Star Wars Disney+ limited TV Series

[Seto Kaiba]

59 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Going to disagree.  Star Wars IS the movies.  The other stuff was a way to milk money out of the movies.  The president of the studio very much deserves the blame when the product does so poorly (at the end) that the studio has to stop producing movies completely for years.  Does she get the blame for any particular thing that went wrong, no, but any president of a company that had a product mishandled so badly gets the blame for who they kept in charge during that time frame.

That hasn't really been the case for a long time.  Star Wars is a merchandising empire that goes far, far beyond the movies.  That's what made George Lucas a billionaire.  If anything, it would be more accurate to say the movies and TV shows are a way to milk more money out of merchandising because they're launchpads for toys, for games, for novels, for comics, and all manner of other goods.

Does the studio's president deserve some of the blame when the work her subordinates do doesn't produce the intended result?  Yes, absolutely.  Most of it belongs to the project's creative team who dropped the ball.  But that's not what Star Wars's crybaby culture warriors are complaining about.  In their desperate delusion, they imagine her to be chiefly if not solely responsible for every single thing they don't like about the franchise (which is ridiculous) and conveniently overlook that those projects were still financially successful and that she presided over a number of extremely well-regarded Star Wars projects like The Mandalorian, Rogue One and Andor as well.

 

The hilarious irony is her anointed successor has a far better claim to being responsible for what ails Star Wars than she ever will.  😆

 

 

[Dynaman]

40 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That hasn't really been the case for a long time.  Star Wars is a merchandising empire that goes far, far beyond the movies. 

 But that's not what Star Wars's crybaby culture warriors are complaining about.  

The hilarious irony is her anointed successor has a far better claim to being responsible for what ails Star Wars than she ever will.  😆

Star Wars Merchandising is based off the movies being popular.  All of that will dry up if the movies don't start making big profits again.

I am NOT one of those culture war crybabies.  But the new trilogy characters are all completely forgettable.  That is a problem.

Last I checked Dave had nothing to do with the movies (except perhaps that Clone Wars animated mess that started the whole thing off).  The movies are where things went off the rails.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Star Wars Merchandising is based off the movies being popular.  All of that will dry up if the movies don't start making big profits again.

Eh... now, I'm pretty sure Star Wars did a pretty decent trade for a decade and a half with no new films coming out because they had comic books and novels and such building up the setting and doing their own thing.  In fact, isn't that that material got tossed one of the things the fans were upset about when the franchise changed hands?

 

2 hours ago, Dynaman said:

I am NOT one of those culture war crybabies.  But the new trilogy characters are all completely forgettable.  That is a problem.

Not enough of a problem to stop the movies from making serious bank. 🤔 They may be bland, uninteresting, forgettable, or even downright cringeworthy at times... but they still put buns in seats in epic numbers at least temporarily.

 

2 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Last I checked Dave had nothing to do with the movies (except perhaps that Clone Wars animated mess that started the whole thing off).  The movies are where things went off the rails.

Filoni's the man behind Star Wars's forgettable franchise slop on Disney+.  Almost every series there is based on his work from The Clone Wars directly or indirectly.  Genuine, utterly unambiguous flops like The Acolyte have his fingerprints all over them.

[Duke Togo]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Filoni's the man behind Star Wars's forgettable franchise slop on Disney+.  Almost every series there is based on his work from The Clone Wars directly or indirectly.  Genuine, utterly unambiguous flops like The Acolyte have his fingerprints all over them.

Have to agree here: Filoni is part of the problem. 

[TangledThorns]

My main issue with KK with her strong producer resume is that she put profit waaaay ahead of art. Filoni is a student of George Lucas and sees the art and source of Star Wars first and brought new amazing ideas. 

That being said, Star Wars needs moar ANDOR themed media and I hope that isn't lost. 

 

[Duke Togo]

10 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

My main issue with KK with her strong producer resume is that she put profit waaaay ahead of art. Filoni is a student of George Lucas and sees the art and source of Star Wars first and brought new amazing ideas. 

That being said, Star Wars needs moar ANDOR themed media and I hope that isn't lost. 

 

I'm sorry, but that's just not accurate. And Filoni being a student of Lucas is a mark against him, not for him. He has every bad tendency and instinct that Lucas had.

And there was so much chatter about Filoni disagreeing with the direction Andor was taking Star Wars that Gilroy had to defend him to stop the gossip.

[electric indigo]

The debate is on:

 

[Hikuro]

23 minutes ago, electric indigo said:

The debate is on:

 

It wasn't for everyone, but when it comes to people saying Dave Filoni is a genius or makes fantastic shows, I generally tend to remind them the awful mess that was Star Wars: Resistance, his third animated series considered by many to being one of the worst out there with cringe characters and poor storyline. 

[Roy Focker]

They're blinded by childhood nostalgia for the Clone Wars. See I never watched the entire series. I just saw a couple episodes each season. Usually the best and worst episodes. His fans only give him credit for the good ones. Average them out and he's just mediocre.

If you include his live action it is just more mediocre. 

[Big s]

I don’t necessarily think we need more like Andor, just less crap. Mando had a decent first two seasons, but that third was trash. Ashoka was crap and the Acolyte was also garbage. They just need better writers overall. I personally don’t care who’s in charge or whatever, but something big needs to change with the writing and how these shows are put together. The acting and effects are fine, but just like everything Disney, the writing is where things are failing. And they don’t even have to be the worlds greatest writers, just not the garbage writers they currently employ

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

My main issue with KK with her strong producer resume is that she put profit waaaay ahead of art.

How can I put this gently?

That's her doing her job.  One of a producer's main responsibilities is ensuring that the production is as profitable as possible for the investors and whatever network, studio, theater company, etc. is putting the production together.  

Hell, there's an entire classic comedy movie built around the premise of producers abusing their financial authority for personal gain: Mel Brooks's The Producers.  

 

4 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Filoni is a student of George Lucas and sees the art and source of Star Wars first and brought new amazing ideas. 

That's more an indictment of him than a defense of him, TBH.

Like Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas is an auteur weirdo who isn't a very good writer and functions best when he has a small army of people filtering and polishing his ideas for him.  As Harrison Ford once said to Lucas about his writing "You can type this sh*t but you sure as hell can't say it."  

Filoni is a promoted fanboy, and like many promoted fanboys working on franchise fiction he's blinded by his profound affection for the source material.  He has a very narrow view of what Star Wars is and what kind of stories Star Wars can tell, and that's reflected in his body of work.  He's an imitator not an innovator.  His creative "comfort zone" is what Star Wars was when he was a regular fan.  It's a sucker bet that his attachment to The Clone Wars has a lot to do with it being where he worked with his idol, George Lucas. 

That's why so much of his work feels like Expanded Universe franchise slop.  He's not interested in broadening Star Wars's horizons and exploring what new and different kinds of stories the setting could accommodate.  He wants the comfort of the familiar.  So what he writes are elaborate and unnecessary backstories for minor/secondary characters and factions (e.g. the Tales anthology) and various forms of The Continuing Adventures stories built around established characters and their descendants that are positively infested with fanservice, continuity nods, and tie-ins.  Everything has to revolve around the Jedi and/or tie back into the Skywalker Saga too, as though they were the center of the universe and literally the only thing happening in the galaxy.

 

 

6 minutes ago, Big s said:

I don’t necessarily think we need more like Andor, just less crap.

Not being crap is kind of what sets Andor apart in the first place.  It stands out by not being franchise slop.

Filoni builds Star Wars stories around tie-ins and references to other stories, pre-established characters, homages, and other forms of continuity porn.  The character writing in his stories is never better than mediocre because the story treats the characters more like props than people.  Their interactions are shallow and superficial most of the time because they're just filling time between action scenes.

Andor is character-first writing.  That's why it's so much better than the others.  It takes pains to ensure the audience gets to know the characters as people and get invested in the struggles they face.  Not just the protagonists, the antagonists too.  References to other Star Wars characters and titles are little more than set dressing because all attention is on the interactions between the characters.  You could take it out of the Star Wars universe and it would be just as compelling because its connection to the rest of Star Wars is not a main focus of its story.

 

6 minutes ago, Big s said:

Mando had a decent first two seasons, but that third was trash. Ashoka was crap and the Acolyte was also garbage.

This is a perfect example of the above.

The Mandalorian's third season was where continuity nods and whole-plot references to other Star Wars media fully overtook Din's story as the driving force of the plot.  The whole thing is an attempt to tie up a plot thread from The Clone Wars that Rebels had already picked up and run with.

Ahsoka was an unasked-for continuation of Rebels after that story had reached what was Very Definitely The End (Rebels itself being an almost-direct continuation of The Clone Wars) that only really exists to get two fan favorite characters back into play: Thrawn and Ezra.  Its story is extremely heavily dependent on Clone Wars tie-ins to the Mortis Gods arc and the Witches, both of which were kinda dumb even in their original context.

The Acolyte is a promoted fan creator's love letter to Expanded Universe media and has a plot structured almost entirely around callbacks to Prequel Trilogy and Clone Wars events.  Its writing suffered terribly because its characters and entire first season story were largely irrelevant to the story's actual goal of introducing the mentioned-but-never-seen Darth Plagueis and providing a backstory for the terminally underdeveloped Knights of Ren.  Its showrunner was so sure everyone was as invested in her fanservice as she was that it lost the audience almost right away and got cancelled before it did any more than hint at its goal.

 

6 minutes ago, Big s said:

They just need better writers overall. I personally don’t care who’s in charge or whatever, but something big needs to change with the writing and how these shows are put together. The acting and effects are fine, but just like everything Disney, the writing is where things are failing. And they don’t even have to be the worlds greatest writers, just not the garbage writers they currently employ

That's a problem with franchise fiction.  Once a franchise is popular enough, finding a creator who understands the assignment but can balance affection for the source material with the need to tell a compelling story that is accessible to everyone is REALLY FREAKING HARD.

Star Wars, as a cultural icon, is stuck with a lot of writers who adore Star Wars and thus are mostly writing Star Wars fan fiction and finding a capable writer who isn't a fan and will put in the effort to tell a compelling story is a big ask.

[Duke Togo]

Did anyone read Kennedy's interview with Deadline? It certainly sounds like she's leaving because Disney was stifling her (and Lucasfilm). There's a lot of great stuff in that interview.

[Hikuro]

Wasn't she stepping down but also taking on a producer role either within the company or the industry overall? 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Wasn't she stepping down but also taking on a producer role either within the company or the industry overall? 

Yeah, her interview says she's not retiring completely.  She's just getting out of the boardroom.  She intends to continue her career as a producer.

[Dynaman]

That has disaster written all over it.  It was bad enough when the Bob Iger DID quit (kinda)...

[Graham]

My take on Filoni is that he is good when it comes to animated series, much less so with live-action.

I really like Clone Wars, Rebels and Bad Batch.

Of the live action series, I only really enjoyed The Mandalorian season 1 and to a certain extent Skeleton Crew.

I know a lot of people love Andor, but I just couldn't finish it. I tried to get through season 1, 3 times, but kept falling asleep on I think episode 5 or 6. 😅 Haven't tried watching season 2 yet.

Dreck like The Acolyte, Ahsoka, Obi Wan and The Book of Boba Fett have done a great job of turning me off a franchise I've loved since the 70s.😓

 

[Big s]

23 minutes ago, Graham said:

I know a lot of people love Andor, but I just couldn't finish it. I tried to get through season 1, 3 times, but kept falling asleep on I think episode 5 or 6. 😅 Haven't tried watching season 2 yet.

 

It’s definitely an overrated show, but still likeable if you can get past the first couple terrible episodes in each season.

[azrael]

At least with Filoni in charge, there should be less chance of literal recycling of the old movies. I'll take wins where one can get them, even if its a minor win. 

[Duke Togo]

11 hours ago, azrael said:

At least with Filoni in charge, there should be less chance of literal recycling of the old movies. I'll take wins where one can get them, even if its a minor win. 

His whole thing is running the same characters out there over and over again. And apparently everyone crosses paths with everyone else, even though the story plays out over an entire galaxy. Same stupid nonsense we got from Lucas (oh look, Chewie and Yoda were friends during the Clone Wars!).

[azrael]

17 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

His whole thing is running the same characters out there over and over again. And apparently everyone crosses paths with everyone else, even though the story plays out over an entire galaxy. Same stupid nonsense we got from Lucas (oh look, Chewie and Yoda were friends during the Clone Wars!).

I didn't say he was perfect. But I will take that over Death Star Trench-run v3.0.  

[TangledThorns]

6 minutes ago, azrael said:

I didn't say he was perfect. But I will take that over Death Star Trench-run v3.0.  

 

Or how about Anakin actually built C-3P0? lol. 

Star Wars fans are waaaay too forgiving.  

 

 

 

 

[Big s]

I don’t think it really matters who’s in charge, if they’re just gonna make the same overall mistakes of the past  then it’s all doomed. If they’re learn from the failures, then that’s where things will change. Shows like Obi Wan, Ashoka, and the Acolyte need to be taken as lessons in what went wrong and how to focus on what can be better. If it’s a guy that helped run things into the ground, hopefully he can pick himself up and rebuild and repair and hopefully even improve from past experiences. Although personally I kinda doubt that will happen, I do not mind being totally wrong and would love to see good things finally pop up on this dead streaming service or even in the theaters

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, azrael said:

I didn't say he was perfect. But I will take that over Death Star Trench-run v3.0.  

Give it a couple projects... Filoni might not repeat whole plot references, but he'll repeat plot beats and characters to death and beyond.  

You'll be wishing for the Death Star Trench Run v3.0 around the time Rey is coming back from the dead for the fourth time with the help of the Mortis Gods to assist an aging Finn and Poe with the rescue the kidnapped granddaughter of Jar-Jar Binks (who is also force sensitive and a princess) from a resurgent Second Final Order under the command of Palpatine's forty-third heretofore unmentioned super-secret Sith apprentice assassin Darth Expy and his brutal gimp-suited enforcer Lzmp Stimpy.  It'll be absolutely critical that the audience has read Star Wars: The Rise of The Fall of the Newer Jedi Order Part XIVI: Biflo Scrungus goes to Quiznos so they'll know Lzmp Stimpy is really a clone of Rey's long lost cousin's uncle's neighbor's ex-boyfriend's former roommate's biological son by sperm donation, that his real name is Ichabod, and that he turned evil because his mom divorced and married an elderly and abusive Sebulba.

That's how Filoni writes 90% of the time.  The man is deathly afraid of original ideas and wants to build stories around existing characters and set pieces whenever possible because to develop original characters and ideas is too much like work.  He just wants to play with his action figures in peace.

That's why the next series up is ANOTHER attempt to shake Darth Maul down for gangland drama.  He's already been back to that well TWICE!  Once in The Clone Wars and again in Rebels.

Edited January 22 by Seto Kaiba

[Big s]

17 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Give it a couple projects... Filoni might not repeat whole plot references, but he'll repeat plot beats and characters to death and beyond.  

You'll be wishing for the Death Star Trench Run v3.0 around the time Rey is coming back from the dead for the fourth time with the help of the Mortis Gods to assist an aging Finn and Poe with the rescue the kidnapped granddaughter of Jar-Jar Binks (who is also force sensitive and a princess) from a resurgent Second Final Order under the command of Palpatine's forty-third heretofore unmentioned super-secret Sith apprentice assassin Darth Expy and his brutal gimp-suited enforcer Lzmp Stimpy.  It'll be absolutely critical that the audience has read Star Wars: The Rise of The Fall of the Newer Jedi Order Part XIVI: Biflo Scrungus goes to Quiznos so they'll know Lzmp Stimpy is really a clone of Rey's long lost cousin's uncle's neighbor's ex-boyfriend's former roommate's biological son by sperm donation, that his real name is Ichabod, and that he turned evil because his mom divorced and married an elderly and abusive Sebulba.

That's how Filoni writes 90% of the time.  The man is deathly afraid of original ideas and wants to build stories around existing characters and set pieces whenever possible because to develop original characters and ideas is too much like work.  He just wants to play with his action figures in peace.

That's why the next series up is ANOTHER attempt to shake Darth Maul down for gangland drama.  He's already been back to that well TWICE!  Once in The Clone Wars and again in Rebels.

I’m really totally done with back stories and side stories for existing characters. I’d love something new, but even then Star Wars has been a let down for the most part 

[Duke Togo]

22 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's why the next series up is ANOTHER attempt to shake Darth Maul down for gangland drama.  He's already been back to that well TWICE!  Once in The Clone Wars and again in Rebels.

As far as I am concerned, Darth Maul is dead. You don't survive getting cut in half and falling down a shaft. Bringing him back from the dead was a terrible idea. Makes less sense than Palpatine being resurrected through cloning.

Better yet, Maul never existed. All we know of the time before the Empire is what we hear in the OT.

[Seto Kaiba]

My standards are so low that I'll really take practically any Star Wars story that averts Filoni's tendency to have every established character meet, know, and have at least eight pages of backstory with every other.  

I'd like a Galaxy Far Far Away that feels a bit bigger than, say, Weehawken, New Jersey.

[Big s]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd like a Galaxy Far Far Away that feels a bit bigger than, say, Weehawken, New Jersey.

I’m assuming it’s small, can’t say I’ve ever paid attention to town in New Jersey 

[pengbuzz]

On 1/21/2026 at 8:14 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Give it a couple projects... Filoni might not repeat whole plot references, but he'll repeat plot beats and characters to death and beyond.  

You'll be wishing for the Death Star Trench Run v3.0 around the time Rey is coming back from the dead for the fourth time with the help of the Mortis Gods to assist an aging Finn and Poe with the rescue the kidnapped granddaughter of Jar-Jar Binks (who is also force sensitive and a princess) from a resurgent Second Final Order under the command of Palpatine's forty-third heretofore unmentioned super-secret Sith apprentice assassin Darth Expy and his brutal gimp-suited enforcer Lzmp Stimpy.  It'll be absolutely critical that the audience has read Star Wars: The Rise of The Fall of the Newer Jedi Order Part XIVI: Biflo Scrungus goes to Quiznos so they'll know Lzmp Stimpy is really a clone of Rey's long lost cousin's uncle's neighbor's ex-boyfriend's former roommate's biological son by sperm donation, that his real name is Ichabod, and that he turned evil because his mom divorced and married an elderly and abusive Sebulba.

That's how Filoni writes 90% of the time.  The man is deathly afraid of original ideas and wants to build stories around existing characters and set pieces whenever possible because to develop original characters and ideas is too much like work.  He just wants to play with his action figures in peace.

That's why the next series up is ANOTHER attempt to shake Darth Maul down for gangland drama.  He's already been back to that well TWICE!  Once in The Clone Wars and again in Rebels.

He seems to feel a pathological need to "connect his characters to legacy characters" in order to somehow boost their authenticity/ credibility. Like they aren't "Star Wars" officially unless a legacy character is somehow attached to them.