Freddie Prinze Jr. drops a "Kilrathi knowledge bomb"

Was hoping there was actually some Wing Commander mention in there, but I don't see it, unless I missed it. Not sure he's actually correct either, but he sure is confident about it. :)
 
Hey, come on, that's totally false advertising. I was expecting a Wing Commander mention in there too :).

Goodness, though, for someone trying to show off his knowledge, he could use a dictionary. English is a fairly sophisticated language, he reduces it to one word.

(also, he's wrong: any such explanation of what the Force does presupposes that there is an overarching and stable concept of what the Force does. In reality, though, it simply does whatever the current Star Wars creatives want it to do, which changes from movie to movie)
 
I understand his frustration with the toxic, performative Star Wars fandom on social media... but he's falling into the trap of taking bad actors at face value. The people harassing him don't want an argument that explains why they're wrong... they want Freddie Prinze Jr. to swear a lot so they can clutch their pearls over it.
 
(also, he's wrong: any such explanation of what the Force does presupposes that there is an overarching and stable concept of what the Force does. In reality, though, it simply does whatever the current Star Wars creatives want it to do, which changes from movie to movie)

Yes 👍

I'm open to being wrong but I just don't see how a series that started decades ago, has had 10+ directors of its various media products, and was sold to new owners can maintain total continuity.
 
I just don't see how a series that started decades ago, has had 10+ directors of its various media products, and was sold to new owners can maintain total continuity.

The easy answer is: that was the beauty of the EU. Most of those writers aren't very good at Star Wars, but they (and Lucasfilm!) want to make money at the IP, so they would just bang out some books that would sell. Now with Disney, *everything* is canonized, *everything* legitimate - and now here we are reaping the "benefits" of it.

Without Lucas - who was always in charge of the license before it was sold, down to making decisions on lightsabers functioning underwater in Dark Forces 2 - there is a new lack of consistency.

And yes, though I agree with a lot of what FPLr said here, and laughing at it - LOAF is right. Its a trap (heh) in that these people will use Freddie being argumentative as some sort of "See? See?!" argument for years to come.
 
The easy answer is: that was the beauty of the EU. Most of those writers aren't very good at Star Wars, but they (and Lucasfilm!) want to make money at the IP, so they would just bang out some books that would sell. Now with Disney, *everything* is canonized, *everything* legitimate - and now here we are reaping the "benefits" of it.

I don't think this has actually changed in any way... as far as creative development goes, the books/comics/games/etc. still aren't actually beholden to the films in any way. They have the exact same group of people 'running' continuity and they have the same power over directors that they did over George... none at all. So you have the same good faith attempt to make books not contradict comics but nothing that actually limits anything major.

(The weeping and gnashing of teeth about this online was because they divided the EU into 'legends' and the new material that would remain good faith consistent with the new movies.. which is somehow offensive to super fans even though it's exactly what would've happened if George Lucas had made his sequel trilogy since it certainly wouldn't be based on anything established in a bunch of Kevin J Anderson novels. Heck, it's what DID happen with the prequels... but you know, people.)
 
I'm okay with the EU being gone. Other than having forty-seven levels of canon being inherently stupid I don't mind the dead robot from empire strikes back not secretely being in control of the death star during the battle of endor. Biomechanical bdsm dudes from outer space probably wasn't the best idea either, but people seem to like them, so each to their own.
 
plus if the leaks are true some of the old EU is making a come back anyways. Even thrawn was re canonized in the show rebels. Im loving the mandalorian so far and the new jedi fallen order game is awesome, and did a good job connecting the PT, to the OT, to the ST.

I also agree about the force being whatever the writers and directors wanting it to be. The people who call rey a marysue are the same people who thought it was legitimate that a 6 yr old jake lloyd aka anakin could fly a pod racer at breakneck speeds and not die and also fly a starfighter and not die. I dont mind people who think the force is a dumb plot device, but to pick and choose when to be upset about it, baffles me.
 
I also agree about the force being whatever the writers and directors wanting it to be. The people who call rey a marysue are the same people who thought it was legitimate that a 6 yr old jake lloyd aka anakin could fly a pod racer at breakneck speeds and not die and also fly a starfighter and not die. I dont mind people who think the force is a dumb plot device, but to pick and choose when to be upset about it, baffles me.
Ugh, I don't know if I really want to start a discussion around this again. But, I definitely would argue Anakin is something very, very different to Rey. I re-watched the whole series last year, and found myself really changing my mind on Anakin - and Lake Lloyd's acting, too. The thing with Anakin is that he is designed and explained as an all-powerful figure - he's not an accidental Mary-Sue, he's an intentional Mary-Sue, for diegetic reasons. That was the whole point of inventing the otherwise-stupid and magic-destroying idea of the midichlorians - to explain that Anakin is crazy-powerful already as a child. This was also why Anakin was not the hero of the story, which actually centres around Obi-Wan, because there is no hero's journey for Anakin to take (though, of course, Obi-Wan's hero's journey is exceedingly weak at best - it's just not a good script). You can also see that Lucas intentionally pushed Lake Lloyd to *be* the annoying Mary-Sue. Viewers didn't like Anakin by a long shot, because the actor was not really supposed to be likeable. His Mary-Sueness is meant to pre-figure his rise to power, *and* plant the seeds of his fall. We see that everything comes too easily for him, and even those who somehow stumbled into TPM without watching the original trilogy were supposed to have a bad feeling about him because of this. This is far, far from Rey, who certainly is designed to be a Mary-Sue, but for all the wrong reasons.
 
Ugh, I don't know if I really want to start a discussion around this again. But, I definitely would argue Anakin is something very, very different to Rey. I re-watched the whole series last year, and found myself really changing my mind on Anakin - and Lake Lloyd's acting, too. The thing with Anakin is that he is designed and explained as an all-powerful figure - he's not an accidental Mary-Sue, he's an intentional Mary-Sue, for diegetic reasons. That was the whole point of inventing the otherwise-stupid and magic-destroying idea of the midichlorians - to explain that Anakin is crazy-powerful already as a child. This was also why Anakin was not the hero of the story, which actually centres around Obi-Wan, because there is no hero's journey for Anakin to take (though, of course, Obi-Wan's hero's journey is exceedingly weak at best - it's just not a good script). You can also see that Lucas intentionally pushed Lake Lloyd to *be* the annoying Mary-Sue. Viewers didn't like Anakin by a long shot, because the actor was not really supposed to be likeable. His Mary-Sueness is meant to pre-figure his rise to power, *and* plant the seeds of his fall. We see that everything comes too easily for him, and even those who somehow stumbled into TPM without watching the original trilogy were supposed to have a bad feeling about him because of this. This is far, far from Rey, who certainly is designed to be a Mary-Sue, but for all the wrong reasons.
anakin and the whole story was handled wrong, I know lucas tried to push the chosen one aka jesus angle, but the scenes with young anakin still make me roll my eyes. Plus in the OT obi wan said he and anakin were friends, I never got that friendship in the prequels, their friendship did get explored in the clone wars tv show finally. I do think jake lloyd was a horrible child actor, he was bad here in star wars and he was also bad in jingle all the way. He should not have gotten death threats though just as rian johnson should have not for the last jedi. I also really enjoyed rian's new flick knives out. As a whole I think the prequels are pretty unwatchable minus revenge of the sith, with attack of the clones being the worst offender. Bad acting, bad script and very bad directing. I saw better Cgi in a movie two yrs before episode 2 in the matrix. The opening speeder chase scene looked like a bad universal theme park ride, and a scene similar to that was way better done in the movie fifth element.

Like I said the force grows as the writer wants it to, From the OT we get more powers as the movies go with little to no explanation or "shown" training. The force users in the OT were semi powerful humans, the force users in the PT were one step away from flying aka one step below neo from the matrix.
 
Good WSJ article on the business aspects of Star Wars and fan culture:
Disney Disturbs the Force: Pleasing Star Wars Fans Complicates Saga

alternate article location but seems to have typos?
http://apkmetro.com/disney-disturbs-the-force-pleasing-star-wars-fans-complicates-saga/

The new “Rise of Skywalker” is still expected to be a blockbuster, and those alienated by “The Last Jedi” have turned to Mr. Abrams with hope. One executive who has worked with Mr. Abrams said the director is keeping longtime fans in mind, saying it is like an invisible fan is whispering in his ear during story meetings.

Following the conclusion of the Skywalker trilogy this month, Mr. Iger said he wants the next set of movies to be more accessible to common moviegoers unburdened by decades of Star Wars memories. But he knows that will likely alienate some fans. “You can’t make everyone happy,” he said.

If you’re not going to update a property, he said, “you might as well stick it in a museum and watch it get old.”

I'm sure people will debate the meaning of update. I'm not surprised that after paying for franchises (Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel), Disney is trying to make money on them . . .

Disney increases the pace of Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel films
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Diminishing returns?
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Changing creative staff
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Diminishing returns?
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This isn't enough data to make the conclusion that the article is implying. There are many factors inherent to the films themselves: of courses the first one to start a new trilogy after a long drought will be likely to do better than its direct sequels. Likewise, spinoffs are likely to do worse than the "main" films. Slice up the numbers a different way and chart how much money the films brought in each decade, and it'll show you a graph that tells you Disney is absolutely doing the right thing from its perspective.
 
This isn't enough data to make the conclusion that the article is implying. There are many factors inherent to the films themselves: of courses the first one to start a new trilogy after a long drought will be likely to do better than its direct sequels. Likewise, spinoffs are likely to do worse than the "main" films. Slice up the numbers a different way and chart how much money the films brought in each decade, and it'll show you a graph that tells you Disney is absolutely doing the right thing from its perspective.
I agree with this. look at the OT and the PT, Both first movies made a lot than the sequel saw diminished returns than the final in each of the trilogy saw an uptick in ticket sales. Plus the market is so much different now with all the canon tie ins, from comics, to tv shows, videogames and books.

Speaking of videogames have any of yall tried jedi fallen order, might be my 2nd favorite star wars game of all time. Ive heard rumors that disney might want to turn jedi fallen order into a disney plus show, that might be interesting. Having a tv show and a videogame working along side with each other. It might also be a complete disaster
 
The decrease in domestic audience between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, 66%, is extremely close to the decrease between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back (63%) and The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (65%). Contrary to popular internet goofball understanding, budgeting a movie is not a wild footrace with fingers crossed that you win a prize at the end. Disney's accountants knew exactly what that drop off would be and budgeted their production and marketing accordingly long before a single creative decision was ever made.

It's the numbers for the spinoffs that are having a much more interesting impact on Star Wars and not because they're all terrible. Disney went into them taking more of a chance as they didn't have a strong model on which to base expectations... and in both cases the result wasn't something anyone predicted (Rogue One more than Solo). The hope was certainly that they would perform like a Marvel spinoff (think Ant-Man) but the only comparison they actually had that was specifically Star Wars was the underwhelming Clone Wars spinoff film (funny that gets left off of all these charts about what a genius George Lucas was!) And it was very much a split decision: Rogue One topped their expectations by quite a bit and Solo underperformed... though again, there was certainly a strong expectation that Solo wouldn't be turned around well before it came out (they spent quite a bit of money trying to reposition it the way that worked with Rogue One but it was not to be).

If I were someone who looked at these kinds of numbers for a living in order to develop projects that won't be seen for years... which, I'll note, I am!... my very clear takeaway wouldn't be that Solo proves there's no interest in Star Wars. Rather, in order of likelyhood and importance:

- The market can't yet sustain two Star Wars films in a calendar year. Disney is trying to emulate the Marvel model here and it was too much, too soon.

- Star Wars has established a nice lock on holiday releases. This is probably something of a foregone conclusion as they'd already moved two others from summer to December and were probably only dumping Solo in March to try and make the best of a bad situation in the first place... but that's what these numbers say, not that people especially hated The Last Jedi.

- Audiences are interested in nostalgia (Rogue One) but they don't especially like recasting old characters (Solo). That's a valuable piece of information going into the next set of films that has to decide what it will be (are we doing Episode 10-12 or Kings of the Old Republic or a remake of an old story or something completely different?)
 
- Audiences are interested in nostalgia (Rogue One) but they don't especially like recasting old characters (Solo). That's a valuable piece of information going into the next set of films that has to decide what it will be (are we doing Episode 10-12 or Kings of the Old Republic or a remake of an old story or something completely different?)
I think there's something else here - and the underperforming Clone Wars movie you mentioned is a big hint.

Looking at the numbers of all these various spin-offs, I believe Star Wars is different to the Marvel universe in that… only the fans actually care. The fanbase for Star Wars is huge. But the Marvel films succeed because they reach far beyond the fanbase, to the casual audience. Star Wars fails to achieve this.

The reason Star Wars succeeded at all as a franchise is because it had an incredibly strong start with the original film (both because of its story, and because its special effects were, at the time completely without equal), further cemented by the overall strength of the whole trilogy, once it came into being. People (i.e. the casual audience, not the fans) came for the special effects, and they stayed for the father-and-son story of the Skywalkers. But they didn't come for the Star Wars universe, and the films respected that. The mythology, the history of the universe, it was all casually brushed aside, the audience was only given enough to get what was happening.

As we see both in the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy, any time the films try to explain the Star Wars universe more, the casual audience immediately tunes out. But the spin-offs are, by definition, supposed to cater to people who want more from that universe - and while it's still a huge fanbase, it's just not as big a group of people as Disney would like. The Marvel universe has one big advantage over Star Wars: it's set in our world. You don't have to know (and care about) the backstory of the X-Men, or Spiderman, to casually stroll into the cinema and enjoy Ant-Man. But you do have to know (and care about) the Star Wars universe in order to enjoy Solo. It was a good film - but it told a story few people really wanted to hear.

It's worth noting, Star Wars is doing extremely well as a TV franchise. Even the shows the fans start out hating (e.g. Resistance) still wind up drawing in enough of the fanbase to be successful by TV standards. This is where Star Wars should be, and what they should be doing - big cinematic releases for the "main" storyline, and lots of TV content for the fanbase. If Solo had been made as a TV show with a more modest TV budget, it would have still attracted as big an audience as it did in cinemas, but it would have been considered a far bigger success.
 
I don't know if I'd say it was doing extremely well as a TV franchise yet. The first Disney+ show is anecdotally very popular but everything else (and everything we actually can look at numbers for) has been a mixed bag. In terms of ratings, Clone Wars and Rebels both started strong and lost their audiences quickly and then Resistance didn't even get that initial grace period (it was unceremoniously cancelled before season two aired). People on the internet like to blame these decisions on Disney but you can look at the ratings and see how these shows didn't sustain interest. For all the "those bastards cancelled Clone Wars!" rants there are out there there's very little acknowledgement that season five had already been moved to a Saturday morning death slot because no one was tuning in. The LEGO branded stuff for younger kids has worked the same way: some initial interest and then nothing. So I'd be careful about bankrolling too much more TV based only on the response to The Mandalorian... let's see how people feel about it in a year.
 
I don't know if I'd say it was doing extremely well as a TV franchise yet. The first Disney+ show is anecdotally very popular but everything else (and everything we actually can look at numbers for) has been a mixed bag. In terms of ratings, Clone Wars and Rebels both started strong and lost their audiences quickly and then Resistance didn't even get that initial grace period (it was unceremoniously cancelled before season two aired). People on the internet like to blame these decisions on Disney but you can look at the ratings and see how these shows didn't sustain interest. For all the "those bastards cancelled Clone Wars!" rants there are out there there's very little acknowledgement that season five had already been moved to a Saturday morning death slot because no one was tuning in. The LEGO branded stuff for younger kids has worked the same way: some initial interest and then nothing. So I'd be careful about bankrolling too much more TV based only on the response to The Mandalorian... let's see how people feel about it in a year.
excellent points but it is still impressive that a show in its first season like the mandalorian is, has become the most watched and pirated tv streaming show above stranger things and game of thrones.

We already know we are getting an obi wan show, clone wars the last season, and a cassain andor show, and there are also rumors everywhere that a character that is popular in the star wars comics is also getting a show. I feel like disney plus is bob iger's baby and a huge part of his legacy at disney. He is going to do whatever it takes to make it work. So I see no stoppage of star wars shows anytime soon, plus the service needs a lot more original content anyways. The disney library is amazing but it only launched with a handful of Original Content, like the mando and a jeff golbum reality show lol.

Back to the box office success for episode 9 I found this article from forbes to be really interesting.

Box Office: ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ Barely Matters To Disney
We are one week away from the overseas debut of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The domestic tracking is still projecting an over/under $200 million domestic opening weekend, with the big questions still being A) will the slide from opening weekend straight into the holiday break give it noticeably better legs than The Last Jedi and B) will general audiences, especially overseas, give it a finale bump that these “end of the line” franchises often get? With Disney’s overall grosses for 2019 releases, including the Fox flicks, now just over $12 billion (they were at $11.94 billion as of Sunday), the performance of the ninth Skywalker/Solo Star Wars episode is almost irrelevant.
Even if Star Wars IX hits big, Disney will still have to figure out how to get audiences to care about Star Wars movies (in theaters) outside of the Skywalker narrative. If it disappoints, it’ll just mean that Disney’s overall year less slightly less ridiculously huge than guestimated. They’ll still face the same “What do we do with Star Wars theatricals now?” question that has been an eventuality ever since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012. To be fair, that will only really be a huge concern if A) the post-Avengers Endgame MCU stand-alone flicks take a noticeably downturn, B) Avatar 2 stumbles and/or C) Disney+ stalls after the initial rush of subscribers.
I’m still thinking Rise of Skywalker ends up somewhere between The Lion King ($540 million) and Avengers: Endgame ($865 million) in North America and somewhere between Frozen II (probably $1.1 billion) and The Lion King ($1.656 billion) worldwide. But either way, its performance will have little bearing on the overall success of 2019 (still ridiculously huge), Disney’s post-2019 slate (no Star Wars, with or without marquee characters, until 2022 at the earliest) or the very real questions concerning how to get audiences to show up for a Star Wars movie that doesn’t revolve around the Skywalker/Solo family. It could pull Force Awakens or Solo numbers, and the variables wouldn’t change.
Thanks to Avengers: Endgame, Frozen II, Toy Story 4 and The Lion King, the eventual success or failure of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has become as important to the overall financial health of the 2019 slate as Penguins. And the larger questions concerning Star Wars (the popularity of The Mandalorian, the iffy initial reception to Galaxy’s Edge, even if “Rise of the Resistance” is supposed to be quite spectacular, the post-Skywalker future of Star Wars movies, etc.) makes Rise of Skywalker something of a lame duck. For better or worse, Disney’s tentpole blockbuster dominance has turned an IP as mighty as Star Wars as just another brick in the wall.


for the record my box office prediction is between 1.4-1.6 billion dollars for rise of skywalker
 
Star Wars is slowly shifting towards the James Bond style audience: the new iteration (new SW trilogy, new 007 actor) gets the biggest attention and a bigger box office draw. The ones that follow do well, just not as good as the first one. Everyone loved Goldeneye/The Living Daylights/Casino Royale, no one seems much excited for Die Another Day/License To Kill/No Time To Die.

So you have the same good faith attempt to make books not contradict comics but nothing that actually limits anything major.

My understanding was that Disney had disposed of all attempts to "tier" canon. Basically, if they made it since 2014, it was part of the canon. No "levels" like previously (though that was silly) and nothing like Star Trek. Everything is accepted. However, I am relieved to *not* find that statement anywhere of note - of course discarding fanboys screaming about "Legends" when 95% of EU was garbage anyway - so, perhaps I was wrong in that or read something that had jumped the gun. I honestly hope this is the case, as much like the EU before 2014, a lot of the new stuff is written by people who seem to struggle opening pickle jars from the glass bottom.
 
excellent points but it is still impressive that a show in its first season like the mandalorian is, has become the most watched and pirated tv streaming show above stranger things and game of thrones.

I totally agree, and Disney+ is certainly much more how TV is going to work going forward than trying to sell Star Wars on a broadcast network. (I should stress also that I flipping love Star Wars in all of these incarnations... I tune in for Resistance just as eagerly as anything else!)

My understanding was that Disney had disposed of all attempts to "tier" canon. Basically, if they made it since 2014, it was part of the canon. No "levels" like previously (though that was silly) and nothing like Star Trek. Everything is accepted. However, I am relieved to *not* find that statement anywhere of note - of course discarding fanboys screaming about "Legends" when 95% of EU was garbage anyway - so, perhaps I was wrong in that or read something that had jumped the gun. I honestly hope this is the case, as much like the EU before 2014, a lot of the new stuff is written by people who seem to struggle opening pickle jars from the glass bottom.

Similar to the levels, that's how they initially presented the idea... but also like the levels it's not actually how it ever worked. The directors of the big projects have the ultimate say over anything the same way George did and none of them care that an RPG manual six years earlier mentioned that Luke Skywalker can't swim.

The biggest problem with the EU today is honestly that it doesn't have that variance... back in the day it ran from amazing and special to... Kevin J Anderson... and on the whole that was a great experience even when it was trash. Now it's all squarely in the middle, pretty much perfectly fine all around but rarely doing anything exceptional. I suspect that has a lot more to do with the need to work around the new movies than anything else, though, so hopefully we'll get some more exciting side stories after Episode IX.
 
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