This stuff has been making me rethink my love of Star Wars. The more content it gets the more tedious and stupid it becomes. It just feels really cheap now.
I think one of the smartest decisions George Lucas made was letting the franchise take a breather for 14 years. It was a much needed rest for the better part of a decade where, not even toys are collectibles were being made. When it returned with the special editions and prequels, it revitalized the brand and made it seem timeless.
Now under Disney it just feels schlocky and run of the mill. Do they rush the production of these things out?
I still believe there is magic within the Star Wars universe. There's an entire world available with lots of interesting world building potential with a still clinging on built in fan base.
Just give really talented people the reigns, some budget and move out of their way. Whiplash was one of the very best films I've seen in the last decade or so. And the subject matter is so out of left field for most people. Lots of people only care casually about music and who truly is that deep into drumming? It's not big budget, it doesn't really have more than two core characters, and yet you don't realize how locked in you are when you watch it for the first time.
Admittedly, it's more of a "guy movie" than a general audience movie, but I don't meet too many people who dislike it. In fact, I find that the film's central themes are disruptive. You don't know if the "antagonist" is wrong or not. I'm not sure you ever do.
The problem is Kathleen Kennedy would never hire someone like Damien Chazelle and just get of his way.
If there's one core gripe that Star Wars fans should have, is that the creative guide post for the entire universe's future shouldn't rest in the hands of someone who
1) Clearly doesn't understand what made Star Wars successful with fans, both on a deep emotional level and a pocketbook level
2) Clearly despises and resents the franchise for what it has always been and why it's a cultural touchstone across multi generations of viewers and fans
I've said this before - Woke people in power in the arts never create anything worthwhile. I've never ever seen it. They only destroy something that another genius made that was successful. It's like they take perverse joy in punishing the average person for loving something, especially and likely when they were just a kid, because it makes them someone makes them immediately complicit against some specific ax grinding exhausting cognitive dissonance fueled agenda.
Get creative people and talented people, and move out of the way.
Why is Mike Flanagan ( Midnight Mass, Haunting Of Hill House) not making a Star Wars series?
Why is Tony McNamara ( The Great) not making a Star Wars series?
The Big Mouse has an endless financial war chest. Unload some of it. Give real proven talent a budget and freedom and move out of their way. This is the bane of the new age of television. There are so many networks trying to get high end/prestige original programming, that creators can ask for more creative freedom and get it somewhere else.
This is why Kathleen Kennedy is such a huge black hole for the Star Wars Universe, once you get a reputation as a person where real careers go to die, no one wants to orbit that perpetual death zone. She's not talented, she was a tag along because she was someone's sidepiece. She's Gale Anne Hurd with more power.
In one way, I'm sad because Star Wars meant a lot to me as a kid. In another way, maybe this kind of crash and burn is needed to finally drive woke and identity politics out of entertainment for good. The God Of Hollywood is money, not woke. Once too much money is lost over woke, then it will be industry poison.
The average American who turns on their TV or their streaming or their laptop is NOT a hateful person. They aren't looking to support some evil cause. They aren't responsible for horrible things that happened all throughout history before they were born. It's not a crime for them to love things they found as kids and it reminds them of a simpler cleaner less brutal time in their lives. They shouldn't be cornered and tried to be forced to capitulate and apologize for crimes they didn't commit.
People come home after a brutal day at work and slaving away and dealing with real life madness and want to spend an hour escaping into something else. They aren't looking to be told they should be ashamed by some cooked up passive aggressive poorly conceived purity test.
There's nothing wrong with the things you once loved. There's nothing wrong with feeling like you want to throw up about things that aren't required to love right now. The franchise isn't stupid, it's just one woke psychopath in charge who has never created one good thing on her own in her entire life.
Attacking our childhoods is a just a very expensive and very brutal public therapy session for Kathleen Kennedy to try to blame someone else for her own personal demons.
Her tears. Our pain.
Don't spend another dime on anything Big Mouse until she's gone, that's how we all put the pain where it belongs.