So there's been a few things announced.

Wonder Womans director is doing the Rogue Squadron film. Not a bad choice for it.

Taika Waititi is working on an unnamed film project, which suggests it's going to be a bit of an off the wall number.

They're also planning 10 TV series in the next decade.

The already announced Obi wan series with Ewan Mcgregor will also feature Hayden Christensen as Vader. An...interesting choice.

And we'll be getting Lando as a series, starring Donald Glover.

Should be interesting to see how these all go.

 

I was SO confused before I realized that you meant Rogue Squadron.

The only thing out of this bunch that‘ll be must-see TV for me will be the Kenobi series. The rest will most likely depend on individual quality.

 

... Yes, I imagine that would have been confusing. Edited now, apologies!

 

Kenobi is a must see.

Ahsoka and Lando look interesting.

everything else depends.
Honestly this goes to show Kennedy still doesn’t understand Star Wars.

We need an Old Republic show.

 

Meh. Vomiting 10 shows/movies at once... I guess it works for some folks. So far, Disney SW has been mostly shit on the Sequels, mostly boring on standalone movies (I very much enjoyed the back half of R1, but first half was boring af) and not my cup of tea on Mando. The only new SW thing I enjoyed unreservedly was the 4 episode arc that caps off the Clone Wars.

Kathleen Kennedy still in charge? Yawn.

 

Yeah Kenobi and Ahsoka sound cool.

But I am so bored of this Rebellion vs Imperium timeline why can't we get some Old Republic or any other wildly different timeline Disney is so scared of just tackling different storylines with no connections to established characters it's annoying.

Also dissapointed that the next movie is going to be about Pilots, Jenkins seems to be a good choice but I wished the next movies would be a Film series with a bigger focus on Force users.

 

Disney gonna do what Disney does, saturate the market with a ton of Star Wars after Mando's success. They will never learn at this point.

 

Market saturation was never the problem. That's the made-up, bullshit excuse Lucasflm came up with to cover their ass after The Last Jedi damaged the franchise so thoroughly. Look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe: They've pumped out literally dozens of movies in just the past decade, yet they still draw huge crowds and record-breaking profits (or at least they did pre-Covid). The reason is simple: They're actually reasonably good movies. Disney made a few Star Wars movies that were mostly garbage, and then made up this "market saturation/Star Wars fatigue" lie to pass responsibility for their failure onto those "toxic fans" who have the nerve to stop spending their money on a shit product.

I guess my point is that there's no inherent problem with Disney pumping out new projects like they're going out of style. So long as there is a clear focus on quality, it will be a welcome, successful new wave of content. But if Lucasfilm in general, and the Kathleen Kennedy crowd in particular refuse to learn from their failures and repeat their old mistakes, then yes, it will be a dumpster fire.

 

When you go from $2 billion at the Worldwide box office to barely $1 billion within 5 years than saturation was a part of the problem. What worked for the MCU didn't work for Star Wars.

And yes I agree that as long as quality is sustained then I have no issue with 10 new shows. But Star Wars under the Mouse has not shown to me & many others that they can handle multiple projects while keeping the quality high.

 

Almost certainly it'll be a "young girl gets doubted/oppressed but through sheer strength of will overcomes the haters to become a member of Rogue Squadron and do cool shit like kill the bad guys" movie. Whether it works or comes off as too hammy...have to wait and see.

 

Exactly my point. Take the two side-by-side: You have two enormously popular, complex franchises with deep histories, extensive lore and devoted fanbases. One of these put out 23 films in 11 years (apparently now known as "The Infinity Saga"), smashing box office records the whole way with even the least popular installment being an unqualified and reasonably well-liked success.

The other releases 5 films in 4 years (a significantly slower rate of release) that, while four out of the five were financially successful, there was a very notable trend of declining interest from the third installment ("The Last Jedi") on, culminating in a situation where a huge portion of the fanbase utterly loathes nearly every one of those films.

Also notable is that Disney Star Wars started off with a significantly larger built-in fanbase than the MCU, but has been outperformed at every turn by Marvel. You're exactly right: What worked for the MCU didn't work for Disney Star Wars. Since it is clear that "market saturation" did no noticeable damage to the MCU's success, despite them being vastly more "saturated" with content than Star Wars ever was, the logical conclusion is that saturation or franchise fatigue were not, in fact, important factors.

Disney pushed that false narrative because it absolved them of blame for the way things turned out. Entertainment media pushed that narrative because they had too much to lose (both in terms of money pouring in from Disney, and in the inevitable storm of hashtag activists screaming misogyny for not offering unconditional support for "Rey Skywalker's" feminist journey) if they gave an honest assessment and just admitted that they were bad movies. People on the street swallowed that narrative because it was an easy, comfortable explanation for why they just didn't feel excited about Star Wars anymore.

It allowed fans to pretend that feeling like something they'd loved for years had been warped into a sad joke was just a phase that they would get over when they were less tired of the franchise. After all, the honest alternative is to admit that the movies are bad, and will always be bad, and you're not going to suddenly love them just as much as the originals some day. They will always be a taint on Star Wars, and will always manage to sap a little of the enthusiasm and love that people have for the series.

 

My thoughts on why Star Wars struggled when Marvel succeeded is that the the Marvel films were new and different, whereas the Star Wars sequels were never going to bring in people not already pre-disposed to liking Star Wars because they very deliberately chose to remake the original trilogy with the sequels. They chose not to break new ground or do anything remotely different, and in doing so, to my mind, quite deliberately chose to not pursue the same levels of success that Marvel has enjoyed.

 

Exactly. They failed because they did a bad job, not because they did too much of it.

 

That particular phenomenon is hardly unique to Disney Star Wars. Hollywood is really bad at understanding its own failures. Any time a big studio film flops, there's a ton of blame tossed around at everything but "the movie wasn't very good." We saw the exact same thing with Justice League when it flopped: people insisted that superhero movies were played out and everyone had superhero fatigue ... until MCU movies came and kept making money hand over fist.

As far as the whole "toxic fandom" narrative goes, at this point it's pretty clear that toxic fan = fan who criticizes the product instead of mindlessly consuming. This isn't to say that there weren't some crazy assholes out there, but crazy assholes are nothing new even if the internet gives them more of a public platform than the old days when they had to write letters to the studio/actors. Being a remotely public figure attracts attention from the lunatic fringe, and modern social media makes it a lot easier for the crazies to get heard.

As for the new shows, I'm cautiously optimistic thanks to the Mandalorian, but a lot's going to depend on how it plays out. A live-action series focused on Ashoka taking on Thrawn certainly has my attention since I like both those characters, but that's only enough to make me watch the first episode: they need to actually produce a good story to keep my attention.

 

TFA was SW coming back after a decade, riding the hype train of being under new management (i.e. George was nowhere near the scripts), people being starved and excited for a new SW thing. No sequel 2 to 4 years later could have built this kind of hype. A drop was inevitable, but a drop of some 700mln from TFA to TLJ and another 300mln from TLJ to TROS wasn't what Disney had in mind, I imagine. Not to mention that drop from one movie to the next is an anecdotal data point. A sustained drop through 3 movies starts to look like a trend.

At the risk of being an asshole, I would've assumed that's exactly what you would like.

@Othalan and @Chengar Qordath have the right of it about "toxic fans" --- it's a shitty excuse for Kathleen Kennedy not taking responsibility for having no unifying vision in place for the sequels.

 

So Filoni has a direct hand in what, 5 of the upcoming projects? I really hope he is low-key helping to coordinate all lore for the foreseeable future. The man just gets Star Wars.

 

At which does he become spread too thin though? Isn't one great show better than 5 with Filoni somewhere in credits?

 

Optimally, I'd like to see him attend the story board meetings for all shows and then be hands off so the writers and directors can do their own thing. Much like Kevin Feige did for the MCU.

What the franchise is most in need of right now is a unifying vision. Someone who can say to Disney execs and Kennedy "No, that is not a good idea, it doesn't fit the narrative" for every Lucasfilm property, and who will be subsequently listened to.

 

Seems like Filoni should just be given KK's job.

 

Certainly wouldn't be a bad way to handle things. I'm not sure what role Kennedy actually fills in the production(s), but if Filoni was in that chair, he'd certainly have the authority to veto stupid shit.