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S91E26: Deep Clean with Disney Star Wars
38 Plays1 year ago
Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter has a breakdown (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/star-wars-disney-analysis-ratings-box-office-1236011620/) and we have opinions!
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Transcript
Is Disney handling Star Wars effectively?
00:00:00
Speaker
Is Disney bad at Star Wars? The Hollywood Reporter has some ideas and I have a response. Grab your joints and brooms, it's a Star Wars cleaning crew.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back to the Star Wars cleaning crew.
Hiatus explanation and Chicago trip
00:00:12
Speaker
After an unplanned week long hiatus, I'll tell you guys what happened. Cause it's kind of funny. I was in Chicago helping my son move into his new apartment and I thought, Oh, this is great. I've been wanting to have him on the show. He is a designer. He's a graphic designer. And we wanted to record a show talking about the design of Star Wars.
Recording mishap with Star Wars design discussion
00:00:34
Speaker
And so I brought my computer and I brought ah the microphones to record everything. And we did record a really good conversation about it. But then I realized I had my work computer and not my Mac, which I use for creating this podcast. And therefore I didn't have access to the editing tools. I didn't have any of our great theme music. I didn't have access to any of that. And so I just was not going to come out on time. I got home. I was going to try to get it done the next day. Life happened. It got crazy. So I thought, you know what? I'm just going to take a week break. So we will get to that conversation with my son Harrison soon.
00:01:18
Speaker
We're actually not going to do it today though. And here's why. I wanted to talk about something that is really current that I thought was exceptional.
Analysis of 'Is Disney bad at Star Wars?' article
00:01:29
Speaker
So about four days ago, an article appeared on the Hollywood Reporter website.
00:01:36
Speaker
By the way, I should also add life is still a little bit crazy. So I am just going to record this and I am going to put it out there and get it out there into the wild. I'm not going to do the editing. So if I have more ums or odds or stumble over words.
00:01:53
Speaker
Forgive me in advance. Don't submit the show for a potty award or whatever you call a podcast award. Potty would be a bad name for it. Anyway, article Hollywood reporter. It came out written by a guy named James Hibbert. I think I've heard his name before. He seems to be a freelance writer for the Hollywood reporter. The title of this was is Disney bad at Star Wars and analysis and.
00:02:20
Speaker
It got out there, I read it. I will say my first reaction to this article was that it was the best, most balanced take on the Disney era of Star Wars that I have read yet. And it seems like other people agreed with me because a lot of other bloggers and podcasters picked up on this article and have shared it. So I wanted to kind of run down this article I will put a link to it in the show link in the show notes for this, this episode. So you can read it on your own, but if you don't want to, I'll just kind of walk through it. So you got the general premise, right? Is, is Disney bad at doing Star Wars? Let's take a look at the history of Disney's, uh, ownership of Star Wars. And he starts off of course, talking about the movies. So.
Star Wars under Disney: From acquisition to The Force Awakens
00:03:17
Speaker
We have to, as James Hibbert does, we have to recognize that Disney bought Star Wars in 2012, and then three years later, now remember, it took three years to make basically every Star Wars movie up until then. So Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012. At the end of 2015, they released The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams' first first sequel, episode seven. and
00:03:52
Speaker
Now that went pretty fast and actually from my understanding is they wanted to actually have that movie come out in the spring of 2015 Memorial Day, which traditionally was the weekend that Star Wars ah movies were released. But JJ Abrams said we just couldn't do it. So they moved it to a December release.
00:04:12
Speaker
Now you might forget about it because I know a lot of people have complained about the force awakens over time, but the force awakens was a monster hit. People were jazzed about it. They were super excited and it made tons and tons and tons of money. It was immediately one of the top grossing films of all time and absolute blockbuster as he says in there.
Criticism and success of The Force Awakens
00:04:41
Speaker
Now, there were some people who complained about The Force Awakens, and I think this is a valid criticism that it was too much, too reminiscent of the plot of episode four, A New Hope.
00:04:56
Speaker
Lucas famously says these movies rhyme, but I think if that's what George, or if that's what JJ Abrams was trying to do, it was more of a Dr. Seuss type rhyme than it was like a nuanced haiku or something like that. Haikus don't rhyme. Don't mind me. You get what I'm talking about.
00:05:14
Speaker
ae He very much JJ Abrams wanted to say, Hey, the prequels, let's just ignore the prequels. None of you liked the prequels. Cause that was the case at the time. So let's get back to the original star Wars. And that's what he was trying to do here. And so that's what the force awakens was. And it worked made a ton, a ton of money. Everybody was very excited about the next movie.
00:05:39
Speaker
And remember I had the force awakens had that cliffhanger ending Ray hands the lightsaber to Luke. What is Luke going to do with it? Everybody's waiting on that to see what his reaction is going to be cut to black cliffhanger.
Mixed reactions to The Last Jedi and beyond
00:05:54
Speaker
We need to see what's going to happen.
00:05:56
Speaker
Now JJ Abrams, I remember back at the time, he had already read the script for The Last Jedi. And he made some quote, something on the lines of, it is so good, I wish that I was directing it. So everybody was very excited about it.
00:06:15
Speaker
three years later, The Last Jedi opens and it was the best we can say divisive. I still believe it is one of the best Star Wars movies of all time. I know a lot of people disagree with me. I got feedback from that episode from people who still disagree with me. ah the The thing is this is It was notably a left turn from what The Force Awakens was. It was a different creative vision. And that was what fans were reacting to. Some of them didn't like going in a different direction. Some people did not like the idea that faced with that cliffhanger, what Luke Skywalker chose to do with his lightsaber was throw it over his shoulder and basically become curmudgeonly old man Luke.
00:07:06
Speaker
It's a valid argument. I happened to like where that went. I also happened to like where Luke wound up at the end of the last Jedi. Not that he wound up dead, but that he wound up admitting he was a mistake for giving up on the Jedi.
00:07:20
Speaker
Okay. Now what's supposed to happen? Colin Trevorrow is supposed to do episode nine at the very last minute he gets canceled. They turn it back over to JJ Abrams and JJ Abrams directs episode nine. And this is a quote from the Hollywood report article that I like.
00:07:41
Speaker
He says, comedians learn in improv class to always say yes and to any idea introduced during a show, no matter how challenging. The studio and Abrams reaction to The Last Jedi was more like, no, actually. Rey is a nobody. No, she's a Palpatine.
00:07:59
Speaker
The result was a trilogy that's a mishmash of dueling creative visions. And I think that is exactly the challenge that the Disney era of Star Wars has had. It has been a clash of creative visions.
00:08:16
Speaker
I know that Kathleen Kennedy values having a variety, having diversity in the creative visions that are brought into Star Wars. so She wants to give more directors and diverse directors, directors with different sensibilities, different approaches, the opportunity to tell stories in the Star Wars universe. And I think that that is a good thing. I like that idea.
00:08:42
Speaker
The challenge comes when you are trying to do that and it's still not unified by a creative vision. especially when we are trying to say, this is one story that has gone on for nine movies. You don't wrap it up by saying, let's have a few different visions and not have it ah stick the landing as it were. And that's a problem.
Solo's failure and strategic planning needs
00:09:05
Speaker
Now, of course, he also goes on to talk about the anthology films, the Star Wars story films, Rogue One,
00:09:13
Speaker
which he calls wildly uneven, I disagree, I like Rogue One a lot, ah was a hit, Solo came out, and it was a flop. And still, I like Solo. It is one of my favorite Star Wars movies. It is one where, if I just feel like watching some Star Wars, I am as likely as not to turn on Solo more than anything.
00:09:36
Speaker
But for a lot of different reasons, Solo didn't make money. One of those reasons might be the fact that they had to actually make it twice because the directors were fired halfway through and replaced with Ron Howard. Maybe that's not the best way to generate a lot of profit in your films.
00:09:56
Speaker
Also, it was released right about the same time as The Avengers and it was actually released while The Last Jedi was still in theaters. So it was kind of a marketing disaster. There was really no marketing for this film. Disney did not did not set this film up for success. Let's put it that way.
00:10:19
Speaker
And then when it came out and it didn't make money, they said, we have to rethink our film strategy. They did release Rise of Skywalker. We haven't seen a film yet. The next movie that we're going to see is the Mandalorian in Grogu, which actually takes us to the TV shows.
Success of The Mandalorian and mixed reviews for other series
00:10:38
Speaker
And it's a very similar story. The Mandalorian Stellar hit baby Yoda definitely helped to make that happen. But the Mandalorian was a hit the first Star Wars live action TV show right out of the box. It was great. We had a couple episodes, a couple seasons of that. And then we had the book of Boba Fett, which I have to say was disappointing.
00:11:03
Speaker
Then we see some other shows come along. Obi-Wan Kenobi. I liked Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi started as a movie that they decided to stretch out into a series. And you can tell some of the stretch marks of that stretching it out of the series. I think it would have been stronger just as an individual movie.
00:11:20
Speaker
Ah, Ahsoka. Was it good? Yes. Were there parts of it that were problematic or I didn't like? Absolutely. I think it was uneven. And I would have to say overall, I was disappointed with Ahsoka, even though I still liked it. I was disappointed in it.
00:11:36
Speaker
And or fantastic. Still, I believe, one of the best Star Wars projects ever. That was an example where you took a different artistic vision on Star Wars, but you made it work because it was still in line, still in coherence with the story that was being told. We weren't changing the story. We were just taking it from a different perspective for a different audience. And that's what I think made Andor work, even though Andor did not get great ratings. We're going to get one more season of Andor next year. And that's going to be the end of Andor. Right now, the only series that is in production is Ahsoka season two. We'll be getting skeleton crew at the end of this year. I'm very hopeful for that. Everybody's excited about that. It seems like we'll have to see how that pans out.
00:12:25
Speaker
So in the end, he goes through all of this, you know again, very fairly represented, ah both positive and negative.
Concluding thoughts on Disney's Star Wars strategy
00:12:33
Speaker
At the end, he nets it out. He says, is Disney bad at Star Wars? The response is on balance, no.
00:12:42
Speaker
And he goes on to say that Disney did succeed in bringing Star Wars back into theaters, which people wanted. They did create movies and properties which have made money with the exception of solo. And, you know, I don't think we could quite get the the profits or the loss on the Disney Plus shows, but they have been successful. But then this is how Hibbard follows that up. Here's another question. Could Disney be better at Star Wars?
00:13:10
Speaker
Clearly, yes. I absolutely think that Disney could be doing better with the properties. I think it would help if they did have a unified creative vision, if they knew where the stories were going. Maybe that's happening with Dave Filoni, now the Chief Creative Officer and at the helm of the overall storyline. I pray that that's opening that that's happening.
00:13:35
Speaker
But the other thing that we need to stop doing is stop announcing projects and attaching actors and directors to them. and then canceling them. There are all sorts of rumors floating around that the movie about Rey and the new Jedi order is on pause or has been canceled. If that happens, it's gonna really make me sad because we keep hearing about these things that are coming and we get excited about them and then they just kind of drift away. Need to get in there, get some focus, make things happen.
00:14:09
Speaker
And we haven't even talked about Star Wars in the parks and how galaxy's edge could be better and what could have gone wrong with the star cruiser, all of that kind of stuff. So I agree Disney. Is it good at Star Wars?
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, because they're making money, you know, and they're putting out content. Could it be better? Absolutely. And that's what I'm going to stick with. So that is this week's episode of the Star Wars cleaning crew. Join us again next week. We will have that conversation with Harrison unless we wind up doing the rewatch of solo and I can justify my, my earlier points. We'll see what happens. Either way, make sure that you like this podcast, make sure that you subscribe and make sure that you leave us a review. Tell your friends. We look forward to seeing you next time. In the meanwhile, keep your kitchens clean. May the force be with you. We'll see you soon.
00:15:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah!