106
Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? An Analysis
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
106 points (92.1% liked)
Star Wars
4834 readers
90 users here now
Discussion for all things Star Wars. Movies, books, games, TV shows and more are welcome.
1. Keep it civil.
2. Keep it Star Wars related.
3. No memeposts. Memes are great and everybody loves them, but there is already !starwarsmemes@lemmy.world for those.
Community icon art from DeviantArt user DavidDeb.
Banner art by Ralph McQuarrie.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
Wrong. The prequels were absolute dogshit. All of them. And it wasn't any of the actor's fault.
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, as disappointing as most of the new SW content has been (with the exception of Mando Season 1, Rogue One, and Andor,) it's all been superior to the 90's sequels created by the man himself. PM, CW, RoTS were all garbage, and it wasn't the fault of Hayden. Lucas didn't have his ex-wife there to edit the shit out.
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.