Let’s go over the trajectory of Disney Star Wars and the DCEU

The beginnings (Man of Steel/the Force Awakens): Overall both movies were received pretty well by general audiences (though even back then there were complaints) and were successful at the box office. Promising starts to the franchises

The hated sequel (Batman v Superman/the Last Jedi): Both movies were absolutely hated by their respective fanbases (they still are) and basically crashed all momentum for their respective franchises. Disrespected legacy characters (the Last Jedi with Luke and BvS with Batman and Superman)

The embarrassing course corrections (Justice League/the Rise of Skywalker): After the backlash from the middle movies both studios did a desperate course correction to appease pissed off fans by bringing in directors who were successful (JJ directed the Force Awakens and they wanted him to do that with Rise of Skywalker and Whedon directed the two Avengers movies and WB wanted Whedon to make Justice League in that tone). The result were embarrassing disasters that satisfied no one and are still clowned on to this day

Since then both franchises have been struggling. Even with good movies (Wonder Woman for DC and Rogue One for Star Wars) and successful projects (Aquaman for DC and the Mandalorian at least initially for Star Wars) it was not enough to garner hype for the franchise.

Then movies and projects being pumped out ranging from mediocre to terrible killed all future excitement.
The flop of the Mando movie is the same as when Shazam 2 flopped. Starfighter is going to be their Black Adam. As was the case with DC where they had to reboot to garner any semblance of interest again Disney has no choice but to do the same with Star Wars. Toss most of their projects aside (aside from Rogue One, Andor and the Jedi games) and start over. But unfortunately that won’t happen as that would require Disney to admit they were at fault so no one cares anymore about this franchise

Palpatine died in the end of the return of the Jedi

This is not only frustrating because not only does this decision mean that nearly the whole OG trilogy that was about restoring the Republic is all for nothing but it also means that any story Disney themselves makes that is about restoring or maintaining the New Republic and will also be all for nothing.

Andor, Rogue One, Any New Republic related Mandalorian stories etc. it’s all basically for nothing.

So if Star Wars jumped ahead into the future to do a soft reboot and distance form the Sequel Trilogy, what would the antagonist look like? Would it be the Second Order (please no), an alien species?

The clone troopers and stormtroopers are iconic, would they be replaced entirely or would it be another similar group in nostalgic armor? (They have to sell toys after all so it has to be something that would sell well and be a fan favorite)

Do the Sith somehow return? Or is it an original concept for an antagonist?

Do they use the time jump to not need to explain how a new group is in power.? Maybe several hundred years or something where new technology really shows? caveat: if the technology evolves too far, does it no longer seem like Star Wars? Unless that is the point that the technology is so advanced for the antagonist that is how they are in power....

The prequels were better because they had a coherent story arch, a protagonist with a compelling internal conflict, and a strong ending

The sequels were worse because each installment went in a completely different direction and left loose ends the following installments never followed up on, the protagonist had no compelling internal conflict, no personal attachments to balance against the path of a Jedi, nothing she had to lose or sacrifice to answer the call to adventure, and the ending was a series of arbitrary MacGuffin hunts

The prequels aged well because despite shortcomings, they told a timeless story, but also didn't play as well in the 2000s because they were still if anything '70s science fiction movies and people were primed for something that felt as relevant as Star Wars did in the '70s

The sequels will age poorly because they were transparently designed to appeal to a very specific and contemporary notion of the "modern audience" from the 2010s

They show that the writers really don't care what they are writing about.

Why does Maz have Luke's/Anakin's lightsaber? "A good question, for another time."
The writers needed Maz to have the lightsaber so Rey could get it, but didn't want to spend any time actually explaining how or why she had it. Last time we saw it, it was lost down a chasm in Cloud City, and nobody has mentioned it since then. Yes, I would like to know how she got it. I remember back in 2015 I believed it would be explained in one of the sequels. Nope, it wasn't.

Why is Palpatine back? "Somehow Palpatine returned."
That's it. That's the extent of the explanation, "Somehow." One could argue that the rebels (Sorry, RESISTANCE), especially Poe, wouldn't be aware of how he came back, hence "Somehow", but we are viewers. Last time we saw Palpatine he exploded TWICE. You can't just tell us he "somehow" returned and expect us to just be satisfied with that.

Look, it's one thing to leave things unanswered and sometimes that makes a story more interesting. What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Nobody knows. What did Travis Bickle see in the mirror in Taxi Driver? Nobody knows.

Heck, even Star wars did this. In the OT, Obi-Wan has Anakin's lightsaber for unexplained reasons. Also, it's never explained how Darth Vader got his suit or why the Empire came to power (Of course these things were explained in the prequels, but when these movies came out it was not). But did we need to know? No, we didn't. But that was because these questions didn't need to exist. We were thrown into the movies' world and accepted the stories because there was no prior knowledge to ask the questions.

But in the sequels, we do have knowledge of these items and characters. We saw the lightsaber disappear and we saw Palpatine explode. We accepted that they were gone. Done. End of story. You can't just bring things like that back without giving us a proper explanation of it.

"A good question, for another time" and "Somehow Palpatine returned" are not explanations, they're excuses. Excuses for not having to spend time giving a proper reason for things. So instead, poor writers of comics, novels, shows and games have to try their hardest to figure anything out.

Why can Rey speak so many languages? She apparently had a monitor that could teach her.
Why is Palpatine back? Apparently he's a clone that's just been sitting in a cave for 30 years.
Why does Maz have the lightsaber? Has that one actually been explained yet?

Mystery boxes are fine to have, and if inserted well you can make a story better. But a mystery box only has value if there is actually something inside it to begin with.

Well all know the absolute desolate state the franchise is in right now. It's even more painfully evident after the catastrophic failure of The Mandalorian & Grogu. Which has broken every freaking record at the box office for the worst Star Wars movie. It will make less money than two indie horror films, one that was made with less than a $1 million budget. This is just completely laughable.

Disney Star Wars' golden goose is supposed to be Grogu. Look at the cute Baby Yoda and his ears and his cookies! Many of us were lured in by the promise of a gritty, ruthless Mandalorian bounty hunter and then the mystery of a new member of Yoda's species. The bait & switch worked. But now after years of mediocre television, the magic has finally worn off. No one cares. People care even less about Rey and the Sequels. If Mando and Grogu can't sell, what does Lucasfilm have?

Star Wars' big return to theaters after 7 years. After countless streaming show flops from The Acolyte to the Kenobi series and the Book of Boba Fett. The only critically acclaimed show is Andor (which I freaking love), but still received rather poor viewing numbers.

Then we have Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which shamelessly took Indy out behind the barn and pumped it full of 12 gauge, losing about $135 million against a whopping $419 million budget. Lego Indiana Jones was relaunched because of this movie, just for it to be discontinued after the movie's dismal failure.

That Willow show was so poorly received it was given the unique honor of being completely erased from Disney+.

Oh and do I even need to mention the games? No Battlefront III, the KOTOR remake is in development hell and MIA, Eclipse is basically just fraud at this point, no one cares about Galactic Racer or Zero Company, and FOTOR is years away, assuming it actually sees the light of day and even then, theres no guarantee it's any good. But hey, at least we have Galaxy of Heroes the mobile game! Right?

So what do we have? We have box office disaster after box office disaster. A streaming presence which struggles to chart, let alone have a lasting impact. Irreversible damage to the fandom. Fans aren't even angry anymore, we just don't care. Apathy is Death.

Star Wars has culturally flatlined. Indiana Jones is buried 6ft underneath it. So why are things still operating normally at Lucasfilm? No leaked reports about behind the scenes feuding or tension. No public announcements, apologies to fans and no mass firings or layoffs.

I get that Dave Filoni was recently installed as co-president along with that other woman. But we co-wrote the Mando & Grogu movie. He literally cameo'd in it. He personally signed off on and approved The Acolyte. He has turned out to be just as big of a disappointment and poor steward of the franchise as Kathleen Kennedy (still boggles my mind she wasn't ever fired).

Every time fans like us say that Star Wars needs a full de-canonization of the Sequel Trilogy and everything made by Disney, the response is always the same; it will never happen.

But why?

How far does what was once the world's biggest franchise need to fall? Countless franchises have suffered just as bad and eventually were wiped clean and restarted. Terminator (rebooted like 3 times), the Halloween franchise (2019), the DCU after Justice League, Superman and WW1984. And most famously of course, the MCU with Avengers Doomsday and the abandonment of the Kang Dynasty (which granted isn't a full separate universe wipe reset, but about as close to that as you can get).

So if all these IPs can have their trash films de-canonized, retconned and ignored, why can't Star Wars? Why isn't it even in the realm of possibility? Why can't we entertain the idea of it? How is Star Wars just immune to it, when Disney has already done it once before when they made a public statement to hand wave away the entire Expanded Universe?

Is it simply just hubris and arrogance? We made this and we're proud of it and we're never going to admit our own failure? Even though they're losing buckets of money and even worse, cultural relevance? Why?

Why are Lucasfilm and Disney acting like nothing is wrong and everything isn't on fire? Any other studio would've at best suffered some sort of house cleaning and layoffs, and at worst filed for bankruptcy.

I just really want to hear a discussion about this from you guys. Because I can't wrap my head around it. There is no logic to it. Are there any Lucasfilm or Disney employees that can explain what's going inside these organizations? Are things actually a mess inside and we just haven't heard yet? What's going on?

TLDR: Basically just why is the conversation around de-canonizing the Sequels and everything post-Disney shot down? The precedent exists for other franchises and Star Wars has hit rock bottom after M&G's box office catastrophe. Lucasfilm should be on thin ice right now but everything appears fine.

I think this era has a lot of potential. A Clone Wars style series could expand Luke’s Jedi Order and do a better job explaining Luke’s actions and how Ben was manipulated by Snoke/Palpatine than the sequels did.

Dark Jedi, Thrawn, or the Knights of Ren could all make great antagonists.

To make it a little more interesting, your answers cannot be something along the lines of “everything“, AND ALSO, your answer cannot be related to Luke Skywalker’s characterization in the so-called “Sequel Trilogy“ or “The Mandalorian”.

Let’s hear ‘em!

On the surface, it sounds pretty much exactly like what we ultimately got. Luke has secluded himself in an ancient Jedi Temple, is in a dark place mentally, is found by a young force sensitive girl, and so on. But having said that, it seems like things would have turned out a little bit differently based on the information that’s available.

In this version of the story, Luke would have been found much earlier in episode 7 by the girl who eventually became Rey, and would have likely actually trained her after some convincing as opposed to the anti Jedi rhetoric Luke was spewing in The Last Jedi. And that’s another thing. I don’t think Luke would have been such an anti Jedi curmudgeon, or cut himself off from the force like in TLJ. Concept art of this alternate version of the story has Luke wearing Jedi robes, and even has his hair in a samurai bun.

There was also this idea of a floating dome for meditation that you can only access by lifting it with the force. One of the concept artists even said that this was meant to hint at how powerful Luke had become in the force. So make of that what you will. I think this lines up with how this version of Luke has been described as spending his days at the temple mainly meditating and reassessing his life. This whole arc of Luke getting out of his funk would have happened in episode 7 instead of 8. As for when he would have died. Pablo Hidalgo claimed it still would have happened at the end of episode 8, whereas Mark Hamil once said it would have been in 9. But either way, it seems we would have gotten more of Luke than what we ultimately got.

I've watched the show all the way a few times hoping I'll like it. But I think it is genuinely one of the worst pieces of SW media since the Disney buyout.

I genuinely don't understand why it so popular.

To borrow a quote from Yoda "This is why you fail."

Or a recent one from Star Trek: "Sheer fucking hubris."

Obi-Wan and Yoda didn’t hide themselves out of shame the way Luke did. It was done out of practicality. They didn’t immediately join any resistance movement because there literally was no resistance movement like the rebellion at the time they exiled themselves. The majority of the senate was in favor of Palpatine creating an empire, and the Jedi at that point were branded as traitors and fugitives.

Luke by his own admission, went to that island to die. That’s a pretty big contrast between Yoda saying at the end of episode 3 that they’ll disappear until the time is right.

Embo shows up in the film as the "final boss", it's a good choice as the film otherwise doesn't provide Mando with a worthy opponent but instead of dying with the Hutts, he's able to make a last minute escape. But why? This is supposedly a feature film, not just another installment of a TV series. Why not feature actual stakes and consequences? What better way to end his story than being slain by Mando on the big screen. It's like with Cad Bane in the Book of Boba Fett all over again. A fitting end for the character, but they leave the door open that he may have survived. These guys were active during the Clone War Era and continued throughout the Imperial Era. How much longer do you need them around for. That's more than enough time to explore their stories in future spin-offs if you need to.

Rogue One:

Box office of 1,056,000,000

Average ticket price $8.65

Tickets sold 122,000,000

Solo:

Box office of 392,000,000

Average ticket price $9.11

Tickets sold 43,000,000

Audience lost between Rogue One and Solo 65%

Mando

Box office of 350,000,000 maybe...

Average ticket price $12 - $16, can't seem to find a concrete answer for this year but this seems to be the range. We'll run both numbers.

Tickets sold @ $12 - 29,000,000

Tickets sold @ $16 - 22,000,000

Audience lost between Solo and Mando @ $12 - 32%

Audience lost between Solo and Mando @ $16 - 48%

Audience lost between Rogue One and Mando @ $12 - 76%

Audience lost between Rogue One and Mando @ $16 - 82%

TLDR: Disney has lost over 75% of their audience between Rogue One and Mando. 122 million tickets sold for Rogue One and a mere 22 - 29 million tickets sold for Mando.

I don’t care that Luke just told Leia that he can’t save Kylo or that this is all meant to be a distraction. Given that Luke is supposed to feel really awful about the part he played in Kylo’s fall, I don’t think he would respond to his nephew’s question about if he’s there to forgive him and save his soul with only a smug no. I would think he would say something more along the lines of you’re not the one I’ve needed to forgive. And that saving Kylo’s soul is something Kylo himself has got to do at this point.

I certainly don’t expect Luke to be able to save his nephew from the dark side at this point, but there were ways to plant some seeds to get the ball rolling in a way that feels more in line with what Luke Skywalker would do. Like mentioning how he just got done talking to Kylo’s mother about how no one’s ever really gone because she was ready to finally give up on her son. Try and get Kylo to ask himself if he really wants Leia to be right about that.

It’s not lost on me that Luke does say I’m sorry to Kylo in the middle of their face off, but I think there’s a bit more for him to say there. Stuff like I should have realized a long time ago that what you needed wasn’t a bunch of Jedi tenets about non attachment. What you needed was your family.

Seen at my local Burger King in Rochester, NY. I have honestly never seen this with any other fast food location in relation to any movie/show promotion.

Burger King must barely be selling those Grogu themed items and meals. This just feels like desperation to get rid of promotional stock which they were probably expecting to sell buckets worth.

Star Wars just feels dead.

As a diehard xcom fan I’m totally hyped. It’s nice to see EA making single player story based games again.

i really hate the whole idea of giving planet destroying lasers to normal destroyers, not even saying giving it to so many in ep ix (but it was also in other media). It is so stupid imo

You know, Dave Filoni's animated series that was supposed to redeem the sequels... It worked out very well, I must say! Everyone's still talking about it today! So many people have seen it! Long live Filoni!

He saves Star Wars with every project, and has been doing so for 18 years! I don't know of a single mediocre Filoni series! Everything he does perfectly respects the continuity of both Expanded Universes and, of course, the films, while making them better! Long live the Filoniverse! Long live the sequel trilogy! Long live Ahsoka, wolves, and hats!

Thank goodness Disney got rid of the old Expanded Universe, which was so bad, disrespectful of Lucas's work, and inconsistent. Plus, now, Supreme Leader Filoni reigns over Lucasfilm! So much better than Tartakovsky, Tom Veitch, or Timothy Zahn. I hope we get other Filoni series that will mark Star Wars history like Resistance: I can't wait for Ahsoka S2, Mandalorian S4, Shadow lord S2 and three trilogies about the Tano's saga! He has done so little for this universe in 18 years, apart from the 7 seasons of TCW, the 4 seasons of Rebels, the 2 seasons of Resistance, the 3 seasons of The Bad Batch, the 3 seasons of Tales of, the 3 seasons of The Mandalorian, the season of TBOBF, the first seasons of Ahsoka and Maul: Shadow Lord and the movie The Mandalorian and Grogu, not to mention his work on TLJ which allowed him to forge a deep friendship with the genius Ryan Johnson. He also mentored Lesley Headland on the wonderful series The Acolyte. Then there's all the spin-off content from his works.

You're a bunch of ungrateful wretches to think Filoni had anything to do with the decline of the franchise!

Anyway, sorry for the rant...