First of all, I want to say thank you for giving us your input, as you definitely pointed out a lot of things that I didn't think of before starting this topic. And you're right that there have been some political symbolism associated with Star Wars in the past, as I won't deny that, nor will I deny what you said about the estranged relationship between Luke and Darth Vader.
There's a lot of truth in what you said, but the part where I will disagree with you is about the fans causing the decline. While you're right that the fans can take things way too far sometimes, we need to remember that fans are what make these movies what they are. Without the fans support, Star Wars never would've became the giant IP that it was prior to Disney's version ruining it.
To put this into a sports analogy, let's take an American football team. A quarterback can be the best quarterback in the NFL, but the reality is without the fans going to see his games, or buying his jerseys, he'd be a nobody like everyone else, and that's a fact.
While I do agree with you that "Revenge of the Sith" isn't too bad, the problem is your kind of missing the point. While the prequels weren't that great critically, the reality is they still created vast new worlds and concepts introduced to expand the franchise, which lead to an increase in toy sales and video game sales. Nowadays, nobody is buying the toys.
Say what you want about the prequels, but at least they made kids want to play with the Star Wars video games and toys. This new trilogy isn't doing that. And while there's certainly other factors that contributed to Galaxy's Edge at both Disney Land and Disney World flopping, the truth of the matter is Disney theme parks have literally had to fire and cut back on hours because of Galaxy's edge. This isn't opinion either. This is fact.
Heck, the President of Disney's theme parks literally had to step down recently this year in part because fans didn't support Galaxy's Edge.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ … ce-1242748
You can say the fans are partially responsible all you want, but the reality is without the fans, Star Wars wouldn't have gotten to where it is today without them. The original trilogy never would've been as successful as it was without the fans supporting it.
Heck if you had told me that there was going to be a star wars theme park at Disney land or Disney world about ten years ago, I would've told you that sounds like arguably the most sure thing you could ever do as a business move. Just the idea of it would make any die hard fan wet his pants, and almost anyone would've told you that Disney doing that would be the equivalent of just straight up printing money. That's how much of a sure thing this theme park attraction should've been, but instead it's flopping and it's damaging the Star Wars brand even more.
Personally, I blame a lot of this on Kathleen Kennedy, as I stated before. You can sit there and like the new sequel trilogy if you want, and that's fine. After all, I'm sure you and I can both agree that all films are subjective and if you like them, then good for you.
However, even if you did like those movies, you can't tell me objectively that the CEO of Lucas films doesn't deserve to be fired, as I'll state various reasons why she should be fired, and why she's contributing the most to why Star Wars is dying.
First of all, it's been reported that she literally had no clue what she wanted to do with Star Wars, as JJ Abrams even admitted that he had to come up with a story from scratch for them.
And after he left to finish Star Trek Beyond, to make way for Rian Johnson to take over, he not only abandoned a lot of the ideas that Abrams planted in the Force Awakens, but he did it so much to the point that now it's being reported that Abrams is going to retcon a lot of the concepts and ideas that Rian Johnson did in the Last jedi. That reeks of the new sequel trilogy not being organized as well as it should, nor as well as the previous two trilogies were in the past.
And if you want to take this further, Colin Trevarrow was originally hired to direct episode 9, but he left after a few months because of creative differences. You might be thinking, no big deal right?
But the problem is that this seems to be a rotating pattern with Kennedy. With Rogue One for instance, Gareth Edwards wanted to make Rogue one arguably the darkest star wars film ever made, but when Kathleen Kennedy saw the finished product prior to it's release, she ordered reshoots because it didn't seem "star wars" enough, so she brought in Tony Gilroy to handle the reshoots to give it that "Star wars" touch if you will. Granted, you'll probably bring up things like how the MCU did the same thing with "Thor the Dark World" with them bringing in Joss Whedon to touch up a scene or two, yet it doesn't make Kevin Feige look bad. Fine. I'll give you that, but let's delve deeper into the rabbit hole before you say I'm crazy.
Then we can look at the cancelled Boba Fett movie. Yes, at one point, Josh Trank (the director of Chronicle and Fant4tic) was assigned to direct a Boba Fett solo movie for Disney and Lucas films. However, after he was hired, Kathleen Kennedy fired him because of the rumors and allegations that came out about his unprofessional behavior making "Fantastic Four" over at Fox, and how he conducted himself there. Granted, it was never proven Josh Trank did what he was accused of as far as I know, but it was enough for Disney and kennedy to fire him immediately after they hired him. Did they not do a background check on this person before they hired him?
And of course, that's going to bring us to "Solo: A Star Wars Story." Originally, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who were hot off their success from directing both "The Lego Movie" and both "21 Jump Street" films, but here's the thing. They were both fired by Kathleen Kennedy after they had shot almost the entire film itself. Why you may ask? Because she felt the movie they were making was not the movie she was promised by them, so she brings in Ron Howard, who reshoots like 80 percent of the movie because the footage both Lord and Miller shot was deemed "unusable", and we know how that turned out. The reshoots added to the films already pricey budget, which ended with Solo being such a huge bomb that Disney and Lucas film literally had to cancel all their planned anthology films from that point on.
Granted, you could argue that maybe both Phil Lord and Chris Miller may have acted unprofessionally for allegedly not giving Kennedy the movie they promised her, and mostly going off script when shooting the film, but here's the thing. As I just told you earlier, this seems to be a track record for Kennedy. She hires someone, but fires them later for something else. It reeks instability and makes it look like she doesn't know what she's doing. I can forgive this if it only happened maybe once or twice in a blue moon. that's fine, as shit happens. However, when it happens all the time on your watch and your the boss in charge running things? That reeks of bad leadership.
And keep in mind, I haven't even brought up her unprofessional behavior labeling anyone who doesn't like the new star wars films to be sexist and misogynist either. I haven't even brought up how she even allows people that work under her like Abrams and Johnson to do that too.
Again, I'm not saying the decline of star wars is entirely her fault, but it mostly is because it's happening on her watch. It just comes with the territory when your the leader of a group or company. To use another sports analogy again if Michael Jordan's Bulls win a title it's because he masterfully willed and inspired his team to victory, since he's the captain of the team, so it's natural that most of the credit for his team's success falls on him. But when Michael Jordan loses, it'll be because he failed to inspire his team to win. It doesn't matter if he scores over a 100 points in that game, and plays great on both ends of the floor either. The fact of the matter is he's the leader of the team, so any shortcomings the team has is on him. When the team wins, it's because of him. When they lose, it's because he failed to lead them. It's just that simple. Same goes for Kathleen Kennedy. You can defend her all you want on the Solo film for example, but the reality is that still happened on her watch, so that film bombing in theaters is partially her fault; whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Star Wars is barely a few months away, and hardly anyone is talking about it. The toys aren't selling at all like they used to. Say what you want about the prequels, but they at least made kids want to buy the toys. The sequel trilogy doesn't even do that. And the last trailer wasn't even a trailer at all practically. They just used a bunch of old footage from past star wars film to play on people's nostalgia senses in hopes of bringing us back to the theaters to see episode 9. Why? It's almost like Disney themselves aren't even confident in the film, so they're trying to hide it.
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