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S02E45: Anxiously Assessing the Disney Effect
25 Plays12 days ago
We are thirteen years into the Disney era of Star Wars... what's worked? What hasn't? And what does the future look like? We could debate for hours, but get some insight in 15 (okay 16) minutes today.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Delay Apology
00:00:01
Speaker
we're looking at the Disney effect on Star Wars and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome back to Short for a Stormtrooper. We're glad you're here. And i wanted to take today and just kind of do a little bit of a fireside chat. Let's talk about some things going on. And i think this will be interesting. So let me start off by saying if you woke up last Tuesday and were super excited to listen to the next episode of Short for a Stormtrooper and then realized that it didn't drop until Friday. That is completely user error on my part.
00:00:44
Speaker
I have to hit publish after the entire show has been made, and i forgot that crucial last step on Monday night as I was polishing off my last episode. So,
00:00:58
Speaker
Apologies for that. try to stay on top of it. I've got some ideas on how I might be able to do a better job of staying on top of that so that it doesn't happen again. But that's the deal. So sorry about that, but I am back now.
Star Wars Visions Season 3 Review
00:01:10
Speaker
Second, in this last week in this last week, Star Wars Visions was released. So that is the third season of the anime series that shows up on Disney+. plus All of the episodes are standalone stories. Two of them this year are actually sequels to episodes that have been on the previous years.
00:01:33
Speaker
And I haven't finished watching them yet. I've watched the first two and I have enjoyed both of them. I have to admit that when I watched the first one, I was really tired and I dozed off in the middle.
00:01:43
Speaker
But i I rewatched it again this morning and I liked it. I watched the second one and I liked it. You know, there's some crazy wacky Star Wars stuff that happens there when you start getting it into the hands of the creators of anime.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I'm here for it. It's a lot of fun. I especially like the very first one, which was ah the sequel to The Duel featuring the character Ronin. Very, very samurai inspired, but the look and feel of this was great. So I invite you to watch Star Wars Visions along with me and we will do a recap on those sometime soon.
Unproduced Ben Solo Story
00:02:19
Speaker
The second bit of news, and this is a little bit older news, but maybe this is your only source of Star Wars news, so you haven't tracked it. A story broke a couple weeks ago that Adam Driver, who played Ben Solo slash Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel movies,
00:02:37
Speaker
had a, not just a pitch, but had a script, at least a draft of a script, and a director lined up for a movie called The Hunt for Ben Solo.
00:02:53
Speaker
And ah let's just say that what it's the story, the way it seemed to, you know, be unpacking is that he had this all lined up. He thought it was a great idea for actually a story featuring Ben Solo after Episode nine in which he famously died ah and he had this idea and he had the director lined up by Steven Soderbergh, who is a fairly famous director of some pretty goofy, crazy movies as well.
00:03:31
Speaker
So it was an interesting idea. And I would say that The fandom, ah the the biggest voices that I was hearing was Disney blew this by not releasing it, by not making it and greenlighting it.
00:03:48
Speaker
Apparently the people at Lucasfilm liked it, but it seemed to come down to Bob Iger. and that he just couldn't understand how Kylo Ren, Ben Solo could be alive after episode nine, so he would not green light this movie.
Impact of Disney on Star Wars
00:04:05
Speaker
I don't know, I haven't read the movie. I don't know what the what the thing is, but this is what what it made me reflect on, and this is what I wanted to spend most of the time reflecting on today.
00:04:17
Speaker
was where are the areas that Disney has helped Star Wars? And then if we're being open and objective, because I realize I tend to run a little bit positive on this podcast, I definitely give the benefit of the doubt to the creators wherever possible.
00:04:35
Speaker
ah Things that have gone wrong. and kind of what is the state that we're in right now. So I thought let's do a little bit of an exploration of that. And let's start, well, first off, you know what, I'm gonna talk about Disney kind of as whole.
00:04:53
Speaker
I think that there are definite oddities whenever a company, particularly a creative studio, gets acquired by a big corporate behemoth.
00:05:05
Speaker
And you you know it How much of this is Kathleen Kennedy? How much of it is Bob Iger? ah you know Who knows? So I'm just going to talk about it with Disney in general and not try to call out Iger versus Kennedy or anything like that.
00:05:24
Speaker
But I do want to leave with this observation is if you track the history of Disney, You know, Bob Iger was the CEO. He picked Bob Chapek as his chosen successor.
00:05:36
Speaker
Chapek came in. Things weren't going great at Disney. ah Fairly famously, the board ousted Chapek and brought Iger back in. And I would say for Disney fans in general, of which I am one, people were very excited about that because Bob Iger had done a lot of great things for Disney.
00:05:56
Speaker
And I will also add that I think the general consensus is they've been a little bit disappointed in what Bob Iger has done ever since. the The dreams that we had of Disney kind of regaining its pre-JPAC status, it's just not really happening. And there's been a lot of miscues with Disney. So I just want to kind of lay out that groundwork.
00:06:19
Speaker
Let's look at the history. Back in 2012,
00:06:23
Speaker
Disney acquired Lucasfilm. And I'll tell you, I had to fly to Madrid on business. I was waiting in the club for my plane. i was looking at my iPad, doing some work, and a message came up that said, Disney acquired Lucasfilm and new Star Wars movies are coming. And I started tearing up. I couldn't help it because I didn't think we'd ever get any more after the prequels. I thought that we were done.
00:06:50
Speaker
So that happened. i was super excited. About a year and a half later, we moved to Santa Monica, California, and we were literally just like a couple of miles away from Bad Robot, from J.J. Abrams' production factory facility.
00:07:08
Speaker
And it was so cool to drive by there and go like, they're making Star Wars in there. That was so exciting. Those were really exciting, heady moments. I will say that when episode seven was released, The Force Awakens, I was thrilled with it. There was also a very clear desire on the part of Disney to distance themselves from what the prequels had been.
00:07:37
Speaker
And remember at the time, the narrative on the prequels was that they were a disappointment since then. The prequels have kind of you know grown in stature in the fandom. People appreciate the prequels now. Back then, they just wanted anything else.
00:07:52
Speaker
So I think Disney may have indexed too hard on really trying to recreate episode four with episode seven. There's plenty of other discussions about that that you can listen to.
00:08:04
Speaker
But they set things going. Here's the first thing where I think Disney went really wrong with Star Wars is there wasn't a clear vision for what this trilogy was going to be.
00:08:16
Speaker
The idea was bring in three different directors, let them tell their own stories. There wasn't enough coordination amongst them. We know episode eight, as much as I loved it, caused huge amounts of division.
00:08:30
Speaker
ah Then they didn't, so then they started getting a little worried. They didn't like the way episode nine was going, so they... They ditched Colin Trevorrow, they brought in JJ Abrams, and in my opinion, JJ Abrams kind of phoned it in for episode nine.
00:08:44
Speaker
i You know, I still like all of them, but yeah, it's just not what we were hoping it would be. ah That I think was the first big mistake that Disney has made. So plus they acquired Star Wars and they kept it going.
Challenges with Star Wars Releases
00:09:00
Speaker
And Khan, they didn't really have a direction of where they thought things were going to go story-wise. And that was a big problem. I know that, and this comes up in Bob Iger's autobiography, ah George Lucas was very disappointed that they basically abandoned Lucas's plans for episode seven, eight, and nine and started over with their own stuff.
00:09:25
Speaker
Is that a pro? Is that a con? I will leave that for you to to decide. I know from what I heard about what George had planned, it was pretty wacky, kooky stuff.
00:09:36
Speaker
So we might've dodged a bullet with that one. I don't know. That is that is a thing. um Nevertheless, for Force Awakens, a big hit.
00:09:47
Speaker
Rogue One, a big hit. Episode VIII, even though it was divisive, huge hit. Then what happens is they're on this path of every Christmas, we're getting a Star Wars movie.
00:10:00
Speaker
On alternate years, it's one of the major episodes of the Skywalker saga. On other years, it's these Star Wars story episodes. Rogue One, and then we went to Solo. Instead of waiting till the next Christmas to release Solo, Disney made the decision to move it up to May, which, ah believe me, I like my Star Wars movies to be released in May. That brings back a lot of nostalgia for me. But they had locked in Christmas.
00:10:25
Speaker
They didn't want to step on the toes of... um Mary Poppins Returns. So instead of releasing it that Christmas, they moved it up to May, which was just a few months after episode eight had been released. They moved up solo.
00:10:42
Speaker
The other thing is there was an Avengers movie happening at the same time, and all of the marketing effort went towards the Avengers and almost nothing to solo. Not to mention one of the problems that Disney has had in Star Wars is changing directors. I already talked about swapping out Colin Trevorrow very famously again. ah Lord and Miller, who were directing Solo, had filmed more than half of the movie.
00:11:10
Speaker
ah They got taken off the project. They didn't like the way things were going. They brought in Ron Howard to direct it. ah Things got scrambled. That got put out there. I love Solo, believe me. It's really, it's one of my favorites.
00:11:25
Speaker
But didn't land as well with the crowd. And... It didn't make as much money. And then what happened is everybody panicked. I do remember hearing Bob Iger say, yeah, it was my fault for playing with the schedule, for for not focusing on the marketing, but he's not indicating as if he really thought it was his fault because everything changed at that point.
00:11:52
Speaker
So, you know, now we've gotten to a place where we haven't had a theatrical release and what we have coming very soon is The Mandalorian and Grogu followed by Starfighter.
00:12:07
Speaker
If those things don't hit with the box office, I don't know what's going to happen with Star Wars in the theaters. That's just kind of scary. I don't like that. um Let's talk about TV really quick.
Star Wars TV Shows and Theme Parks
00:12:20
Speaker
Similar story. Mandalorian, huge hit. Everybody loved it. Everybody's crazy for baby Grogu, for baby Yoda. um Season two of Mandalorian, fantastic.
00:12:31
Speaker
It's awesome. It tells a complete story. And then ah season three, not quite as good. Boba Fett in the middle, not really good at all. yeah yeah things just start kind of deteriorating and maybe they're trying to do too much too fast, but it's just not hanging together the way we want it to. So I see the similar path of Disney tending to get strong starts And then I'm guessing, this is just conjecture, that the suits start getting involved, the number crunchers, the money crunchers start getting involved, try to figure out how are we going to milk this for all it's worth.
00:13:12
Speaker
And Disney is not doing well with milking their cash cows dry. Look at what's happening with Marvel as well. Marvel has really suffered. ah Let's talk about the theme parks really quick.
00:13:26
Speaker
Okay, i love going to Galaxy's Edge, really loved the Star Cruiser. not as interactive as we hoped it could be. We just went to Epic Universe, the new park that Universal opened in Orlando, and what they have done in terms of immersion, especially in terms of just paying talent to come out and be characters and to casually interact with people, they're eating Disney's lunch, folks, and I don't know what's going happen because people keep spending the money to come to Disney parks. It's not until people start really voting with their wallet that the suits in Glendale are going to pay attention and start offering better services. I don't think so.
00:14:13
Speaker
so I'm a little hesitant right now. I don't want to sound too negative, but the current state of Star Wars, it's tenuous. So we're going to keep track of it. We're going to keep talking about it and we will still love it no matter what happens.
Future Podcast Plans
00:14:31
Speaker
Okay. As I wrap up. what to look forward to from this podcast moving forward. Realize, like I said, we have about six months until The Mandalorian and Grogu have come out.
00:14:42
Speaker
We have gotten great feedback on the episodes we had with rewatching Andor with Ben and Phil, for Phil for the first time. We realized Phil hasn't seen The Mandalorian.
00:14:53
Speaker
So we're gonna start a deep dive rewatch into The Mandalorian. Invite you to join in on that with us. So if you wanna start watching with season one again, We're going to load it up and then we're going to be talking about it in the future. Not every week. We'll come back and we'll do some other things, but that is going to be the focus leading up to the release of Mandalorian and Grogu.
00:15:14
Speaker
So we'll wrap it up there. You know, I probably could have gone for three or four episodes with this, but we want to dive back into Mandalorian. Interested to hear what your thoughts are. ah Most of you who listened to this, I think know how to get ahold of me. So please do. If you don't just jump on the discord, send me an email. that All of that is in the show notes.
00:15:33
Speaker
In the meantime, please hit like, hit subscribe, tell your friends about it. May the force be with you. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Aren't you little short? Aren't you a little short?
00:15:45
Speaker
Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper? Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper?