Star Wars Griefing Thread (SPOILERS) - Safety off

[TheClorax]

While it is fun to keep making fun of how badly Solo is flopping, I think this guy said it better then I ever could, in both how it flopped, and why it wasn't really fair because as a movie itself, it was a pretty good watch.

 

[CWCissey]

While it is fun to keep making fun of how badly Solo is flopping, I think this guy said it better then I ever could, in both how it flopped, and why it wasn't really fair because as a movie itself, it was a pretty good watch.

It's an unfair fail, but a necessary one.

 

[knightlautrec]

Disney on the other hand actively went out of their way to cut the star wars universe down to something even smaller than the original trilogy, with the only characters that effectively exist in the whole setting being those we see on screen.....and those characters themselves being near universally boring and unlikable, and the anaemic new expanded universe is just emphasising how creatively bankrupt the whole franchise is which is demonstrated by how desperately the "WE SO WOKE YALL!" button is being pressed by everyone involved.

I think that's the biggest issue a lot of long term fans have with the new films. The new films makes the universe feel pointlessly small. There's nothing grand or exciting about any of the places shown in the film and they're all rehashes of the original planets with nothing to add. Aside from Rogue One that did some newer planets but out of all the new films, I feel that one at least TRIED to do a new spin despite stealing things from the OT.

I'd honestly say The Force Unleashed did interesting planets/settings better than the new films.

 

[Flexo]

I'm starting to enjoy the things ABOUT Solo more than I could any actual movie.

 

[Hodor]

The original trilogy lovers hate the sequels because it makes the original three unnecessary. Just step back from the economics and ask yourself this: What was the point of continuing the Star Wars saga after Luke redeemed Anakin, the Rebels defeated the Empire, and the force is finally balanced?

What Force Awakens, Last Jedi, and eventually Episode 9 do is it makes all those sacrifices and accomplishes the characters made in the original trilogy mean nothing. They made Han and Leia into horrible parents, Luke into a coward after he failed to stop Kylo Ren from turning into the Sith when he could've done the same thing he did with Anakin/Vader, the Empire and Rebels kept fighting.

this might be the fact I'm a bit sloshed, but the fucked up thing is that there's a lot of fantastic ground work in the ST. Like, you can very easily tweak the set up to work way better- like, say Snoke is just an extremely charismatic politician who has been climbing up and up the latter, which quickly corrupted do to the sheer scale and residual influence of the Empire. Play off the fact that the Rebels got swamped by trying to rebuild off the ashes of the empire- something easier said than done- and having the people of the galaxy are getting more and more enchanted by this one Andy Serkis fucker promising a return to the relative control of the Empire.

Suddenly, the galaxy is being fucking plummeted into civil war again.

Han ran off because fuck, can you see Han sitting at a desk and filing paperwork? Fuck no. Dude's a scoundrel through and through. Shit, honestly, of all the OT characters, I really do think playing him off as a deadbeat father was the closest to his characterization.

Have Leia always being thiiiis close to breaking down- she's putting up a strong face for her forces, but always teetering on the edge of that cracking. She's watching her life's work, her attempt at bringing democracy and freedom back is failing in her life time

Its not fucking hard to ape OT while doing something a lil bit new.

I think that's the biggest issue a lot of long term fans have with the new films. The new films makes the universe feel pointlessly small. There's nothing grand or exciting about any of the places shown in the film and they're all rehashes of the original planets with nothing to add. Aside from Rogue One that did some newer planets but out of all the new films, I feel that one at least TRIED to do a new spin despite stealing things from the OT.

I'd honestly say The Force Unleashed did interesting planets/settings better than the new films.

Honestly, the new movies would make more sense if they just reused planets from the OT, rather than bolting new, identical ones into the setting and having that make the universe feel smaller.

 

[BR55]

I think what Disney either failed to understand, or more likely willfully ignored, is that Star Wars is a phenomenon. Something that can't be forced or produced or manufactured. Attempting to do so was always doomed to fail.
They tried to recapture lighting in a bottle without understanding anything about what propelled Star Wars to the top in the first place.

 

[Godzilla@1989]

I think what Disney either failed to understand, or more likely willfully ignored, is that Star Wars is a phenomenon. Something that can't be forced or produced or manufactured. Attempting to do so was always doomed to fail.
They tried to recapture lighting in a bottle without understanding anything about what propelled Star Wars to the top in the first place.

That's true. Could you say the same about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Because I feel they're going to take over once Kevin Feige leaves.

 

[Secret Asshole]

I think what Disney either failed to understand, or more likely willfully ignored, is that Star Wars is a phenomenon. Something that can't be forced or produced or manufactured. Attempting to do so was always doomed to fail.
They tried to recapture lighting in a bottle without understanding anything about what propelled Star Wars to the top in the first place.

It felt like Disney wanted to kill off the OT, like killing each character over their new trilogy, to milk the old fanbase one last time and then make a new thing to milk a new fanbase while leaving the old one behind.

The problem is they had no idea how to make a new fanbase and the old fanbase stopped caring. Really, really quickly.

That's true. Could you say the same about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Because I feel they're going to take over once Kevin Feige leaves.

They should just pay Kevin Feige a billion dollars to stay on Marvel forever.

 

[Godzilla@1989]

It felt like Disney wanted to kill off the OT, like killing each character over their new trilogy, to tard cum the old fanbase one last time and then make a new thing to tard cum a new fanbase while leaving the old one behind.

The problem is they had no idea how to make a new fanbase and the old fanbase stopped caring. Really, really quickly.



They should just pay Kevin Feige a billion dollars to stay on Marvel forever.

Not sure if he'll renew his contract this year or not, if he doesn't, I could Disney taking Marvel Studios over and fucking it up the same way they did to Miramax Films when Harvey Weinstein left in 2005. As much as I'm not a big MCU guy, at least Kevin Feige knows what's he doing with the MCU and you can't deny the success he's having because of him not flipping the fanbase and making sure they deliver on a satisfying level. That's everything Kennedy fails at.

How would you also compare Disney's handling of Star Wars to their handling of Power Rangers from 2003 to 2009?

Screen Rant here with a retarded article on how Lucasfilm didn't try with Solo. Never mind the fact that Disney, Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy, JJ Abrams, and Rian Johnson are suffocating Lucasfilm's oxygen every second ever since Lucas sold his entire life's worth to them.

https://screenrant.com/solo-star-wars-box-office-failure-reason-lucasfilm/

 

[Mola Ram]

The problem is they had no idea how to make a new fanbase and the old fanbase stopped caring. Really, really quickly.

Agreed, but I'd also add that it's now clear Disney did not understand how fragile the Star Wars reputation was in the wake of the prequels. Everyone shits on The Force Awakens now, but the positive reaction to it was really quite sincere ... mostly because that film was at least competent. But more than mere competence was needed in the following movies, and TLJ ... well. Technically competent, I guess, but it sure ain't competent from a storytelling or character standpoint.

 

[Godzilla@1989]

Agreed, but I'd also add that it's now clear Disney did not understand how fragile the Star Wars reputation was in the wake of the prequels. Everyone shits on The Force Awakens now, but the positive reaction to it was really quite sincere ... mostly because that film was at least competent. But more than mere competence was needed in the following movies, and TLJ ... well. Technically competent, I guess, but it sure ain't competent from a storytelling or character standpoint.

TFA and TLJ were pretty boring on a story level.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

What impresses me is that there's another chunk of the company doing an unprecedentedly good job keeping a genre universe going well beyond what anybody would have believed to be market saturation with no signs of slowing down, and then they completely piss the license to print money that is Star Wars down the drain.

Didn't they buy the rights to Star Wars for the express reason that they wanted to get something to carry the torch once the MCU stuff has run its way? After just 4 years, it looks like the MCU movies will far outlive Star Wars. Truly, this reboot of an old franchise managed to die in its infancy.

TFA and TLJ were pretty boring on a story level.

TFA didn't do anything new, TLJ didn't do anything at all.
I am genuinely flabberghasted how Disney did not see this whole mess coming.

 

[RockVolnutt]

I'm not sure if it's true but all this Star Wars drama would be ironic if it is true that Disney only bought Marvel because they couldn't get Lucasfilm at the time.

 

[XYZpdq]

Didn't they buy the rights to Star Wars for the express reason that they wanted to get something to carry the torch once the MCU stuff has run its way. After just 4 years, it looks like the MCU movies will far outlive Star Wars. Truly, this reboot of an old franchise managed to die in its infancy.

I think that was one of the ideas, to get a strong second franchise going.
I read online the stockholder report after the purchase expected Star Wars to continue at its then-current pace for forty years.

 

[Judge Holden]

Didn't they buy the rights to Star Wars for the express reason that they wanted to get something to carry the torch once the MCU stuff has run its way. After just 4 years, it looks like the MCU movies will far outlive Star Wars. Truly, this reboot of an old franchise managed to die in its infancy.


TFA didn't do anything new, TLJ didn't do anything at all.
I am genuinely flabberghasted how Disney did not see this whole mess coming.

Hate to keep beating on this dead horse here but it all makes a lot more sense when you factor in the marketing/PR culture for the past few years years.

Thanks to the increasingly useless "MUH IDENTITY! MUH PRIVILAGE! MUH AIRY FAIRY FEELINGS!" driven schtick that gets taught in collages and universities, especially in "soft" subjects like marketing where any unprovable and nebulous horsecrap can be happily accepted as fact and taught en-masse, and the fact that the coddled shits who wind up working PR/marketing in big corporations tend to exist entirely in affluent bubbles of smug faux wokeness, this current generation of marketing/advertising graduates have wound up fanatically believing that the best way to make money is

a) make minimal concessions/gestures to your existing market or simply ignore them, if not actively reject and insult them. Assume they will stick with your brand and keep throwing money at you, no matter how hard you shit on them

b) decide that no women/gays/niggos were in this existing market to begin with, and dedicate 99% of PR and marketing to blatantly pandering to them in really obvious and cringeworthy ways, often by directly appealing to the most angry and loathed fringe identity movements of these demographics. Assume this will immediately cause these entire demographics to flock to your brand and throw money at you

c) actively grovel and give special celeb treatment to various e-famous "activists" and loudly proclaim how you are carefully listening to everything they say. Assume that these people are not just random internet assholes with minimal real world following, but are actually the Emperors/Empresses of all Blacks and women and gays and troons.

d) react to any and all criticism and mockery by declaring it to be hateful and bigoted harassment that is threatening the lives of those who worked soooo haaaaard on the brand and have friendly celebs and media trumpet this to high heavens across the world. Assume that everyone will be so terrified of being called names on social media by screeching mobs and smug journos/celebs that nobody will dare raise any criticism again.

e) with all this considered, make the resulting media created not only the blandest and most inoffensive mush imaginable, but also have them be launched solely on the Nostalgia and "FINALLY WE HAVE WOMEN/BLACK PEOPLE IN FILM!" schtick instead of any writing or cinematic quality. Assume this will ensure both icky old markets will still throw money at you, and that the grateful new demographics will sweep you to unparalleled financial success

So yeah. Basically gather together some of the absolute most fucktarded marketing assumptions possible, slap them all together, and then have marketing departments guarantee to the execs of media companies that this is "the only way they can hope to compete and make money in the current year". Since so many of these media companies are in a sustained state of apocalyptic panic due to the internet rapidly emptying their pockets on every front, they are willing to overturn decades of basic marketing sense and bet everything on pandering to the tumblr demographic.

The effect this has on every level of media creation is toxic, but especially in terms of writing since it not only seals the writers off from hearing and accepting any constructive criticism, but it teaches them that reacting to criticism by doubling down on everything to "fight da biguts" will be rewarded and celebrated by their peers and disney supervisors. Even George Lucas knew to back the hell off with Jar Jar after the fan reaction. Had these cretins been writing the prequels they would have probably made him dual main character and said everyone who hates him secretly hates black people.

 

[BR55]

The thing about Disney Star Wars is it could have become just as much as a phenomenon as the Original trilogy.
The thing to keep in mind about the beginning of Star Wars is when and why it was created. At it's heart Star Wars was a rejection of the cynical and morally grey films and culture of the '70s.
In an era of films like Taxi Driver and The Dear Hunter Star Wars was an unabashed escapist fantasy about Good vs. Evil, Hope and Optimism, Bright Colors and endearing characters.
In todays culture of even greater cynicism and even outright nihilism people wanted and needed something like Star Wars even more than people did back then.
But instead taking all those aforementioned things and making new adventures for people to enjoy Disney is content to wallow in the past. Tearing the past and it's accomplishments down and trying to replace it with the same damn thing but shinier and newer...And with Women and Minority's instead of Straight White Men this time too!
In fact coming back to the MCU vs. Disney Star Wars comparisons you actually make the argument that Marvel is todays Star Wars. Filling the same niche of escapist fantasy today as Star Wars did in the '70s and '80s.
I know that for me personally I care way more about seeing the Avenger's beat Thanos than Galactic Civil War 2 electric boogaloo.

 

[Secret Asshole]

I think at this point, everyone cares more about Infinity War 2 than Star Wars Episode 9. When you basically answer every mystery that Abrams set up with 'lol, its all boring garbage' then why bother? There's nothing interesting or compelling. People wanted a satisfying conclusion to Luke and you gave him....what? Carrie Fisher is dead, you killed off most of the original cast in the movie (Han Solo was always gonna die, I don't doubt that was written into Ford's contract. He wanted that character dead for 30 years). But Luke? And to make him a bitter old man and just dispose of the character like that? Disgraceful, utterly disgraceful. Poor Mark Hamil.

Not sure if he'll renew his contract this year or not, if he doesn't, I could Disney taking Marvel Studios over and fucking it up the same way they did to Miramax Films when Harvey Weinstein left in 2005. As much as I'm not a big MCU guy, at least Kevin Feige knows what's he doing with the MCU and you can't deny the success he's having because of him not flipping the fanbase and making sure they deliver on a satisfying level. That's everything Kennedy fails at.

How would you also compare Disney's handling of Star Wars to their handling of Power Rangers from 2003 to 2009?

If Kevin Fiegie doesn't renew, they're straight up fucked. He's the only person in existence who has built a coherent, profitable cinematic universe and has military-like precision and logistics and can keep the movies creatively flexible as well. Go and try to find that shit again.

And I have no idea, since I never followed the Power Rangers.

Agreed, but I'd also add that it's now clear Disney did not understand how fragile the Star Wars reputation was in the wake of the prequels. Everyone shits on The Force Awakens now, but the positive reaction to it was really quite sincere ... mostly because that film was at least competent. But more than mere competence was needed in the following movies, and TLJ ... well. Technically competent, I guess, but it sure ain't competent from a storytelling or character standpoint.

I was pointed out by a friend, TLJ is ok...in a vacuum. He liked it and that's the way he looked at it. The problem is that it wasn't made in a vacuum and I can't look at it like that. You have 30 years of extended universe novels, video games, animated series, comics, all this shit going on...and TLJ is the story you want to tell? Seriously? That's the final story of one of the most iconic characters in pop-culture history (like it or not, Luke Skywalker is)? I don't much care for Starwars. Like the prequels, I only watched the first film. I watched TFA and enjoyed it (people shit on it now because of TLJ) and once I heard that all the plot points set up in TFA were ignored, I simply stopped wanting to go. Like, alright, you set up all these points in the first one and then you let the director basically troll the fucking audience by making all of them irrelevant. Why should I see your film then?

Hate to keep beating on this dead horse here but it all makes a lot more sense when you factor in the marketing/PR culture for the past few years years.

Thanks to the increasingly useless "MUH IDENTITY! MUH PRIVILAGE! MUH AIRY FAIRY FEELINGS!" driven schtick that gets taught in collages and universities, especially in "soft" subjects like marketing where any unprovable and nebulous horsecrap can be happily accepted as fact and taught en-masse, and the fact that the coddled shits who wind up working PR/marketing in big corporations tend to exist entirely in affluent bubbles of smug faux wokeness, this current generation of marketing/advertising graduates have wound up fanatically believing that the best way to make money is

a) make minimal concessions/gestures to your existing market or simply ignore them, if not actively reject and insult them. Assume they will stick with your brand and keep throwing money at you, no matter how hard you shit on them

b) decide that no women/gays/niggos were in this existing market to begin with, and dedicate 99% of PR and marketing to blatantly pandering to them in really obvious and cringeworthy ways, often by directly appealing to the most angry and loathed fringe identity movements of these demographics. Assume this will immediately cause these entire demographics to flock to your brand and throw money at you

c) actively grovel and give special celeb treatment to various e-famous "activists" and loudly proclaim how you are carefully listening to everything they say. Assume that these people are not just random internet assholes with minimal real world following, but are actually the Emperors/Empresses of all Blacks and women and gays and troons.

d) react to any and all criticism and mockery by declaring it to be hateful and bigoted harassment that is threatening the lives of those who worked soooo haaaaard on the brand and have friendly celebs and media trumpet this to high heavens across the world. Assume that everyone will be so terrified of being called names on social media by screeching mobs and smug journos/celebs that nobody will dare raise any criticism again.

e) with all this considered, make the resulting media created not only the blandest and most inoffensive mush imaginable, but also have them be launched solely on the Nostalgia and "FINALLY WE HAVE WOMEN/BLACK PEOPLE IN FILM!" schtick instead of any writing or cinematic quality. Assume this will ensure both icky old markets will still throw money at you, and that the grateful new demographics will sweep you to unparalleled financial success

So yeah. Basically gather together some of the absolute most fucktarded marketing assumptions possible, slap them all together, and then have marketing departments guarantee to the execs of media companies that this is "the only way they can hope to compete and make money in the current year". Since so many of these media companies are in a sustained state of apocalyptic panic due to the internet rapidly emptying their pockets on every front, they are willing to overturn decades of basic marketing sense and bet everything on pandering to the tumblr demographic.

The effect this has on every level of media creation is toxic, but especially in terms of writing since it not only seals the writers off from hearing and accepting any constructive criticism, but it teaches them that reacting to criticism by doubling down on everything to "fight da biguts" will be rewarded and celebrated by their peers and disney supervisors. Even George Lucas knew to back the hell off with Jar Jar after the fan reaction. Had these cretins been writing the prequels they would have probably made him dual main character and said everyone who hates him secretly hates black people.

I mean, SJW pandering has never worked. These people aren't actually interested in these things. They don't buy these products and normal people are tired of politics and wokeness being injected into everything. Corporations are flailing around for an audience that doesn't exist. Like GenCon invited Anita Sarkessian and paid her a boatload to show up. Fucking lol. What does she have to say about pen and paper gaming or board games that would possibly be of any fucking interest? None. Its all for 'wokeness' and virtue signaling cred to an auidence that does not fucking exist. They don't do pen and paper games, they don't play board games. They say the want to, but they never put their money up. They never interact besides telling people things are problematic. And the minorities and women that do play these games don't like it either, because these people like the games and board games for the same reason everyone else does. They don't want to feel like they are being pandered to. They don't want to be the 'white feminist/woke person's' burden.

These are people who think that injecting wokeness will make an audience appear because it 'excludes minorities'. No, it excludes people who don't like the thing, wheter it be a game or a PnP RPG or a boardgame. Corps are so fucking busy trying to include everyone they ignore what their original audience liked. So not only do they lose their original audience, some of whom contained the very minorities they pander to, they fail to gain a new one because the shit is still something they aren't interested in. It happens time and time again. Its going to take corporations to continually lose money before they realize this shit doesn't work and they are grasping for an audience that views geeky hobbies as a social accessory, something that makes them 'cool' and 'unique', not something they will actually spend money on.

 

[Godzilla@1989]

If Kevin Fiegie doesn't renew, they're straight up fucked. He's the only person in existence who has built a coherent, profitable cinematic universe and has military-like precision and logistics and can keep the movies creatively flexible as well. Go and try to find that shit again.

If he doesn’t renew, it would also become impossible to make everyone care about the MCU even more since much of the Phase 1 actors are don’t after Avengers 4. With him and the original cast gone, I don’t see how the MCU would stay relevant.

Also, you know how the fifth Transfomers movie did absolute shit at the box office? I’m starting to see Episode 9 doing shit at the box office now. I feel like they’re going to do all the shittest jump the shark moments in Episode 9 in the most ridiculous way possible since it’s the last the of the sequel trilogy.

 

[Flexo]

I mean, SJW pandering has never worked. These people aren't actually interested in these things. They don't buy these products and normal people are tired of politics and wokeness being injected into everything. Corporations are flailing around for an audience that doesn't exist. Like GenCon invited Anita Sarkessian and paid her a boatload to show up. Fucking lol. What does she have to say about pen and paper gaming or board games that would possibly be of any fucking interest? None. Its all for 'wokeness' and virtue signaling cred to an auidence that does not fucking exist. They don't do pen and paper games, they don't play board games. They say the want to, but they never put their money up. They never interact besides telling people things are problematic. And the minorities and women that do play these games don't like it either, because these people like the games and board games for the same reason everyone else does. They don't want to feel like they are being pandered to. They don't want to be the 'white feminist/woke person's' burden.

Agree 90% BUT...

It's hard not to look at Anita's initial kickstarter and think there's NO money in it.

What I think is the problem is that population is large enough (and tech for production cheap enough) that almost anybody can get a sustainable audience for their product at just a few hundred thousand - so the landscape is less about hitting as broad appeal as possible as much as getting a hardcore, passionate fanbase.

THEN the problem is that the media live in such a group-think bubble that they all believe they have to chase after the same audience of woke folk. They are essentially trying to oversupply a narrow demand and not many think to try and serve the population or normies or conservatives or sane-left or anybody else not SJW. So then something like Roseanne or some of the Christian film companies comes along and cleans up with major $$$ by grabbing the underserved market.

The one OTHER factor I think may be at play is that a buddy of mine tried to create his own business and failed the first time. His frustration (and I've heard other business owners say this too) is that it's SUPER hard to get customer feedback - even though it's literally a request to do whatever they can to please the customer. If there's one thing we know about SJWs, they LOVE to complain to anyone that is listening. So they end up swaying companies because the companies are desperate for feedback and the majority is silent.

(That's why while I won't do much customer surveys, I will try to talk to people face to face and tell them what I liked or didn't.)

 

[Maggots on a Train]

If he doesn’t renew, it would also become impossible to make everyone care about the MCU even more since much of the Phase 1 actors are don’t after Avengers 4. With him and the original cast gone, I don’t see how the MCU would stay relevant.


Also, you know how the fifth Transfomers movie did absolute shit at the box office? I’m starting to see Episode 9 doing shit at the box office now. I feel like they’re going to do all the shittest jump the shark moments in Episode 9 in the most ridiculous way possible since it’s the last the of the sequel trilogy.

I hope we're over the hump of peak "cool nerd" shit. I remember peak anime shit about ten years ago. It really felt like anime was going mainstream, even shitty modern shows and books got released in English. We had western faux anime get popular.

Then anime DVDs started showing up at Big Lots for $3, TokyoPop went bankrupt, and you could find manga by all publishers in the discount book bin. I guess teen girl pseudo-action series, Homestuck, and MCU did it in. The wall of Funko Pops at every dying Toys r Us gives me hope.