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Is Disney's Star Wars Franchise In Trouble? (cosmicbook.news)
Disney's Han Solo movie was the first Star Wars movie to lose money. But is there a larger problem? dryriver writes:
Comic book news website Cosmic Book News reports that even though Disney put bucketloads of Star Wars out there in 2018, revenues from all things Star Wars have actually fallen, according to Disney SEC filings. Disney made more Star Wars money in 2017 -- when only Rogue One hit cinemas -- than in 2018, when Solo, Last Jedi and SW Battlefront 2 were released.
A Rian Johnson-led Star Wars trilogy appears to have been delayed or cancelled entirely. Rumored spinoff movies for Bobba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi appear to have been put on the backburner or cancelled. Disney's CEO has confirmed that the Star Wars movies are being slowed down.
A Rian Johnson-led Star Wars trilogy appears to have been delayed or cancelled entirely. Rumored spinoff movies for Bobba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi appear to have been put on the backburner or cancelled. Disney's CEO has confirmed that the Star Wars movies are being slowed down.
Time to be honest. The Last Jedi was SJW force-fed garbage while shitting on the last of the OT characters. This movie destroyed the franchise.
Release too many things, too quickly, without enough time between your releases, and people get tired of it and lose interest.
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They've dumped hundreds of millions (billions?) into this franchise and produced 1 good movie, 2 mediocre movies, 2 mediocre TV shows, and 1 more or less bad movie, not to mention the controversy surrounding the games so far. I'm not surprised that Disney is looking to roll back their investment, it's been profitable but it wouldn't take too many more bad projects to kill off the brand. They're getting out while they're still ahead.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
For a company that prides itself on its 'imagination', even calling its engineers Imagineers, there was a clear and unmistakable lack of imagination in the new Star Wars movies they put out.
Perhaps they will hire some realists to figure out the problem.
I think it wrongfully took the heat and backlash for the wretched Last Jedi. Last Jedi was pretty wretched and I thought Solo superior.
Solo was no Episode IV or V but it was easily of the same quality as VI, and IMO, far more enjoyable than literally any of the other films.
I think Star Wars was a product of its time, and what made it great was the lack of competition. These days, eye-popping special effects are a dime a dozen, and audiences are used to aliens and blasters. It had nowhere to go but down.
It definitely can't help that the Star Wars video games are there to sell microtransactions these days, either. Over half the American public plays video games, don't tell me it doesn't matter.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Um, actually Rogue One was very well received. It was The Last Jedi that killed interest in the franchise.
STORY. Star Wars in the 1970s had a fantastic story arch. The current batch of Star Wars movie (sans Rogue One, and Solo) have had no heart and soul. Only a bunch of special effects that are unimportant if the story is good.
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I saw that one SW movie where Princess Leia went through space like Superman. I was wondering at the time: how did that EVER get through any editing process? Did people really look at that and say "hey, that's pretty good?". It was just weird, and I have a low bar for movies. That scene was possibly the worst scene I have seen in any movie, ever. It was just bizarre. I wasn't really paying attention to the movie until that point.
The more you tighten your grip, Disney, the more franchises will slip through your fingers.
The idea is for sale things for "children".
star wars is losing for the same reason that video games have been attacked, and that is because of liberal left wing SJW political correctness from democrat party! did you noticed how this was not a problem until the democrat party took over the House? well now they are control and in addition to the open boarders and massive gun confiscation policies they have they also want to impose severe attacks on all video game and star wars franchises for "too much violence" and "not enough black lesbians" type things. sad.
How's this a surprise?
Disney is about making money, not about art or entertainment. Their primary focus is to turn a profit on the movie they are making. So, if cutting corners makes them more money, if not consulting with the creators of the franchise or taking their advice looks like it will produce more profit, they are going to do it.
But let's face it. The original Star Wars concept was at best 3 movies and it's been down hill since The Empire Strikes Back and we are waiting for installment 9? This franchise has been driven into the ground and milked for all it was worth and then some (pun intended). Few franchises last this long with Rocky and Star Trek being about all I remember.
Disney bought an old used up sports car, that had 200,000 miles, poor tires and a bad front end out of somebodies barn. I'm not surprised they are having difficulty making money on it's restoration. Such work is a labor of love, not profit, and Disney is about the latter. I'm thinking this franchise is about over.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Took them that little time to kill a billion dollar franchise. Great job guys, Jar Jar Binks didn't kill Star Wars. You did, however.
Corporatism != Free Market
Dumbest investment Disney has ever made, hands down. The only way it could ever reasonably expect to be brought back is if they gave projects in or before the Old Republic era a real budget and kept identity politics as far away from the marketing as possible.
License the franchise to a game developer, don't really focus on the content, and load it up to the brim with micro transactions that unlock critical content and end game material. Problem solved.
Rogue One was better than any of the 3rd trilogy. First one was just a rehash, while the second was just trash.
Did it lose money, or did Hollywood accounting make it look like it lost money? Because movies pretty much never make money anymore, at least by the way the studios mangle the books in order to avoid actually paying out on profits.
Yes. Disney acquired the rights to the greatest movie franchise of all time and flooded the market. On top of this, they decided to make the tentpole of their investment (the sequel trilogy) without even so much of a sketch of a story arc. (Marvel people must be stunned at their incompetence.) And instead of sourcing great material from a vast and wonderful expanded universe to make the best proper sequel trilogy possible, they decided to make everything up as they go film-by-film, giving too much liberty to the creators. This ultimately resulted in Last Jedi. Just from a literary perspective, how did a script that broke the conventional trilogy story arc get greenlit? It's great, for example, when stories are successful with a non-conventional arc but those are the exception, and the "rule" exists for a reason. You don't bet the farm by taking a risk like that. But that's what Disney did.
Sells Star Wars IP to Disney for fuckton loads of money.
What has happened before will happen again....
the 2015-16 era saw Marvel re-releasing the Dark Horse comics in a new format, causing a surge of sales - now everyone who wants those re-releases has them, sales are flat again - let's not shape the narrative, but look at facts like this to explain sales trends! sales are down because they were artificially high - the same is true for the once-in-a-generation hype of Episode VII - the interest level in the Star Wars franchise is about normal now...
the Marvel sales boost was similar to music sales falling in the 2000s when everyone who wanted music on CD had the remasters and re-remasters of classic albums - sales returned to normal levels, which was a big drop, but it was a big drop from an artificial boost in format shifting
(if you don't believe the Marvel issues are worth getting, check out the picture of Kaleth in Dawn of the Jedi #0 - compare the original DH digital to the new Marvel digital and notice the difference)
It might help if Star Wars wasn't attacking their own fans. This is far from the first time, but it's certainly a rather visible example.
They seriously fucked Last Jedi for me, and technically them as well.
The scene where Leia and Poe were on that ship preparing to escape should have been totally different.
Considering the fact Carrie, you know, died, they should have reshot that scene to make Leia knock out the Admiral, put her on the ship, then had this back and fourth between Skywalker over the force about how she shouldn't do this, make it some really sad scene about the past and embracing the new generation, and she "needs to do this".
Then BOOM, ship obliterated, Skywalker fallen to his knees broken inside, and THAT is what eventually gets him involved with the battle.
Now they have to deal with doing the CG of a dead actress and voice. Great one, you morons.
Such a trivial thing to edit that one scene and it would have made the whole film even more impacting emotionally.
"b-b-but we have 2 other films with her involved!!!".
Do what any other company does, fucking adapt.
I'm not weirded out by the fact, I think it is amazing what we can do with CG now, but it was still the inferior story-line. They missed out big time.
I didn't watch it in the theaters for the same reason a lot of people didn't, which is a shame. Solo was about Han Solo but unlike even Rogue One, it didn't feel the need to wink and nod at the audience every few minutes. I think it may be my second-favorite Star Wars film after Empire.
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Last good star wars movie on the main sequence of star wars was released in 1983.
I would have been alright if not for Jar Jar and friends.
III was not believable.
VII main characters that suck and have no skills. Oh look a death planet this time..how fucking original.
VIII needless killing off characters, unbelievable scenarios... invincible shield tanking ships just out of range until they run out of fuel? In star wars??! Annoying incompetent characters. Too much force this and force that... I feel the good left in you regurgitations.
Pod racers, BB-8 and Porgs were the only original ideas post 80's that didn't suck ass. It's like they go out of their way to make crummy annoying movies.
To save them
The Last Jedi has the lowest user score on Rotten Tomatoes (45%) of any major Star Wars film. It's lower even than the prequel films (59%, 56%, 65%, respectively), it's lower than the less-than-stellar Solo (64%), and it's certainly less than the decently well-regarded Rogue One (86%). If you want to pin Solo's failure on anything other than itself, pin it franchise fatigue (too many movies, too fast) and more specifically on The Last Jedi, which utterly failed to connect with audiences and was still fresh on everyone's minds since it had come out just a few months prior.
As for Rogue One, I'll grant that it was a significant departure for the franchise, so it didn't feel like a Star Wars episode, but they never said it was supposed to be one. Quite the contrary, they made it clear that they were going for something different that was set in the same universe, and with that in mind, I'd say it was a smashing success, both critically and commercially. It was a good film in its own right, despite being disliked by a handful of people, such as yourself, who couldn't enjoy it for what it was.
Rogue One was pretty good. The pissed-off Vader murder spree at the end was cool as fuck
There's just too much Star Wars crap being put out.
That's what I think as well. I think a Star Wars movie of some kind about every two years is about right... much more than that and you start burning people out.
I also liked Solo quite a bit and thought it was a shame that it seemed to be the movie that made them pull back so heavily, when really Last Jedi should have been the movie to cause them to re-think things...
I still look forward to the third movie though just for closure. But I'm glad it's not coming this year.
You should see Solo as I think it will un-burn you in that a lot of it is just fun.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They are too busy making social commentary to worry about making good stories.
And the fights go on toooooooooo long.
Ground fighting is stupid.
And I miss Yoda kicking ass, bouncing around, at 800 yrs old.
Plus lots of flaws in the entire "force" capabilities. If a Jedi can lift things, why can't 2 Jedi together fly by lifting each other?
Why would any Jedi get rained on?
I still remember the first real show of Jedi power in Ep1. Huge smile on my face due to that scene.
it was just plain a bad movie. The character motivations didn't make sense, the fight scenes were poorly choreographed and there was no character arc like in originals or even the prequels. It was just bad film making.
No idea why they gave it to Johnson. Is he Hollywood Royalty or something? His filmography is sparse. I can't imagine him being handed the keys to the kingdom on one of the largest franchises ever with Looper under his belt and damn near nothing else.
It's pretty clear what happened to. They started doing the Solo kids story, Johnson decided he wanted it to be "his" thing and not just an existing story so he changed it all at the last moment and didn't have time to make it work with his limited skillset.
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from other movies. It's basically Lensmen, the 7 Samurai with a bit of WWII dogfighting thrown in. And the Last Jedi Still cleared $1.3 _billion_ on a $300 million dollar budge. Even if they spent twice that promoting it they still made $600 million.
The reports of it's death are greatly exaggerated.
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Why are you on Slashdot? This site is news for nerds.
Here is news for mentally stunted crybabies like you.
With some exceptions, the last 20 years or so of Hollywood movies have been retreads of retreads, the same ideas over and over again, and in many cases just outright remakes of old movies. For something like Star Wars, I think you need to mothball it for a generation, then spin a new version of it, when almost nobody is alive to even remember it -- but how about someone comes up with something new instead, eh?
Disney corporate greed can f up The Lords Prayer
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Even nerds have better things to whine about than you nazi faggots with your crybaby SJW act. "Oh the SJW's are telling me I'm an uneducated troll, oh it hurt my feewings so I hate star wars now!" - Republican faggot
I found the blind ninja monk guy they added to pander to the Chinese market in Rogue One absolutely cringey.
What do the manchildren have to say?
Yep, yep, the dreaded SJWs, which is coded language for Women, Blacks, Gays, Jews, and other assorted types who you can't directly name since that would reveal the color of your own robes.
They should just make a movie with big explosions, scantily clad women and manly grunts like you want to watch with a beer in hand and that's the truth.
So giving the games license to EA was a really stupid thing to do.
Another one was the hyperdrive suicide attack in TLJ. If you could do that, just stick a hyperdrive engine on an asteroid and chuck it at a starship, no fleet commander with a brain in their head would ever build a Star Destroyer or cruiser anymore, 'cause their enemies would just rip them apart from outside weapons range.
And since hyperdrive tech hasn't really changed since the days of The Old Republic... most Star Wars space combat history is invalidated.
I scanned the thread as it exists so far, and there seems to be a correlation between SW movies in the Disney era: episodes that discerning viewers like lose money, while episodes that discerning viewers dislike make money.
80% of the available viewership wants a popcorn movie set in space. But you don't want too much immediate grumbling from the discerning crowd, as that might snowball into a social media buzzkill. So what the writers did was Sheldonize it: embed enough fetish lore to keep Sheldon & company immersed in their game night man-toys rather than tweeting toxic takedowns.
J.J. Abrams Reveals the Meaning of Rey's Flashback in "The Force Awakens" — 20 October 2016
This is the ultimate sensory-overload pastiche of everything they needed to accomplish: heaps of Sheldon-appropriate fish food (but it all goes by so quickly the popcorn crowd barely notices), a nod to the Superheros in Spandex "orphan" trope, and there's nothing to tense up the snowflake crowd like perplexed isolation (what they are really thinking: OMG all of this and no Twitter to unbundle her soul).
This is why Rey isn't actually a Mary Sue: yes, she manifests preternatural skills like a genetic amalgam of Wesley Crusher, Jason Bourne and the seven barely distinguishable shades of Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes, Fe+2 Man, Fe+3 Man, etc) but she hasn't got social media, nor a single person to favorite, even if she had social media, which she hasn't—OMG. This is more larded with tension to the social media snowflake than a Jules Verne retelling of the Achilles myth from the perspective of a giant squid, whose fatal weakness is replicated on the underside of every giant suction cup. It doesn't matter than Rey has ten giant, undiscovered arms that can each uproot massive trees; what matters is that she's got no-one to tell.
The forceback sequence also tests wu positive: the viewer can discern any mixture of telepathy, telekinesis, the original force, the postmodern force with midichlorians, the postmodern force without midichlorians, fate, predestination, Freudian self-revelation, and even a small hint of dramatic foreshadowing (here a small contingent of the audience perks up "oh, so they do actually know that literature exists" and this potentially glues them into their seats for another 15 minutes). It's a giant glueball of as-you-like-it, each to their own.
I new the entire trilogy was doomed the moment this sequence crossed the screen (as a result, I only seen fragments of the subsequent movies, such as one finds on YouTube).
No surprise to me to discover that Luke jettisons his Freudian-freighted lightsaber to establish his postmodern break as his first hominid act (he's barely more than one of the primordial monkey-men
Personally i've only seen the first of the Disney star dance movies and that was in an airplane. And thanks to it, i have no interest in the rest of them.
I'm just gonna go see Iron sky 2, which is much more likely a good movie.
If you watch the Last Jedi and cheer for the bad guys, it's actually a really good movie.
But now I'm conflicted because the empire needs to win!
I hope the last Star Wars film ends up with most of the rebels getting killed or going into hiding.
That Chinese chick Rose that ruined TLJ is killed in some hilarious way.
Poe is offered to join the empire, and does. Becomes an elite soldier who hunts done rebel scum.
It would make up for an otherwise hilarious end to a ruined franchise.
Nazi nazi nazi nazi republican. Nazi republican nazi? Nazi nazi nazi! LOL!
Stupid, limp-wristed SJW piece of shit.
Go drink a bottle of bleach you communist mongoloid
Do the world a favor and after kissing more bolshevik ass like you only know how to, go martyr yourself for your lord and savior Trotsky.
Donnie Yen? I thought he was a great addition to it. Then again, I was a fan of him in the Ip Man franchise before I went to see Rogue One, so I'll admit my perspective with regards to him is colored by past experience. Either way, however, he didn't play a significant role in Rogue One, so it seems odd that he'd be a reason to hate the movie, even if you did find him cringeworthy in it.
You sound offended. Want a lollipop?
Last Jedi was a terrible movie. If Solo had been released without the dark shadow of Last Jedi hanging over it, it was would have done far better. Solo captured much more of the lighthearted appeal of the original Star Wars.
The idiots who directed and produced Last Jedi should be banned from doing anything Star Wars ever again - they clearly don't understand the Star Wars universe.
I don't get the rehash criticism when specifically aimed at the most recent films. But then I really like the one where someone shuts down some shields and then someone else blows something up...
Midichlorians upset quite a lot of the fan base, but that was based on canon of a fantasy setting.
The Identity Politics card that's been played (very prominently) is all about being patronising to a whole segment of the fan base in the real world.
Perhaps they don't know their fan base as well as they thought they did. Failure in the Star Wars franchise was strictly self inflicted. And here we thought that Lucas was the only one crazy enough to do that.
but for the vast majority of us it just didn't matter.
Rey didn't make those actions scenes a confused, laughable mess where people throw out attacks for no good reason, Rian Johnson did. The same goes for making Luke a depressed, whinny old goat.
Of course they want the old fans. The movie is chock full of fan service, so much that it crowds out the story. Rey is trying so hard to be Luke and Luke to be Obi-wan. That's not virtue signalling, that's bad story telling.
SJWism is annoying, but it's not the world ending event folks make it out to be. Take the couple of SJWish things out of the movie and you've still got a bad movie. Not because the people involved were busy virtue signaling, but because they're just not very good at making movies.
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to indicate he could be trusted with a by the book movie. He just doesn't have enough experience directing large projects. It's weird. Abrams I get. He had a ton of big, successful movies under his belt (that I hated, but that's just me).
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It isn't coded language for anything of the sort. It refers to far-left, Marxist, intersectionality-based identity politics. Which is a rather different, and quite unpleasant, beast.
What? Rey has no "hero's journey". Everything she touches magically works. No effort. No consequences. She's a badly built character. Luke started as whiny and immature and grew into a Jedi. That was as story worth following.
BTW, the people here obsessing over SJW themes are picking up on a minor aspect of modern movies. Its badly done in this movie because everything except the special effects is done badly in this film.
It's no surprise that the "strong women exist" theme is crap in this film simply because all themes in this film are crap.
The effects in the originals aren't impressive by modern standards. But the stories are better than any of the recent efforts. Stories beat effects.
The stories in recent Star Wars films have not been worth experiencing. Special effects don't improve that situation much.
It was a good film in its own right, despite being disliked by a handful of people, such as yourself, who couldn't enjoy it for what it was.
Not the OP but my two cents. I didn't enjoy Rogue One because it wasn't a Star Wars movie. If it hadn't been set in the Star Wars universe and marketing as a Star Wars movie I would have probably liked it fine.
I was hoping for a movie I could share with my kid that had the same effect the original Star Wars had on me. Instead I got a gritty war movie, in which it was clear that everybody was going to die and in which the "hero" gets his partner killed in order to save himself in this introduction to the audience. So, yeah, I didn't enjoy it.
Rogue One was pretty good. The pissed-off Vader murder spree at the end was cool as fuck
It was fan service and nothing more. It also didn't make up for the horrible plotting of the film.
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None of that makes for a bad movie.
How about being highly forgettable? The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I did not hate the film I just found it so bland and generic that I can only vaguely remember what happened in it.
The whole plot of
...but I really liked Solo. I finally caught it on VOD and I didn't get all the hate at all. I found it to be mostly entertaining and decently written/directed/acted. I say this as a man who's seen every SW movie on opening day (except ANH, which I saw opening week as a 7 year old). I just didn't get why people hated it so much.
There is nothing left to be seen there.
The entire plot of the Last Jedi was complete trash and the attempt to turn Star Wars into an in-your-face cheese party was just lame. Worst was that the whole premise of the movie was a slow chase in starships with hyper drives. Somehow we have to believe that the empire had no ships that can catch the rebels, but yet, the rebels have time to go on an spring break trip to Monte Carlo and listen to the Most Eisley cover band. Also, why made the central drama something something as ridiculously stupid as Laura Dern pretending she's entirely incompetent and had no plan... even to get own officers.
They need to make a new Episode VIII, and have Finn wake up in the medical bay and say "I had a this terrible dream", and go from there.
Both Star Wars and Star Trek have been 'Abramized'. Largely stripped of their unique identities and turned into more simplistic generic action oriented popcorn flicks appealing to millennials. Which is kind of ironic since they're both scifi templates in and of themselves. TFA was a simplified millennialized reboot of ANH combined with heavy SJW elements like a sudden in universe switch to gender balanced armies with no explanation, heavy 'checkboxing'; a technique where in every action scene the director bends over backward to include gender balanced shots, and a God tier Mary Sue. Of course New Star Wars was so hyped and anticipated however and the general population went to see it. By the time of TLJ, the hype had died down and people were noticing how shitty and generic these movies were. And then TLJ just doubled down on the shittiness and 'gender diverse characters means we don't have to write a good story' philosophy. Plus the crew made it abundantly obvious that they were politically and ideologically driven and this affected the story, in interviews and their social media. So there was a backlash. In response the cast and crew pulled the standard socjus PR movie of developing an antagonistic relationship with the fans which certainly didn't help things. Combined with the general shittiness, contempt, and oversaturation of the franchise its no wonder things are as they are. Say what you will about the prequels. They were shitty but at least they were shitty with more original stories and much less rabid agenda pushing behind them.
I think many people don't realise that there is a significant number of Star Wars fans out there who don't care about the mystical Force and Jedi aspects to the universe - for us, Rogue One was amazing. It was a decent film that expanded the universe with only a touch of the magic McGuffin to detract - perfect.
Give us more!
Can I just hold your beer for you, moron?
David Carradine would have done a better job, despite being dead.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
because he was just competent enough to finish the film on time and he didn't ask for much money? Now _that_ would kill a franchise alright...
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Red Letter Media's criticism is remarkably apt. Rich Evans pointed out something regarding how limited the Star Wars universe is when he, Mike Stoklasa, and Jay Bauman reviewed "Rogue One" about 10m28s in:
RLM also shows scenes in the ad for "Rogue One" that aren't in the movie (I think there's good reason to call this fraudulent on Disney's part).
As Rich Evans has pointed out, "Star Wars has been creatively bankrupt since 1983." and I concur. Evans said he enjoyed "Solo" but I figure that's slim pickings overall. There's just too much junk for me to want to spend money with a business that treats us horribly on important policy issues (copyright term extension, for instance) and is too scared to do anything interesting with some newly-acquired brand. When I consider the Disney-managed Star Wars stuff as a whole, I'm not incentivized to pay them to see it nor would I choose to spend more of my time watching it.
I find RLM's commentary to be far more interesting than a number of the things they watch and I'd understand if they decided they were no longer going to watch more of certain series (Star Wars movies, Star Trek Discovery TV show, to name a couple examples).
Digital Citizen
And in other film series you Universal's 'Dark Universe'.
They have published 1 okay movie and one terrible movie since 2014. In the same span MARVEL spat out 12 unique movies thats good.
In these movies, each scene thats a part of the 'larger narrative' is mostly terrible scenes which end up ruining the pacing of the movie. Instead of a exciting movie, the possibility of exciting scenes are 'delayed to the next movie' which never comes or delivers on its promise.
So what is going on the MARVEL side of the fence?
The MARVEL films makes money because each film is good.
But there is another benefit: Because of the MCU brand each successive movie basically gets free PR, meaning that each successive "good" movie will continue to cash in on the brand.
This has been tried before with Rocky, Highlander, Pokemon and several other franchises. Its a tried and true concept: People who enjoyed Highlander will watch Highlander II when it lands in theater, making it possible to increase or stabilize revenue.
But the difference between a movie series and MCU is that MCU is based on a franchise that already have the script for a few hundred good movies and storylines. So unlike traditional movie franchises you already have a red line to make several movies. Where movies are written per script, produced standalone, and sequels are made as standalone script with the artistic limitation of being made as a single product.
In the MCU, the framework to make all the movies is already there. The screen writers just have to decide what arc they are going with(Infinity Gauntlet) and then produce that arc, taking other arcs and making them into standalone movies to make the framework for the arc. So far the Infinity Gauntlet Arc has been 15 released movies out of 19 MCU movies.
And that is what makes the MCU into what it is. If you don't know about the source material or look over the list of featured films its not going to be obvious that this has been one large arc.
And i have trouble imaging standalone movies with standalone scripts doing Movie: Movie 19 and not have the wellspring or the structure of the script gone completely dry. Most series have problems making Movie: Movie 2 and even large problems making Movie: Movie 3
Added note: What is funny to me, is that on the movie side MCU is a success. While on the TV side its a disaster that lives purely of the fact MCU have had 19 movies and still more being produced.
On the TV side there has been 11 shows so far, some with enough audience to warrant more than one season. Each of them being produced episode by episode, script by script, with terrible arc progression, terrible budget and poor foresight/planning.
The TV side is EXACTLY what you describe, were its only working because its part of the MCU(despite being mostly terrible).
It was boring and twit, and when someone feels the need to attack others who think it was what it was, it proves the point of how bad the movie was.
The whole reboot is SJW screwed up, and this movie is only marginally better is it is mostly only boring with minimal political pushing.
I won't see any more of this junk, nor will anyone I know.
They're both action flicks about what are basically warring kingdoms involving swords, sorcery and skimpily clad women.
There are two differences. One of them involved the level of gore.
The other might attract a much larger fanbase but would certainly get a massive boardroom rebellion, not to mention a mass boycott of merchandise.
The original movie had broader appeal. It was part Eastern-style mystical, part western, part sci-fi, part World War 2 (George Lucas borrowed heavily from Dambusters and 633 Squadron).
That's a very broad audience.
The Last Jedi appealed to... Whom? It wasn't aimed at any of those target audiences and was generally a crap script.
So superior scripts, messier battles and an all-round appeal might rescue the franchise. But I'd recommend replacing LOJ entirely. It disrupts the flow.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As if millions of sequels and spinoffs were suddenly snuffed out of existence!
So we've won on the Star Wars front, but will we be able to slow down those awful things known commonly as "Superhero Movies"? Only time will tell.
Not much more to add besides that The Last Jedi was, by far, the worst movie Iâ(TM)ve ever seen. Not just the last nail in coffin for the franchise. For having production costs greater than a national GDP, it lacked anything to make it a story worth learning. With a tenth of its budget, it could be regarded as a decent film. But for such extravagant spending, it shouldâ(TM)ve made our toes curl from start to finish. And despite being a SJW screed, its characters cause profound damage to the interests of women and minorities. Literally ever single âoelessonâ was counterproductive at best and simply wrong at best.
SJW = hostile, childish, entitled instigators who are perpetually looking for reasons to pretend to be angry because its easier than getting a job and supporting themselves.
I know plenty of women, blacks and homosexuals who hate SJWs too. (I only personally know one Jewish person.) Oh and before you try to make stuff up, no, I'm not white. I am biracial which makes me even more of a minority than any of the commonly considered minorities, yet somehow I'm doing OK in life (because I don't waste my time being faux outraged).
Rogue One was excellent. Solo was fairly decent. The two sequels, meh would be very generous even from an objective artistic standpoint and TLJ definitely had a lot of bad bits.
I think Rogue One in particular and Solo to some degree work because they add color to the original movies. They fit in the established story. Rogue enhances the original story by really giving emotional impact to the beginning of New Hope that wasn't so prominent before.
The two sequels, you know what's up with them besides being poorly done, is they STOLE our happy ending. We got to the end of the Return of the Jedi and evil was vanquished, Vader was redeemed, we left feeling like our heroes were going to live happily ever after.
But here now comes Force Awakens and not only have our heroes personal lives turned out just awful but the Empire is alive and well for all intents and purposes and is even more powerful and a bigger threat than before because now they can destroy multiple planets at a time from across the galaxy.
I think Disney could have done just fine exploring the universe further but because they wanted to capitalize on using the original actors they did this sequel model that of course has to introduce new conflict into their lives. A better approach would have been to go with the extended universe, explore heroes and antagonists completely unrelated to the original set. In short, if they'd put artistic and emotional integrity ahead of marketing toys, they would have ended up with better films which in the end would have likely made as much or more money anyway.
RLM are the only film critics that I trust to be thorough and honest (and highly entertaining and witty). Mike Stoklasa is a genius.
I also like that Rian Johnson fears them.
Yes but mainstream franchises are not for fringe nerds. Star Wars has sold out. Yes, this happened.
Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, TrackMania, there are tons of franchises these guys ran into the ground.
Sega on the other hand is doing things right, giving us tons of quality Yakuza, Sonic Mania, quality emulated games with M2, the wonderful Ages line of remastered games, successful 3D Classics on 3DS where even Nintendo didn't succeed.
I guess you were talking about the 90s when they gave us the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn in quick succession, but this was a result of Sega Japan telling Sega America to make one product while they simultaneously withheld their work on a similar product that would compete in the same space. This might have been OK if they communicated with gamers about their intent to do so, allowing people to plan their purchases, but they never did and gamers felt burned when they seemingly obsoleted their own product.
All I know is that Kathleen Kennedy is someone who wants to prove a point.
I have no problem with female stars, however, I don't want to pay to have a point rammed down my throat. I expect story and the experience to reign supreme. She neglected character development of the center of the movie, which was very stupid.
This is what most people don't get about SJWs. It's not about the politics at all; it's 100% self-righteous virtue signaling.
These people feel like they need some kind of validation to be good people, and grandstanding for a cause will fulfill that need.
While the Holiday Special was very cringy, it wasn't as immature and empty as Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.
Why even bother building a fleet when you can just warp through objects to destroy them? Now I have to assume nobody knew you could destroy the armada by just building large ships and auto-piloting them through the enemy while jumping.
If a single space ship battle happens in the next movie where it isn't a just race to kamikaze, it'll just look like complete ineptitude by all commanders involved.
How do you get out of this huge scientific (magic) discovery?
The Last Jedi casting and acting was as good as a daytime soap opera. No real plot, bad acting from a bunch of pressure treated 2" by 4"s from Home Depot, and a 'yes we've go that diversity slot filled' checklist of character types.
We've bought no Star Wars toys, movies, merchandise other than 3 tickets to The Last Jedi since Disney bought Star Wars. That's a big change from earlier when we bought much Star Wars merchandise for the kids.
Start with an actual story, not a bunch of car chases and visits to the 007 gadget lab scenes, add in good cast of actors,....
The old comic book writer submission guidelines come into play: "Write a story ...
using existing characters,
existing locations,
don't introduce new super powers,
don't introduce a new secret origin,
don't introduce a secret history,
don't introduce new technologies,
don't introduce new
Essentially write a story without a bunch of filler material explaining new things. A good story with existing characters shows better basics than going from filler material A to filler material B to filler material C.
Have actual dialog and pass the like test.
The like test: Prefix each character's line with "Like,"
The Solo movie was just a bad ripoff of the Lando Calrissian/Han Solo novel trilogies from the *1970s-80s!!* L33t was just a bad ripoff of Botux/Blue Max (Who by the way were one of the most memorable droid pairings behind R2D2 and C3PO!) And in fact those trilogies were effectively written to begin and end with those droids time aboard the falcon, helping to bridge Solo's win of the Falcon from Calrissian and providing background for some of the falcon's later modifications.
The sequel movies were bad alterations of the post-ROTJ EU universe which had 20+ years of history they shat on(the prequels did their share, but only in relation to a few short stories about characters histories), some of it questionable, but most of it both self and inter-consistent. They didn't just build up the characters as lone heroes or villains, but provided familial backgrounds and growth, relationship strife, and more than a dose of loss for both heroes and villains. More than a few characters lost loved ones (Including Han Solo, giving both his ruthlessness at the start of ANH and his softening in later movies far more depth.) Furthermore, with exceptions for the whole Clone Emperor arc and Ssi'ruuk invasion, there wasn't a lot of universe shifting unbelievable stories, and many that would have made good movies unto themselves.
Just going off what I assume was a direct LucasArts property, they could have produced a Shadows of the Empire movie. It wouldn't have been as over the top as ANH or ROTJ with their Sith Lord/Emperor and Death Stars, but it already fit into the universe, had a comprehensive novelization plus secondary works, had plenty of action, primarily revolved around main characters who didn't have existing actors, and a hot blonde killer assassin anyone would like the ending of flying away with :) Plus it had just enough character development for Luke, Leia, Lando, etc to help clear up eventings between Solo's carbonite imprisonment and Luke's arrival at Jabba's Palace to rescue him.
Furthermore, adding more blades to a lightsaber really lacked originality after Maul, who by the way was at least badass enough to make the lightsaber battle one of the most exciting scenes to ever grace a member of the franchise. Oh, while we're on THAT subject, the cybernetic limbed Maul was just a ripoff of Maw, a different alien character from LucasGames own Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, which also involved a Kyle Katarn media franchise that spanned through Raven Software's JK2 and JK Academy, including Novelizations.
They are 1970s-1980s era, but you worth a read if you really liked Solo.
The plot is basically an inferior mashup of the novel's stories to avoid paying royalties or sharing creative ownership with anyone else.
Star Wars is under even worse leadership under Disney than they were under Lucas in his twilight years.
Literally every major and minor character in the 'original' trilogy were fleshed out by the time 'The Phantom Menace' came out in 1999. There had been short stories on Dengar, R5 (the red and white droid who blows his motivator so R2D2 gets chosen from the jawas instead), an anthology worth of Boba Fett stories, IG88 the assassin droid, at least one short story of EVERY CHARACTER IN CHALMUN'S CANTINA (The ANH 'Cantina Scene') and dozens of others.
Literally if Disney had chosen to, they could have had hit movies for the next thirty years running a movie quarterly, both low and high budget for main and secondary characters, if only they were willing to license/share ownership with the authors. There is literally no reason for an unsuccessful Star Wars film and particularly a need for an obscene budget to make them successful. 9/10ths of the films would need minimal CGI since no cataclysmic outdoor scenes are going on. Most of the characters' alien prosthetics/makeup would be no higher budget than the original trilogy, and many of the sets would be reusable with some planning ahead for multiple movies, cutting down on per-movie stage and scene costs.
But Disney has to have billion dollar hits, instead of consistent income on reasonably budgeted and lower grossing films that keep their moviegoing audience engaged while also interesting them in both new and reissued merchandise for the Star Wars brand.
I'd love to see a film based on HK-47. I loved the stories he would regale Revan with about the deaths of his former masters and would like to see some of that on film.
Another character that would be good to base a film on is Kyle Katarn, the guy who is really responsible for stealing the Death Star plans.
Unfortunately that isn't possible anymore since Disney in their ineffable brilliance declared all of EU non-canon.
Like many posters, I'll agree that the spin-offs both Rogue One and Solo were better than the sequels, and I think there is a lot of reason why.
1) First off is the stories. What Rogue One and Solo did was take bits of the original movies that were never really explained, but hinted at and basically made a movie about it. How were the DeathStar plans stolen, and why did so many Boffins die? Ok, we could have seen more Boffin death... How did Solo with the Falcon in a card game, and how did he meet and save Chewie's life? My only gripe with that movie was the lover that seemed to sacrifice herself for very little reason. These were things fans were already interested in, so it instantly has appeal. The sequels on the other hand were just fan service and pandering and basically reboots of the exact same stories already told. Ermagah! A DeathStar, but this time it's really really big, oh and twist the bad guy is related again. What was the last one about again? Some sort of returning jedi or something?
2) Technical Science Fiction gaffs that once you do them, hard to come back from. The new Star Treks are guilty of the same BS. Both universes have an existing rich and explored cannon of how physics and various stuff works. What the new produces of both don't seem to understand (or don't care), is that there is a lot of reasons for putting limits on things for the purpose of story telling. It's like if they made a new Superman and decided "you know what, he is more badass than ever, and is no longer weakened by kryptonite!"... Which would be incredibly stupid, because it is there for a reason, as in where the hell do you go from there in future movies etc... So the super teleporters in Star Trek... Why even bother with ships anymore? There was so much of this in the StarWars sequels, it's no doubt they need to have a "pause" and try to figure how the hell to dig themselves out of this mess without just doing a complete re-boot. From Ray basically being some sort of innate super jedi, to FTL weapons technology, space bombers and how gravity works, planet sized DeathStars and Star power, etc... Stupid plot holes like General purple hair going down with the ship again for seemingingly zero reason (I mean they don't have auto pilot? They seem to have a lot of droids hanging around doing nothing, they too busy or something?)
Anyway I'm sure there is a bunch more reasons, but I've complained enough for today. I'm sure the StarWars universe has plenty of life left into it, however they do need to get some new writing blood it seems. Draft up some original stuff, heck there is plenty of written content out there to steal from, I'm sure plenty of folks would love to see the General Thrawn trilogy made!
And Rogue One was released in 2016.
What I see is the Disneyfication of Star Wars as another problem. It has to be 'family friendly'-ish enough. Less Saving-Private-Ryan and more Mulan.
Sure in some cases you would not really miss the adult action, though it would(/should?) already reach or cross it's border for cases like Solo, who worked in the shadiest parts of life.
But for Boba Fett? I want 'evil John Wick in space'. Period. Boba is a ruthless and effective killer who works for, with and against even more evil characters (Jabba, Bossk, IG-88). Boba will be going through imperials, rebels and civilians alike. He even torched Owen and Beru looking for Luke!
But that would not be a PG13 rating and thus not something for Disney.
Disney sees Star Wars like 'Masters of the Universe': toy sales first and perhaps by chance you will get something resembling fragments that look like it could have belonged to a story some kid dreamed of.