So with the official flop of Solo: a Star Wars Story, the movie no one really wanted, I thought it was time to talk about my thoughts on Star Wars currently. I used to be a huge Star Wars fan, I read all the books, watched all the movies ( not as much of the prequels but usually 3-6), and talked about it constantly, much to the annoyance of my friends and family. When Disney bought the writes to Star Wars I was incredibly hopeful. I thought they could open up the Star Wars universe and make movies about all of the great stories that had been told in the EU and eventually branch off into some new ideas, like they did for Marvel. Unfortunately that was not to be.
The first red flag for me was throwing out the EU. They should have reviewed it and used the best ideas to build a new timeline post ROTJ. By simply throwing it all out they alienated a lot of people and began the Grand Canyon sized split in the Star Wars fanbase. Then they got J.J Abrams to direct the first movie, and while he's not a bad director I didn't really see his style of movie making meshing with Star Wars. Then they announced the new trilogy would be continuing the Skywalker story and the original cast was coming back, that really made my heart sink. The main problem with the Star Wars universe is that in the official canon it is much too small. For a galaxy far, far, away the movies seem to focus on these same characters much too much. Do you really expect us to believe a member of the Skywalker family is involved in everything meaningful in an entire, supposedly rich galaxy? We need new stories, and we need to put some of the great EU stories to film. Darth Bane, The Thrawn Trilogy, even the Corellian War saga which chronicles the fall of Han Solo's son much better than anything in the Disney trilogy. So many wasted opportunities, it almost makes me sick.
Then they announced the anthology movies a few months before the Force Awakens and it gave me a little hope, finally a chance for some unrelated stories to be told. Then they said it would be about the Death Star (ffs). We need to do something outside of the context of the original story. It doesn't even have to be imagined by Disney, plenty of material exists that the main fanbase has never read and the hardcore fans would love to see made into a movie. With the Last Jedi killing the little enthusiasm I had left and the Han Solo movie putting the final nail in the coffin I have honestly just given up on Star Wars. The Star Wars Disney canon has all the depth of a puddle and I just can't get into it anymore. I don't even want to see Episode 9 with Jar Jar Abrams at the helm yet again. Unlike many critics of the Kathleen Kennedy era of Star Wars ( though her approach does the company no favors), I don't think it's all her fault, I think the overall direction and vision of the company is wrong and she just foolishly signing off on all of it. I don't think removing her will solve all of the problems with Star Wars but it couldn't hurt, being ignorant is really no better than being malicious. Unless a major change of vision takes place at Lucasfilm I just can't bring myself to care about Star Wars anymore. To make it clear, I've spent a lot of money on Star Wars, I mean a lot, if Lucasfilm drives enough of the mega fans off these movies the franchise will crash and burn, which I think has been proven by Star Wars toys killing Toys-R-Us and The Han Solo movie not even making a profit.
I never imagined Star Wars would be at this point, but here we are. Squandering one of the greatest entertainment juggernauts of all time in pointless mediocrity, just stop Disney, you're breaking my heart.