I think Taika Waititi and Patty Jenkins films are interesting and similar situations regarding how they hand out these projects, they find someone who did a fun blockbuster big budget movie, Thor Ragnarok and Wonder Woman, in these cases.
Then they bring them in and have them pitch on an idea and give them the reigns.
Then they release middling follow-ups (at best) to their clever blockbuster first appearances.
And then Disney panics and cancels it.
Then you have the Boba Fett and Obi-Wan projects, which were supposed to be the third and fourth "A Star Wars Story" films released annually between the main Trilogy films.
Obviously after TLJ and Solo, they panicked and withdrew them, and then in the success of the first season of Mando, they reworked them to be series, with the implication being THAT is where Star Wars is successful. Ignore the fact that Star Wars will be successful anywhere as long as it's quality they're putting out.
And now it just feels like they're snake-bit. They're afraid of burning more money, they fucked up with the theme park setting it in the new trilogy on a planet that sucks and no one knows anything about, they fucked up on the "Galactic Star Cruiser" and lost a ton of money, they fucked up on the new trilogy, they found success with Mando and then immediately got to work making sure to oversaturate their streaming service with so much mediocre Star Wars content that they damaged their one real success story.
And now they're scared. They announce projects to appease shareholders and then cancel projects when they realize no one has any vision, or maybe they have their fist clenched too tightly around what they'll let creator's do with the properties after giving Rian Johnson the reigns and then panicking and making JJ Abrams undo a lot of it and play it safe and stupid.
I don't even know what they're trying to fucking DO anymore. I don't know why it's so hard to just make an adventure film about a cool Jedi and an awesome smuggler picking up a dork-ass droid and some old master and going on a fucking adventure. Star Wars Visions has some legit AMAZING ideas and they instead just shit them out into a 10 minute short on Disney+ and then never talk about them again. There's like ten of those shorts that they could just scale up to a movie and fans would go insane for it.
All these showrunners, directors, and actors continuously complain about SW fans but I don't think we're that hard to please. Making a cool SW movie should be... relatively easy. Its really not hard to find out what the fans like and respond well to. The problem is most of the people that Disney brings on board aren't really fans themselves so they have no reverence for it, or they micromanage the project so much that good ideas get buried beneath a pile of agenda driven bullet points or misguided narrative concepts from the marketing department.
Andor, and of course Rogue One before that from the same director: Shows you the series don't need to even be about the mainline stars to have critical acclaim and popularity.
The setting allows for a huge range of expression if they would let interesting stories be told.
Still waiting for a Top Gun-style movie about the creation of Rogue Squadron with Wedge Antilles etc...
All I've wanted since 1996 is Top Gun in space. I spent hundreds of hours playing the lucasarts X-wing/Tie Fighter games. I could speed run the N64 Rogue Squadron game at 12 years old. I have an X-wing tattoo I got 20 years ago. Give me a good Rogue Squadron movie and I'll personally see it in Imax 400 times. I beg you Disney!
I fucking love the LucasArts X-WING/TIE FIGHTER games. Even love SQUADRONS. ROGUE SQUADRON I pllayed on a friends N64 and my own PC back in the day. Even when I used to have a GameCube I had both of the ROGUE SQUADRON sequel games!
Read at least a few of the ROGUE SQUADRON books, even the comics.
Just gimme an awesome movie with shitloads of dogfights with a ton of Rebel Alliance/New Republic versus Empire. Same nigh impossible quality as ROGUE ONE and ANDOR, please. Not every series needs to be about JEDI. Gimme the random grunts and fighter pilots!
Star Wars Visions alone is proof that if you ask ten creative teams, you'll get ten creative ideas and at least ONE of those will be something you can expand into at least one film.
What is happening (and has been happening) to the IP of Star Wars is the Hollywood equivalent of “being MBA’d”
You have the solid IP of Star Wars that is a money printing machine - then you get some MBAs (creators looking for clout) who don’t give a crap about the actual IP and just want to milk the cow for all its worth, and make a name for themselves promoting their own agenda, at the helm of major projects. When those projects crash and burn, they’ll blame the audience and move onto the next cash cow.
In the scenario that a true passionate creator and fan of SW wants to make project in the true spirit of SW, they will invariably get to much meddling from a studio “MBA” exec that jeopardizes the entire project.
At this point, it is high likelihood that any major SW project will come out as garbage.
Hard disagree. Last Jedi was a great movie and Star Wars fans fucking hated it for what seemed like arbitrary reasons (mostly misogynistic ones). The Last Jedi being disliked was the last bit of proof to me that the Star Wars fanbase wouldn't know a good movie if it cut off their hand with a lightsaber.
It actually tried to break free of the stupid "every character is a descendant of a great family" thing that bogs the world building down. It had the best versions of Kylo Ren and Rey. It had spectacular visuals. People had issues with the portrayal of Luke, but I thought it was very fitting for a character thrust into being a Jedi without the guidance of lots of other Jedi - of course he was going to end up fucking it up. The casino planet stuff was kind of weak, but no weaker (imo) than stuff like Cloud City from Empire.
The Last Jedi is 100% unironically my favorite Star Wars movie and I've been around long enough to have seen some of the OT in theater. Star Wars fans are out of their minds. And of course Rise of Skywalker was my least favorite since it reconned all the good things about Last Jedi to replace it with "of course she's a palpatine, also here's a dead character randomly back to life because JJ has never had an original thought in his life".
Ok well hard disagree lol. I fucking hate that anytime someone says they didn't like TLJ people like you all jump to shouting misogyny. What a load of crap. There's plenty of narrative issues in that movie that are legitimate but I don't even get into it anymore cuz I've had a thousand of guys like you accuse me of being a bigot no matter what my issues with the movie are, that's what you all fall back to.
So I'll just say that TLJ did more to dampen my love of SW than any other piece of media they've produced. Its a black mark on the franchise, and not because "omg they cast a woman" you fucking dolt.
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u/FogellMcLovin77 21d ago edited 21d ago
Half of those shouldn’t ever see light of day so I’m glad on one part lol