Star Wars - Kathleen's Firehose of Fun! What is going on at Lucasfilm???

it's almost impossible to discuss the current state of star wars these days analytically in a video because by the time you have your thoughts down on a particular development five more crazy things have happened in less than three days and those new dominoes have all collided with the ones you were already aware of changing the game but you can't wait for conditions to be perfect so maximum effort in december of 2020 lucasfilm president kathleen kennedy announced so many new projects on the schedule for star wars it was a virtual fire hose and anyone with a brain couldn't help but wonder what fire they were attempting to put out within this one announcement was an obi-wan tv series that had formerly been a film before the disaster that was solo a star wars story leading lucasfilm to cancel all standalone movies at that point what a cassian andor series orlando series a third season of the mandalorian an ahsoka series a series called rangers of the new republic a high republic based series called the acolyte two animated series one about the droids and one about a group of clones from the prequel era called the bad batch and finally an original trilogy era starfighter pilot film directed by patty jenkins called rogue squadron and that's not even taking into account ryan johnson's announced star wars trilogy that's still in development hell and the announced untitled taikiawaititi star wars film they claim is coming there's too many of them that would have been more than enough to wrap one's arms around but those of us who'd become very skeptical of the pattern of modern lucasfilm were taking all of these announcements with a truckload of salt what's this loaded with rock salt this is the same company that has already established an almost clockwork reliability in canning announced projects and creative teams they sidelined the rogue one director during the reshoot process they ignored the need to reshoot large sections of the last jedi in the wake of carrie fisher's untimely death they fired the director of episode 9 as a result of that decision on the last jedi they fired the directors of solo after principal photography was nearly completed they hired an unproven director for the boba fett movie then fired that director in the wake of the fantastic four disaster and then cancelled the project altogether they hired the game of thrones guys for an entire star wars trilogy then fired them after they revealed that a texas sci-fi convention they truly didn't know how to make films and with all those firings and cancellations on their resume lucasfilm's sheer volume of announcements this time around are even more eyebrow raising because a good number of them come from previously cancelled ideas you see one of disney lucasfilm's first moves in acquiring star wars in 2012 was to cancel everything star wars that was already in motion they nullified the expanded universe series of books and comics they cancelled the successful clone wars animated series in mid-stream they even shuttered lucasarts as a division wholesale and sold the video game rights for star wars to ea where it has been an almost total dumpster fire ever since well this is just plain dumb and stupid what made lucasfilm and star wars special was how it was all generated in-house with a small group of independent creators once the company was absorbed into a monster corporation all of that unique creative autonomy that had kept star wars rarefied and immensely successful was the first part of the lucasfilm culture that ended up on the chopping block you're kidding that's what i said i'll be the first to admit i was never a huge fan of the direction taken by the star wars films in the prequel era and that subsequently made me uninterested in the clone wars show for quite a while but i'll never say the endeavor wasn't successful financially the clone wars tv show and merchandise knocked it out of the park creating an almost new age of star wars success if the original trilogy was the golden age of star wars and the 1990s was the silver age of the expanded universe and lucas arts video games then it is undeniable that the 2000s were the bronze age of the prequel era lucasfilm under disney cancelled all of that right at the starting line of their ownership of the franchise they cancelled the games they cancelled the expanded universe and they cancelled the prequel era and you can yell and scream all day that the expanded universe wasn't canon when it comes to lucasfilm under kennedy cancelling the expanded universe the issue has nothing to do with canon it has to do with what was making money you sell tickets of course and it doesn't pay well that's impossible the opera has never paid well then we must give the wrong kind of shows knights of the old republic and all that darth revan stuff was making a lot of money for lucasfilm similarly ahsoka and the clones were making a lot of money for lucasfilm one was officially canon and one was not disney had this delusional idea that they would erase the game board and then decree that every game comic and book they would make in the star wars world from here on out would be part of the official canon of the saga do you see how stupid a move that is there was a very shrewd reason george lucas left the expanded universe up in the air in terms of it being canonical to the star wars mythology because there are so many different artists and writers and stories coming into this effort that means by any law of averages there are going to be stories that absolutely suck so lucasfilm calling the expanded universe a harmless buffet that has no bearing on the main course meal that were the star wars films allowed fans to breathe easier when a comic or book completely sucked we take what we want and leave the rest just like your salad bar keeping the expanded universe optional would also prove to mitigate some of the damage to the cannon when movie characters or plot ideas didn't quite work with the audience you saved my again what's this because at least the expanded universe couldn't be attached to any creative failures in the canonical films everything was compartmentalized in that respect lucas was smart enough to know what needed to matter and what shouldn't matter even if he didn't always succeed at what mattered two words mr president plausible deniability and when the expanded universe kicked off with timothy zahn's thrawn trilogy of books in 1991 lucas didn't explicitly invalidate past licensed star wars stories in fact the han solo and lando calrissian book trilogies written in the 1970s and 80s were republished and while the marvel comics and the novel splinter of the mind's eye weren't always present on an expanded universe timeline they were still an option for fans of those stories and yeah i know that disney has created a legends marquee to publish most of those stories under so technically they're keeping them available but let's be honest with ourselves publicly declaring these stories as invalid and non-canon just devalues them in the eyes of orthodox fans as well as new fans coming into star wars it's a tactic to justify deleting them from the catalog when their sails inevitably dwindle to a trickle rigs this is very thin and anorexic yet upon inspection this barrage of new announcements from disney lucasfilm leans heavily on previously deleted ideas the obi-wan series is a return to prequel era nostalgia by bringing you and mcgregor back for another turn despite lucasfilm having tried to get away from the prequels right from the off in 2012. the droids project is a direct descendant of the droid's animated series and the dark horse expanded universe comics of the same title showcasing the adventures of r2d2 and c-3po bad batch and ahsoka are both continuations of characters created for the now cancelled clone wars tv series which disney relaunched for a final season in february of 2020. the announcement of those final episodes felt like a begrudging white flag being waved by disney lucasfilm as it came on the heels of the conclusion of star wars rebels and the unpopular animated follow-up star wars resistance both of which were disney lucasfilm conceived projects then we have lando a streaming series spin-off of the film solo coincidentally a movie that many said should have been focused on lando all along there's also andorr a series centered on one of the heroes from rogue one literally a deleted hero dude man died in a nuclear fireball you don't get more deleted than that rangers of the new republic was supposed to be a spin-off from the mandalorian said to be focused on the other peripheral characters from the show in their own adventures rogue squadron is a reimagined revival of a very popular expanded universe series of books comics and lucasarts video games and finally there's the acolyte the first live-action project set in the new high republic timeline announced by disney lucasfilm which itself is a retreading of the entire concept behind the old republic era of the expanded universe that began with the tales of the jedi comics range from dark horse in the 1990s the old republic era would ultimately result in the massive success of the knights of the old republic video games from lucasarts and create an expanded universe rock star out of darth revan now if you've been paying attention to all of this star wars hoopla over the past five years you can see why a deluge of content announcements doesn't necessarily bring good tidings fire hoses are made for two things putting out fires and crowd control first let's deal with the fire if you're wondering where the fire is look no further than the current state of the star wars film productions there's a sequel trilogy that lost more and more money with each installment and two standalone movies both rife with production problems and both ending up a mixed bag critically to date rogue one is more often cited as the best star wars feature film disney has managed over any of their other star wars movies it's high the franchise that disney purchased with the goal of capturing the boys entertainment market immediately turned itself into another disney princess factory right at the starting line which makes little sense given how locked up they already had the girls entertainment market in other parts of their company you sit on a throne of lies and then lucasfilm's creative brain trust proceeded to develop a trilogy of star wars snuff films to kill off the three original heroes there is a childish way for a grown man to make a living each hero was killed in each successive film gutting many in the fan base of any sense of fun joy or hope the original trilogy is known for delivering and this is despite the fact that the first installment of the sequel trilogy was designed with the intent to recapture that original sense of fun you disgust me how can you live with yourself and at the tail end of this run solo flops and the rise of skywalker underperforms to the tune of a mere half of the force awakens box office while merchandising profits for star wars also plummet i personally wouldn't care to be the head of a business that kept losing money so yeah kennedy's legacy as the leader of lucasfilm and the very products she shepherded are very much on fire and that fire needed to be put out fast i'm sick and tired of these stupid things that haven't happened to me the audience was also getting angry in the wake of luke skywalker's mistreatment and death in the last jedi the calls for both kennedy's and ryan johnson's ouster from lucasfilm had grown louder making rey a palpatine only made things worse you are a palpatine ray skywalker what are you kidding me but it was a little series on disney plus that fell outside kennedy's direct creative purview that staved off the barbarians at the gate the mandalorian what i like to call that boba fett movie that never happened reskinned to be legally distinct from the original trilogy characters for royalty purposes was a runaway hit with the entire star wars fan base and two of the most successful things about it were an infant yoda creature named grosgu and a mercenary named cara dune but we'll get back to that in a second the mandalorian launched about a year after bob iger took personal responsibility for the failure of solo at the box office iger said they'd made the decision to slow down it was a little too much too fast were his exact words in regard to star wars content and the final chapter of their sequel trilogy the rise of skywalker proved to be just as big a critical failure and proportionate to the previous chapters in that trilogy just as big a box office disappointment so it would have seemed like stepping back and taking a huge breather was a good plan on iger's part but at the same time rise of skywalker was nose-diving into the ground their mandalorian show on their new streaming service was doing boffo business so barely a year later disney and lucasfilm have aimed the fire hose of content at the consumer yet again and yet again the person holding the hose is the same person who promised boba fett movies and yoda movies and obi-wan movies and fired so many directors it's difficult to remember them all resulting in a run of five movies that collectively underwhelmed to the extent that star wars merchandising sales would have all but imploded had it not been for that baby yoda and that 40th anniversary of the empire strikes back keeping fans interested in legacy-based merchandise i'd love to know what happened to the promise of slowing down from bob iger [Music] star wars wasn't a monthly comic book before it became a series of movies star wars built its legend on its mastery of anticipation with its film and tv productions three years between each saga film very long waits between trilogies sporadic tv series and specials made within those gaps and look i'm not saying the amount of time lucas waited between trilogies was smart or even excusable but that's the reality of the personality of this franchise comic books are like the tides they roll in and roll out every day making mcu movies at that same frantic pace as the comics themselves seems only natural star wars for better or worse did not operate on a tidal pattern it's more like an eclipse or a passing comet because it only showed up very irregularly that's why everyone grabbed their telescopes to watch when a new movie appeared since lucasfilm was sold to disney the amount of star wars content produced by the new disney-owned lucasfilm has been staggering the first major production after acquiring the property was star wars rebels which resulted in four seasons and 650 minutes of content the force awakens was released the next year running 135 minutes carefully taking into account disney's runtime averages for movies animated shows and live action tv series like the mandalorian one can look at their production announcements and extrapolate a fair guess as to how much content we're in for just in terms of disney produced star wars content we're not talking about anything lucas made prior to the 2012 acquisition just the disney stuff and the conservative estimate for how much content they've made and aspire to make comes in at around 9570 minutes of content just to put that in perspective for you there are 10 080 minutes in a seven day week on earth a normal human sleeps an average of eight hours a day or 480 minutes that's 3360 minutes a week taking that out of your waking hours and assuming you never work or travel you'll have six thousand seven hundred and twenty minutes in your week now most of us work at least eight hours a day at a job a lot of us work even more than that but using that as an average that's another 2 400 minutes a week where you cannot devote time to watching disney star wars content now you're down to 4 320 minutes a week of potential free time when you're conscious assuming you don't have kids to care for grass to cut or rooms to clean i've just sucked one year of your life away yes you can tell me all day how disney doesn't dump all this out in one lump so you're not literally having a week of your life drained away but in point of fact you are cumulatively speaking and lucasfilm's production volume is ramping up not slowing down they want you binging on disney plus content with every spare minute you're not in their theme parks and don't forget you still need to keep up with the marvel content and if you love comics you'll also be wanting to stay current on warner brothers dc offerings like superman and lois and the snyder cut of justice league it's rapidly getting to the point where not only is star wars hardly special anymore but a person wanting to be a star wars expert will have to devote their entire existence to watching nothing but star wars content until their dying breath just to keep up god didn't hear what i said what do you dab what is this a game and just like a buffet the more content you produce in volume the less tasty it seems to be these powdered eggs with gag of the buzzer you done with that and we're not even starting from a place where the creative teams pulled together by disney lucasfilm have been scoring solid goals the only runaway hit with the majority of the fan base has been john favreau's the mandalorian which is largely creatively separated from the rest of lucasfilm's operation of the creative teams lucasfilm hasn't fired or undermined in mid-stream the resulting films have been middling affairs at best controversial and divisive at worst and the most recent announcements from lucasfilm's attempt at a high republic novel don't paint a brighter picture for the immediate future they've literally made a rock the navigator of a starship named the vessel get used to disappointment hey the very jaded side of me isn't surprised by these revelations because they are the types of things concocted in a meeting of creatively bankrupt corporate bobble heads that just love the idea of being part of something outside their pencil-pushing paper-stacking jobs they want to see their names in lights and they think the creative stuff is fun and anyone can do it and anyone should be allowed to do it i've been there so many times in the oxymorons known as creative committees and the result is always the same so this high republic novel having a rock as a co-pilot and a ship called vessel reeks of corporate goons playing at being creative could be worse are we really surprised the title of this book is into the dark it's worse remember what i said in previous videos about corporate hollywood's obsession with the word dark they put that word in movie titles as frequently as millennials adds sriracha to everything they eat it's the smoke in the woodpile for committee creativity the ultimate example of the corporate belief that saying words make something true so who's really surprised that the nadir of disney lucasfilm's creativity to date is titled into the dark and all of this is coming from the same leadership that turned the star wars saga into an empty mystery box without a real plan look at like star wars you got the droids they meet the mysterious woman who's that we don't know mystery box then you meet luke skywalker he gets the droid you see the holographic image but who the hell is on kenobi mystery box you just make me feel tired all over when you talk like that abrams and johnson's ideas were as substantive as holograms while the industry that paid top dollar for them continues to describe these directors as visionaries to a generation x kid like me the irony is as loud as a fire alarm so yeah it's feeling more likely that this fire hose of content isn't fresh water but that we're about to get hit by a slime blower the most mystifying thing about this crop of lucasfilm creatives is their proclivity to push away avoid and reject the most beloved parts of star wars lore they looked at the stories and they said we want to make something for the fans a lot of times i would say to ryan we got to think about the fans and he said no writer michael arndt is on record stating that abrams didn't want luke skywalker taking over his movie with the force awakens so his only solution after multiple failed attempts during the writing process was to keep luke out of the film until the very end without any dialogue at the same time abrams took the liberty of killing han solo by the next film luke was dead too and most tragically carrie fisher had died in real life but despite having a year or more to reshoot and change the script so luke would still be around for the final chapter since leia could not be the decision makers at lucasfilm stubbornly doubled down on their concept for the last jedi i actually thought you were smart for a second the result was a public relations nightmare for the studio especially in regards to the treatment of luke skywalker and that pr crisis was one that abram's rise of skywalker could not correct for mainly because lucasfilm threw all their chips in with a director notorious for being unable to end stories that maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge where'd you get that a good question for another time listen to me coppertop we don't have time for 20 questions they assigned a guy who only knows how to ask questions without answers as their main point man for ending the most famous film saga of all time and i mean sure there were some people that walked away loving these movies but that's not much of a measure of anything there's always someone that loves a movie everyone else ran from like it was a house fire my god the internet has only proven that there's one born every minute and since rise of skywalker the news surrounding lucasfilm has been vague and unreliable for both their creative projects and their business situation there are a lot of rumors but few facts it's something elsewhere elusive but what is being seen by the fan base continues to support the observation that lucasfilm doesn't want to give much attention to the loved aspects of star wars within just a few weeks the fan favorite grogu aka baby yoda was removed from the mandalorian show by a digitally recreated luke skywalker allegedly included without kathleen kennedy's immediate knowledge or approval although admittedly that's hard to believe given her position within lucasfilm and in the days following the luke event which seemed to wrangle the decision makers within lucasfilm because it overshadowed the announcement of their high republic launch the company fired actress gina carano from the mandalorian show in another very public way that similarly backfired for their pr people just as the killing of luke skywalker had done in 2017. once again disney lucasfilm did not have a good read on the popularity of elements of their own franchise the character of cara dune had not only become as loved as grogu but also like grogu had become a best seller for hasbro on toy isles inspiring no less than four different figure variants since mandalorian toys hit stores unfortunately the way lucasfilm positioned their firing of carano forced hasbro to discontinue one of their best-selling star wars toys in quite a while and at a time when lucasfilm has badly needed an infusion of interest into their star wars merchandising operation but again this isn't at all surprising this is the same lucasfilm that decided one of the most beautiful women to ever be in a star wars movie should be costumed in a hideous wig and a mustard yellow jumpsuit creating one of the worst selling action figures since jar jar binks and general medin this is the same company that colluded with hasbro toys to make a 400 spaceship toy of the mandalorian's razor crest knowing full well that the ship would be destroyed almost a year before the toy would ship to buyers this is the same company that directed hasbro to short pack rey in the first waves of force awakens action figures out of abram's inspired fear of movie spoilers to such an insane degree that it caused a twitter hashtag where is rey to go viral to prompt lucasfilm to produce enough ray toys so kids could actually get figures of the main character from the new star wars film and this is the same company that didn't have any grogu merchandise ready for the christmas of 2019 despite his massive and immediate popularity some reports say it was for the same reason as the dearth of ray figures a fear of spoilers other reports say it was an attempt to keep merchandising focus on the toys for rise of skywalker although incidentally there were hardly any toys for that movie and the few that were made nobody wanted i invent things that nobody needs either way it was another huge profit blunder for lucasfilm that defied all common sense but keep in mind we're talking about a leader who became a leader in the tried and true corporate way by failing upward a personal assistant that spielberg himself said wasn't even good at that but was very good at interrupting people what's he supposed to be that's my deputy why last week he was shoveling hot he was walking in the stable and now with grogu out of the series the razor crest destroyed and carano's popular cara dune forcibly removed from a show that was in the process of throwing in everything including the kitchen sink having recently added rosario dawson into the show as the fan favorite jedi knight ahsoka tano from the clone wars as well as katie sakhoff reprising her role of bo katan from the clone wars now in live-action form and the aforementioned luke skywalker appearance the clunky and inflammatory move by disney lucasfilm in removing cara dune has deeply bruised the mandalorian their only golden goose in the public eye because the bruise isn't just one that will be felt for the third season of mandalorian but lucasfilm's move also endangers the entire rangers of the new republic series a spin-off of the mandalorian that centered on the peripheral characters from the show specifically cara dune this show and the upcoming mini-series the book of boba fett are both highly anticipated by mandalorian fans but now both have been affected by a company that only seems good at zeroing in on and discarding the elements of their stories people like most that's who i am that's my role you guys you create fun and i destroy it so lucasfilm decided the best way to move on from all that and distract us was to introduce us to a spaceship named the vessel and a co-pilot that is a literal rock as you can probably guess the introductory video was practically laughed off the internet anyone paying attention can't help but wonder how we got here i've spent the last few weeks really trying to understand where the train went off the rails and even revisited what the hell hold on a second i'll be right back michael french yeah [Music] bloody hell how many went out so far count 95 million at least christ i want anyone caught with one of those helmets silenced give me the cara dune figure and those theatrical cuts on blu-ray lucasfilm is under siege the whole fan base has gone mad this is exactly what star wars wants what anarchy in the fan base chaos mr favreau i am holding you personally responsible for this situation the problem is that star wars knows us better than we know ourselves and that's why i watched last jedi last night but that's outside the original trilogy i had to see it there wasn't much there but when i was watching it was strange i suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected my god i wish i'd give anything to be able to fix that i could see the whole thing one long chain of events that stretched all the way back to before last jedi i may have gone too far in a few places i felt like i could see everything that had happened attack of the clones is the worst thing ever made by a human i sold them to the white slavers and everything that was going to happen happy to ruin people's childhood i think it's a stupid conversation no i got paid it was like a perfect pattern laid out in front of me and i realized that we were all part of it okay my hands are my hands are shaking and all trapped by it [Music] so do you know what's going to happen no it was a feeling but i can guess with so much chaos around lucasfilm someone will do something stupid when they do things will turn nasty i am not all right ask the alt-right it is not good star wars and it is not even good feminism kathleen kennedy needs to go and then kennedy will be forced to do the only thing she knows how to do at which point all the fan base needs to do is keep its word and pull their disney plus subscriptions and then oh my god like mystery boxes are everywhere it was the worst movie i've ever seen the type of movie that i want to make the rise of skywalker it doesn't answer anything i rebel [Music] i'm in [Music] you

Channel: RetroBlasting

Views: 244,381

Rating: 4.8502817 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, disney, lucasfilm, mandalorian, sequel trilogy, rogue one, solo

Id: 3aKDDyS7Z-U

Length: 30min 48sec (1848 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021