Star Wars Episode II - A New Thread

[Chuckman]

It's odd how the "____ A Star Wars Story" movies have better pacing than the actual Episode VII and VIII.

The main movies are overstuffed, like they have too many ideas and want to rush them out.

I liked what they did with Luke and Rey/Kylo, even, but Solo is a better film than TLJ. In fact I think Solo might be the best of the post-Lucasfilm era. I think it suffered from coming after TLJ and all the negative buzz about the production.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Well, inasmuch as Star Wars is popular, and Han Solo is also popular, I don’t think that really translates into equal popularity when you make a solo Solo movie for Star Wars. Making prequel films to supporting cast members should never have had as high a budget as Solo had, regardless of brand/supporting character recognition. It starts to become a niche film at that point, and those don’t ever do gang busters in the summer box office.

[Sachi]

It's odd how the "____ A Star Wars Story" movies have better pacing than the actual Episode VII and VIII.

The main movies are overstuffed, like they have too many ideas and want to rush them out.

I complete agree here. I've expressed this on the discord before, but the sequel trilogy is far too reaching in scope, and is too self-conscious of its efforts to be huge event films, very much at the cost of pacing and developing characters. The good stuff is really good, but is heavily weighed down by the bad stuff. Meanwhile the stand alone films are purposely smaller stories, and work so much better on nearly every level. I think Solo does more to expand the SW universe than the sequels do, which is telling because the sequels literally had the opportunity to write into uncharted territory. With how things have been so far, I would be happy if there are no more saga films after IX, and we only have the "_____ A Star Wars Story" movies going forward.

As far as what Freaky says about niche films: I say good. I'd rather have SW films appealing to niche audiences than being mass appealing, and aiming for the lowest common denominator of audiences. It's true Solo's budget should never have been what it was, but it was a smart investment to fix the film and ensure brand faith in the long run.

[Chuckman]

If they're smart they'll use the last of the Episode films to set the stage for an open universe they can write new stories in.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Star Wars is never going to be "niche". The very nature of the brand name STAR WARS defeats the concept. If they ever make a movie for under $10 million that doesn't open in 10,000 theaters across the globe at once maybe you can toss that word around with the largest movie franchise of all time.

Anyway, to each their own. I personally couldn't stand the tone-deaf mess that was Rogue One & Solo is a big nothingburger that even people who like it have to throw in the caveat "it's made for me, a Star Wars fan". The Last Jedi is the first substantial Star Wars movie made since 1980. It will probably also be the last as the galaxy far, far away returns to whatever blueprint makes the most money.

[IronEvangelion]

I agree on the side stories being better than the main sequel trilogy, I'm far more excited for the rumored Obi-Wan and Boba Fett films than I am for Episode IX: Wait We Found Another Jedi. I am interested in seeing Episode IX, but only to see how it ends. At this point, the sequel trilogy is beyond saving. They had a chance to do some awesome stuff with it, but they squandered that chance with TLJ. Now it's just mediocre.

After the dust settles from the sequel trilogy, I really hope they stop moving forward in the timeline, and either focus on side stories/original stories or go back in time to the Old Republic era for a new trilogy. Adding Episodes X, XI, and XII would only make an even bigger mess of the post-RoTJ story than what's already there.

Oh, and for future trilogies, find one person to direct all three films for goodness' sake. The way they keep switching directors around is one of the biggest reasons the sequel trilogy has turned into such a disjointed mess. Everyone is trying to do their own thing, which is not good for films that are supposed to flow together.

[TheFriskyIan]

Just saw Solo yesterday, it was OKAY. It wasn't great, it wasn't amazing, but it certainly wasn't bad, or hammered dog shit. And that's more than what I can say about that absolute dumpster fire of a movie called TLJ, and I can't help but feel that Solo's lackluster performance might still be backlash from that trash heap.

[Chuckman]

TLJ is a film of ambition that didn't come together. The script moves in too many directions at once and it lacks focus.

I think, also, that many of these big blockbusters with big casts suffer from this need they have to keep moving from character to character and plot to plot and back again, cycling through them instead of letting things breathe. That, and it was hamstrung by the baffling decision to throw the audience into the First Order/Resistance conflict without any context, or seemingly coming up with a logical explanation for why the First Order even exists or what the fuck the Resistance is.

I blame what I call the technician effect. People like JJ Abrams are technicians, not creators. He can look at Star Wars (1978) and see things that worked, such as throwing the audience into an ongoing conflict at the start of the movie, or tossing things like "the clone wars" out without explanation to give the world a sense of depth and flavor. When he turns around and uses those things, though, they carry with them a sense that he doesn't understand why they worked. Star Wars had a pretty straightforward setup and the opening crawl laid out almost everything we needed to know.

More importantly, it felt like there was a world behind the world. Mos Eisely continued to be a hive of scum and villainy after the heroes left. There was a sense of distance and scale. The characters were archetypal, the plot fairly simple and straightforward.

TFA doesn't really try to duplicate these things, it tries to imitate them. There's no real sense of what the First Order is, or what is going on with the Republic or what the Resistance is or what they're Resisting or why. Abrams does this a lot, just sort of announces that things are a certain way now and does a lot of things without thinking them through. Some of them are nerd quibbles but some of them are downright baffling.

You see this effect strongly in his ST films, particularly the second one. There's a sense that he watched Star Trek 2 once, didn't bother watching the TOS episode that inspired it, and decided to be clever with the "reversals" and such nonsense.

Abrams is creatively bankrupt. When he rebooted ST, many critics accused him of making Star Trek look like Star Wars as an audition to direct the eventual Episode VII, but from watching the two of them it's pretty clear that Abrams just makes Abrams movies and they all look the same. He made Star Wars and Star Trek look like JJ Abrams.

TLJ is getting a lot of hate that should be pointed at TFA. TFA is the one that really shit the bed, by establishing all these things- the illogical and bizarre politics of the post-Empire era, the whole First Order thing, Snoke's identity Rey's parnts' identities. I'll give you a clue: TLJ doesn't provide concrete answers to these questions because there never were any. JJ likes throwing out mysteries and scrambling to solve them later. There never was a plan for either of these things and TLJ did the series a favor by sweeping them off the board; it's good to have a protag who's just some person and not the child of a being birthed by the Force or whatever shit, and the Snoke was only ever interesting in TLJ anyway, otherwise he's about as deep and complex a villain as Skeletor.

This is a Hollywood thing, really. Films are a visually driven medium and directors and studios tend to disdain the most important part of a good film, the script. The written word is the mother tongue of creation, and when you neglect it in favor of pure visuals you either get masturbatory "art" or Batman vs Superman.

[EvangelionFan]

I blame what I call the technician effect. People like JJ Abrams are technicians, not creators. He can look at Star Wars (1978) and see things that worked, such as throwing the audience into an ongoing conflict at the start of the movie, or tossing things like "the clone wars" out without explanation to give the world a sense of depth and flavor. When he turns around and uses those things, though, they carry with them a sense that he doesn't understand why they worked. Star Wars had a pretty straightforward setup and the opening crawl laid out almost everything we needed to know.

This is a good analysis, and I've actually been thinking about this lately myself. I would argue that JJ Abrams is a creator in the sense that he creates characters, scenarios, and settings to sell for other people to use. The TV series Fringe is a good example of this, in that even though Abrams co-created it, co-wrote a few important episodes in the first season & the season two pilot, and acted as an executive producer, he never directed a single episode himself, and after the first season he had a hands-off approach that allowed showrunners Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman to take the series where they believed it should go. That the production for one of the strongest episodes of the series - season two's Peter - only involved Abrams when they needed him to do an 80s synthesiser verison of his original theme music for the show (as a special intro) speaks volumes about the quality of the work which the team behind Fringe was able to accomplish without his immediate influence. I'd also add Star Trek: Beyond as another example of other people making better stuff out of Abrams's building blocks.

That said, I feel one difference in a director like JJ Abrams from a director like George Lucas or Steven Spielberg is that Lucas and Spielberg are clearly storytellers, and Abrams is far more a story-seller. A story like The Phantom Menace, though clearly unwieldy and flawed in more than a few respects, feels like it's got a storyteller whose intention is to guide us through their imagined world. I would argue Abrams' intention is more to sell a specific idea of a story to an audience, and in the first Star Trek reboot and The Force Awakens, that vision involved selling a version of something he and his backers know that audience would be keen to buy (into) again, and the moreso if it was polished up with the newest and bestest effects.

Abrams is creatively bankrupt. When he rebooted ST, many critics accused him of making Star Trek look like Star Wars as an audition to direct the eventual Episode VII, but from watching the two of them it's pretty clear that Abrams just makes Abrams movies and they all look the same. He made Star Wars and Star Trek look like JJ Abrams.

I feel that this is partly a result of the influence of his production company, Bad Robot, on the visual effects and sound effects of those two films. From the opening scene of TFA in the cinema, I could feel that something was off about the way the First Order Star Destroyer looked, and later, the all-too clean sounds of the Stormtroopers' blaster rifles. I rather found it difficult to suspend my disbelief that all of that originated from the Star Wars universe and not the audiovisual landscape of, as you said it, the two JJ. Abrams Star Trek films.

JJ likes throwing out mysteries and scrambling to solve them later. There never was a plan for either of these things and TLJ did the series a favor by sweeping them off the board; it's good to have a protag who's just some person and not the child of a being birthed by the Force or whatever shit, and the Snoke was only ever interesting in TLJ anyway, otherwise he's about as deep and complex a villain as Skeletor.

The following spoilered longpost is loosely related to your remarks on Snoke and my above remarks on The Phantom Menace ... I got very distracted by a stray thought I had about the character of Nute Gunray in the, and I got a little too into describing his character in the prequels films in comparison to Snoke in the sequels. I guess, for those interested, it's in the spoiler.

SPOILER: Show

I've mentioned The Phantom Menace ... it's occurred to me that the Trade Federation characters are actually in a more interesting position in the prequels any of the First Order underlings so far in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Just to recap, that underwhelming and arguably incompetent pair of Nute Gunray and The Other Neimoidian Guy initially blockade and invade Naboo at the bidding of Darth Sidious on the pretext of protesting taxation by the Galactic Senate, sadly, it's actually a scheme by Senator Palpatine (actually Sidious) to trigger a vote of no confidence in Supreme Chancellor Terence Stamp and replace him as the Grander Supreme Chancellor.

Cut ten years later to Attack of the Clones, and a disgruntled Nute Gunray and The Other Neimoidian Guy are quietly in league with Count Dooku (actually Sidious's apprentice) and some other disgruntled commercially oriented organisations to form a confederacy to separate from The Republic for the interest of not being in The Republic that doesn't like them anymore because of the blockade they did that they thought they were right to do but actually weren't, and actually they knew they weren't right to do it. It appears to be going alright, but alas, Nute Gunray has a grudge against Senator Amidala for Naboo, who ten years prior had held him at gunpoint at Theed Palace and forced him to feel very uncomfortable about invading her homeworld, and because he's an imbecile he decides it's a good moment to quietly hire Dooku's space New Zealander henchman to discretely dispose of that now very visible and very influential Senator. In so doing, he inadvertently tips off the already not happy The Republic about the space New Zealander being cloned for an unannounced but desperately needed Republic Army and leads the not happy The Republic to the secret hidden evil lair of the confederacy that is very really raising a droid army to assert their independence from The Republic which is still unhappy but now clearly has an armed force. In the following fight, the Neimoidians are rightly worried about laser blasts, and flee along with the rest of the separatists confederates.

Frankly there is an adorable irony about Nute Gunray and The Other Neimoidian Guy's situation to this point, and Dooku orchestrating the whole confederacy for Sidious adds additional deliciousness. It does suffer from the general lack of clarity and focus, as do a lot of the other story arcs in the prequels, though it's there, and it's worth appreciating.

It does get a little off-beat in The Revenge the Sith, as after Dooku's decapitation death, the confederates are in their new secret hidden evil lair, and it looks like - from General Cyborg Guy's conversation with still-clearly-three-steps-ahead Sidious - that the confederate leaders are going to be moved to yet another secret hidden evil lair in order to avoid apparently certain death at the hands of an army of identically white armored identical space New Zealanders (this is something to be afraid of). It doesn't work out for them, though that isn't the important detail - the detail I recall being absent from Attack of the Kiwis but is clear in Revenge of the Sith is that Nute Gunray and the other confederates were aware all along that they were in league with Sidious, and that in spite of their previous dealings with him, they've actually got complete faith in Sidious and his promise to protect them all. As with the Republic Senate by this point, their blind faith is probably a result of the Supreme Sith Lord's shadowy influence, and they don't question being sent on their own to a fiery death trap that these days conjurs images of Lost Izalith from Dark Souls and almost any other fantastically hellish destination you can imagine. In his death, Nute Gunray is again incompotent, asking Anakin the Youngling-Slayer (as an aside, none of confederates reacted suspiciously when he came in through the door, in spite of Anakin arriving Jedi Robes, and in spite of him landing on Mustafar in a Jedi Starfighter, as though they haven't had reason to be suspicious of Jedi... lol seriously) to be spared, saying that 'Sidious said he would protect them' or some shit. In his pleas, it appears that Gunray is still unable - or unwilling - to consider that, in all these years, the dark hooded dude he's never actually seen in the flesh is actually a con artist, and he is about to die because he's no longer needed by the dark lord con artist and is therefore a liability. I'd like to think he's unwilling to accept it, and is unwilling to accept his death is because of his own lack of foresight. I feel that, though the character is limited due to the more important focal points of the prequels, Gunray does have something going on in his character through these films (and likely in The Clone Wars animated series).

In his death, The Other Neimoidian Guy dies. I recall Anakin got him out of the way almost immediately, as he is less interesting and his hats aren't as good as Gunray's anyway.

All that long spew above about Nute Gunray is to observe the following about Snoke.

In the two films featuring Snoke, in the initial one he's a merely imposing and menacing dark force user who is the Supreme Leader (TM) of The First Order (TM), though once he actually appears in the flesh in the follow-up he's more than a one dimensional character, he's compelling, he does shit that moves the story forward by creating conflict in and for the central characters of the story (Kylo and Rey, in that order). It all goes rather smoothly up until Snoke dies an idiotic death.

It's idiotic in that the film switches off one of the most compelling characters it offered through to that moment, and though I am aware of the irony in Snoke giving a long speech about seeing his apprentice's 'thoughts and feelings' and 'seeing the future' to in which apprentice uses his cross-bladed lightsaber (TM) to slay Rey right as Kylo does the opposite and uses Anakin's Luke's Rey's Lightsaber (TM) to slay Snoke, I'd say it is forced irony. From the information that the film showed and told us about his character through to that instance, Snoke is demonstrably powerful enough and insightful enough that one wonders if he should have some inkling that Kylo is attempting to decieve him - only he doesn't, and he doesn't notice the inactive lightsaber by his side slide over in his direction. I do recognise that there' something about Snoke being all-so-powerful but ultimately dying because he neglected to pay attention to an otherwise inanimate object at his side, sadly, the film doesn't give us a chance reflect on this, and the characters aren't given a chance, as they are thrust into an action scene shortly thereafter. Thus, his death is simply shocking, and any opportunity for genuine irony or nuance to it is soon swept away.

And so Snoke's death is shockingly unexpected, and a thrill, and then it's somewhat funny for how silly it is that they'd let their big evil dude die like that, and then oh shit they actually did it and now this fight scene with the red guards is in full swing save for the fact that though the evil dude the red guards are supposed to guard is already dead so the only reason they're fighting Kylo and Rey is to give us this cool fight scene. It's cool scene? It's a cool scene.

The corpse of Snoke is forgotten dead on the floor until after Rey runs away (and due to obscene film length, how she got off that wreck is explained away in a line), so that Rian can show us a shot of Snoke's silly-looking face as half his corpse lies on the floor clearly dead and unimportant to anyone other than General Redheaded Shouty Dude (Ben Solo clearly doesn't give a Jet Alone about Snoke, and the Red Guards are dead). I daresay the demise of Snoke's character is inventive, I daresay it's compelling, I daresay it's an outright poor decision for the film franchise moving forward, I daresay I've got little further response than to like it for daring to do something that critical film fans are going to find funny and laugh at (and I am laughing inside rn). It's really something unique and worth remembering for all of those reasons, and though the film is already suffering from focus issues at that point, I feel it is far less clear about its focus from that moment onward.

From another point of view, though, the sudden death means that Snoke arguably does the same amount of stuff that Nute Gunray - the underwhelming and unwitting pawn that he is - accomplishes/doesn't accomplish in the prequels. I am prepared to say that Nute Gunray probably gets more a little interesting the closer one considers his role in the films, and that Snoke in his films does not. People are going to remember the Snoke scene more though, as he had started to get interesting in the story by that point, is in a more good-looking film/s, and killing him off in such a silly manner was shockingly unexpected and more immediately satisfying for audiences in a I-don't-believe-they-did-that kind of way ... which is all well and whatever by itself, but that isn't the sort of storytelling that made Star Wars endure through the years.

On that note, I've committed far more of my evening to this post than I anticipated ... at the least, I hope those of you who read through the stuff in the spoiler get a laugh out of it.

[Chuckman]

That's a very valid way of looking at it. Not to go back to the Snyder well too much, but he and Abrams both have this tendency to make movies that are more like trailers than actual stories. All edging with no payoff.

TFA at least had an emotional payoff with Rey taking up the lightsaber, but it was overshadowed by terrible worldbuilding and the hilariously dumb death star planet idea.

Plus the thing that bugs me about TFA and Star Trek (2009): Abrams, or whoever is the common thread that makes these writing decisions, seems to have no idea that things in space are really fucking far away from each other and unless Old Spock's Ice Planet and Sassy Not Yoda's Planet are orbiting the other planets in those scenes, there's no way in hell they could see them that closely.

I find it baffling that Disney, upon acquiring the rights, trashed the entire extended universe, and then went ahead and started doing all of the things from the EU that drew the most complaints, like Death Star rehashes and gimmicky lightsaber crap.

They haven't gotten to the point where they have lightsaber knees and a Hutt Jedi using a regular sized lightsaber and lightsaber nunchuks yet but

SPOILER: Show

They did have Darth Maul show off his double bladed saber for absolutely no reason in Solo, like people wouldn't recognize the guy from Phantom Menace -the face of the marketing for Phantom Menace, no less- who was chopped in half (hence the robot legs) unless they show of the signature weapon. Plus you have Kylo's gimmicky saber, which I like... but still.

I liked the cameo at first... but when he took out his weapon for no goddamn reason except to show it off to the audience it ruined the moment. It instantly went from "We're going to do something finally with this intriguing, yet blank slate character" to "I'm going to be the villain in Kenobi, make sure you buy my toy!"

[Sachi]

Regarding said character in the Kenobi film.

SPOILER: Show

I don't think Maul will be in the Kenobi film. In Rebels, we see how he discovers that Kenobi has been hiding on Tattooine; at which point he goes straight there, specifically questions Kenobi why he would ever come there, figures out about the chosen one, and is promptly killed by Kenobi. The only two ways for them to meet on the big screen is if it takes place off Tattooine (unlikely that Kenobi would ever leave), or if it overlaps with Rebels (also unlikely, as that would require bringing Ezra to live action as well, and I don't think they want to simply rehash the same event for live action).

[DarkBluePhoenix]

So here's a question for this thread to ponder, when will we experience mass Star Wars fatigue? With a movie a year, becoming the norm (and maybe Disney will push for two a year down the line, similarly to what they did with Marvel), how many "ok" movies will it take before people get turned off?

I understand that Disney is trying to recoup its IIRC $4 billion investment in the series. But IMHO, treating Star Wars like Marvel is going to be more of a problem in the long run when people eventually get bored with the movies, especially when they get to the 2 or 3 movies a year like Marvel is currently doing. Part of what made Star Wars great, again, IMO, is that less was more. Now with so many movies, and Disney trying to set up another super-franchise, I'm unfortunately getting a bit turned off by the series as a whole and afraid of where it's being pulled. I only say this because of whenever a director tries to do something presumably unique with the series (like with Rogue One and Solo), they're fired and replaced, with re-shoots galore to bring things in line with Disney's frankly myopic vision.

In my view for the series to survive, Disney is going to have to go far away from the characters we know, and either looks towards Legends for inspiration on something from the past like a movie about the schism in the Jedi Order that created the Sith, or jump to something else, like an entirely different way to use the force, beyond the light and dark, or go to the future where the original trilogy characters are more literal legends that shaped a better future that's in peril again.

[TheFriskyIan]

So here's a question for this thread to ponder, when will we experience mass Star Wars fatigue? With a movie a year, becoming the norm (and maybe Disney will push for two a year down the line, similarly to what they did with Marvel), how many "ok" movies will it take before people get turned off?

There's already fatigue, Solo flopping was more than just the quality of the previous film (or lack thereof) with the lack of quality with Solo, people are tired of it already.

I understand that Disney is trying to recoup its IIRC $4 billion investment in the series. But IMHO, treating Star Wars like Marvel is going to be more of a problem in the long run when people eventually get bored with the movies, especially when they get to the 2 or 3 movies a year like Marvel is currently doing. Part of what made Star Wars great, again, IMO, is that less was more. Now with so many movies, and Disney trying to set up another super-franchise, I'm unfortunately getting a bit turned off by the series as a whole and afraid of where it's being pulled. I only say this because of whenever a director tries to do something presumably unique with the series (like with Rogue One and Solo), they're fired and replaced, with re-shoots galore to bring things in line with Disney's frankly myopic vision.

Yes, Disney thinks they can treat Star Wars like Marvel is a big flaw considering Star Wars was always more than just a mindless space flick. Even the debated prequels have underlying themes and messages in them that we can all relate to. There's none of that in the MCU (or I should say, no real powerful ones), and they're severely lacking that in the new Star Wars movies too. As for Disney firing and replacing directors for its myopic vision, it's more Kathleen Kennedy firing and replacing directors to fit her myopic vision.

In my view for the series to survive, Disney is going to have to go far away from the characters we know, and either looks towards Legends for inspiration on something from the past like a movie about the schism in the Jedi Order that created the Sith, or jump to something else, like an entirely different way to use the force, beyond the light and dark, or go to the future where the original trilogy characters are more literal legends that shaped a better future that's in peril again.

What they should do: Have a movie come out every few years or so to combat the fatigue, make a movie for the FANS and not people who aren't going to bother watching Star Wars anyways, throw IN as much Legends stuff as humanely possible. No anthology stuff either anymore, finish the current trilogy but just make films in the same vein as Solo and Rogue One.

Here's my pitch for a film, have a story on Thrawn's rise to power with the main plot being him stopping a group of Rebels allied with the Zann Consortium from stealing a proto-type hyperdrive engine from the Kuat Shipyards for the Eclipse and using it as a weapon against the Empire. Or better yet, if you want the heroes to be the protagonists, have it be the new republic stopping neo-imperialists from stealing the engine and using it as a terrorist weapon. The story practically writes itself.

[DarkBluePhoenix]

What they should do: Have a movie come out every few years or so to combat the fatigue, make a movie for the FANS and not people who aren't going to bother watching Star Wars anyways, throw IN as much Legends stuff as humanely possible. No anthology stuff either anymore, finish the current trilogy but just make films in the same vein as Solo and Rogue One.

Here's my pitch for a film, have a story on Thrawn's rise to power with the main plot being him stopping a group of Rebels allied with the Zann Consortium from stealing a proto-type hyperdrive engine from the Kuat Shipyards for the Eclipse and using it as a weapon against the Empire. Or better yet, if you want the heroes to be the protagonists, have it be the new republic stopping neo-imperialists from stealing the engine and using it as a terrorist weapon. The story practically writes itself.

I'm seeing this trilogy in my mind, and I already want to it in all it's glory. Seeing as Thrawn was remade as canon (rightfully so, he was the best villain in the series beating out my second favorite, Jacen), and they can certainly pull anything they want from the old days and put it smack dab into their "Disney Approved" canon. And they could introduce new characters and not necessarily focus on established heroes, and actually make a compelling story where we're invested in the characters.

And yeah, definitely should have put the pile of flaming dog shit at Kennedy's feet for the firing, she is the head honcho after all. That and the myopic view certainly hit the EU hard when it was wiped form existence like Alderaan was... which is ironic considering they do pull some themes from it (or actual characters), like Luke's nephew going dark side and trying to kill his parents and uncle because... well, Jacen at least had reasons and was at least in charge, Jacen-lite... I mean Kylo, doesn't. I still don't see the motivation behind his fall. Anakin was temped by saving the love of his life, and Luke was saved form it by seeing what his father had become. Emulating grandpa just doesn't jive. So if they do use established material as a jumping off point, I hope they don't butcher it too much.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

There's already fatigue, Solo flopping was more than just the quality of the previous film (or lack thereof) with the lack of quality with Solo, people are tired of it already.

That's yet to be seen, really. Solo is, in reality, a prequel movie focused on a supporting character of Star Wars. Not a whole lot of typical audience members are going to be into that sort of thing. It'll be like make a prequel film about Samwise Gamgee from LotR. Sure, LotR was popular, and Samwise is a recognizable character to most of the people who've seen the LotR movies, but it's not gonna attract the majority of filmgoers to the theaters to see it. (And these days many Hollywood-based studios are going for an "All or Nothing" approach with filmgoers.) And I can't even blame the incoherent thematics of TLJ on Solo's dwindling ticket sales since it shares the narrative mistakes of other majorly successful blockbuster films. Heck, I don't even think Solo's sales plummeted due to Kathleen Kennedy "disrespecting the Star Wars fans," ("fan" = "fanatics," AKA, people who dress up at cons and discuss SW lore and stuff in detail) since fans of any piece of media will always be outnumbered by casual movie goers who simply have a record of enjoying movies a lot. It's that casual movie going market that has kept any film franchise afloat (including Star Wars), and it's that market that will continue to do so in the future. (Notice that big-budget film that's marketed as "for the fans" has consistently flopped in the box office.)

Now, if Star Wars Episode IX fails in the box office, then that's evidence of mass Star Wars fatigue in the casual audiences. Very few Americans in their right mind will miss a major Star Wars "Episodes" movie, since they've been a part of the contemporary American culture that "ruined filmmaking" to begin with, unless the franchise as a whole seriously fell out of favor with everyone. Right now, I'd place Solo n the same category of Star Wars film as that animated Clone Wars movie, or the two made-for-TV Ewok movies in the 80's. It's not surprising that these Star Wars titles didn't make as much money as the Star Wars "Episodes," but it is surprising that Solo in particular had so much money spent on it to begin with.

[Chuckman]

If I was in a high level meeting with the Disney execs, I'd put it to them like this:

Lucasfilm didn't become a brand worth paying $4 billion to acquire because they were making movies constantly and raking in steady receipts. It became a brand worth $4 billion by marketing the ever loving shit out of it. The money isn't in a movie a year, it's in selling commemorative popcorn buckets.

Star Wars is fundamentally different from Marvel: Each sub franchise is different from one another, and Phase 3 had Guardians/Ragnarok/Dr. Strange/Black Panther, all of which started to deviate from the formula and grow the brand a little, creatively.

The problem with their Star Wars efforts is that they're all tied to the OT somehow, either as prequels or sequels, and the sequels don't even really have a plot, they're just two and a half hour long pleas to remember how good the originals were, with a few worthwhile flourishes here and there.

If every single Marvel movie, all 19 of them or however many there are now (Jesus) were about Tony Stark, or Rhodey, or Pepper Pots, or how "Happy" Hogan came to be called such, or the origin story of Dr. Yinsen, or a period piece where Howard Stark navigates boardroom drama, nobody would go see them because they'd be aggressively terrible and boring.

Solo and Rogue One would be vastly better movies if they had the same plots with the OT references stripped out and the macguffins changed. Moreso Solo than Rogue, which looked like a prison break in space movie and had about thirty seconds of space prison breaking, and it wasn't even a space prison. It was a space van.

[Mr. Tines]

George Lucas on his plans for Star Wars 7-9.

[DarkBluePhoenix]

Well, he's not wrong about the reaction. It's everything wrong with the prequels times... idk a googolplex. I'm not even sure how that jives with the original idea that it was the epic saga of the Skywalker family. This is basically the reaction on imgur (and most likely reddit and tumblr)

SPOILER: Show

[movieartman]

All spinoff films have been indefinitely postponed in the wake of Solo's failure.

As a massive fan of R1 & I believe that Fett & Mangold were a utterly perfect match, I am fairly pissed off.
Plus I have heard nothing but people being hopeful about the Obi Wan movie.

This is not the answer. If they want to rectify things they need to do a film fans are actually asking for unlike Solo which would be the Obi Wan film. Then they need to do a film that will rectify the things people are angry about. A Luke movie set a few years before Kylo lost his shit showing him in a purely postive light teaching his students & going on peace keeping missions all over the galaxy might do this. Actually show us the Republic our heroes created after the original trilogy. (Fuck JJ for destroying it without letting us see it)

[Joseki]

It was inevitable, Episode VIII has been kinda underwhelming at the box office and Solo was a massive flop.

Maybe they'll start pulling out movies that actually have something to add the previous movies or totally unrelated stuff with an actually interesting premise.