Can Disney's Star Wars Franchise succeed?

[Zaktar]

I mean, he didn't check his pulse.

He crouched over him, and palmed his forehead.

I always thought, even when I was a kid, that he was doing some magic shit to him.

Fair enough, to each their own. I always thought he was just checking on Luke. Given that we never see this come up again until this most recent film, I find the healing interpretation hard to swallow, but maybe I just need time to digest it.

Edit: I was curious so I found this clip. First he checks Luke's wrist (though his clothes, but hey, this is an actor), he puts his hand on Luke's head and checks his skull, then he has a conversation with Artoo, he puts his hand on Luke's shoulder, then Luke groggily wakes up. Don't see what you see.

[eschatological]

Fair enough, to each their own. I always thought he was just checking on Luke. Given that we never see this come up again until this most recent film, I find the healing interpretation hard to swallow, but maybe I just need time to digest it.

Edit: I was curious so I found this clip. First he checks Luke's wrist (though his clothes, but hey, this is an actor), he puts his hand on Luke's head and checks his skull, then he has a conversation with Artoo, he puts his hand on Luke's shoulder, then Luke groggily wakes up. Don't see what you see.

It didn't come across as healing to me, when I was a kid. It reminded me more of like a hypnotist, snapping his fingers to wake a person out of a trance. Like some transfer of psychic energy. IDK, it's hard to explain, but it seemed like he was waking him up psychically.

[exochaft]

Fair enough, to each their own. I always thought he was just checking on Luke. Given that we never see this come up again until this most recent film, I find the healing interpretation hard to swallow, but maybe I just need time to digest it.

Edit: I was curious so I found this clip. First he checks Luke's wrist (though his clothes, but hey, this is an actor), he puts his hand on Luke's head and checks his skull, then he has a conversation with Artoo, he puts his hand on Luke's shoulder, then Luke groggily wakes up. Don't see what you see.

From what I've always thought was occurring, he's just checking a pulse and checking to see if he's fevered. I mean Luke is passed out in the middle of a desert planet during the day, makes sense that you'd check for a pulse and fever for varying medical reasons. At most, I could persuade myself that he's just using Jedi powers to check his mental state, and having contact makes it easier to do. Force healing? Not a chance in the way the scene is shown. If the Force was actually used there in a healing capacity, it would've likely shown up at Obi-wan's home during that conversation when Luke first learns of the Force (based upon the structure of the movie and the other exposition moments).

Anyways, more on topic: it completely depends who is in charge and if they have a plan. If they keep the same team who completely mismanaged the new trilogy on so many levels, you're going to have issues maintaining and expanding your Star Wars base. Favreau has a proven record for making content that's entertaining to a broad audience, as is shown with the popularity of The Mandalorian if we want a Star Wars example and the MCU.

[Fkiolaris]

When debating the "success" of a Star Wars movie or not, you have to take into account the sales of merchandise, too. I mean you have people still buying shite related to the original trilogy, whether in digital or physical form, but how many people do so with the prequels or the Disney films? And I am willing to bet my salary that when Disney bought Star Wars they also had that kind of revenue in mind, not just what they make at the cinema.

Point being, people will go and watch the films regardless because they are visually spectacular films with space battles, laser blasters and space wizards- but how many people leave the cinema and go "I need to buy more products related to this because I freakin love it"? For a comparison just between Disney products, check (if anyone can find the figures) the sales between any of the "cute" creatures introduced in the sequel trilogy versus the sales for baby Yoda products. For the first group, I imagine the buyers are mostly parents for their kids, for the second it's probably parents for the kids but also adults just for them. Disney are not stupid, they have probably seen already a number of trends regarding their Star Wars income and I believe there will be changes going into the future.

[exochaft]

I wouldn't call any film that makes a billion+ worldwide (2 billion in the case of TFA) a "flop" but I also wouldn't say the new trilogy performed "significantly better". Not with a budget twice that of 1-3. (The numbers you linked to are US domestic, just for clarification)

Sure, Eps 9 is still out, we don't know where it will end. We can only look at trends and compare how the other films did at the same time (and by that Eps 9 will gross less than Eps 8) - anyways...that is Disney's problem. Not mine. I don't get to profit (or get punished) if the films do or don't perform as expected.

Yes, as I said, my Star Wars is Eps 4-6, but even and especially here we get the same drop off. ANH gaining 1.6 billion (adjusted for inflation) and TEsb made "only" 876 million. RotJ made 839 million. So any of the sequel trilogies was actually more stable

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the OT numbers don't even touch how often and how many people actually saw the movie in theaters. If you weren't around at the time you likely don't know that the OT completely changed how many movie theaters operated because of its popularity. There were many establishments at the time where you buy tickets to go see ANH, but you could also go see other movies afterwards using the same ticket. However, what happenedwas that people were staying to watch ANH 2-3 times in a row, which eventually caused movie theaters to trend towards what we have today: the near-universal hard rule of 1 ticket = 1 movie showing only. It's not the only thing that's changed with theaters since then, but Star Wars was the primary driver of that multi-showing/double-feature perk all but disappearing from theaters.

Anyways, the real money comes with merchandising, another thing that the OT revolutionized. Let's grossly overestimate and say each film in this new trilogy made $2bil in ticket sales net profit, so $6bil total. Merchandising alone prior to these films related to Star Wars? Over $250bil on the conservative side of things, the OT/prequels by themselves roughly being single digit percentage of the previous total profit gains of the first 6 films (new trilogy's ticket sales are roughly 2-3% of this amount in comparison). Understanding how small the ticket sales are compared to the money a film can make via merchandising, it's very clear that the main driver of "success" in Disney's mind is how much they can profit off merchandising new trilogy Star Wars stuff. However, if we are to believe news stories and Disney themselves, they're really struggling in the merchandising department compared to their expectations. Sure, there are numerous external factors that come into play, but the quality of the new trilogy itself is still the biggest driver of this market as their expectations account for most external factors already (the number-crunchers get paid the big bucks for a reason).

I'll just roughly repeat what I said in my previous post: they need to avoid doing what they did with this new trilogy if they want the Star Wars franchise to be successful to levels of the pre-Disney era. If they stick to things like The Mandalorian, Rebels, etc., I think consumers and Disney will both agree the franchise is successful (even if their metrics are completely different).

[ravenmoon]

@det There were more new force powers to revealed in this wave of the franchise, especially in the last moview right? The ability to transfer objects between two people .. I wonder if this requires the special bond that Emperor Palpatine mentions or force users who any force user can or force users that are close/develop a bond.

Also we see the force spirits able to do things, or is that just unique to Luke's force spirit? Do living Jedi have the ability to summon force spirits they know, or that's entirely up to the force spirit to come. And if force spirits can do things, this has implications.

One of my biggest criticisms of the earlier new movies is how lack lustre force action seemed to be, however the Luke projection was incredible in Epsiode 8, but we see it much strongly in episode 9.

Also force telepathic communication across huge distances has been there since the original, but rarely given definition or developed.


Finally, if they drew healing from the games, I wonder what other things they will draw from the games (assuming healing came from the games ofc)

[Knaar]

When i think about the Disney version of Star Wars is that they are good movie, they do generate a good chunk of money. Will we still talk about those movies in 20+ years like we're doing with the original starwars? Not a chance. If we still talk about them in 5 years it will be a miracle.

[tromage2]

When i think about the Disney version of Star Wars is that they are good movie, they do generate a good chunk of money.

So did transformers, but they broke the franchise down in the progress toward a crapfest.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If we still talk about them in 5 years it will be a miracle.

There will be some talk about them for a while, especially once the contracts expire and the exposes start coming out with "what went wrong BTS" etc..

[ravenmoon]

Yeah, more powers. At some point they pretty much stopped working for me - even if people can rationalise them. I also didn't read any books or watched any of the cartoons outside the main movies and I pretty much only played the Dark Forces and Mysteries of the Sith. Well..that was the time when Mara Jade was to be Luke's Wife and the mother to Ben Skywalker - but apparently all this was rendered "non-canon" in 2014 or so. Another nail in the coffin for me...just like bringing Palpatine back (in whatever form people might explain he survived that fall and the explosion of the Deathstar). Made the end of Eps 6 cheap. So again, the Star Wars Saga stops there for me. Just like the Terminator Saga stops with T2 and Alien was complete with Aliens. Hell...it was complete as its own film.

I think a lot of the criticism to the new tirlogy is not as much the actors and the plot as much as the premise and setting..

nullifying the eu canon completley
then doing things that just make episode 1-6 seem pointless
then effectively just remaking 4-6 as to say, now this is ours, here is our new and improved version - star wars is now diverse and in the modern era (which it never left andquite comfrotably achieved)


if 7-9 was actually episode 4-6 then it would have been a great set of movies because we'd never seen that aspect. (with minor adjustemnts ofc)

At least this is my view.

[ravenmoon]

Especially Adam Driver gets good critique for his acting and Oscar Isaak and John Boyega (sp) are also obviously good actors with great chemistry. I am just not a fan what they did with their characters. As for the plot...maybe I am reading too much into it, but I wonder if there ever was an overarching plan for the 3 films. There is so much where it seems that Rian Johnson just trashed what JJ Abrams build up and then Abrams had to come back in and solve that mess.

Exactly, me too. it's not the individuals or their acting, it's their way they wrote their characters, their scripting is fine too, they just managed to not make them exciting or enjoyable, even though I did warm up to the characters at last in the last movie around the midway p9oint upwards.

Was Rian Johnson the one that decided to kill Luke off? I wonder who decided to base the new movies on the original 3? I can see how that might have seemed the safe option, but despite the box office hit (which though huge I think was disappoiinting for STar Wars, it iddn't match the biggest hitters where it was expected to destroy them. ), they just didn't pull it off (and it's got nothing to do with the lead character being female despite what some would say) It looks like every successive move just did something even more grevious - despite them all having good things about them.

[Cosmic Janitor]

As for the plot...maybe I am reading too much into it, but I wonder if there ever was an overarching plan for the 3 films. There is so much where it seems that Rian Johnson just trashed what JJ Abrams build up and then Abrams had to come back in and solve that mess.

There wasn't. While some of the higher ups claimed it to be, Palpatine actor Ian McDiarmid has been quoted in interviews to have been completely surprised that he was to give another rendition of the character shortly after planning began on the last movie. If they had planned this mess from the beginning then they surely would have asked him before. Also, unless someone suffers from severe cognitive disabilities, the back and forth between directors of 8 and 9 are very apparent with the way they react to the things the previous director wrote. These crass changes in tone and direction do not happen if there is an overarching vision.

[Logwyn]

Dude that is a serious reimagining of the scene. He just checks on Luke, no one thought it was healing until they added that to the lore, and we have no reason to think it was the intention when it was filmed.

What is the long touching of his head for 4-5 seconds?
Vader chokes someone. If the light side and the dark side are opposites of each other how it is not logical that the opposite power exists on the light side aka healing.

Even Lucas himself stated that the force was like Yin and Yang. So why would it be surprising that someone that could manipulate the force could restore balance in someone else and heal them. I think the force healing is reconting crowd is grasping for straws.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

People can like mediocre stuff. I enjoy the franchise but I don't think it's the greatest ever.

That's certainly true, I have my share of guilty pleasures. I must have misread your comment though, it seemed to me as you were leaning more towards disinterested than 'I like this but it's not the best.'

[Zaktar]

That's certainly true, I have my share of guilty pleasures. I must have misread your comment though, it seemed to me as you were leaning more towards disinterested than 'I like this but it's not the best.'

This probably describes where I sit and why I'd guess the franchise still has a lot of life. Even the worst Star Wars stuff still wrings a little enjoyment out of my withered heart, and the best stuff is a genuine pleasure to experience. Is it ever the pinnacle of art? No, of course not.

- - - Updated - - -

What is the long touching of his head for 4-5 seconds?
Vader chokes someone. If the light side and the dark side are opposites of each other how it is not logical that the opposite power exists on the light side aka healing.

Even Lucas himself stated that the force was like Yin and Yang. So why would it be surprising that someone that could manipulate the force could restore balance in someone else and heal them. I think the force healing is reconting crowd is grasping for straws.

Force choke would be a kind of telekinesis, maybe if he stopped people's hearts or something that would be a balance for healing?

As for the scene, he touches Luke's head for like a second, then talks to Artoo before Luke wakes up. It's not really how healing is presented, that is more instantaneous.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

This probably describes where I sit and why I'd guess the franchise still has a lot of life. Even the worst Star Wars stuff still wrings a little enjoyment out of my withered heart, and the best stuff is a genuine pleasure to experience. Is it ever the pinnacle of art? No, of course not.

Episode III is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I find I & II increasingly unwatchable. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety. Of the new ones I find VII & IX 'entertaining enough'. I didn't hate VIII as much as a lot of people seem to, but it is the only one of the 'main' series I have not seen more than once, for what that's worth. I just have no interest in watching it again.

[Kokolums]

Some people say JJ ABrams is a great director but terrible writer, and he should direct someone else's script. I wonder if JJ Abrams actually should have remade episodes 1,2, & 3 instead of writing his own stuff. Use the scripts Lucas wrote and make something good outta them.