As far as Star Wars goes I still think they’ve done the best work with the franchise since the original trilogy though.
See that's a hot take but honestly, I agree. A lot of the dudes working at DIsney seem to get that SW is medieval fantasy in space with samurai/western shit for flavor. It's really anachronistic, pulpy, and weird (and deliberately so). Meanwhile back in the 90's and 2000's every guy working in the old EU seemed to be in a race to one up each other in a "how to make something unique more generic" contest.
That's why Mandalorian works so well. It is just no holds barred a single cowboy in space.
But like you said, lots of franchise worship. Ditch that and get down to just being gritty and real. No need for it. A big problem all new content has right now is that it's all made as a tribute and homage to Star Wars instead of just being Star Wars. If the franchise continues onwards I would hope to see that people figure this out and move on creatively from it... Assuming actually-creative people remain in positions of value of course. If corporate drones end up churning out any old shite they'll sit around a meeting table and repeatedly make a ragtag bunch of heroes with [insert hero archetype from first trilogy here]. Here's Han, here's Chewy, here's the Princess, etc etc.
The most relateable character that has been written since the first series is K-2SO. Although L3-37 the robot from Solo is a close second because she wanted a fucking revolution, they fucked her up by turning her into a fucking spaceship computer and enslaving her for eternity though. If I were the Falcon's computer after expressing her revolutionary energy I'd have killed the people responsible.
See that's a hot take but honestly, I agree. A lot of the dudes working at DIsney seem to get that SW is medieval fantasy in space with samurai/western shit for flavor. It's really anachronistic, pulpy, and weird (and deliberately so). Meanwhile back in the 90's and 2000's every guy working in the old EU seemed to be in a race to one up each other in a "how to make something unique more generic" contest.
That's why Mandalorian works so well. It is just no holds barred a single cowboy in space.
But like you said, lots of franchise worship. Ditch that and get down to just being gritty and real. No need for it. A big problem all new content has right now is that it's all made as a tribute and homage to Star Wars instead of just being Star Wars. If the franchise continues onwards I would hope to see that people figure this out and move on creatively from it... Assuming actually-creative people remain in positions of value of course. If corporate drones end up churning out any old shite they'll sit around a meeting table and repeatedly make a ragtag bunch of heroes with [insert hero archetype from first trilogy here]. Here's Han, here's Chewy, here's the Princess, etc etc.
The most relateable character that has been written since the first series is K-2SO. Although L3-37 the robot from Solo is a close second because she wanted a fucking revolution, they fucked her up by turning her into a fucking spaceship computer and enslaving her for eternity though. If I were the Falcon's computer after expressing her revolutionary energy I'd have killed the people responsible.