I can only imagine what George felt watching that first cash-in movie, the guy who fought to keep himself independent from the studio system all his career only to see the studio he thought he could finally trust immediately whore his IP out.
We already know exactly what George Lucas thought of TFA, courtesy of Bob Iger himself via his autobiography published in 2019:
"Waaaah, mean old George doesn't understand the pressure on having to deliver new Star Wars films to a nit-picky fanbase!"
...you mean like how he did in 1999? And 2002? And 2005? Bob, are you actually retarded, or do you just buy famous IPs without doing a lick of research on their brand and production history?
Also, lol at "J.J. creating the 'perfect bridge between what had been and what was to come'". Does "what was to come" translate to diminishing returns? Because he certainly created that with Ep. 9...the last SW film we've gotten in half a decade.
To be that nerd, some of the shots have no CGI. There's still CGI in the backgrounds and extensions to buildings. The scenes at Villa del Balbianello on Lake Como have the settlements on the lakes edges painted out. There's lots of little tweaks.
Yes, but most of the close-up shots of the actors interacting (including the exact shot of Anakin monologuing about sand) is just that: close-ups of the actors in costume, against the backdrop of practical sets. I believe some CG is implemented during the establishing shot of the villa, and when Padme looks in the distance and talks about her childhood in this place, but that's about it.
How profitable are the new star wars shows to Disney
Disney measures profitability by viewership and subscriber additions. The only live-action SW show to see a surge in both are all three seasons of
The Mandalorian--everything else has either been average to subpar numbers (
Ahsoka), or outright barren viewership (
Andor, which even the showrunner admitted was a season-long exercise in the production team "chasing the audience" that wouldn't show up to watch it). The animated shows like
Bad Batch or
Tales of the Empire garner something like 100K-500K viewers, if the Nielson ratings are to be believed (even the recent finale to
Bad Batch got the traction of a fucking funeral), but given how significantly cheaper it is to recycle ugly animated assets to pinch out another one of these shows, I wouldn't classify them as any kind of loss leader.
I think the most definitive failure in terms of Disney Content from LFL isn't even a Star Wars show---it was that
Willow TV series, which, because of either reviewing so poorly or getting such abysmal viewership, was literally
axed from existence David Zaslav-style and now only exists through torrent sites.
It was so bad even professional financial journals like Forbes were dancing on the grave of this trainwreck.