This seems like a really dumb thing to do honestly.
For Star Wars, it's just escalation of commitment at this point. They tried to replicate the economic success of the MCU by milking their IP as hard as they can, but they never cashed out as much as they had hoped to, and their solution to that is to just dump more and more money into the franchise. If you figure in the marketing costs (which nowadays usually run as high as the movie's actual budget), Solo was a massive flop, and the last two main movies did pretty meh as well. If you combine that with the billions they paid Lucas for the IP, it looks like a real shitty investment they made. I could see it working out for them in the long run if they focus on using shows like The Mandalorian to prop up Disney +, and the merch revenue is obviously nothing to scoff at, either, but more Star Wars movies in theaters seem like a giant money sink to me. Playing it safe and giving the people a normal Star Wars movie that hits all the beats you expect from a normal Star Wars movie and doesn't dare to focus on unexplored parts of the setting and the lore doesn't work any longer, it's too obviously boilerplate and everybody but the most fanatic fanbois is fed up with that.
The problem is, Star Wars is such a limited IP. it truly is a small universe when it's all said and done. The original trilogy was written entirely around Joseph Campbell's set up of The Hero's Journey. It does a great job with that. Lucas made the universe small by setting the prequels just 20 years before the first movie, and the prequels are absolutely god awful movies. It wasn't until 2015 we started seeing all these articles pushing "actually, the prequels are good!" before that, they were universally mocked for being so poorly written, and rightfully so. But the bottom line is, the entire Star Wars universe revolves around one dysfunctional family, a few of their friends and their drama. Take the Skywalkers and Solos out of it, and it's just generic Sci Fi with cool looking aesthetics here and there.
Star Wars fans love to scream about how the universe is supposedly so big, but all the good Expanded Universe stuff follows the same tropes - Jedi, lightsabers, tie fighters, super weapons, mysterious underling to Palpatine we never heard about, etc etc. I loved the first KOTOR game, but it follows all the tropes and themes of the original trilogy beat for beat, right down to having a Vader-esque villain with a mask and a big Death Star-like superweapon at the end. Maybe that's why KOTOR worked so well, it understood Star Wars and didn't try to be something it wasn't, like the god awful prequels.
I think this is going to backfire on them hard and cause serious burn out. One of the spinoff projects is literally out of another spinoff - the Andor character out of Rogue One. I completely forgot he existed cause those characters were so one dimensional and poorly written.
Star Wars really is just a small IP though at the end of the day. You can only do so much with lightsabers, tie fighters, x-wings, Jedi, Sith, smugglers, bounty hunters, Empire and Rebels.
They could do more with Star Wars, but that would require them to actually create something different that wasn't related to the originals, and creativity ain't exactly their forte
Love how capitalism can allow these multimedia conglomerates to accumulate billions of dollars and a huge workforce but they still can't manage to shit out an original idea with all those resources because it all has to be focus grouped I guess
KOTOR 2 will always be my favorite star wars game for the villain's motivation being "it's kinda fucked up that we keep having massive wars with millions dead every time a dozen Jedi have an argument, what if we just killed the Force?"
Then she dies and Disney makes a hundred movies
For Star Wars, it's just escalation of commitment at this point. They tried to replicate the economic success of the MCU by milking their IP as hard as they can, but they never cashed out as much as they had hoped to, and their solution to that is to just dump more and more money into the franchise. If you figure in the marketing costs (which nowadays usually run as high as the movie's actual budget), Solo was a massive flop, and the last two main movies did pretty meh as well. If you combine that with the billions they paid Lucas for the IP, it looks like a real shitty investment they made. I could see it working out for them in the long run if they focus on using shows like The Mandalorian to prop up Disney +, and the merch revenue is obviously nothing to scoff at, either, but more Star Wars movies in theaters seem like a giant money sink to me. Playing it safe and giving the people a normal Star Wars movie that hits all the beats you expect from a normal Star Wars movie and doesn't dare to focus on unexplored parts of the setting and the lore doesn't work any longer, it's too obviously boilerplate and everybody but the most fanatic fanbois is fed up with that.
The problem is, Star Wars is such a limited IP. it truly is a small universe when it's all said and done. The original trilogy was written entirely around Joseph Campbell's set up of The Hero's Journey. It does a great job with that. Lucas made the universe small by setting the prequels just 20 years before the first movie, and the prequels are absolutely god awful movies. It wasn't until 2015 we started seeing all these articles pushing "actually, the prequels are good!" before that, they were universally mocked for being so poorly written, and rightfully so. But the bottom line is, the entire Star Wars universe revolves around one dysfunctional family, a few of their friends and their drama. Take the Skywalkers and Solos out of it, and it's just generic Sci Fi with cool looking aesthetics here and there.
Star Wars fans love to scream about how the universe is supposedly so big, but all the good Expanded Universe stuff follows the same tropes - Jedi, lightsabers, tie fighters, super weapons, mysterious underling to Palpatine we never heard about, etc etc. I loved the first KOTOR game, but it follows all the tropes and themes of the original trilogy beat for beat, right down to having a Vader-esque villain with a mask and a big Death Star-like superweapon at the end. Maybe that's why KOTOR worked so well, it understood Star Wars and didn't try to be something it wasn't, like the god awful prequels.
I think this is going to backfire on them hard and cause serious burn out. One of the spinoff projects is literally out of another spinoff - the Andor character out of Rogue One. I completely forgot he existed cause those characters were so one dimensional and poorly written.
Star Wars really is just a small IP though at the end of the day. You can only do so much with lightsabers, tie fighters, x-wings, Jedi, Sith, smugglers, bounty hunters, Empire and Rebels.
They could do more with Star Wars, but that would require them to actually create something different that wasn't related to the originals, and creativity ain't exactly their forte
Love how capitalism can allow these multimedia conglomerates to accumulate billions of dollars and a huge workforce but they still can't manage to shit out an original idea with all those resources because it all has to be focus grouped I guess
KOTOR 2 will always be my favorite star wars game for the villain's motivation being "it's kinda fucked up that we keep having massive wars with millions dead every time a dozen Jedi have an argument, what if we just killed the Force?"
Then she dies and Disney makes a hundred movies
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