How to fix Star Wars

The force is strong with this rant

The latest Star Wars show “The Acolyte” has split the Star Wars fans. It’s being called the worst show Star Wars has ever done. Thanks Disney!

So over the weekend I had this bright idea on what fans can do to fix Star Wars if they don’t like the direction it’s going in. You can watch the full rant on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTHYA5UQqc

My basic point is this - if you want to fix Star Wars, stop giving Disney your time, money, and attention. Also stop giving people online who talk about Star Wars your time, money, and attention too. Pretty much pretend that Star Wars doesn’t exist. Cancel Disney+, don’t go to the theme parks, stop buying merch, and yeah just sort of leave to do something else.

Or if you still like Star Wars, get physical copies of the pre-Disney stuff that is still enjoyable and rewatch those.

But all of this brings up a basic problem with modern commerce (from the consumer side). With large content subscription services like Netflix for movies, Xbox Games Pass for games, Spotify for music, etc. you are signing up to put your money into a giant pile. You don’t really get to vote with your wallet anymore.

This is a huge problem because now these companies no longer have to make something you will pay for. They need to make something that is just good enough for you to keep paying monthly.

For example, the last two or three Star Wars movies (including spinoffs) didn’t do very well at the box office. And DVD/Blu-ray sales are down across the board. So Disney stopped making Star Wars movies for a while and shifted Star Wars to Disney+. At first Mandalorian was great (seasons 1 and 2). But now Disney+ looks more like a dumping ground of random Star Wars shows of varying quality.

Not all the new Star Wars shows are bad. But it looks to me like Disney’s strategy shifted from getting me to buy a $10-20 movie ticket or a $15-25 movie on disc, to paying $10-20/month to watch the latest Star Wars thing. Business wise isn’t not a bad strategy. But as a consumer, it means they don’t have the same incentive to make something amazing enough that I go to the theater to see it. Or order it from Amazon. It just has to be okay enough to not cancel the subscription.

From what I can tell, this amounts to lowering the bar for something to get made, even if it has astronomical budgets of $200 million or more! There are plenty of movie projects where if it had a $200 million budget and it only made $20-50 million back in theaters, the project would be a failure and everyone involved would be shunned for lighting a ton of money on fire on an expensive failure. But shows like She Hulk (for marvel) and The Acolyte (for Star Wars) have the same crazy budgets approved and they perform poorly.

Even crazier is often the show runners get offered tons of other Disney+ deals for movies, spin off series, etc. before these shows even come out (and bomb). Eventually these deals get unwound, but not before wasting even more money.

And hey, Disney has billions of dollars. It doesn’t matter what they do with the money they make.

But the basic trade used to be - “make me something entertaining and I will pay you to enjoy it”. Now it’s more like - “we will make junk and you are too stupid to cancel the subscription”. And that’s not just a Disney thing. It’s a Netflix thing. It’s an Xbox thing. It’s a Spotify thing.

All the subscription services seem to end up in the same place - massive production budgets wasted on mostly mediocre projects or straight up propaganda. Every once in a while something incredible sneaks out, but that almost feels like an accident now.

The only way out of this game seems to be to stop playing OR go back to paying for individual shows/movies/games that you enjoy instead of the all you can eat content buffet.

Anyway, was feeling kindof ranty about this topic, so I thought I’d share.

-Brian