Quite the clickbait article. There has never been so much Star Wars compared to before Disney took over, more movies, more tv-shows.
I am not surprised they’re putting future projects on ice though, especially with the ridiculous amount of criticism a lot of their work gets.
One of the problems is that the TV series are starting to look and feel like TV, even when they’re telling galaxy-spanning stories of huge in-universe importance. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi missing from the production values that even the most garbage of the movie offerings (pick for yourself which those are) still did right. Star Wars fans, including me, are always overdramatic, but as a franchise it’s also getting small.
Meanwhile, the plans were for there to be at least one movie a year, yet nothing since Solo 6 years ago has even made it into production. Something is off. Whether it’s as simple as a bad media strategy of announcing their “inside baseball” pitches to goose corporate earnings, or an actual dysfunction in the studio, it’s worth talking about.
Not quite, they announce/hint a lot of new movies that we never heard of it again, they released 5 movies but announce/hint at least 10 more if you count Obi-Wan and Boba Fett that were supposed to be movies.
Well I meant that in the 70s-80s there were 3 movies, and then in the 90s-00s we got 3 movies, so like every 20-30 year gap.
But we got 5 movies in recent times. I don’t know if Kenobi and Book of Boba Fett were supposed to be movies though, I never heard anything other than them being shows. I initially thought that Book of Boba Fett would’ve been part of the Mandalorian show too, which frankly would’ve made more sense. I do prefer the shows though, it gives so much more world and character building and things don’t feel as rushed, although not every show has been good with it.
I do know about a few planned upcoming movies that were put on hold, and I’m not sure if Rian Johnson’s movies are still happening, I was really looking forward to see what he could do with an own dedicated trilogy.
Just some links about Obi-Wan and Boba Fett:
Obi-Wan Kenobi was meant to have a movie
Everything We Know About Star Wars’ Canceled Boba Fett Movie
Seriously – what? I’m so far behind because of how prolific they’ve been. Sure, a good chunk of that is shows, but there are so many movies, too
I’m assuming that this has bubbled-up because Steven Knight has left the Rey movie, as did Damon Lindelof before him. They’re both established, prolific writers, known for their ability to get the writing finished, so I’d guess that the problem at LucasFilm is one of interfering producers.
I like Rogue One and Andor, quit infantilizing Star Wars and profit, or keep making plushies and drag the brand through the sewer and making the :0 face when it continues not to work out
Star Wars is a science fantasy film with space magic and swords made of light where the main character goes into the evil warlord’s dungeon to save the princess. Oh, and it made most of it’s money by selling toys.
That’s not to say other media in the same universe can’t be gritty war films, not that it can’t be good. But the issue isn’t that Disney are “infantilizing Star Wars and profit”, the issue is that they are, for the most part, doing a bad job at it. The first season of The Mandalorien was arguably the best thing to come out of the brand since the original trilogy because, like the original trilogy, it had charm, lovable characters and (to a lesser degree) some nice world building.
I think part of the issue is that people at Disney realize why Star Wars was successful, but think along the lines of “Well, if people loved this chocolate cake, I could double the amount of chocolate and people will like it twice as much”.
Less movies less chance to fuck up the canon.
They are making the absolute most of their limited opportunities to fuck up canon, though.
The very concept of “canon” is a terrible idea anyway.
It never improves anything.Depends, I personally prefer a canon to what happens with hero comics like Marvel and DC that have 20000 stories that contradict each other and they have to reboot everything in a 5 year cycle.
That’s exactly how canon is done badly. Why in the end it never helps anything.
They try to stay consistent across dozens of series, each with several writers. Eventually it becomes more of a hindrance than help, as all canon does; And they restart to clean up the mess.
But if they didn’t bother trying to keep a consistent canon to begin with. Instead, letting each writer tell their own story. They never have to wory about it. Each one can be self contained, and make changes as needed to tell the best version of their story.
I feel like there’s never going to be a complete universal agreement about what the canon should be like. Whatever they write, there will be some group of people that won’t like it, and they’ll make it their crusade to let it be heard as loud as possible regardless of what it is.
There’s a reason why people joke that nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.