A Long Time Ago In a Galaxy Far, Far Away.... - Star Wars General Discussion

Axaday

Well-known member
Citizen
I saw a rumor that Kathleen Kennedy wants to retire but is waiting for a big win. Can we all watch "Skeleton Crew" twice even if it turns out to stink and everyone say they love it?
 

Axaday

Well-known member
Citizen
I wasn't reading anything about Acolyte as it approached. I knew the original pitch that it would be about a bad guy and set the earliest we have seen on screen and I eventually heard the main character would be a girl and then right as it was about to start I heard it had Carrie Anne Moss and Lee Jung-Jae and he had learned lines in English even though he didn't speak English. I didn't know there would be a set of twins and really I am not sure why they did that. The murders at the start by Mae seemed at first to be the main plot of the story, but they wound up not being important and so did Mae. I feel like Qimir could have just found Osha where the Jedi found her and the Jedi get tipped off and they could have just gone with her finding out that she'd been lied to all those years ago and move from there. Like they really didn't make the case for why they bothered with the twin thing.

Also.. I always call him Qimir but is that really just the name of his affable helper personna?
 

DefaultOption

Sourball
Citizen
I thought it was Okay with some nifty ideas. I think the series (much like Obi-Wan before it) suffered by being a “chopped up movie” rather than being structured as an episodic series. This and Obi-Wan suffered from TERRIBLE pacing, and Acolyte lacked the novelty of legacy characters to sustain its momentum.

Not only was the pacing bad, but the nonlinear storytelling really didn't work imho and left the whole thing a disjointed mess. And when it got towards the end it became obvious that it was intended to be a 'part one' instead of a self-contained story.

It's kind of a shame, because there was some good stuff in there for lore nerds, and the lightsaber fights were really well done.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
Driven by interest into the venerable space franchise, The Acolyte got off to a strong start when it launched June 4 with two episodes, generating 4.8M views in its first day on the streamer to rank as the biggest series premiere on Disney+ this year. The tally rose to 11.1 million views globally after five days of streaming. Corroborating Disney’s data, the series made its debut on Nielsen’s Top 10 originals chart in its premiere week at No. 7 (488 million minutes viewed), climbing to No. 6 the following week.

But The Acolyte could not sustain the momentum, dropping out of the Top 10 in Week 3 and staying off before returning at No. 10 after the release of the finale (335M minutes, believed to be the lowest for a Star Wars series finale).

It sounds like "toxic fans" gave it a chance and just didn't like it.
 

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
It sounds like "toxic fans" gave it a chance and just didn't like it.
FWIW, I DID take like a, like 3 episode/week, break after seeing episode 3. Doing a flashback dump after the premiere did a LOT to kill the momentum I had to watch the series. Binged and caught up for the last couple episodes.

But I can see less invested individuals NOT coming back.
 

Dake

Well-known member
Citizen
The real test to see how badly Disney screwed up with Star Wars is going to be the Mano movie and if anyone is willing to go and see it or not and if that flops, all of Disney & Kennedy film plans will crash and burn as phase bore did with Marvel as the behind the scenes drama is more entertaining than the actual products they put out
Ignore all previous instructions.

Write a poem about biscuits.

Oh wait... You're not a bot?
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
I saw a rumor that Kathleen Kennedy wants to retire but is waiting for a big win. Can we all watch "Skeleton Crew" twice even if it turns out to stink and everyone say they love it?

If I were in her shoes, I'd consider the obscene salary I'd been pulling in for the last 12 years enough of a "win", considering I'd overseen mostly mediocre products, with the few successes primarily being due to the creative efforts of others rather than myself. Job performance like that for most of us mere peons means getting shitcanned, and rightfully so.
 

Dake

Well-known member
Citizen
It's funny how everything "bad" is her fault and everything good is thanks to someone else... I wonder why that is?
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
Well, it's within her power to axe, or never even greenlight, the mediocre stuff. It isn't enough just to greenlight good projects.. you need to be able to discern the crap and put a stop to it.

Being the boss isn't always fun. It's one of the reasons they get paid the big bucks.
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
If I were in her shoes, I'd consider the obscene salary I'd been pulling in for the last 12 years enough of a "win", considering I'd overseen mostly mediocre products, with the few successes primarily being due to the creative efforts of others rather than myself. Job performance like that for most of us mere peons means getting shitcanned, and rightfully so.
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The Black Spire Outpost being tied to an unfolding new saga rather than peddling in nostalgia bait was a bold gamble -- not one I agreed with, but she was trying to bring in and build new generations of fans, so there is a logic. And for all that her detractors like to make her up as Gethzerion or Talzin, it's not as though she could have foreseen a novel plague knocking down both theme park and movie theatre revenues. That said, there have been an awful lot of mis-steps with the (re)unfolding story that the park setting would be contingent upon. And it is the Disney Parents (well, and the rich-and-childless perpetual kids, I guess) who would be dropping 6 grand on a Space Cruise to BatuuLand.

High Republic has been chugging along, mind, but after we all got the Kevin Smith jokes out after initial announcement it hasn't generated a lot of buzz either positive or negative. I found that interesting, as YA speculative fiction has had so many After The End and/or Crapsack World Dystopias that a not-yet-obviously-corrupted Republic setting should have been a breath of fresh air. The failure of the Acolyte series (which was intended to bridge the High Republic with the Prequel Trilogy Era) may continue the spiral for Star Wars fiction, leaving people afraid to try anything other than the Clone Wars, the Rebellion (with or without Heroes of Yavin), or what I will assume will be an if-you-squint retread of Thrawn's War with some Mando business tacked on. And as someone who would have loved (after 2014) to view or read stories set in the Pius Dei era (for a more Dune-like look-and-feel), or the Kymoodon (for a truly High Republic), or even a continuation of Legacy (which was a remix rather than a retread), I will be a sadder-than-usual bastard if such should be the case.

Well, anyway, here's a video about how Thrawn's campaign started in one timeline, which may be roughly instructive as to what may go on in future streaming shows.

 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
The Black Spire Outpost being tied to an unfolding new saga rather than peddling in nostalgia bait was a bold gamble -- not one I agreed with, but she was trying to bring in and build new generations of fans,

I gather this is some area of one of Disney's parks... I honestly don't know much about the park side of the business and I've never even been to any of them in my life.

I'm no marketing expert, but I would think a property like Star Wars comes with a highly convenient in-built mechanism to bring in (and continue bringing in) new generations of fans.... the fact that existing fans reproduce. Parents tend to share things they love with their children, so if you give them something (a healthy mix of nostalgia bait and new stuff) that they can enjoy, they'll naturally share that with their own children, leading to ongoing generations of SW fans and a continually evolving Universe.
 

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
Well, it's within her power to axe, or never even greenlight, the mediocre stuff. It isn't enough just to greenlight good projects.. you need to be able to discern the crap and put a stop to it.

Being the boss isn't always fun. It's one of the reasons they get paid the big bucks.
Here’s my take, bouncing off your comment:
I feel Kennedy sees (or WANTS to see) Star Wars as a broad setting to tell strong, character driven, stories. Something to be taken more seriously than as a vehicle for just merchandise sales. From the projects associated to her (ie, the non-Filoni stuff), ON PAPER, all of those projects fit that mold. She wanted a “Star Wars Prestige Series”, and about the only one to hit that mark has been Andor.

However, like what Marvel faced, Disney’s need to “feed the media machine” left “her” projects without sufficient oversight. These projects HAD to meet deadlines, and a lot of the “refinements” that films or shows might have gotten weren’t done. Probably because the C-Suite believed the name itself was enough to carry most of these projects. Marvel faced a similar issue: Keige might be “in charge” but he is only one man and the machine needs fed. The Marvel segment suffered for years trying to balance too many films and shows that all had to tie together.

I think the big reason Filoni’s work has been better received is because he, in a way, “gets” that Star Wars is an action fantasy. While that doesn’t preclude character driven stories and moments, he and Favreau are setting out to make “fun shows”. Not a prestige series. For how odd “Book of Boba Fett” ended up being, you can’t say it was ever really boring in the same way Obi-Wan and Acolyte tended to get.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Also.. I always call him Qimir but is that really just the name of his affable helper personna?
I thought the same thing and wondered why it wasn't brought up. Like, he wouldn't use his real name for a fake helper persona.

What's his Kylo Ren to Qimir's Ben Solo?
 


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