- Star Wars Disney Plus shows should move away from Jedi-centric stories and explore other aspects of the Star Wars universe
- Andor is a successful example of a Star Wars show without Jedi, focusing on the Empire’s control and morally gray characters
- Suggestions for new Star Wars show ideas include Pod Racing, Jawa Storage Wars, and One Man and His Droid, among others
You mean like The Mandalorian? 🤔
Also Boba Fett which, sadly, proves that focusing away from the Jedi stories doesn’t guarantee a good story.
What Disney should do is focus away from the ~100 years that take place during the Skywalker saga. Theyre coming out with an old republic show, finally, after owning the property for over 10 years now. Its a big ass galaxy, fill it with something.
But of course, obligatory Tatooine plot
Old republic isnt less sith and jedi, its many many more.
Nah, it’s the High Republic era, aka Disney fanfic because they can’t figure what to do next with their nostalogy sequel era.
I’ve been saying this forever, the games and expanded universe figured this out decades ago. It let’s you do whatever you want because you don’t have to deal with accidentally retconning something or making sure it fits the existing timeline.
As a longtime (read: older) Star Wars fan, I feel like completely eschewing Jedi is a mistake. What I’d love to see is more exploration of the world from the perspective of people who aren’t Jedi and aren’t directly involved in the mystic struggle, but are present to bear witness to what happens when literal gods play politics around them.
The Jedi should always be a central theme to Star Wars. They’re what make the universe what it is. Without them, it’s just another space opera, and sci fi needs its MacGuffin. But it would be super interesting to see stories told from outside of that central narrative, reacting to, interacting with, and otherwise existing around the Jedi.
I know this has been explored to some extent with Mandalorian and Andor, but the latter - while a great show - still felt like it would be improved with more direct involvement of the central theme of the universe.
IMO talking about Jedi, Sith and the Force too much dilutes their importance.
They’re indeed central to the story, but they’re also extremely rare, to a point where most people in the Star Wars universe believe the Jedi are a myth which may not even be real. Seeing a Jedi in action would be like seeing the Messiah in the flesh.
That’s in large part due to the machinations of the Emperor, though. They were a para-military policing force throughout the galaxy before the fall of the Republic. Those planets who don’t get a lot of interaction with the Republic (like Tatooine) are probably going to have less direct interaction… but they’ll still have some familiarity with the overall concept that doesn’t lean heavily into grandiose myth.
Disney needs to re-learn the concept of the Disney Vault, and use it.
I don’t want any more star wars this decade, thanks. Games, books, sure. But TV and film absolutely not.
Take a break, let the audience build nostalgia and long for it, and sweet Jesus have a fucking plan next time.
Nope, they’re doing a trilogy of Rey movies.
Nope, they’re doing a trilogy of Rey movies.
They’re doing fucking what?
I only see one Rey movie in here, but Mandalorian and Grogu is going to be horrible, calling it now.
The Mandalorian and Grogu
Can’t quite believe that’s a real movie name and not a joke.
I mean Mandalorian already jumped the shark with season 3 anyway.
Agreed
Let me go against the grain here: I see a lot of people saying “we need a show like this, we need more of that”, but we don’t really need more Star Wars. We need good Star Wars, not more Star Wars.
Most people want the occasional movie and show about the central Star Wars story, not a multitude of spin-offs about not-Star Wars which happen to be set in the Star Wars universe. They should develop more original stories and settings. “Go out and make your own Star Wars” in the words of George Lucas.
The only problem is the central movies have turned out to be absolute dogshit under Disney.
Yeah, hard agree. “Andor was great because it wasn’t about Jedi” is the wrong lesson to take.
Andor was great because it was made by people who were deeply passionate about what they were doing. They took the set dressing and the context that Star Wars offered and they used it to tell an incredibly powerful story of resistance against fascist oppression, everything that means and entails and what it costs. They created something powerful and vital that deserves and needs to exist.
We need more media that was created out of passion. We need artists to be set free to make art, not shackled to producing whatever a studio thinks is popular. That doesn’t mean it all has to be high minded, subtle or complex; John Wick was a work of artistic passion and it shows. The art is “Look how cool it is when Keanu Reeves shoots people”, but that can be art too. Subtle, complex morality plays or guns and explosions, or Jedi having lightsaber duels. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that people creating it really, really give a shit about what they’re making, and are allowed to make it the way they want to.
Or in short: we need more things that were made because someone wanted to tell that particular story, not because someone needed to fill a slot in a release schedule.
Yeah, too often stories involve just phoning parts in (or the majority, as was the case with episode 8). The story they end up releasing is full of plot holes and tactical and strategic errors.
They didn’t even try to create a coherent sequel trilogy arc and gave the different pieces to different people, one of whom didn’t really like star wars fans (though to be fair, I enjoyed that aspect at the time because the fanbase can be pretty toxic and Kylo Ren, from my interpretation, was making fun of toxic fans who turn their passion into shit for others they deem unworthy), and the other seemed to hate star wars itself. At least, that’s the only way I can understand how episode 8 ended up being such a steaming pile of shit. Rian hated heroes and people not following orders and shoehorned those positions into a series that heavily features heroes improvising in ways that often went directly against what they were told to do.
See, I feel like you’re missing the point here when you bring up Last Jedi as your negative example.
If you didn’t like the movie, fair play, that’s your deal, but it is most certainly not an example of something being phoned in. Whatever else you may feel about Last Jedi, whether or not you agree with the choices it made, it was clearly made with passion and intent. Rian had an artistic vision for the movie, he had things he wanted to say. The reason it gets so much hate is mostly because the things he wanted a) didn’t mesh with what the fans wanted to hear, and b) didn’t really line up with what anyone else involved in new Star Wars wanted to say. What he offered was a very bold, very different new direction for the series, but it was a road that no one else was interested in going down. And you can fairly make the argument that that’s a failing as a film-maker; sometimes you need to know your audience. But either way, it was the story that he wanted to tell, so much so that it ended up not being the story that anyone wanted to hear.
If you want to talk about movies that exist just to exist, that were made without passion or purpose, you’re looking for Rise of Skywalker.
I stopped reading when they chose 8 to shit on over 7 or 9
There were still gaping holes in the plot.
Like the resistance characters go from not believing light speed tracking is possible to guessing how it must be done and therefore a weakness in two breaths.
No one thinks to scatter the fleet to sacrifice one ship but save the rest.
If they could use shuttles to jump to other planets for side missions, why not make more use of that to help their hopeless situation?
That light speed ram taking out that massive star destroyer basically just said they were doing space battles wrong this whole time. Don’t bother putting resources into fighters, bombers, and all that, just strap light speed engines to various masses and use them as missiles.
How does Rose go from retreating with the rest to being able to intercept Finn’s speeder thing, crash into it at high speed when he would have been going all out to make his intended suicide attack most effective? Plus they both walk away from it? Ignoring the injuries such a collision would have caused, plus their close proximity to enemy forces who then just ignore them or something?
And what’s with those bombers? What were they designed for, taking out undefended settlements on planets?
And Luke just decides fuck his friends, the best thing he can do is die alone on that planet? Why not die helping them, which would also result in the Jedi order dying out but not handing the galaxy to the first order. Sure, he did eventually help, but he shouldn’t have needed that much convincing. And the whole force projection oh now I’m dead thing was also weak.
Also Yoda using the force to burn down that tree as a force ghost begs questions similar to the light speed ramming. Why don’t the force ghosts help instead of just messing with whoever needs advice?
Also Luke, the same guy who threw his lightsaber away because he believed Darth Vader could still be turned back just thinks, “oh, he’s farther along to the dark side than I thought, better kill him” strongly enough to turn on his lightsaber while standing over him?
I agree that there was a failure to know his audience. If he did like star wars, what he liked about it didn’t overlap much with what most liked about it, though I suspect he didn’t really care for it but thought that was his chance to fix it into something he did like.
I didn’t agree with his hierarchy is important message and didn’t think it fit in Star Wars, given it’s about rebellion and heroes defying the odds to do incredible things. And while I do agree that the whole “special people go on a special mission and save the day” thing is problematic, it’s a core part of Star Wars and not something to change 8 episodes in. But these are things that fit your argument.
So I don’t think he was passionate about Star Wars. But all the rest is just sloppy IMO.
This is a classic example of the Cinema Sins school of criticism that has completely rotted our collective ability to actually engage with art on an intellectual level; identify something that feels incongruous to you, label it as a “plot hole” and mark up one point in the “sins” tally. Rinse, repeat. Many sins = bad movie.
And I’m sorry but this is a terrible way to approach media, and one that will destroy your enjoyment of a lot of truly excellent art.
Also, if you took “hierarchies are important” as being the message of the movie, you really, really didn’t get it, because it’s literally saying the exact opposite. But that’s a whole other discussion.
Your biggest complaint here seems to be that in your opinion Rian hates Star Wars. Which is very much missing the point of the argument you dove into here. First off, I don’t agree; I think he hates what Star Wars is, and loves what it could be. Hence his herculean effort to steer the ship in a new direction. But even supposing that you were right, and that his goal was just to burn Star Wars to the ground… That would still be a movie that deserves to exist. Hatred is passion. You have to care about something to hate it. Frankly, a movie created by someone who truly hated Star Wars would be a very interesting thing to see, because I’d be curious as to why they hate Star Wars and what they hate so much about it that they would invest that much energy in tearing it down. But that’s not what this is. You don’t write and film moments like Luke’s goodbye to Leia for a story you hate. It’s a movie that’s made out of love, but the kind of love that fuels an intervention. It’s a movie that wants Star Wars to be a very different thing to what it’s become. You don’t have to agree with or like Rian’s vision, but it’s clear that he has a vision, and it’s one that he deeply cares about.
I can’t agree that lazy writing is something that needs to be overlooked in excellent art. Writing is an important part of storytelling media and excellent writing is a part of excellent art IMO.
And no, that wasn’t the message of the movie, but it was a message of the movie, though tbf I can’t tell if it was trying to communicate that the mistake was Holdo refusing to communicate her plan or Poe refusing to just sit back and follow orders.
Hating what it is is the same as hating it, even with a belief that it can be changed for the better. I think he was trying to change it rather than just burn it to the ground but I also think that people who love someone but think they need to change don’t actually love them but instead love a different idea of them that they aren’t.
Maybe he did have passion for what he was doing, but he either didn’t respect what it was or didn’t understand it.
I think everything you said here is great, but I’ve been in the “stop making Jedi shit” camp since Rogue One, maybe before.
And funnily enough, AI powered tools will help with this. It’ll allow more singular or low number group creatives to take on works that would have required full studio teams (and the money to back said teams) in the past
I really feel like somewhere along the line they forgot that what made Star Wars cool was the gritty ‘Han shot first’ scifi spaghetti western stuff. The Jedi are an important piece of that but it’s so sanitized now - ain’t nobody suddenly finding their bloody arm laying on the ground anymore.
“Sanitized” is the best way to describe everything Disney puts out these days, whether it’s Marvel, Star Wars, or even Pixar.
They feel designed-by-committee, unassuming, uncontroversial, flat, easy. There’s little experimentation in story-telling, filming techniques, dialogue, and pacing. It’s always the “conversation, action, witty remark between characters, action, conversation, witty remark” formula.
It’s all so predictable and boring.
I loved the franchise when I was a kid for exactly those reasons, and then Star Wars started talking about failed trade negotiations and midi-chlorian counts. I haven’t paid too much attention since then, but I get the impression I haven’t missed much.
Andor was written as a heist thriller that happens to occur in the Star Wars universe, that’s why it’s good. Same as Rogue One.
Andor had one heist arc, amid a broader story about radicalization and the creep of authoritarian power. It’s a damned ambitious show. I’m so glad it exists.
They should leave the Skywalker saga. There’s thousands of years & a whole galaxy to fill with stories, and they keep dancing in the same 100 years & the same planets.
Man if I see Saw Garrera appear in some obscure corner of the galaxy with a band of proto-rebels again I’m going to be mad, Cad Bane too, fun for a bit but how do we keep running into the same characters in a whole galaxy? I’m sure there were more but I always noticed how they kept appearing.
Well that’s because they keep killing off all the compelling characters they could follow.
I’m not still bitter about Rogue One at all…
Or…and hear me out…come out with a newer, shittier trilogy every 20 years
Only if we ruin the characters from the previous trilogy with every new one we make.
There’s the High Republic initiative. The Acolyte is part of that.
I haven’t paid much attention to the High Republic stories, but the response seems to be mixed at best.
Wrong (in my opinion), jedi aren’t the problem, writing and creativity is.
It’s important to remember that the vast majority of the galactic population has never seen a Jedi in real life, and doesn’t even know anyone who has. The Jedi are nearly mythical figures, surrounded by rumor, speculation, and misinformation.
Well, by now they’ve probably seen all the films.
If it happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away and has made it to our backwater planet, then it must be pretty widely popular.
The dumbass writing would make more sense if it were a documentary.
The space marine effect
They are not obsessed with jedi, they are obsessed with making money. Wait what that little shit yoda is trending on twitter? Throw everything away, we need more baby yoda.
I think the Jedi/no Jedi debate isn’t useful. I believe the major difference is whether or not the writing is good or not. Andor felt like the best star wars material ever written, a whole different league. Mandalorian season 1 felt like fresh, fun star wars. Season 2 felt messier and more corporate with it’s connections to the greater universe. Season 3 felt bad. Ashoka felt bad. Boba fett felt bad.
They feel worse the worse the writing gets, Jedi or not.
I agree that seeing a wider range of stories from different time periods (other than the ones Disney has already fucked up - looking at you FO and the rehash of 4-6) would be great. But that’s not what will predict the quality - well paid writers with a vision and a team around them interested in that vision is what we need.
I just want smaller scale stories where the stakes are high not because of some galactic consequence but because we become attached to the characters and their small worlds.
Andor felt tense because the world was small so smaller scale crises seem larger. I felt more when >!Kino said he couldn’t swim!< than I did when the Death Star obliterated everyone on Scarif.
The only reason why I want less Jedi in my star wars is because I want them to feel special. Star Wars has a massive Galaxy where Jedi were a rarity even before the purge so give me more of that. Don’t blow your load every 10 seconds by shoehorning lightsabers into every story.
Give me a film noir set on Nar Shaddaa or a heist set on Alderaan. I’m tired of the overuse of Jedi like I’m tired of the overuse of Tatooine. That planet is supposed to be a backwater with nothing going on hence Obi Wan choosing to hide there but instead we visit it every other Tuesday because executives think people want sand and brown doors.
I actually don’t want any more Star Wars content. I’m seriously bored now. Perhaps if any of it was good it would be different but so much of it is so bad.
Same. I recently found out there are Star Wars shows I wasn’t even aware of and I have no desire to even find out what they’re about.
I watched “the bad batch” cartoons because I liked clone wars some millennia ago. It was ok, ::: spoiler and luckily the protagonist is not secretly a jedi :::
I saw Star Wars in the theater when it was just called Star Wars. I couldn’t agree with OP more. However I have zero trust that Disney will make more adult oriented shows for the simple reason of merch. What’s the merchandising opportunities of Andor? You can’t sell lightsaber replicas when there’s no lightsabers to replicate.
But you can’t have merch if you don’t have a popular story and they’re jeopardizing the popularity of the whole franchise. I just saw an article talking about the 5 least profitable films from 2024 and 4 of them were from Disney. They make sport of beating dead horses until the world collectively. They’ve already killed Marvel and Star Wars is bound to be next.
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I think we can look at the Marvel shows to see some good examples of what works and doesn’t work. Star Wars, like Marvel and in some ways moreso, also has the problem of being expensive. Exotic locations, costumes, CGI–these shows cost as much as $250 million a season. You’ll probably make your money back, but the production on something that feels like it “fits” in the bigger SW canon can easily carry a lot of risk.
And I think that’s the real issue: for the price tag, I want Andor–a show that has something to say about the human condition and says it in a way that’s beautiful–but it’s very easy to just get “just more Star Wars” instead (and see also: superhero fatigue).
There’s room for light sabers in good stories, but the stories have to be good themselves. I think there’s an incentive to start from light sabers and then try to fit a story in, and that’s working backwards. Some stories are going to want space wizards–but a lot aren’t.
That’s an excellent point about front-loading a light saber into the story is not a guarantee. Andor’s prison break arc - we only get to reap the the excellent tension and planning and loss because there’s no deus ex machina. Adding a light saber or even force-sensitivity to that story beat would take that juicy tension and make it, “super easy, barely an inconvenience.”
There’s a conversation I’ve seen in tabletop RPG circles and had with my table about this: “the Jedi problem”, that you simply can’t tell a story that has both Jedi and non-Jedi in it (and on screen together) without a great deal of contrivance to explain why the Force can’t immediately solve a lot of problems that could otherwise empower character development. The original Star Wars films really only work because Luke is a student and the other Jedi are either dispatched (Obi-Wan) or too old to hand-wave anything (Yoda). As much as I love watching Ian McDiarmid chew the scenery, the other two trilogies both suffer from having competent (sometimes) Force users basically making everyone else irrelevant by their mere presences. The power levels just aren’t compatible.
