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Bloomberg: Star Wars Is Struggling to Win Over the Next Generation of Kids

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
At 19 you aren’t a kid anymore, Star Wars could be kids first option if they move the Mandalorian to the side option and might release a AAA game.
 

NecrosaroIII

Ask me about my terrible takes on Star Trek characters
That's what happens when you turn the next film in your long lived line of pulp space adventure movies into an extended episode of V Gundam.
V Gundam is at least good. I would LOVE for Star Wars to go full V Gundam. People would shit themselves.

Tomino is too good for this world.
 
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If they were going to make the sequel trilogy with all the same characters from the original, they had to make it about those characters. Luke cannot just be this kind of tertiary, Yoda wannabe. People didn’t want that. They wanted a story with an ascendant Luke.

Now they didn’t have to give people what they wanted. But if you’re going to tell a story that basically does the opposite of what everyone was looking for, it had better be DAMN good. Otherwise you’re disappointing most fans for something that isn’t even any good. Doing what they did to Luke’s character or to Han’s character has to be worth it. If you’re turning childhood heroes into dad beat dads and hermit weirdos, there had best be some payoff that offsets that disappointment.
 

CloudNull

Banned
Say what you will about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but that franchise is trudging along to great success because it produced movies that had each individual character shine and made the audience care about them. It's no wonder Avengers: Endgame was such a huge success because people around the world were eager to see how the overarching storyline would resolve.

Star Wars isn't exciting audiences anymore because the creative voices behind it have no idea how to make it fresh for a new audience. They're instead relying on nostalgia and callbacks to the original trilogy with movies like Rogue One and Solo. The Last Jedi was an attempt to try something new but failed in the most spectacular way possible.
Great fucking post. Nailed it on the head.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Modern day kids arent going to care about a franchise that churns out movies every once a in a while. And none of them are going to be old school reading all the SW books you hear about that have nothing to do with the classic movies. Modern people have zero attention span.

There's got to be more to it. All these superhero movies go beyond with way more media --> tv shows, games, toys etc....

There's so many characters and villains as long as you enjoy superhero stuff (I dont care for it aside from Bale batman movies and Blade and the first Wonder Woman), there's likely a character or two you really like with crazy powers. I've never read a comic about him, but I even like Doctor Doom.

In SW, you got a more traditional good guy vs bad guy plot where there's fewer characters and aside from some Jedi powers, nobody really any special powers. They are all rebels with street smarts or endless waves of dumb stormtroopers. And the main villain is always some kind of Darth Vader dude (whether it's him or someone like him). Even the plots are the same in most of the movies. Evil Darth guys want to take over the universe with Death Star shit blowing up planets. That plot with rebels infiltrating a base and destroying it from the core must be in 3-4 movies alone.

So in recent movies, the key characters are Rey and Adam Driver lately with some attention to the Black guy and X-wing fighter pilot. That's most of the key people.

They are trying to expand it with all these Rogue One and Solo movies and now Mandalorian, so they know the key to sales and attention span is to churn out shit asap like Marvel and DC movies.
 
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sol_bad

Member
If they were going to make the sequel trilogy with all the same characters from the original, they had to make it about those characters. Luke cannot just be this kind of tertiary, Yoda wannabe. People didn’t want that. They wanted a story with an ascendant Luke.

Now they didn’t have to give people what they wanted. But if you’re going to tell a story that basically does the opposite of what everyone was looking for, it had better be DAMN good. Otherwise you’re disappointing most fans for something that isn’t even any good. Doing what they did to Luke’s character or to Han’s character has to be worth it. If you’re turning childhood heroes into dad beat dads and hermit weirdos, there had best be some payoff that offsets that disappointment.

Why is it OK for Obi-Wan to turn into a hermit weirdo? Why aren't people complaining that he isn't out there trying to overthrow the Emperor? Complete 180 to his Clone Wars days.
 

dcll

Banned
I used to like SW when I was a kid, I don't care anything about watching it anymore and my kids never showed any interest, joked about it being nerdy
 

Xenon

Member
It's all about the toys... or the lack of marketable ones. I don't watch this chick that often but this was a great explanation why the toys bombed harder the Rose Tico's sister.

It's hard enough to try to compete with all the other things viying for children's attention nowadays. But if you screw it up completely it's almost impossible..

 
Why is it OK for Obi-Wan to turn into a hermit weirdo? Why aren't people complaining that he isn't out there trying to overthrow the Emperor? Complete 180 to his Clone Wars days.
We could get into why the situation was very different but it would be very far in the weeds. Let’s just say Obiwan was originally the hermit guy, so getting a backstory about who he was before that wasn’t a big deal to anyone. Plus the prequels were bad for other, more jarring reasons.

I didn’t say they couldn’t make Luke a hermit weirdo. I just said people generally didn’t want that story. After The Force Awakens, people were excited to see Luke as an ascendant, powerful character. For fans of the original trilogy, the guy was a childhood hero. If you’re going to turn that guy into a weird dude who drinks blue alien milk and acts like a bum, you’d better have a really good movie with a really good story. They didn’t. They had the Last Jedi, which was trash. So it was injury on top of insult.

They took a beloved character who people were excited to see again in a positive way, purposefully disappointed them, then gave them a shitty movie to top it off. People don’t want to see their childhood heroes that way. Now perhaps that could’ve been used as a great storytelling tool. Something about being disappointed by your heroes or whatever. But that would’ve required a great movie and complex storytelling.
 
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BouncyFrag

Member
Its seems Disney has passed the torch to Dave Filoni. If anyone can dig the franchise out, it’s him. From the final duel between Kenobi and Maul, from the last scene of the Clone Wars series the guy is great. Not sure if he can pull it off tho.
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
d9c52b53bc52552f5952de66e77fa8d6866c9464.png


Hearing this makes me happy. I might get to see an original work of fiction with a Disney caliber budget within my lifetime.

It really is a dark future when I think that the creativity of thousands of artists around the world is wasted into rehashing Star Wars shit.
 

Tschumi

Member
Serious question: how would you do it? To retain the same breath of appeal? To generate enough variety of content?

I'm not saying it can't be done, but there are reasons Disney has gone the way it has, they figured their course by committee. They have different objectives to NeoGAF people -- does that make them less viable?

I'm just playing devil's advocate
 

Karmic Raze

Member
I don’t know how you could freshen things up. The Last Jedi literally made me sick to my stomach with the way they handled Luke Skywalker. It was a travesty. I still haven’t watched Rise of Skywalker yet due to lack of interest. I’m still bummed from how they did good old Luke.
 

T4rz4

Member
Recently i show my girlfriend sw in machete order (4-5-2-3-ro-6) and she loved it. Obviously the new ones and the ep1 must be avoided.
I can feel that kids nowadays can be far from understand the old movies and the impact they had in the pop culture.
 

BigBooper

Member
Reboot the prequel trilogy and make Anakin a cutter with eye shadow and black hair who cries a lot. Kinda like this guy.
Kylo Ren Rain GIF by Star Wars


Are there any good new characters in the new movies? I didn't think so.
 

sol_bad

Member
Recently i show my girlfriend sw in machete order (4-5-2-3-ro-6) and she loved it. Obviously the new ones and the ep1 must be avoided.
I can feel that kids nowadays can be far from understand the old movies and the impact they had in the pop culture.

My nieces were bored as shit when I tried introducing them to A New Hope about 6 or 7 years ago. They love Marvel and the Fast movies though.
Ah well.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Its seems Disney has passed the torch to Dave Filoni. If anyone can dig the franchise out, it’s him. From the final duel between Kenobi and Maul, from the last scene of the Clone Wars series the guy is great. Not sure if he can pull it off tho.
It’s too late man, the damage is done. I can’t imagine what anyone could do to restore any interest I had in Star Wars.

Remove some of the dumber changes in the OT and declare episodes 7-9 as basically a mistake.

Even then I think I’m still totally done.
 

Karmic Raze

Member
It’s too late man, the damage is done. I can’t imagine what anyone could do to restore any interest I had in Star Wars.

Remove some of the dumber changes in the OT and declare episodes 7-9 as basically a mistake.

Even then I think I’m still totally done.
I’m still game for more lightsaber fights. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 

DKehoe

Member
Hearing this makes me happy. I might get to see an original work of fiction with a Disney caliber budget within my lifetime.

It really is a dark future when I think that the creativity of thousands of artists around the world is wasted into rehashing Star Wars shit.
It is kinda depressing when so many upcoming promising talents get snatched up to work on Marvel, Star Wars or some other franchise.
 

MrMephistoX

Member
If they were going to make the sequel trilogy with all the same characters from the original, they had to make it about those characters. Luke cannot just be this kind of tertiary, Yoda wannabe. People didn’t want that. They wanted a story with an ascendant Luke.

Now they didn’t have to give people what they wanted. But if you’re going to tell a story that basically does the opposite of what everyone was looking for, it had better be DAMN good. Otherwise you’re disappointing most fans for something that isn’t even any good. Doing what they did to Luke’s character or to Han’s character has to be worth it. If you’re turning childhood heroes into dad beat dads and hermit weirdos, there had best be some payoff that offsets that disappointment.

The problem is the 30 year gap. They can backfill it to make it cool with animation and games or Mando cameos but at the end of the day the ST couldn’t just pretend Mark Hamill was in his 30’s like people wanted because all the actors especially Carrie Fisher were too damn old and physically incapable of believable stunts unless they went full CGI body doubles like Christopher Lee in the prequels. If you want an example of how bad it could have been look no further than Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. They should have just used George Lucas’ scripts and brought on Filoni sooner. Star Wars Tv is way more exciting than the Disney films.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Never watched a single Star Wars movie. What am I missing?
Nothing really. I havent seen all the movies, but have seen maybe 2/3 of them. I barely remember anything about them, but here's the summary.

If you really want to check them out, the movies are long. Even though old and campy and cheap special effects compared to now, I'd watch the original movies. They are more memorable than the latest flicks even though the production quality is 10x better. Then again, if you like more serious gritty sci-fi movies, watch the recent ones.

It sounds crazy, but watching those old movies and the giant space fights they had are still great to watch though the budgets are obviously low.

- In some fictional universe (even though somehow a spaceship has a modern day Earth name like Falcon in it), there's poor scrappy rebels living on dirt planets vs. the evil Dark Side who are trying to destroy planets or at minimum take them over. The only places the evil side seems to live are in giant spaceships or military bases and the leaders dress in black
- The universe has something called "the force" which some people (Jedis) are born with and they can do crazy attacks, jumps and move things with their mind
- Each side has their own crew of Jedis and many of them have laser swords called light sabers which some reason can deflect laser shot at them. So a laser deflecting a laser I guess
- The Jedis can do super powerful tricks, but only use it when convenient. So they rather do swordfights and run from people shooting at them instead obliterating them with the force, but when there's a giant boulder in their way, then they use the force
- There's a ton of movies, which combine a prequels, sequels, spin offs stories (past 5 years), they all interconnect like a giant saga. So if you jump into a random movie, you wont get half the stuff or who these main characters are because most of them interconnect in all movies in some way
- The older movies were more campy and cheesy. It was family fun which had crazy puppets and people dressed in costumes and plastic models. Now, the movies are more serious, darker and more gritty special effects. Think of it like old Batman movies vs. Christian Bale movies
- Most of the movies, the main plot is rebels infiltrating a base and destroying it from within, or why the evil leader became who he is. Or both
- The series hinges on the old characters/actors from the movies 40 years (the 3 starting movies which launched SW into fandom). SW fans seem to love them, while the newer characters are hit and miss. So to keep interest, the recent movies have these 75 year old actors still in it in some way so people can awe at seeing Luke Skywalker and Harrison Ford as senior citizens
- The moves go back to the late 70s, but the actual order of story doesnt start with the first movie. Those 3 starting movies are actually Acts 4, 5, 6. I think the movies made in 2000-ish are really Acts 1, 2, 3. And the recent movies are 7, 8 etc... I think that's the order. And the spin off movies like young Han Solo are it's own thing although I'm sure someone can piece it together and figure out where all those go
 
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HoodWinked

Member
i dont know that it's a reflection of the declining quality of Star Wars that's putting kids off.

Kids just don't give a shit about anything anymore, their brains are so fried from having a practically permanent affixed handheld device with unlimited porn and the dopamine drip of youtube, social media, f2p games.
 

SafeOrAlone

Banned
I'm around age 30 and never fully got on board. I mean, I've always had a passing interest and I've always tried. It's a big budget fantasy epic and there is a ton of content, so it's something I want to like. Usually leaves me feeling dry though.
I do like Boba Fett. Yeah, cause he looks cool and is mysterious. That's about as geeked out on Star Wars as I get.
 
The OT still remains as good as ever but the cultural landscape has changed drastically. Star Wars will never hit in the same way it did back in the 70's. There is just too much other content competing for the same audience.

Its also not helped much by the newer stuff being largely either superfluous at best and total shit at worst.
 
Recently i show my girlfriend sw in machete order (4-5-2-3-ro-6) and she loved it. Obviously the new ones and the ep1 must be avoided.
I can feel that kids nowadays can be far from understand the old movies and the impact they had in the pop culture.

Wat Episode 1 is better than Episode 2, 3 , TLJ, RoS and probably TFA as well. I'll die on that hill.
 
The problem is the 30 year gap. They can backfill it to make it cool with animation and games or Mando cameos but at the end of the day the ST couldn’t just pretend Mark Hamill was in his 30’s like people wanted because all the actors especially Carrie Fisher were too damn old and physically incapable of believable stunts unless they went full CGI body doubles like Christopher Lee in the prequels. If you want an example of how bad it could have been look no further than Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. They should have just used George Lucas’ scripts and brought on Filoni sooner. Star Wars Tv is way more exciting than the Disney films.
Perhaps. But Luke could’ve been powerful via the Force without a lot of stunt work. He could’ve at least been heroic. Luke was never the tragic figure that Obi Wan was. They turned him into this jaded, grumpy weirdo. And like I said, if it was in service of a really great story arc, so be it. But it wasn’t. So much of that movie seemed to be in spite of the audience. “Subverting expectations” isn’t a plot.
 

MrMephistoX

Member
Perhaps. But Luke could’ve been powerful via the Force without a lot of stunt work. He could’ve at least been heroic. Luke was never the tragic figure that Obi Wan was. They turned him into this jaded, grumpy weirdo. And like I said, if it was in service of a really great story arc, so be it. But it wasn’t. So much of that movie seemed to be in spite of the audience. “Subverting expectations” isn’t a plot.
Totally and I’m pretty sure it will get earned eventually with Filoni and Favreau but that’s honestly a cop out: the only reason people like the prequels now is because they reconned in a good story arc for Anakin and Obiwan.
 
Totally and I’m pretty sure it will get earned eventually with Filoni and Favreau but that’s honestly a cop out: the only reason people like the prequels now is because they reconned in a good story arc for Anakin and Obiwan.
Eh. The prequels were bad mostly because of their writing and over reliance on green screen film making. I honestly this there was a decent story in there somewhere. But choices like making Anakin an 8 year old instead of a teenage in Ep 1 or not using episode 2 to build a more positive relationship between Obi wan and Anakin were bad decisions. A few tweaks and I think those are decent movies. Maybe that’s a bit of nostalgia talking since I was a teenage when they came out.

I always saw the prequels as a missed opportunity due to poor execution. The Disney trilogy has just been an unadulterated disaster. They kind of seemed like they were building something with Force Awakens. It was a rehash in a lot of ways, but there seemed to be a lot of things they were planning to pay off later. Then Last Jedi basically goes out of its way to shit all over everything. And finally, Rise of Skywalker just rolls around in that shit, culminating with the Emperor shooting lightning into space to disable an entire fleet like this was some kind of fan fiction.
 
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They could have made movie about Thrawn... it is consider disney canon now. I mean it would fit the left ideology too since Thrawn is well know anti-racist as he fact his own fair of racistism during his time in imperial school.
 
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sol_bad

Member
They could have made movie about Thrawn... it is consider disney canon now. I mean it would fit the left ideology too since Thrawn is well know anti-racist as he fact his own fair of racistism during his time in imperial school.

Cannon Thrawn and Legends Thrawn are different though aren't they?
 

Durask

Member
IMHO
The only reason Star Wars became popular is because of the special effects.
When the original came out it was mind blowing, nothing was even close. In fact the entire original trilogy put any other sci-fi movie to shame, effects wise.
Even the prequels looked pretty damn good for that time.

Now it's just another CGI movie.
 

PanzerAzel

Member
And, the search by the clueless as to why this is happening continues.…with the answer staring them directly in the face that arrogance and hubris simply won’t allow to be acknowledged:

The new Star Wars films suck.

Make good movies, and people will flock to them. Otherwise Disney….carry on calling everyone bigots, blaming the fans, etc, while your golden goose goes swirling down the fucking toilet. As big of a fan that I am for the Star Wars UOT, this is gratify to see.
 

Kenpachii

Member
Nothing in the new movies makes sense. Its terrible. From cast to weight of characters and ships to scripts. its a disney rollercoaster of checkmarks and that's all u get.

Loads of people grow up with luke and his lightsaber. he was a huge inspirating for many guys in there life and to be motivated etc.

All of that got reduced to ash when his introduction being a old man drinking tit milk from some fucking alien slug.

The constant introduction of US politics and woke points and comical bad acting whjile at it at times, just made it so bad to the point i didnt'even watched the end of the first movie because i already saw this movie and this bootleg version of it just was not interesting at all.

This represents the movies vs what people want to see.

The movies:

F0sVx9l.gif


Vs what people wanted.

9e98a21e26f3f44251e5869d693f015a.gif
 
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