), and Finn as a failure.
Imagine if Finn had succeeded in his sacrifice. How powerful would that moment have been?
Instead the story we get is one where morality is an old fashioned idea. Hard work and merit (Jedi training) are "the old rules that are holding you back." We get the whole "there's no good and evil, there's just power." All of which fly in the face of the original world of Star Wars. Patience, self-control, and practice were virtues. Anger, impulsiveness, and fear led to hatred, evil, and suffering -- the Dark Side.
Rey can't be trained, because it would mean a man was training her. Leia can just develop Force powers on her own, because otherwise, she would have had to learn them from a man. Poe Dameron can't have a proper perspective on the battle or be trusted with any plans because the point of his character must be "toxic masculinity."
It made the stories of these movies suck. Contrast that with how Andor and The Mandalorian deliver female characters that are amazing. Leia is a true badass... as she was in the original movies, without the Force. Bo Katan's character goes through a deep understanding of what it really means to lead her people, and earns it. Strong women, that don't require a man to fail, in order to be strong on their own.
> they're randomly inserting ideological stuff which has no relation to the story or they're contorting stories in support of an ideological narrative
Which bits in particular is this a reference to?
There are lots, but here is one examples:
In "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" there is a random scene where the police hassle Falcon. (this was shortly after tragic George Floyd incident). It wasn't part of the story, had nothing to do with the plot. Why was that there? The first thing they teach you in dramatic writing is cut fluff. That was fluff that just got people worked up.
"She Hulk" also was filled with political narratives.
And again, I'm not taking a political stand here. I'm just saying when I sit down to watch a Marvel show, I want to escape and have fun. I don't want to be reminded of controversial political issues - unless it's essential to the plot. Otherwise, if I wanted to watch a show about politics, I'd just turn on the news for free instead of paying for Disney+.
Side note: I heard second hand from someone who works at Disney that Tune out Times (ToTs)- when a user stops watching a show, spike at these things. The data is telling them they're aggravating their audience, but they just keep on trucking... God knows why. They're a business, not a political activist group.
Stan Lee didn't de-prioritize telling a compelling narrative.
There is a difference between the progressive ideals of the previous generation and the current generation, if anything the current generation of progress ideology is more regressive than anything else.