Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? An Analysis
Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? An Analysis
High budgets, scrapped projects, fan backlash. Here's a look at Disney's 12-year Star Wars legacy.
Yes yes they are. Don't need to look past the sequel trilogy films. Which are essentially:
A happy days reunion special.
Running from set piece to set piece with a mess of a plot
Fuck it let's just bring Palptine back to make it look like we had some grand plan.
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, with notable exceptions of stuff like Andor (this is AMAZING), the real Star Wars story is the pre-Disney EU, which was, contrary to popular refrain, fairly consistent once they got the "keeper of the Holocron" to make sure the stories were relatively cohesive and didn't contradict one-another.
A bunch of the authors even worked to retcon-remove the Dark Empire storyline with the reborn Emperor in their various series by referring to that as "mere rumors" and whatnot.
That's not to say the entire EU was marvelous. But I read the vast majority of it - overall it entirely eclipses what Disney has been doing in terms of quality and depth. Not to mention...Disney, with their tabula rasa, still have stories contradicting one another and introducing inconsistencies...
For me, Disney's Episodes 7-9 never happened. I consume and recognize anything that doesn't materially contradict the prior EU - I'm O.K. with smoothing over, explaining away, and massaging stuff to make it work. But "Kylo Ren" is a dollar store knock-off of Darth Caedus.
Episodes 7-9 were, from a creative standpoint, made with pure contempt. Watching that shit felt like there were MBAs in the writers room reminding people that on brand strength alone these movies were guaranteed to make a profit so all their nerdy ideas were pointless. And they were right. Those movies sleepwalked into being highly profitable. The creative damage it did to the franchise is nerd shit for nerds, and MBAs are winners and they won.
It's not even worth going over their failings. They're so creatively bankrupt that they're not even worth any critical analysis (not that that hasn't been done to death).
I'm just sad that the Sword of the Jedi is never going to be finished.
Seeing Disney just repeating all EU mistakes (superweapon after superweapon, Palpatine clones, inconsistencies) is just rubbing salt in the wound.
I disagree that the entire EU was better. To me, it seems like the combined works in the EU were just so enormous that there were enough high points one would positively remember WHILE at the same point allowing for singular bad instances to be mostly ignored. With the unified canon disney has established, having one bad trilogy will forever taint all the remaining pieces because you can't handwave TRoS away and pretend it didn't or will not happen in canon. Marvel and DC comics have hundreds of timelines and hundreds of different iterations and versions of heroes and wildly different stories and you can pick and choose what you like and ignore the rest. If disney does a poop at any point in the one solidified Star Wars timeline, that poop is now there to stay and everybody now has to bend over backwards to make it appear like it's less of a poop than it really is.
They seem like normal movie execs. They don’t understand what works or doesn’t work then they make weird conclusions that they will use as blanket decisions for everything else they do. Then they get confused why everyone isn’t throwing all of their money at them.
Their content is fine. It’s just not great and it certainly never reaches they hype the brand thinks it deserves.
It's iterative AI slop but they don't even have the excuse of being AI.
Disney is bad at an awful lot of things. Why would they be good at Star Wars, of all things?
For this I look to my wife. She is someone who did not grow up with Star Wars so she has no bias or expectations. She also doesn't keep track of lore and "universes". I mean, unless we binge watch, she'll literally forget who main characters are. For her she either likes or dislikes a show on its own merits. Most Disney releases she has outright hated. Unexpectedly, she enjoyed " the one with the red sand" (The Last Jedi). My theory is that she had no hangups with all the lore breaks and such. Expectedly, she loves "baby Yoda", even if she can't remember anything else about the show (honestly, neither can I). I have not shown her Rouge One yet as I am waiting for Andor Season 2 before we binge it all.
I wonder if watching Rogue One before Andor (and of course right after once again) or seeing the whole thing chronologically will be a better overall experience.
I haven't watched Rogue One in a good long while, but I remember it feeling rushed and disjointed. It was a visually beautiful film which seemed like it had ideas that had been muddled with by the powers that be forcing re-writes. I think I read afterwards that was the truth, but I actually could sense it just during my viewing.
Andor seemed like it reached the potential the Rogue One was aiming for. It keep the great visuals and designs, while really fleshing out the ideas.
I would say for a fresh watch, Andor first and Rogue One second will probably create some needed investment in the character that isn't contained in the movie itself.
For the most part, yes. Someone needs to make a Star Wars in the spirit of the first Pirates. With everyone double crossing each other except the Jedi
That was Solo. Everyone double crossing each other doesn't necessarily make a good movie.
Solo was decent enough, but Christ it would have been better if they hadn't thought the fan-service in the prologue to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade should be stretched out into an entire god-damned movie. I was also only "whelmed" by the scenes on Mimban and I don't quite get the online begging for an entire movie of nighttime mud-blasting. Like, just watch a couple war movies, y'all.
Eh, hard pass that was not Solo. Solo was a walk around old characters going "look at this! Yep! Thats how that happened!" The heist was cool, but it was not in the same spirit at all.
My working theory always was: Star Wars is better without lightsabers
The more lightsabering and force using there is it gets worse.
The biggest problem is they've over committed what those things are and what they can do.
A lightsaber can cut through anything and the force can do just about any telekinesis you want it to.
Now you need to either ignore these incredibly powerful tools or carefully design intricate, thoughtful problems that can't be flashily solved by CGI theatrics.
So what do they do? Well, 9/10 times, they just make a normal fucking movie/show with Star Wars painted on top. Lightsabers can be blocked by whatever weapon the bad guy has (make it zappy and then it's basically the same as a lightsaber). Things get knocked just out of reach, people hang by their fingers of ledges, bad guys run away down that long street with no way to catch up and some Jedi stands there like a fucking oaf wishing it wasn't so.
All Disney does it up the ante. More power, more different lightsabers, more aliens, more locations. But then they slap that shit on whatever story they have laying around.
I feel like people just like to shit on literally everything these days.
Star Wars has always been a mixed bag of good and bad products. Plenty of high budgets, scrapped projects and fan backlash on Lucas his content too. And some stuff is simply subjective, not everything is meant for everyone.
This isn't exclusive to Disney, which also delivered good and bad products. Much like what Lucasfilm and LucasArts did back in the days, or did everyone casually forget the insane criticism that the prequels got? Or the big promising games that were in deep stages of development that were scrapped. Or gems like the Holiday Special.
The only difference now is that everyone and their moms can express their opinions online, and it'll get a lot of traction. Negativity is always more likely to make its way to the frontpages. Because it's an easy way to farm clicks, views, likes and whatever else fake internet points are out there to get publicity.
I enjoyed most of Disney's SW content, very similar to enjoying most of Lucasfilm/LucasArts content.
The prequels are bad… but not in the same way the Disney stuff is bad. Their main flaws lie in dialog and acting. You can see that Lucas had a story he wanted to tell, it was interesting… It just needed another couple rounds of polish (by someone other than Lucas and his yes-men) that it never got.
Most the Disney stuff, on the other hand, never had a chance. It all follows the principles of: design by committee, fan service, and rule of cool. There was never a vision for compelling story to be told…. Just dollars to generate.
I am on a similar wavelength, but harsher as the plots and film structures of the prequels are also just no good. The prequels are bad. I have trouble putting myself in the headspace of people who genuinely enjoy them as films.
As terrible as I think they are, the fact that Lucas clearly had passion and love of the universe he created did give them a flavor which is missing in the sequel films. While the prequels failed at being coherent films, they succeeded in creating a whole new era in the Star Wars universe that was ripe for other people to come and tell stories inside of. The prequel era feels so different from the OT, but at the same time is undeniably proper Star Wars. Other creators came in and built so much there. The strength of those other creations are actually why I think some people have convinced themselves to re-examine the prequels.
The setting of the sequel era is just so bland and lifeless. There is nothing there which was set up by those movies really for other creators to get passionate about and flesh out. The Mandalorian wedged itself between OT and sequel era to get some stronger tie in with the OT, but really there's been very few stories set firmly and entirely in the sequel movie era, and none that anyone seem to care about.
I think the prequels are a good example of how divided it is, and how similar it is to Disney stuff. Lots of people that think the prequels are bad, or that only one or two movies are bad. Same goes for the sequels, and other shows as well.
The problem is that the community behind SW is so gargantuan that it is impossible to cater to all crowds. It's simply not possible, and it will never happen. There will always be people that agree and disagree about what's good and what isn't.
Especially when Disney decided to just destroy the whole expanded universe before Disney came around, to make room for their own canon. It opened up so many fan ideas and theories. And it ranged from simple concepts to the wildest concepts. It really exposed how divided the community was about how SW should be in their eyes.
It's definitely a mess over at Disney when it comes to story/world consistency and those that are in charge of many of their projects, but I don't think it would've mattered who would've been at the helm. If Lucas had decided to continue with the sequels and/or tv-shows on his own it probably would've been the same all over, especially considering his previously revealed concepts of what could've been his idea for the sequels stories (something about the midichlorians being a sentient race controlling everything or something vague like that) and how insanely divided people were about that too.
This is a true statement, 100%. It still doesn't detract from the fact that the sequels were the cinematic equivalent of a dog chasing a car and not knowing what to do with it once they caught it. Disney had an entire EU laid out before them, had a chance to make something awesome...and they did that instead.
This is a good point.
The people who make the shows are artists. Some artists are better than others, and some works by an artist are better than other works by the same artist. If you listen to music, you don’t usually care if the label is Sony or Universal or whatever. Disney has management who hires the artists but those managers and executives aren’t making the content, good or bad.
On the other hand, Disney does apparently meddle too much to try to use formulas for popularity or whatever. And that can ruin art.
They do have people or story groups at Disney that are supposed to be in charge of consistency and such. But I don't think it ever worked as well as Lucas being the sole "grand-father" of everything Star Wars. I get why Disney does it though, they want to speak to as many people as they can with the franchise, but it comes at the cost of never being able to truly succeed in its entirety and having to make decisions that will not please everyone, it simply cannot be done.
I never felt like Star Wars was supposed to be like that either, not everyone needs to like Star Wars, although that seems to be something Disney doesn't want us to believe.
I think you can have in-depth Star Wars feeling/knowledge. If you start out without even a hint of a coherent plan like they did, you will fail.
First time I see an article with a question where the answer is "yes".
The article lands on "not actually all that bad, especially from a business perspective, but could be much better," which is kind of unsatisfying, but I did like the opening analogy to the Falcon: "The garbage will do."
One thing they absolutely have to do is get better acting and production values that match the sequels, or at least Mando S1. The Volume should only be used when the scene makes sense for it, so either spaces that are themselves enclosed, or where the actors' blocking reasonably makes sense. Kenobi was particularly egregious with this, especially the airspeeders sequence. Everything is just so slow and small and anything that can't be done in VFX is crowded into a very tight space. When the Acolyte tried to build bigger sets... I dunno... something came off wrong, like they contracted the whole thing out to the Disney teams that make the public spaces in Galaxy's edge, which like all theme parks trade a certain amount authentic screen presence for durability. I doubt the sets are that durable, making it all the worse when they look how they do. BOBF's infamous scooter chase had some other issues, but what locked it in as a blunder was the cheap visuals that screamed, "We can't afford enough set to zoom through it at more than jogging speed!" Somebody needed to tell Robert Rodriguez that this isn't Spy Kids. Andor had a large but not unlimited budget, but the key is (barely greebled AK-47's aside) that they used it wisely and got bang for their bucks; they made choices that fit the story into the budget (they actually made two TIE fighters feel terrifying), and it ended up looking just right for the most part.
Then the acting. All 5 Disney movies did okay with this, and the sheer watchability of the performances an one area where I think they ALL outshone all three PT movies. Star Wars has never been known for "realistic" dialogue, but the OT sold it by having actors with movie star charisma, veteran chops, and a decade of "new Hollywood" naturalistic sensibilities. Then you had a collaborative process that took better takes and excised material that couldn't be made to work. The ST was less organic, but similarly collaborative and while almost cloyingly modern and quippy at times, you don't get the sense that the actors are struggling with the material. I don't want to lean in too hard on overly simplistic narratives here, but the amount of control that Lucas had in the prequels undoubtedly led to an under-emphasis on the parts of filmmaking he finds less interesting, and too much reliance on newfound abilities to "fix it in post." He somehow got awful performances from Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson, and even fairly uneven ones from Ewan McGregor.
The shows, however, have mostly skewed to the worse side of things. Not quite so stilted as the PT, but there is a serious lack of charisma and humanity emanating from them, and it just makes things less fun, and when your dialogue mostly exists to deliver exposition, it leaves us more willing to nitpick details. Andor has a grimmer tone, but there is charisma there. The performances were compelling and I had to watch. You cannot and should not make all Star Wars like Andor, but you could make it all as well-conceived as Andor.
The shows, however, have mostly skewed to the worse side of things. Not quite so stilted as the PT, but there is a serious lack of charisma and humanity emanating from them, and it just makes things less fun, and when your dialogue mostly exists to deliver exposition, it leaves us more willing to nitpick details. Andor has a grimmer tone, but there is charisma there. The performances were compelling and I had to watch. You cannot and should not make all Star Wars like Andor, but you could make it all as well-conceived as Andor.
I recently watched a video that went deeply into exactly that criticism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4IfoQzSSE
The gist is that most of the current content forgets to focus on making characters feel human, and that's because they're so relentlessly focused on forcing exposition that needs to get the plot from point A to point B that they forget to focus on the organic way that a character might interact with and react to a situation. Every character turns into a cardboard cutout because they're archetypes designed to fill a role in a plotline, as opposed to living, breathing individuals with their own priorities, intentions, and often times inner turmoil. Andor and Rogue One are the only two projects that allowed characters to be flawed and emotional, and therefore authentic and relatable. And that's why we care so much more about those stories, because we can feel what the character is going through. The rest is just hitting us on the head with exposition so that we can follow along, as if we're all thumb-sucking idiots who can't think for ourselves.
I really like the Star Wars universe. Trash and all. Could Disney do better? Yes. Could Lucas Arts have done better? Absolutely. Art is never perfect, but that is what makes the art beautiful. Perfection is boring.
But as someone who used to despise Star Wars, you really need to pay attention to the extended universe(EU) to get a more complete picture. The EU fills in all the holes that the movies/shows create, provide a better view of what the force actually is, and often provides more interesting stories by not focusing on the Skywalker saga.
I now absolutely love Star Wars only because I gave the EU a chance.
Yes, but it wouldn't be possible without fans that are willing to eat this drivel up.
the best thing Disney can do for Star Wars now is to give an extremely large sum of money to Tony Gilroy, and step away.
I'm explicitly not a star wars fan, and never really have been. Before the Disney buyout my friends gave me mad shit for preferring the prequel trilogy as movies simply because the OT is just (gonna get ripped for this but idfc I got an A defending my point in film school so) not very good looking or interesting to watch by today's standards, really (and I watch 2001 like yearly so clearly I'm an expert). But, I really liked the concepts the universe had and the expanded universe, and I like how much Mark Hamill loves being Like and that rubbed off on me and I like Luke too.
Then Disney got their hands on it and I watched all the people who used to shit on me slowly turn to my side. Felt like emperor palpetine seeing my Anakins finally come to my side, honestly. So I know they're fucking it up
Even my wife, who much like someone else in this thread isn't really into star wars, had seen the OT recently enough that when Luke showed up in The Mando and started being all not-Luke even she was "who is this and what did he do to my boi", because people have basic story/object permanence?