This article contains spoilers for some of the Star Wars movies. If you have not seen them then turn away.
Welcome to part 2 of “How Disney Ruined Star Wars.” So in the last part, we covered how Disney ruined Star Wars through their movies and in this part we will explore the other ways how Disney harmed the massive Star Wars franchise.
A very large problem with the new Disney controlled Star Wars is the specialty. Let’s look back at the dates of the past Star Wars films. A New Hope 1977, Empire Strikes Back 1980, Return of the Jedi 1983, Phantom Menace 1999, Attack of the Clones 2002, and Revenge of the Sith 2005. In each trilogy, there would be a three-year gap between each film but in the new movies, there would be just a two-year gap with a branch film in between each main saga movie. Having such a short gap with a film coming out each year got rid of the excitement building up for so long in between each one and fans excitedly awaiting the next film.
The next issue was actually more film-related. What I’m talking about is the inconsistencies between each film. In Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, he spent most of the film completely obliterating plot lines and story threads J.J. Abrams created in his film The Force Awakens. Then Disney, seeing how bad a filmed helmed by Rian Johson did, brought back the first director, J.J. Abrams. So what does he do with his second foray into the Star Wars galaxy? Completely re-write and destroy everything Rian Johson built in his film. Episode IX is a good sequel to Episode VII but not to Episode VIII and episode VIII would be a good stand-alone film.
Next, we got onto the issue of merchandising. In the 70s and 80s, not many Star Wars toys would come out each year so it would be a big deal when they did. Ever since Disney, the merchandising of Star Wars has gone way up mostly due to their contracts with LEGO and Hasbro. As of right now, a new Star Wars toy comes out every day and it’s no big deal. Having more toys isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it certainly gets rid of the excitement.
Another very issue with Star Wars is actually directly Disney’s fault. I am of course talking about the sacrifice of story for politic’s sake. The biggest example of this took place in Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi. The biggest example of this was the Canto Bight sequence in the second act. So apparently the head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, thought it was a good idea to spend half an hour of the already long film on a political statement of a planet. To fit it into the story Rian Johnson said that they had to find a rich gambler on this planet to help them stop Supreme Leader Snoke and The First Order. What’s so political about that? Well, it turns out that this city is full of unjust rich weapon suppliers who sell blasters and ammunition to the First Order. This is Disney’s way of sort of saying that being rich is bad no matter how righteous or in this case immoral your cause is. Lastly is the fact that Disney doesn’t care about the quality as much as they care about them making money. Disney is a mega monopoly and they can’t quite help themselves but care more about the money each movie makes rather than put all their effort into rewarding people who pay them to see the movie by crafting a good plot. Bob Iger paid a full $4,500,000,000 to buy Lucasfilm so they only just made their money back after releasing 3 Star Wars films those being Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Last Jedi. So when they released Solo: A Star Wars Story (which completely bombed) they had to press even harder to make back the money they lost from the film. So when Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker came out they put plenty of pressure on director J.J. Abrams to make sure that his film made at least $400,000,000 dollars to be sure Disney more than made back what they paid. And they sure did as it became the 46th movie to make over a billion dollars. As pointed out in part 1 the movie was simply terrible but Disney does not care as long as it makes them money. So hopefully Disney does what’s best and take a break from making main saga films
