That isn’t necessarily about the Obi-Wan series though. It is pretty common that each “hot new show” pushes the last “hot new show” out of the limelight.
I don’t follow Haslab much (despite slightly knowing someone who works for them), but looking now, it looks like the Rancor fell short by about 5% of the people they needed to back it. So is that really a sign that Star Wars “needs saving”, or is it a sign that Hasbro did a bad job with the marketing–some of the other posts make it sound like Hasbro could have done better on the timing.
Finally, your first post reads to me like the type of complaint about the sequel trilogy that has always annoyed me. I summarize it as “they didn’t write the story line I wanted them to write back when these movies were announced in 2012, so therefore they ruined the franchise”.
The Disney movies were fine. I enjoyed them–I saw most of them multiple times in the theater. For an age reference, RotJ was the first movie I saw in theaters back when I was 6 years old.
My feeling is that people who dislike the modern iterations of the franchise should probably just admit to themselves that they aren’t Star Wars fans any more, rather than pushing to rekindle the things they liked about the older movies.
It’s also worth mentioning that a large number of contemporaneous reviews for The Empire Strikes Back viewed that film negatively because it diverged from the original so much, and it had a darker tone. People were mad that EMPIRE wasn’t close enough to what they loved about Star Wars, when in fact…
Many people have been wrong about things this is maybe the most wrong post in the history of this forum.
The latest 2 Disney+ series are the best Star Wars since Empire.
I don’t think this is quite fair. Just because they don’t like the direction doesn’t mean they’re suddenly not fans. On the contrary, having enough interest to think about how things could have been done better rather than just moving on is more a sign of a fan than other things. If you don’t care about a franchise, then, when you don’t like it, you walk away (as I did with Marvel; watched a few and liked them but when I ceased to be interested, it was easy to stop watching and not care).
While I think there are some flaws in the plot presented by @Shredder565, I think it was more cohesive and better than the screwed up plotline we got with the sequels (and really, with the change in directors and the huge shift in The Last Jedi which was basically admitted by the studio as a mistake, the plot was messed up). I also agree with hating the killing off the original trilogy characters just to introduce the new ones. That sealed the deal for me in The Force Awakens, and when I realized that they were basically just killing off each one of the originals, I just decided to be done.
I think there was potential in The Force Awakens but it was largely squandered. I absolutely thought that Finn was going to be more of the focus, maybe even a new Jedi or something. I knew that Rey was going to be connected to the Skywalkers somehow.
Now, I haven’t seen the TV series, but from what I’ve read, it’s a mixed bag of good, bad and indifferent. No big surprise there and perhaps that’s the best medium for Star Wars at this point because it does open things up to the wider universe in a way the movies can’t really do. I’ve seen good things about Andor.
But I’m not sure I can forgive the killing off of Luke, Han and Leia (and yes, I know they didn’t have much choice with Leia).
I had blocked it from my memory until that point, it was vaguely familiar in an old nightmare sort of way when watching it again after they riffed it.
Back to the “can it be saved” idea.
Probably not for some people. Time is cruel. Everything changes, actors and crew get old and pass on, companies change hands, things don’t get made the way they used to.
If you don’t like the new stuff just enjoy the old stuff, I wish Star Trek was still like it was, but I have little hope of ever getting anything again with the sole it had in it’s first 40 years. The Orville has come close to that feeling, maybe something like that will come along for people that don’t like the new Star Wars stuff.
Also not sure it needs to be ‘saved’, but in an environment where a tent pole theatrical release needs to gross $1bn to be considered a success, streaming is probably the best place for decent quality creative output.
I can’t say I enjoyed the latest trilogy, mostly because I thought the hand of ‘secure return on investment’ was always on the tiller, or at least on the shoulder of the person on the tiller. So you got a soft reboot (fine), an interesting attempt at doing something with the new characters that ultimately swerved out at the last minute (frustrating) and whatever Rise Of Skywalker was supposed to be (baffling being an understatement).
At the end of the day if you just gave me a nice blu-ray release of the OG films in their theatrical release form I’d be happy.
Nope. my complaint is, they didn’t have a plan. AND they insulted the fans and the franchise along the way. even mark hamil calls his portrayal of luke ‘jake skywalker’. It’s no secret he’s no big fan of The Last Jedi, either.
people keep throwing that around. That’s like saying Batman and Robin is Greater than everyone’s perennial favorite, ‘The Dark Knight Retruns’. Disney star wars dosn’t come CLOSE to lucas star wars :). Also MHO :).
I JUST saw a review on Andor, by someone who hates Disney star wars, unless it’s done by John and Dave. and he is actually enjoying it. Even though I Hated Rogue One (took away Luke’s Founding of Rogue Squadron, BTW, by having him not be the head Rogue)…and felt it was a totally un needed movie… now i’m toying around with watching at least the first few.
So long as it doesn’t insult the franchise or the fans, like She-Hulk directly did to a much beloved fan favorite character most normies didn’t know about, I’ll give it a shot.
IMO, it’s fruitless to wave plot points and character development around when Lucas didn’t bother, and gave no more thought to a retcon than comic book writers ever did. By his own admittance, he’s a weak writer, but you don’t let that get in the way when you’re filming the zoom zoom pew pew.
Also IMO the solution to a shredded palate is to take a break after one bowl of Capn Crunch.
Saved for whom? Many fans (mostly in their teens and 20s?) are enjoying the flood of films, series, books, comic books, and whatever else. Disney can’t deposit the Star Wars revenue fast enough.
Sure, things have changed from the olden days, but they always do, including the “olden days” folk themselves.
That’s not to say Disney hasn’t done some tremendous blunders in my opinion. Sometimes it’s even objectively, like the Solo movie. (Is it only two directors that left due to “creative differences” in the five Disney-era films?) And the killing off of the old characters (as well as the “extended universe”) seems something out of a psychotic tragedy where the new generation felt they could only be seen as better than the previous one by killing them all. (Again, in my opinion.)
But I’m not a Star Wars expert or super fan. For younger me, my best Star Wars was A New Hope (pew-pew!). For current me, my best seems to be The Empire Strikes Back and Knights of the Old Republic (single-player game). Side note recommendation: Lego Droid Tales recounts the first six movies with good fun and humor. I would watch a sequel that does the same to the last three, but I doubt Disney has the necessary strength of character to let that happen.
I would be surprised if those decisions weren’t made well ahead of time. It makes me sad wondering if this was one of the things weighing on Carrie Fisher’s mind prior to her death.
As a writer and storyteller myself I can honestly say that Star Wars has lost its way. This has nothing to do with the icky politics of the “showrunners” or all the other stuff. This has everything to do with how you freaking tell a STORY and the intent/purpose/attitude that a franchise is supposed to have.
Star Wars was a phenomenon because it appealed to universal themes, couched them in an action-based story that moved at a brisk clip, and maintained an internal logic and purpose. The characters were archetypal and appealing. The theme of the entire original trilogy was one of good versus evil, painted in broad strokes and done with heart.
I have no idea what Episodes 7-9 were. They were disjointed, haphazard, had conflicting and contradictory messages, and were sloppily written even in the kindest interpretation. The themes were muddled. Plot points were started and abandoned. Characters were thrown into the movies that had no real purpose and several of the “main” characters were downright unlikable. The plot and characters and themes were not universal … and they did a lot of stuff that outright broke the universe (detecting hyperspace … Force pulling spaceships from orbit … et al).
Mandalorian to some extent went back to what Star Wars originally was and its no surprise that it has been the one rare exception to the flood of mediocre to awful “content” that has had the Star Wars name slapped on it the past few years. Whoever is in charge of the franchise of this point needs to be fired and they need to hire someone who …
Understands and RESPECTS the franchise
Understands and knows how to write a story and characters
Understands and knows how to maintain a consistent theme and concept to the Star Wars universe.
Until that happens, Star Wars as a franchise will continue to muddle itself into oblivion with large numbers of lousy entries run by people who want to tell their own crappy story rather than tell a STAR WARS story.
That’s really the problem with shows these days. Whether its Dr. Who or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or He Man or Ghostbusters or whatever … modern “showrunners” couldn’t give a crap about the “franchise” they are given charge of. All they want to do is puke out their own inferior content (witness She Hulk for example) and the franchise is nothing but a vehicle they couldn’t care less about.
I think part of this is down to there being just so much stuff out there (even before Disney took over) that, like with Doctor Who or Hitchhiker’s Guide, the canon pretty much is “there is no canon”.
Are we following the canon of the original movies? The comic books? The Timothy Zahn books? The games? The Cartoon Network output of Rebels and Clone Wars? Everyone is demanding adherence to a canon that was contradicting itself long before the D+ shows came along. If you could accuse the D+ shows of anything, it’s trying to create a cohesive “history” from everything that came before the current crop of shows.
The sequel movies had a myriad of issues, I don’t think anyone denies that. Director squabbles, writing issues, the previously mentioned “kill their childhood” philosophy. You have to wonder what the heck was going on in the back offices that created the onscreen problems. It’s like they couldn’t settle on what story they wanted to tell, and ended up trying to tell too many.
The other reality is the mega fanboys and fangirls will never be happy. Whether we’re talking about Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Marvel, or anything else, simply because these franchises are so big and there is so much content that it’s impossible to please everyone.
Nah - that’s definitely not the case. Franchises have a ‘vibe’ … a sort of overarching nascent concept that needs to be at least moderately adhered to in order to maintain itself over time. That’s how the original Masters of the Universe can still be enjoyed for what it is (cheesy though it may be) while the 2001 version is also very much still He Man. The 2001 version still kept the essence of He Man as a show, respected its history, while also adding some new elements which did not detract from the lineage. But the Netflix He Man did not do these things. Rather, it determined it was going to subvert the essence of what He Man always was and focus on other stuff. He Man was a third fiddle even in his own show. That’s not a show that stepped into a franchise that was “too big” to possibly please anyone. That was a show that deliberately chose to crap on the entire premise of everything that came before it by adding adult themes, changing the focus, and lying to (or attacking) its own loyal fans for not liking the “new direction”.
It’s entirely possible to tell new stuff while still respecting a franchise’s history and concept. Modern “showrunners” are not doing that … and in many ways they are actively hostile towards the expectation that they would have to respect what came before them - because in many ways they really DON’T respect the franchises and their history or the fans associated with them.
While I accept it is probably an oversimplification, I do think there has to be a big element of ‘This film need to gross X before the next shareholder report’ resulting in all sorts of direct and indirect pressure on the production.
This is of course a tale as old as film itself, but I think the sheer AMOUNT of money at stake pushes it to another level and actively prevents a creative team having the latitude to do good work, because it doesn’t correspond to the latest audience analytics or whatever. Just feels like the boardroom drove those films more than the creatives.
I’m not entirely sure that’s the primary cause. I’m sure that influence is there and that it has some impact … but in the case of the 7-9 movies it is hard to say that the literal whipsaw change in tone and concept between The Force Awakens versus The Last Jedi can be put at the feet of meddling by the studio at the expense of the creative team. Rain Johnson wrote and directed TLJ, and much of its attitude of dumping on the Star Wars universe was absolutely attributable to him. He out and out said in interviews that many of his decisions were made on purpose to subvert expectations, radically depart from tradition, and otherwise take the story in the opposite direction of what Star Wars always was. That wasn’t studio meddling. That was the writer/director pretty much admitting he hated the franchise he was stepping into and he was going to make it what HE wanted - by crackey - whether anyone liked it or not.
Yep. I think people in the biz are piggybacking or shoehorning in concepts which would be better as creations in their own right. But nobody in Promotions wants to fund a new thing. They just want more of the old thing.
concepts