Are people getting sick and tired of all these Star Wars? According to Mark Hamill, the current president of the Star Wars Opinions Club, it’s possible. During an appearance on this week’s edition of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, Hamill responded to the suggestion that audiences might be experiencing a little franchise fatigue–as evidenced in part by Solo: A Star Wars Story’s underperformance at the box office:
I’m not gonna tell them how to run their business, but is there a possibility of ‘Star Wars fatigue’? Yeah, I think there is. I’ve experienced it, to a certain degree. But they never listen to my ideas anyway, so who needs ‘em?
Yeah! Take that, Lucasfilm! Who needs you, anyway? (Except for the many hundreds of people you employ and also maybe Luke Skywalker, who appreciates his paychecks.) To be fair, Hamill isn’t entirely off base. The general response to Rogue One and Solo was tepid at best, despite sizable box office numbers. And with the announcement of not one, but two new Star Wars film trilogies on the horizon (one from Rian Johnson, the other from Game Of Thrones duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss), as well as a pair of new TV prequels on Disney+, there’s definitely potential for audiences to become more disenchanted with the franchise. Or maybe we’re just ready to be done with this whole Skywalker saga and everything connected to it.
Although he seems salty about Lucasfilm ignoring his ideas, Hamill seemed open to return to the franchise in the future. When asked if he might lend his voice to an animated series, Hamill said, “Make me an offer.”
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Yes Mark, the fatigue began as the end credits to The Force Awakens rolled and everyone let forth a collective “Uh-oh”.
The Disney run so far has left an imbalance in The Force to be sure. We might need one of the new series outside the Skywalker saga to hit, but I’m not holding my breath.
Yeah, we’re not in the premium era of Star Wars that brought us such gems as The Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.
And a happy Life Day to you too.
I can’t help but read that in Captain Murphy’s voice.
Hey now, I loved those movies when I was 8!
I’m not tired of it. I’m just no longer interested due to the direction it went.
Is there Marvel fatigue? Um, no. Make better Star Wars movies.
well I have it, but I seem to be mostly alone in that.
The response to Rogue One was hardly tepid. It was well reviewed and did much better than Solo. Personally I liked it better than ep 7 and 8. Solo, yea that was a flop.
I was glad it was a flop based solely on what I saw in the trailers AND the threat of a Boba Fett movie if “Solo” succeeded.If I wanted to see another “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie, I’d go see that. I don’t need or want my “Star Wars” characters to become hack-y tropes of what I loved for so long. Let alone waste my time with minor side characters who got less than 5 minutes in the original films. (I don’t care about the extended SW universe one bit, it’s not germane to the film franchise universe that casual fans like me have watched since 1977)
Solo felt like some internet forum post making up all of the explanations for Han’s off-the-cuff lines in the other movies turned into its own movie. Gotta include the Kessel run. Gotta have him shoot first. Gotta have high stakes gambling to explain the Lando’s line. What’s the central plotline? It’s basically just a big exercise in setting up Han for A New Hope.
It’s a movie by checklist.
I was so much more interested in the Kessel Run before they showed it. It kinda ruined the mystique of it.
Or maybe we’re just ready to be done with this whole Skywalker saga and everything connected to it.That’s like saying, “I love this Batman story, but why the fixation on this Bruce Wayne guy all the time?” I.E. DumbdumbdumbCan’t speak for anyone else, but I am fatigued at all the NuWars fans acting like a classic story of good vs evil is too childish for them. Efforts to make the villains sympathetic are antithetical to the inherent nature of Star Wars itself.
But the movie isn’t called Skywalker. It’s called Star Wars.
Funny, then, how the movie opens with a scene between two Skywalkers and then transitions to a separate location to introduce a third one. Are you deliberately trying to ignore the fact that the Luke Skywalker character was the audience surrogate for entire first movie? I mean, I don’t want to accuse you of being disingenuous, but surely you know that every narrative has to pick a core cast of central characters in order to be realized, yeah? And that for Star Wars, it is and has been the Skywalker family? I’m not trying to argue that the Star Wars setting can’t be utilized without them, but frankly, then it just becomes a generic sci-fi setting akin to “post-apocalypse” or “the 24th century,” which makes it boring.
“Star Wars” as a universe is far more specific than “post-apocalyptic”. In fact, I can build an entire Star Wars story that is clearly in the Star Wars universe, and never once reference a Skywalker. It may or may not be very good, but that will be a judgement on me as a writer, not on Star Wars as a location.
The title of the first film was retroactively changed from Star Wars to A New Hope in 1981 so you win either way.
“Star Wars” as a universe is far more specific than “post-apocalyptic”. But it’s not, really. It’s actually very broad and general, like most sci-fi settings. The Star Wars universe is one where there are alien planets and spaceships and laser guns and faster than light travel,with some robots sprinkled in generously. All of which has been seen before in almost every sci-fi setting ever. I can build an entire Star Wars story that is clearly in the Star Wars universe, and never once reference a Skywalker.I can do that too, but that doesn’t change the fact that it would just be a Star Wars anthology story and nothing more. The world and the setting were created by the “Skywalker Saga” (which is just such a ridiculous moniker, because another story about some Non-Skywalker would just become the “Non-Skywalker Saga” itself); anything else that takes place there is always going to be nothing more than an offshoot of that.It was Luke’s story, and those of his friends and allies, that brought people deeper into that universe, because that’s inherently how stories work. It is honestly like saying, “I love A Song of Ice and Fire, but I’m so tired of these same old Houses always being involved. No more Starks and Lannisters, instead let’s see some new Houses!!” That’s just not how proper narratives work.
Ok, but you can still tell plenty of stories that take place in the Star Wars universe without any Skywalkers. It’s already been done, and it will happen again. The idea that Star Wars is Luke Skywalker and Friends and nothing else is both absurd and demonstrably untrue.
The idea that the non-canon books and other ancillary material is as important as the actual movies is what’s truly “absurd.” (Sorry, but if you want to start getting nasty about it, I’ll respond in kind. I thought we were having a pleasant discussion up until now.) To the majority of Star Wars viewers, it’s all about the films. There’s not a single Star Wars movie that’s not connected to A New Hope somehow.
Nobody here is being nasty. We just clearly disagree. Yes, it all starts with A New Hope, but it doesn’t need to end with Skywalker. The idea that one can hand wave away everything that invalidates one’s point as “non-canon” is equally as absurd.
But that’s what SHOULD happen. Making it about a Skywalker dynasty or those fucking Midichlorians or whatever, will weaken the series, I think. At some point, it has to be about people not related to that family or necessarily part of the Jedi as a group. Otherwise, it’s just a superhero film, where a new member of the family comes into the power and is the focus.
I think Rogue One is a great example of how a movie can be set in the Star Wars universe and not feel like a generic space movie while also not prominently featuring characters from the old movies…I’d also say Rogue One is by far the best of the four Disney Star Wars movies (my opinion of course).
But it’s also a historical story expanding on the minor details of some throwaway lines from the original trilogy. Imagine if the rest of Star Wars didn’t exist and you went to a movie where some space spies tried to heist some space plans and then all died at the end, with no context for you to know whether the theft of those plans was successful, much less meaningful. Would that be a satisfying story to you? It’s only satisfying now because it connects to something else.
Yea but no one is saying to get rid of the connections to the original trilogy completely. They’re just saying focus on the stories of other characters in the galaxy. Likely that involves following other Jedi or Sith characters in different time periods.EDIT: Nevermind reread that sentence again. Yea I see your point now.
Rouge One featured Darth Vader, a Skywalker, in its closing act.
Wait, I thought it was A New Hope?
That’s what the chapter is called, if we’re going to play semantics.
Ah, but it was originally just called Star Wars. That whole New Hope crap was Phantom Menaced. Or something. Really, I could not possibly care less. Star Wars was such the *thing* growing up in the 70’s and 80;s, and Phantom Menace so shitty, that any fond memories I had were nicely compartmentalized as just said fond memories after the Trade Coalition and Jar-Jar opened their CGI’s mouths.
Dude, The Phantom Menace ruined me for all this shit. All of it. I was so so SO hyped for new Star Wars after having spent my childhood committing the first three movies to memory, and to have it shit the bed that hard. Took me years to finally see Episode 3. Never did see Episode 2. I can’t get excited for movie franchises anymore.
After Phantom Menace I decided I was okay as long as there were space wizards with laser swords warring in space. That’s why the only Star Wars movie I haven’t watched is Solo. I hear there aren’t any space wizards with laser swords. That’s why I don’t care about people arguing over TLJ: laser swords, space wizards. Maybe it broke something inside of me too, because ever since I just eat my popcorn and wait for the light show like the mindless idiot I am.
….this is the point where half the internet (the “young” half) calls us out for being toxic incel fanboys and discounting NuStar Wars, and the other half, (the “old” half,) embraces us and together we discuss our 401(k) retirement vehicles.
Sure, but people came to love these movies because of the characters and story. The special effects and stuff help, but it’s not like there aren’t other “space war” movies.
Sure, but the comparison was not talking about Luke Skywalker in a Star Wars movie is tantamount to not talking about Bruce Wayne in a Batman movie, and I’m saying it’s not. We have to talk about Bruce Wayne because he’s Batman. We don’t have to talk about Joker, because he is not Batman. We don’t have to talk about the Skywalkers, because the movie is not called Luke. It’s called Star Wars. Lots of people live in the Empire. Lots of room for other stories.
There have been other Batmen, just like there are other Spider-Men so the Batman = Bruce Wayne argument isn’t even totally valid. You could very easily make a Batman movie without Bruce Wayne as Batman.
That’s true. In most of the Justice League cartoons, it’s pretty rare to see Bruce or Clark or Diana. They are usually in uniform and rarely discuss their private lives to the point where it’s clear they are Justice League full time.
I mean, I’m kind of in the middle of this whole argument. But I think the title really is irrelevant. If you boil it down, the first Star Wars really is a story about Luke. The trilogy focuses on his journey. And it’s Luke and the other central characters that people grew attached to. The broader universe only ever existed to serve that story. Sure, that universe might have other interesting facets and there could be potential for other stories set in it, yada yada yada. But at the end of the day the core of the property is the Skywalker saga. It’s the only reason any dorks were ever invested enough to start writing stories about Hammerhead in the first place. Remove the core story and the universe itself is just any other sci fi setting. Pleasant, interesting maybe, but probably nothing that would resonate so strongly for 40 years. And I mean I’m not really a Batman person but couldn’t you make the same argument there? There’s a Joker movie, there’s a TV series about Gotham that (as far as I know) doesn’t feature him. The question is more whether those stories are actually essential or as interesting as the main ones. In the same way a lot of Star Wars fans (myself included) would say Star Wars without the Skywalkers is just lesser Star Wars, I could see a lot of people saying that a movie about peripheral characters in that universe is a little pointless and inevitably going to be less interesting.
You sound fun
Wait, you didn’t come away from Return of the Jedi with some sense of sympathy for Vader? Like, isn’t his final grasp at redemption the entire point of the movie, and the only thing that finally secures victory for the good guys?
I don’t consider a redemption arc the same thing as a sympathetic villain. One makes the audience happy to see a villain lose, and the other makes them happy to see the villain win.
No, the point of the movie was that they could finally move multiple model TIE and Xwing figters along more than two axes at once.
“…they could finally move multiple model TIE and Xwing figters along more than two axes at once.”
Part of me wants to correct what’s probably an innocent typo. A much larger part of me is imagining a TIE and an X-Wing fighting each other on the intersecting blade edges of multiple mammoth axes twirling through space in a chaotic mess of deadly swirling steel while thinking that’s a great reason to have a movie.
oh damn, i just looked it up and i’m an idiot. “axes” is totally the plural of “axis” and i didn’t know. my bad, oops. >_<
It was kind of a big point for Lucas. That’s why they fly all over like crazed butterflies in the battle scenes.
I really didn’t get the whole Ewok thing.
My mom painstakingly sewed together a pretty awesome Ewok costume for me and I looked fucking adorable in it and that’s all you should need to get on board with Ewoks.
Also, Ewoks eat people so that’s cool.
Funnily enough I actually have the exact opposite opinion. For me the most annoying thing about the new trilogy is the fact that it undoes huge chunks of the original films. Instead of the original being an exciting story where our heroes prevail in difficult circumstances, the new movies make it very clear that the Star Wars universe is one endless cycle of Empires and Rebellions fighting each other, and that the specific people we meet along the way don’t really matter because their struggles won’t change anything. If they had set the movie in the same universe but 100+ years earlier or later it would have been far more interesting to me.
The new producers failed to realize that “galactic civil war” is not a viable constant state for any universe, and that with those stakes already dealt with in the original trilogy, they needed something different for the new one. If anything, they should have gone more micro and stuck to one planet or region of space this time around. They also failed to resist nostalgia by involving the old cast, which probably tied their hands the worst when it came to what story to tell. Just by virtue of trying to include characters who had already won, they were forced to undo it all, where if they’d started with a clean cast, it could have taken place anywhere and anywhen outside the original trilogy.
………………HAN. SHOT. FIRST.
Agreed. As I see it, they could have taken the series in one of two directions and still made it enjoyable:1) a soft reboot, with Rey, Finn, and Poe, in a less grim setting where they could just have some adventures. 2) the same grim “nothing that happened in IV-VI mattered” plot of the current trilogy, but with the original cast foregrounded. Instead the went with a bit of both, and it just doesn’t work. If they had focused on the original cast, at least they would have had pre-established good will to make the audience willing to endure a reset to any and all progress made by the rebels. It’s weird to me that so many people went batshit over the “Rey is nobody” thing, when the end result is that all of the new characters’ lives and plots are nevertheless defined entirely by the original characters.Undoing every bit of progress makes it hard to be that invested in caring about what happens, since it’s just as likely that that kid with force powers from the end of TLJ will just go and establish a new empire and commit genocide in twenty years. Doing a stereotypical “things aren’t black and white, they’re gray” has limits when you make the galaxy into such an aggressive shithole that it’s hard to care about it.
This is a fair point. I would only say I think the era for the new trilogy was thematically out of their hands. You have the events of the Original Trilogy, that all play out over a 4-5 year span. (3 or so years between Episodes IV-V, 1 year or so between V-VI) Then you have the Prequels, starting 32 years before Episode IV and carrying on for 13 years and are fixated from a story perspective on setting up the events of the OT. So when approaching the final trilogy they probably saw dealing with the fallout of the OT as their best bet to tie a bow on the whole thing.
You’re ignoring the fact that Batman exists in a big clusterfuck comic multiverse. By your logic, every DC comic/movie should have Batman.I’m sure you’ll love the many Jokers in the pipeline.
wow, uh, i think you’re in the wrong article. we’re talking about star wars? the series where the most iconic villain of maybe all time gets three whole movies to set up why he fell to the dark side and how he eventually gets redeemed? i dunno what series you’re talking about where sympathetic villains are unconscionable but it’s not this one. weird how you got so confused. happens to everyone, though, don’t sweat it too much.
“Make me an offer.” Now that’s the sign of a pro. At the end of the day, it’s just a job.As far as fatigue goes, yup. I’ve had my fill of all things Trek, Wars, Bond and assorted franchises. I’m not knocking anyone’s taste. If these are what you like then good for you. As a non-fan but former movie lover who went to the movies as much as three to four times a week though, I’m lucky if I go to a theater five times a year now and then only to the local indie and revival theaters. I’m signing up for Criterion and will still catch the odd film on Netflix but watching movies at home is a poor substitute that no monster 4K TV will ever compensate for.
I mean, there are still great authors out there putting out interesting series that could be adapted new for audiences. I just read through the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne and that would be cool to see on-screen somewhere. It just seems like Hollywood wants to smooth away all of the interesting edges after they acquire the rights, which seems counterproductive.
Same here!I can tell when my pockets are being picked and I dont’ like it.So no “Discovery” for me and I waited for “Ragnarok” and “Infinity Wars” to come to Netflix and avoided “Solo” like the plague, even on Netflix. And saw 15-20 minutes of “Spectre” and found it so pretentiously directed and with a plot so silly, that I turned it off, asked a friend who saw it to spoil me and was validated in my choice to leave the rest of the film alone.Like you, I’m surprised if I can make myself go to the movies 5 or more times year. Last year, I went TWICE. For the whole year. This is after a lifetime of seeing at least a film a month if not more.
Harrison Ford has always been very upfront about treating it just like a job as well. He even referred to conventions as a monetary exchange between fans and the corporations who produce content. And because he’s Harrison Ford, he can give no fucks about saying that.
One of the things that annoys me to no end is when studios try to sell a movie as something more than a movie. Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman were not transformative girl power movies – they were products created by large corporations to make money. Star Wars is not a religion or culture experience – it’s a product. I mean, point blank these movies are bubblegum meant to be consumed and enjoyed for a short while and then spat out.It’s a job for these actors. A lucrative one, but a job all the same.
But that’s when movies succeed, when the viewer gets caught up in the story and doesn’t just see it as an amusing way to kill 2 hours.
It’s okay to get caught up in the story. As a matter of fact, that’s what they are supposed to allow a viewer to do. But in the end, especially with huge summer tentpole movies, they are just products.The Avengers is not gonna change history. It’s just gonna but a lot of butts in seats and sell a lot of toys.That said, I am not above any of this. It will put my butt in a seat and it will sell toys to me. It’s not a bad thing. But I know that is what this is – just a Disney product.
Maybe leave the pronouncements on what’s a transformative girl power movie to the women, dude.
I think wookietim was referring to studios’ (and industries’) blatant co-opting of cultural zeitgeist to turn a buck. Movies might be transformative experiences in spite of it, but they’re still exploiting the fact that people want to talk about it to make a lot of money. (Although, yeah, “girl power” was pretty condescending.)
I’m pretty tired and cynical about the never-ending barrage of giant-budget effects driven movies, but I don’t think we should be so quick to write off Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman. Sure, they are products created by giant corporations to make money, and no, they don’t contribute any brilliant insight to the feminist discourse. But those movies are in large part aimed at girls and boys who might be too young to have seen Linda Hamilton in T2 or Sigourney Weaver in Alien(s). Even my fiancee, who is very well read and not too interested in action movies, said the No Man’s Land scene in Wonder Woman really got to her.Having said all that though, we’d all definitely be healthier if we just agreed that acting is first and foremost a job and treated it as such.
Here’s the thing (in my mind) on those movies : Girls have actual human beings to look up to. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Marie Curie. Eleanor Roosevelt. Billie Holiday. The list is long and diverse. They don’t need amazon princesses or women that can shoot lasers from their hands to be made to feel special. Just like I don’t need a super soldier or a man that is bulletproof.But that is just my opinion and it’s okay if others have a different one.
Many fans do the same. Look at how many on both sides turned Last Jedi into the end all be all, either as an abomination that was there to spite fans and destroy white men, or some kind of brave, daring work of art that showed the hollow worthlessness of all previous Star Wars and was therefore the best ever. It was never worth the hype.
“One of the things that annoys me to no end is when studios try to sell a movie as something more than a movie. Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman were not transformative girl power movies – they were products created by large corporations to make money.”
That take is beyond reductive.
No, the corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about “transformative girl power”, but audiences sure do.
Ask any geeky girl how important Princess Leia, or She-Ra, or Wonder Woman, or Whatever-Female-Icon-From-Childhood was to her, and they’ll gush about how much such heroines meant to them.
The same can be said of black audiences and Black Panther.
The outcome is what matters.
I mean, it can be both. Yeah, Hollywood is a corporate endeavour as much as anything else, and that’s just as true of a film that some studio wants to be the next ‘American Pie’ or ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ as ‘Ant-Man 3′. But that doesn’t stop screenwriters and directors putting their heart and soul into it, or actors from getting some personal fulfillment out of it, and it certainly doesn’t stop audiences connecting to it. I know I’ve heard of plenty of women who got very emotional seeing strong Wonder Woman and Carol Danvers on the screen at last. And I see elsewhere that you’ve said women have real female figures to look up to, and that’s true and good, but you can have heroes that are real and those that are imaginary. They feed different parts of the soul. When I was a kid, I felt small and scared a lot, and very unsure of myself, and so when I read Winnie the Pooh and saw little Piglet being brave even when it was tough, it made me feel better. I knew I wasn’t going to grow up to be a stuffed pig toy, but I still get emotional thinking about Piglet to this day.
“I knew I wasn’t going to grow up to be a stuffed pig toy, but I still get emotional thinking about Piglet to this day.”When I get done going to a buffet, I feel like a stuffed piglet… Does that count?
He even referred to conventions as a monetary exchange between fans and the corporations who produce content.
This is completely true. YouTube is full of videos of genre entertainment favorites (Patrick Stewart is a perfect example) telling the same stories over and over again in the same way. It’s another acting gig for them.
I go to theaters a lot still but yeah it’s tough. During the summer, when I have the most time typically, I get so excited for the summer movie season until I remember every weekend is another franchise release. It’s not like there isn’t good stuff coming out, but unless you live in a big market like NYC it can be hard to see much of it with the franchise films drowning the multiplexes.I do still love Star Wars but I’ll admit even I have some fatigue, and I haven’t really seen any other big franchise films the last few years because I’m just tired of all of them. The world does not need more Marvel movies.
I do still love Star WarsI also still love Star Wars but, since I hate everything NuLFL has done except for Rogue One and Rebels (okay I don’t hate Solo — it was a decent meh), I’ve passed from fatigue to apathy in regards to anything new. I’ll go see Ep 9, but my expectations are so low, they’re nonexistent at this point. And after that NuLFL is going to have prove to me they’re worth spending my money on.
You could see if the independent theater near you has a membership with reduced prices. I live in Boston and my membership gives me free showings Monday-Thursday and 25% discount during the weekend (and free popcorn!) I think I went to the movies there 50 times last year as a result.
I get that… You must be aging out of the high school/college age demographic. My movie watching habits did exactly that. Once children come… I see more solar eclipses than movies at the theater. This shows that all the money and talent(Disney) can go a long way, but there is a point of inundation… Thanks for your contribution to this discussion.
“I’ve had my fill of all things Trek, Wars, Bond”That cynicism will end when you see the crossover film The Wrath of Her Majesty’s Empire. Just think of opening titles with naked Tusken Raiders in silhouette….
I have to disagree with Bond, though. A), his movies haven’t come out very much recently, and B) every Bond movie is a unique experience, with Bond and some MI6 regulars being the only returning characters.
The absolute best thing about Hamill these days – aside from being, you know, an incredibly talented voice actor – is how he’s really gone all-in on being the real-life embodiment of “Old Man Yells At Cloud.”
Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion back in 2012. So is it Disney’s fault for pushing too much Star Wars product for the ROI when they’re instead killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Oh yeah.
Rogue One and Solo were both pretty good, highly enjoyable (easily critically dismantled) films. Popcorn films. Nothing wrong with that. But there is DEFINITELY too much Star Wars out there all at once. There is no time to anticipate the next film. Comic book films (not a fan, BTW) can do the glut because the stories are ridiculous and there is no expectation of sheer excellence that surrounds Star Wars. Thus, every little gaffe (Prom gown wearing admirals) seem more glaring and less forgivable. Rogue One was, in my opinion, awesome. Solo was very good.
The Greedy Mouse tried to ramrod a new franchise movie every two or so years with a character film every year or so. That was the plan.So they took something special and tried to make it something regular because they saw how the Marvel franchise was working out. But Star Wars isn’t Marvel. And they’re learning that now the hard way.The more films and other media they release as “official” Star Wars franchise material, the more problems, plot holes, and general fatigue of audience, will occur. Most people who see this stuff are casual fans, not devoted stans. The stans aren’t enough to support all this product and casuals won’t care about every new character introduction or back-story film, let alone pay good money to Disney streaming. (though that is a perfect example of how stans can be fed product and their numbers will be enough to make Disney profit)
Bingo. It’s just not new or novel anymore. They are ALL the SAME movie with time travel, aliens, wars and boring posers in fancy suits. Endless cat regurgitations of cinema hairballs of Star Trek, Star Wars, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, yadda yadda yadda that appear “new” to a ten year old bores a 15 year old when the remake, reboot, reimagination gets shoved into the cinema.
It’s not Star Wars Fatigue, in the sense that there have been too many Star Wars movies too fast, it’s MEDIOCRE Star Wars Fatigue.As Marvel proves, if you keep your quality even (for better or worse), you can release 96 billion titles a year and fanboys keep slurping them up.
^^^ Snake speaks the truth.
Yes! It always cracked me up when people would point to BvS or JL failing as signs that superhero fatigue had set in and future Marvel movies were doomed.Or even better, they’ll talk about how they personally are tired of seeing these movies and that indicates widespread fatigue, even as the MCU movies keep making more and more money.
Eh…I’m not sure that’s quite true. It could be part of it. But Star Wars isn’t Marvel. You can’t really break it down into tons of movies with one singular thread going through them. And that’s what Disney tried to do with Star Wars. For the vast majority of the audience (those that don’t read every single piece of SW fiction created), the SW Universe is actually quite small. It’s just Luke/Leia/Han vs the Empire. When you expand that universe out, a lot of those casuals are like “Wait, how does this fit in? Eh. I like the old movies better”. Whereas Marvel, there wasn’t a base reference already established like those first 3 SW movies. People were more willing to embrace the larger MCU broken into pieces and fed to them because it was all largely new to them
“the SW Universe is actually quite small. It’s just Luke/Leia/Han vs the Empire.”It’s baffling to me that this has been the case.
These people live in a galaxy with faster-than-light travel, planet after planet of bizarre and incredible biomes, countless alien species, and a mystical energy field that connects and binds all life forms and grants preternatural abilities to those sensitive to it.
Why the ever-loving fuck does every single story have to be about the same band of plucky rebels against the same implacable, tyrannical empire? Do these guys not know how to do adventure stories anymore?
ehhhhhhhh. The MCU films are super mediocre. they just have a strong fanbase for reasons unknown to me
Eh I’m feeling some MCU fatigue here. I’m ready to get Endgame over with and take a break.
Trust, me too.
Exactly.Despite Rogue One being an arguably decent movie an exploration of the Death Star plans and an origin story of Han Solo were not on any Extended Universe fans’ list of what they wanted to see. Disney threw out all the old canon and started throwing out mediocre films.Just like Marvel has a vast and rich comic universe that is largely respected in the films (with many changes, yes) Star Wars has a vast and deep lore in the old canon.If Disney had released a new Thrown trilogy with elements of the books and consulted the author to write, no one would be complaining about “Star Wars fatigue.”But last I heard they had a Johnson trilogy planned (whose last movie suffered horrible criticism) along with a Boba Fett and Obi Wan origin story. It’s not that these stories couldn’t be great—but Solo definitely wasn’t. There’s a whole wealth of new stories to tell and in different ways.Star Wars 1313 for example is salivated over. Whole new genre, very high quality. Rogue One is considered one of the best Star Wars movies, it was a war movie with brand new characters.Everything leading up to Infinity War was unknown. You can’t do origin stories about legendary characters already dead. If they wanted to go the Marvel route, then they should have made a Rey movie, then a Kylo Ren movie, then a Smoke movie, and then tied them all together in a Last Jedi-esque movie, and then hired a competent sci-fi writer like Joss Whedon to do it.Or expanded into EU material…like a Knights of the Old Republic movie, for God’s sake!But the way they did it now—which is stupidly—they will think people are getting “Star Wars fatigue.”People are tired of going to their favorite restaurant every year to eat mediocre food that’s worse than the other restaurant they go to every month, and both are the same price. Except it’s even worse because they know how the food used to taste, how it SHOULD taste, but they can’t do anything about it.
The other thing that separates Star Wars from the rest is that everybody else goes FORWARD with their stories, but Star Wars is scared to do anything other than telling more meaningless prequel/reboot stories.
A very good point. I think part of the problem is that when you remove the force from the equation, there’s really nothing that peculiar or interesting about Star Wars world. I mean, sure, they have aliens, and they different modes of transportation, but once you get over that, it’s just people being people. I suppose Star Wars world is most like a western, outlaws and all that, but there’s nothing intrinsically interesting about Star Wars world beyond these particular characters and these particularly stories we’ve already been told.Marvel, by contrast, has 200 characters, all of whom have their own lives, their own worlds, their own backstories. If Star Wars wants to go there, they have to make up entirely new characters.
Eh, I can Star Wars succeeding without the Force. Rogue One was good. To me, the franchise is simply the preeminent “space fantasy” series going – so it has the best mix of sci-fi, knights, cowboys, etc. But “Solo” really showed how they literally sat down with a checklist of fanboy boxes to hit, instead of just writing a really cool film about the baddest dude in the galaxy. Let alone, just creating a new really cool character to follow.
I don’t think the fatigue is in the amount of movies but more in the media coverage.
Star Wars is stupid.
what about your nards though?
Mark, I love you, but please shut the fuck up.
Comments like this are why I hate reading comments.
I think it’s pretty clear the relationship with Lucasfilm and Hamill is strained at this point because as he says “they don’t listen to his ideas” so it’s hard to take much of what he’s saying at face value if it truly is sour grapes.
He keeps cashing those checks, though. Not that I blame him.My reasoning for wanting him to shut up is admittedly selfish, but it was his first comments about The Force Awakens that gave some of the MRA dipshits more fuel to bitch about that movie and TLJ. And he keeps doubling down on them, no less. Honestly, I’d rather he just shut up about what he thinks of these new movies and be happy that he’s involved at all. He’s got a lifetime pass from me for many reasons, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish he’d shut his yap a bit so we’d hear a touch less from all those fucking mouthbreathers.
You can’t handle the truth. And also different opinions.
I can handle both those things just fine. It’s just that some people’s different opinions fucking suck.
Even if they “fucking suck,” you should be able to handle them without exploding into vitriolic rage.
LOL. First of all, I have displayed no ‘vitriolic rage’, you fragile little sunflower. Everyone in this thread except you seems to be having a perfectly normal adult conversation. If you’d stop pulling your skirt over your head to get some attention from me for a minute, maybe you could think of something to add to it besides hyperbole and baseless accusations.Second, fuck you, random person on the internet whom I owe absolutely nothing. You are no one and nothing to tell me how to act or what to say. Nothing.There. There’s your ‘vitriolic rage’, you spineless little twerp. Fuck off.
Wow. Thanks for proving me 100% correct. The misogny/homophobia was an unexpectedly classy cherry on top.But seriously you need to chill and not have a heart attack over Star Wars comments.Despite your hostility, I wish you the best.
Again, no one was wetting their pants over anything until you showed up bitching about how I couldn’t handle ‘the truth’ and that I was supposedly ‘exploding’ into non-existent ‘vitriolic rage’. What ‘truth’ are you referring to? And where exactly is this ‘vitriolic rage’? And please, tell me, who’s the one who can’t handle different opinions when an opinion that differed from your own is what set you off? Read up. Tell me where I’m wrong. Draw me a map. A perfectly normal conversation was being had until your whiny ass showed up. That really is the fact of the matter here, and it’s pretty ironic that you turned out to be the one who can’t handle the facts.Take your supposed best and shove it, you gaslighting little fuck. I doubt it’s really the best of anything.
I’d say he’s being passive-aggressive, but I don’t think anything he’s said has been that wrong. The fans who latched onto his comments were going to have the same reaction anyway.
Because Star Wars wasn’t a franchise I obsessed about (unlike, say, Pokemon), I didn’t really experience much burnout, aside from maybe seeing too many TV ads. It helped that there was an ebb and flow to the Disney movies at first, and while we got new movies every year, since they were always released around the same time each year there was enough time to let the previous movie settle. Force Awakens and Rogue One got me hyped as fuck for the 2017 entry.Then I watched the movie and it literally killed any interest in any future Star Wars projects going forward. I saw Solo but thought it was OK at best. I barely pay attention to Resistance. Fallen Order’s announced garnered a yawn. I have no interest in any of the Disney+ shows. I’m not excited or eager to see Episode IX at all. Maybe it is burnout, especially with how much arguing and furor there was over the franchise in 2018, though I can still watch the original trilogy and enjoy them just as much (and did so a few months ago). Whatever it is, nothing is connecting with me.
I don’t think he’s wrong about fatigue. I was happy to wait for Solo to come out on Netflix, and even though I enjoyed it and wouldn’t have regretted seeing it in the theater, I didn’t feel any need to return to the world Star Wars exists in. I think a lot of it is due to the joyless direction that the series has taken. There’s so little opportunity for the audience to feel any sense of wonder, which is kind of a major part of science fiction. That’s especially the case with Rey, who is the obvious audience surrogate, but the STAKES ARE SO HIGH and she spends two hours on an island with an asshole. I mean, I want to know how the series ends, but I’ll probably just wait to rent it and occupy myself in the meantime with reading spoilers and enjoying whatever impotent rage about women and minorities that incels whine over.
Damn, you really nailed it. “Joyless” is the perfect word to describe the series’ muddled and angsty plotting, when it’s all supposed to be just swashbuckling in space!
All I know is that a friend of mine who is one of the biggest Star Wars fans I know, who loved Rogue One and really liked The Last Jedi, told me recently that he keeps forgetting about Episode IX and isn’t really anticipating it at all.
How could people be getting tired of space opera critiques of mansplaining and toxic masculinity? That can’t be right.
What happened with Luke Skywalker? Is it clear to much bigger Star Wars fans than I what the deal is? Why did Leia and Han Solo get much, much bigger parts than Luke in the new movies? Why was the character kept on ice for 30 years, such that you couldn’t do a Solo style standalone movie about Luke if you wanted to, because it’s established that Luke does absolutely nothing when the camera is not on him (including a 35 year gap where he just subsistence farmed and meditated)?Is it just acknowledged that the character isn’t very good, or Hamill isn’t good, or is Hamill difficult to work with? Literally every aspect of the Star Wars original trilogy has been mined for value except the original main character. Is there a standard explanation for this?
Whatever is considered box office underperformance for Star Wars, isn’t it partly due to the fact that China couldn’t care less about it?
I saw Solo in the theatre and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and then I picked up a second hand bluray of it and haven’t been able to get through the first 20 mins because, really, who cares? Disney has yet to figure out that less is more sometimes.
I hate when people use the word fatigue with movies. People not paying to see bad movies like Solo or BvS isn’t fatigue of a genre or franchise, it’s just proof that reviews do still matter and people do care about seeing something generally considered as good.If Disney releases a string of awesome Star Wars movies, people will show up. And if people don’t show up to a movie that everyone considers to be good or better, then I would call it fatigue.
The problem with Star Wars is that it keeps constantly repeating the same story ad nauseam. The government is all too powerful and ridiculously bad. The good guys are a bunch of plucky upstarts who are barely getting by on luck, grit & a mysterious force of either space religion or too many T-Cells depending on who is writing the script for the current movie. One old character will probably die. A villain will also be killed in order to balance everything out and then the movie makes a billion dollars and Lucasfilms just repeats the cycle all over again.Enough already! Flip the script and add something original or watch the series become the new Police Academy franchise, but what do I know, I still have Rogue One in my top 3 Star Wars films so whatever.
Yea that’s what I hated about The Last Jedi the most. The Resistance is reduced to like 30-40 members and one Millennium Falcon by the end of the movie. Like why? Why not show two equally powered sides at odds to differentiate the new trilogy from the old and show that the old trilogy had an impact on the political balance of the galaxy?For as much as people give credit to Rian for not making obvious moves, he left TLJ in a place that makes it even easier for Abrams to recreate The Return of the Jedi now.
When you think about where we’re at the SW timeline, how that dynamic should have played out in the sequels “the resistance” should have actually be what the First Order is; a small, but potentially powerful group holding on to the remnants of the Empire and their influence starts to grow as the New Republic struggles to govern itself in its infancy (30 years isn’t a lot of time for a government). The story is obvious. People think the New Republic is fine but its the old guard like Leia and Luke that see the real threat that the former Empire loyalist pose as they try to infiltrate their way back into power. And that’s how you incorporate the new characters. The battle of good and evil never stops. You constantly have to stay vigilant against the dark side.Instead, both movies just repeated what we’ve seen before. And somehow TLJ, despite being the middle movie which traditionally does a lot of the heavy storytelling lifting, left the table in such a way that Episode 9 has to pull so much together that its almost going to be impossible
In some ways the new movies make a lot of sense. Gigantic bureaucracies don’t disintegrate immediately when the leader is killed/deposed. Usually the most opportunistic asshole remaining from the old regime grabs power and basically continues doing what they were doing before. All of that celebrating on the forest moon of Endor was not about the end of the war, just the destruction of the immediate threat. At the end of the day blowing up the Death Star does very little to re-establish the Republic. Hell, virtually nothing the rebels do helps to form a new Republic. They’re basically just space terrorists blowing up military installations. If Leia were truly committed to the new Republic she should be flying around to star systems and gathering allies and turning planets against the Empire. Blowing up the planet one-shotter is helpful, but a Star Destroyer or two can undoubtedly wreck the shit out of a typical planet so it’s mostly a symbolic victory.
Not once does anyone in the Rebel alliance demand that the Emperor reform the Senate and restore checks and balances to the force.
Yeah, the puny scale was not very “Wars” at all. That epic battle was like a soccer game.
I love rogue one. Not being a bit Star Wars fan, maybe my opinion doesn’t hold too much weight, but i think it’s very rewatchable and the cast was terrific.
Your opinions hold just as much weight as the next persons – if you liked it, then good for you.Myself, I found Rogue One to just be depressing and blah. But hey – opinions vary.
Myself, I found Rogue One to just be depressing and blah.
I watched it on a trans-pacific flight. It put me to sleep. I did wake up for the hallway scene. Which, and this coming from someone who can take it or leave it when it comes to SW, was fucking bad-assed and made me wonder where that Vader was hiding out for six movies.
Then I thought I was massively jet lagged because I saw 18 year old Carrie Fisher and went back to sleep.
I’m all aboard your Police Academy/Star Wars reboot/mashup. Can you imagine the dude who makes all the sound effects getting to do all the light sabers and tie-fighters and everything?!
The Star Wars universe is simply suffering from a lack of bad crossovers. Get some Predators in there to tear everyone a new a**hole. That should freshen things up a bit. Sprinkle in a few Giger Aliens too. Alien vs. Predator vs. Jedi. You know you want it.
Had to make sure someone posted this. *posted from my iPhone while hanging onto the feathers of the Millenium Falcon*
This is the FIRST think I thought of when I saw the headline.Well done, sir.
Oh yeah I’m definitely experiencing that…it’s not new though, my Star Wars fatigue started somewhere around Vector Prime.
“Or maybe we’re just ready to be done with this whole Skywalker saga and everything connected to it.”
There’s a great big universe out there. 9 movies is enough. I’m with you. Let’s move on and see what else is out there in that galaxy far, far away.
All series like this get’s fatigued if there is that much product being put out (And make no mistake – these movies are just products made by Disney to make money). The only franchise that still seems able to regularly get excitement is the MCU – but I’d argue that is more because it is a group of movies rather than just one. But even with the MCU I kinda feel that fatigue setting in.If Disney was smart they’d kind let Star Wars rest for a decade after the next movie. They need to put some distance between these movies and whatever comes next in order to allow for hype to build… They won’t do that but that’s what they ought to do.
Thank you for the Upright Citizen’s Brigade reference.
He’s right, and I got it a while back.
I have to think the principal actors in the original movies have experienced Star Wars fatigue for over 40 years.I personally was fatigued by Star Wars about 10 minutes into The Last Jedi. (“Jeez, 2 more hours of this??? I’m half-expecting a Disney-style musical number.”)
I mostly just have star wars vocal fan fatigue. I am tired of everyone still yelling their opinions about star wars.
There is no fatigue for “Good” Star Wars, it’s been a juggernaut for many many years. There is fatigue for “Shitty” Star Wars that is pushing a SJW agenda.
No…it’s just that now EVERYONE knows how bad the last one was. Took a bit but people came around. Thankfully.
LOL, Mark. Most of us have been saying this since 1983.
If they don’t scale back the scope (and the budget) of these new entries, then they’re sunk. Star Wars was made for $11 million, which is 46MM in 2019 bucks. They should put a $100 million cap on the budget for any new entry and not hold it to the same standard of success as “The Force Awakens,” which, yeah, no Star Wars film will every achieve again.
I personally think they shit the bed with the new movies. They should have done Zahn’s Heir to the Empire series. Christ that would’ve been so much better….
“Fatigue” is such a BS excuse. Marvel/Pixar/hit TV all release product regularly, and fans eat it up. Star Wars has just sucked under Disney. Maybe they should try to do something new instead of recycling the same tired prequel/reboot crap.
The general response to Rogue One and Solo was tepid at best, despite sizable box office numbers.The responses to these films weren’t anything alike. Rogue One made more than a billion dollars and pulled an 83% at Rotten Tomatoes; Solo failed to make even 400 million and scored just 70% with RT critics.
When a new Star Wars movie came out, it used to be a big deal. People used to call the original trilogy The Holy Trilogy. Disney thought they could keep the same excitement by taking something that was an event, and making it commonplace. Tough to see the public excitement and anticipation for new Star Wars in early ‘99 and late ‘15 ever repeated again. Thinking Star Wars (which had six feature films released over the 35-year period before Disney bought Lucasfilm…not counting that Clone Wars film) and Marvel (thousands upon thousands of comic issues released over decades) could be handled the same way was a huge mistake.
More like Rian Johnson crapped the bed with TLJ so hard that a good chunk of the fanbase no longer has any faith in Disneys ability to make Star Wars and just aren’t interested. IMO Solo was the best non-saga film yet but it’s cold reception was 100% backlash from TLJ.
star wars fatigue is more than possible when disney’s films are so utterly effing awful
franchise fatigue? even after all these years, he doesn’t know me very well.
Solo’s biggest problem was the short time between TLJ and it. This killed the marketing period and was just plain too close together.
If Solo had come out at Christmas this wouldn’t be a problem.
I think Hamill is right. It’s not special anymore. You need scarcity and Star Wars had it. When your movie franchise is more about the actors in it versus what characters or stories it will tell, it’s already dead.Star Wars is no more special than Star Trek anymore.