The Mandalorian

[Yukaphile]

They will not do that. They're paranoid and terrified at the movies, trying to handle them with kid gloves while trying to gently smash a hammer down. That analogy might seem weird, but it's how I see it. These movies have HUGE stakes. Huge stakes. Billions of dollars. And they managed to so successfully sway audience sentiment that people went to see Force Awakens over and over. That's just sad. They wanted to recreate 1977 in the modern era. And now they don't know where to go past that.

Then you're missing out on a lot. They are likely to try and "recanonize" KOTOR somehow, likely with a movie, which just scares me... the KOTOR games are arguably the most beloved parts of Legends. Seriously, how the hell can you be part of such a dedicated fan forum as this, and not have played the KOTOR games? Unless you consider the movies "prime" canon, in which case, can you really say the worst movie is superior to the KOTOR games? I'm more an EU/Legends nerd not just because I dislike capitalism, and take issue with their poor leadership, but that I dislike how in general, books are shoved aside in favor of moving images. Text uses lots of fancy words. Motion pictures are less sophisticated that way. And that's what happened with the 2014 decision.

I frankly think if they took more time away from spamming us with movies nonstop out of fearful greed, then they could throw Legends fans a bone every so often. It's what they want. Look at Winter. Yet they won't. Surely as a "canon purist/movies only" fan, you could accept they need time to perfect the movies? More than a year. It seriously looks like they bit off way more than they could chew. And how they handle the fan reactions are proof of that.

[CmdrKing]

They will not do that. They're paranoid and terrified at the movies, trying to handle them with kid gloves while trying to gently smash a hammer down. That analogy might seem weird, but it's how I see it. These movies have HUGE stakes. Huge stakes. Billions of dollars. And they managed to so successfully sway audience sentiment that people went to see Force Awakens over and over. That's just sad. They wanted to recreate 1977 in the modern era. And now they don't know where to go past that.

That is a very strange lesson to take from what Star Wars has done the last four years. They're terrified of doing anything risky with the movies, but The Last Jedi exists?

Or let's bring this back to the Mandalorian. This show has an estimated per-episode budget exceeding that of the last season of Game of Thrones at 15M. This show, in its first season, being the anchor original show for an entire new streaming service, cost them around half the cost of a feature film, with absolutely no safety net except the Star Wars name. Like, in what world is this somehow less of a risk than Rogue One? I guess Rogue One costs an extra 50-60M to make but it wasn't trying to also sell Disney's billions and billions invested into an entire streaming service.

[Mecha82]

They are really going all out to sell Disney+ with this one when they giving it budget like that. Then again this is Disney so they have money to throw around to this.

[CmdrKing]

Yup.

Honestly that’s the damning thing about a lot of this stuff, Disney can *absolutely* absorb the risk of some high-profile flops if an experiment doesn’t pan out, but instead of something amazing like “fuck it let’s make a proper 2D animated film so the techniques can be passed down from the old masters before they all die” they put out live action Aladdin.

Fuck, Star Wars comparatively *is* the swing for the fences risk takers in this lovecraftian conglomerate.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

They will not do that. They're paranoid and terrified at the movies, trying to handle them with kid gloves while trying to gently smash a hammer down. That analogy might seem weird, but it's how I see it. These movies have HUGE stakes. Huge stakes. Billions of dollars. And they managed to so successfully sway audience sentiment that people went to see Force Awakens over and over. That's just sad. They wanted to recreate 1977 in the modern era. And now they don't know where to go past that.

That is a very strange lesson to take from what Star Wars has done the last four years. They're terrified of doing anything risky with the movies, but The Last Jedi exists?

Frankly that's because it's not a lesson to him, as he conveys on the forum. Respectfully speaking he speaks from the position that Last Jedi is a critical failure. It's easy from there to stem that to Disney's corporate decision to try to manufacture Star Wars for the sake of nostalgia with no sustainable plan. On one hand it's true that that's what they did, but on the other it begs the question as to if it was an appreciable approach to the whole thing.

Many would say so given positive criticism that the movies do get. The backlash is pretty self contained to a subsect of the respectable fanbase of the original trilogy at this point.

Or let's bring this back to the Mandalorian. This show has an estimated per-episode budget exceeding that of the last season of Game of Thrones at 15M. This show, in its first season, being the anchor original show for an entire new streaming service, cost them around half the cost of a feature film, with absolutely no safety net except the Star Wars name. Like, in what world is this somehow less of a risk than Rogue One? I guess Rogue One costs an extra 50-60M to make but it wasn't trying to also sell Disney's billions and billions invested into an entire streaming service.

I would say that "no safety net" misrepresents the circumstance. The market for streaming services and serial seasons is understandably hot right now. People are only starting to complain about how many of them you have to buy to get all the shows you want at once, but that's insurmountable to the amount of people that are going to get at least 2 or 3.

Also what I meant to say primarily is that Mandalorian is just a launch show. They have a volume of shows in their lineup that can keep a lot of people subscribed all year. It works for DC Universe I would say between their ever present release schedule, and that's a lot more limited of a service layout.

[CmdrKing]

Frankly that's because it's not a lesson to him, as he conveys on the forum. Respectfully speaking he speaks from the position that Last Jedi is a critical failure. It's easy from there to stem that to Disney's corporate decision to try to manufacture Star Wars for the sake of nostalgia with no sustainable plan. On one hand it's true that that's what they did, but on the other it begs the question as to if it was an appreciable approach to the whole thing.

Right, but that’s beside the point. Last Jedi was a sure financial bet after the success of Force Awakens, and by golly they sure as shit tried new things and went hard the other direction on catering to fan expectations. Whether you like it or not, it definitely wasn’t playing it safe.

And with only one movie released since then, we can’t especially assess *what* Lucasfilm took from the financial and critical reception of Last Jedi. Solo definitely was very safe! But it was in the can when Last Jedi came out.

I guess when Mandalorian finishes we can add that to the pile.

[Yukaphile]

It is a schizophrenic approach. It's all I can observe. They wanna do something new, but are also scared to do so at the same time. And of course, they had no centralized figure guiding the way like the MCU did. They were rushing this to cash in. I bitch over Legends, but as I've said, it was lost in the mad dash to cash in. That's proven by the constant spamming of movies. They had no time to flesh out each movie. And unlike with the MCU, they disregarded the older material. I think it's safe to say they have overestimated Star Wars' appeal at the same time they're terrified of driving everyone away, so try to make everyone happy.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Iron Man 1 came out in 2008. Disney bought Marvel in 2009. There was nothing to throw out or disregard so what do you mean by them disregarding material unlike the MCU?

Kathleen Kennedy is much doing the same thing that Feige is doing but letting people like Johnson and Howard make the movie without tight constrictions to franchise format.

[hammerofglass]

It's telling that they put their heavy hitters on the streaming series and then let hacks like Abrams and Johnson do the tentpole films. The movies are expected to succeed no matter what, but they needed the streaming series to actually be good.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Ron Howard is a hack?