Yeah given their recent track record of announcing stuff with great fanfare and then quietly shelving it, I wouldn't be surprised if only 1 of those 3 get made at most.

Also FWIW, I'm pretty sure the Rey spinoff is only one movie, it got falsely reported as a trilogy early on and that just got repeated ad infinitum. Still agree that zero people want to see that, probably a significant portion of the ones that might have been open to it are the Reylo types who now don't care since they can no longer explore the weird ****ing relationship between Rey and Kylo.

Was she even fired? From what I recall Disney just didn't hire her again for the next season.

The statement was pretty clear as to why she was "not currently employed by Lucasfilm". In 99% of cases, they end this bit with "we wish her well with her future endeavours" rather than throwing her under the bus.

it basically looks like it was written by a DEI intern, and I'd be surprised if they don't settle out of court rather than comply with a FOI request.

Don't they specifically use the word "nevertheless" to make sure the two parts of the statement are unrelated? Even though everybody knows they're not.

What makes you think that while she was unable to find a regular lawyer over the last two years there's still a good chance Disney is going to settle for any meaningful money? I wouldn't even be surprised if Disney was happy about the new publicity because that obviously fits well with their agenda.

I doubt she is wealthy enough to take on Disney with a non-zero risk of losing and having to pay their costs. On the other hand, it's chump change to Musk and obviously fits well with his agenda.

I try to make it a point to not to pre-judge anything based on a trailer or hype (or lack of hype), so I won't. But if I had to grade The Acolyte trailer itself, it's zero stars. And it's not because it lacks white guys.

At very least no one will accuse them of making a trailer that "spoils all the good stuff." Unless the good stuff is the rehashed fan fiction style dialogue and what a mystery bad guy throwing a lightsaber? Which will probably just be Darth So-and-So from some book or comic that gets the super-nerds jizzing and screaming on YouTube reaction vids.

There's no way this show is gonna be good. I still can't believe the garbage level of writing they have for every single project outside of Andor (which of course got the worst ratings, so Disney learns nothing from it).

None of the writers of The Acolyte have any previous connection to Star Wars, right? I've read in an interview with Leslye Headland, the show runner, that she even decided to hire one writer who never had watched Star Wars.

FWIW and no idea how much intel Stellan Skarsgård has, but he said that Andor S2 might actually start before the end of the year. No idea if that's even possible if Skeleton Crew doesn't get a release before November?

I feel like Andor is more like the least worst. It was okay but then go watch something like Shogun later and the gap is enormous.

And honestly I don't have a problem with Disney bringing people new to Star Wars in to handle new projects, in fact I think I'd prefer it. And while they're at it get whatever continuity committee they have to **** off and get out of the way. I can live with mistakes and continuity errors if the story works.

Yeah but it just goes to show that the bar doesn't even need to be that high, combine OK writing with the SW universe and it's pure gold for most fans. But they've so rarely even managed to reach that level.

I don't know, but I asked someone at work who generally likes the newer stuff who his favorite villain in the Disney+ show era was and he said Moff Gideon.

Granted, Darth Vader is always in the discussion for GOAT villain and a hard act to follow. But honestly there are more compelling villains in Happy Gilmore than Moff Gideon.

Lucas wants back in to the Star Wars universe... seeing as Disney f*cked the entire franchise up.

Who else is there though?

Nobody. At least not for people who only watch the live action shows. I assume that's the majority of casual Star Wars fans.

The main villain in Andor is the system. Thrawn in Ahsoka and Cad Bane in BoBF are irrelevant to anyone who doesn't watch the animated shows. Reva in Obi-Wan Kenobi is an antagonist but not really a villain. So it's Moff Gideon by default.

I suppose I at least made it through all of the prequels so this would likely be an improvement.

I mean, it's a "be careful what you wish for" situation. I remember that if Lucas had done the sequel trilogy, he said he would have leaned heavily into the microscopic world of the "Whills" that actually channel and control the force or whatever. If he were still in charge, we probably would have gotten three movies that were equally as head-scratchingly bad but just in a totally different way.

I can't see how Lucas vision would have been as bad as the Disney sequels, that really have no redeeming features. The one thing that probably separates the prequals from the sequels is the level of world building. Disney have based nearly all their streaming content on Clone War era stuff - because it has the most interesting characters and ideas, perhaps even moreso than the OT.

Compare that with the sequels, and what do we get? Super-weapons, Sand planets, Ice planets, Star Destroyers, AT-ATs, etc. In other words, absolutely no threads you can make further content out of. The only really interesting thread/character was Finn, and Disney would really have to get their chequebook out to get John Boyega back.

So, at least with George we might have got a few more interesting ideas, although I agree I'm not the least bit confident that the films would have been any better from a storytelling POV (albeit it would be difficult to make them worse).

Nope, I get it. For sure the movies would have been full of interesting ideas, even if we all walked out saying "Well that was ****ing weird, George really went off the deep end". Not much different than the prequels really, which I do appreciate the ambitiousness and coherence of (much more so now that I've seen the alternative) even if I don't think they're very entertaining movies and really never rewatch them.

as bad as the prequels were

they were fun to watch

I've rewatched them all quite a few times

there's good action, just enough of a coherent plot to let you go along for the ride

and the stupid stuff is mostly concentrated in the dialogue

they have a lot of warts for sure, by no means are they good films, but they are fun to watch - even if the plot that delivers that the race/battle/duel is a bit dumb and drags a bit, lucas really understood compelling action sequences

even if you don't like the films as a whole, each has lengthy sections which are quite enjoyable to watch even as a standalone youtube clip




i can't say that for any of the sequels whatsoever - even the parts which should be cool end up being stupid - they couldn't just have action for action's sake, there needed to be an underlying message behind it

i actually can't really think of any standout scenes, IIRC it wasn't even so much dedicated action sequences either but they were often cut scenes, there's some people inside trying to figure out their next moves, and then we'll cut to scenes of the battle happening outside - the battle isn't a battle there but instead a tool to drive urgency over a plot point we never cared about without or without that urgency

like exegol, they have this massive armada that's impossibly large (nevermind the economics of building and manning all those ships, entirely in secret, in the remote and fringe part of the galaxy...) and then we don't get the big battle but rather just a few cut scenes or snippets of it

like when they ran to that planet that had an old rebel base on it - everything about the battle was just stupid, they are in a fortified bunker and decide that they need more time to stall the impending troops so send out speeders in a sort - that seems reasonable, but... for some wild reason someone had this ridiculous image in their mind of a ski speeder (that's what they are literally called)

sure it's an interesting image, but then having a speeder ski doesn't make any sense if speeder technology doesn't require skis to begin with as they hover above the ground, perhaps if it were an ice planet and some vehicles got around on uniskis because they could save money without needing to build in hover engines as well... that could make sense
but they don't go that route, they clearly show how these speeders already hover as is, they then show there being turbulence and that lowering the ski would resolve that - which is just the stupidest thing in the world, the literal equivalent of a jet fighter dragging an anchor on the ground as it flies around

so that's why it's stupid, someone had a visual idea, and then they came up with whatever idiotic pathway required to justify it - the disney exec pats herself on the back, look at us everyone, we made ski speeders and ignore that nobody asked for ski speeders and the way they built them made it just a terrible thing to watch

and then don't forget that the entire reason why those ski speeders are out there are to slow down the incoming forces, they are out there purely to sacrifice themselves to give the people in the bunker more time to die

and then that stupid annoying girl is like omg the guy i like is going to get hurt so she crashes into him to prevent him from doing what they went out there to do in the first place - so they may as well have not even gone out there in the first place - but they wanted to have a scene about the annoying girl talking about love means more than anything so they do it, nevermind that the entire premise they built up for it was just stupid

then you get the luke skywalker thing where he dies simply because he projected himself as a hologram, again, for what, to give the others what, 3 minutes? again some exec saying "wouldn't it be cool if luke showed up, but then we reveal it was a trick, and best part is we can solve the problem we have of not having the first clue about what to do with his character and have him die when he does this"

and then on top of all that, ok they found a way out of the bunker, but that was just stupid, they chose to go in the bunker earlier, they could have easily left the bunker without using the secret path out - and taking the back door out of the bunker still left them with the same problem as before, they were on a planet surrounded by an enemy fleet...

just so dumb on so many levels

like that bombing run wasn't a scene to show cool action - but instead was done to give the worst and most annoying character in the history of star wars (that's not easy to do either) a dead sister and lame boring leader something to complain about - oh no we lost lives in the war

all the rey and kylo stuff was more about their personal relationship than their actual battles, can you imagine if when obiwan fought darth maul, they had them pacing around exchanging dialogue where obi wan talked about his feelings over seeing his master die?

battle vs praetorian guards was fine - basically the one action sequence that was decent

Just don't ever try to watch it again, because once you spot the sloppy mistakes you'll hate that too.

Solid post, you'd be right at home in the /r/SaltierThanCrait subreddit.

Say what you will about the sequels, but the visuals and sound design are phenomenal.