Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? An Analysis

Yes

Unpopular opinion: I think people are tired of disjointed big stories.

I mean, I know I am. Give me a story about a couple of people doing something that's a good story, not a giant montage of short scenes about the fate of the galaxy.

I don't CARE about the galaxy, I want a good personal story that has stakes that make sense on a personal level, and isn't just some weird superhero story but happens to be wearing a Star Wars skin suit.

Also maybe don't make a trilogy that's the same damn story beats as the previous trilogy, but worse in every way you care to mention.

And, maybe, that's not just me: Rogue One is such a movie and it's been well received. Andor is a show at the same kind of scale, and hey, it's also been accepted as good.

I was quite looking forward to Star Wars: Skeleton Crew until I saw the first trailer. It looks like someone is trying to do The Goonies in space. The one image that really disheartened me is the shot of the suburbs, rows of houses and streets. Star Wars isn't a place where I'd expect to see suburbs, it's in a galaxy far, far away, a long time ago.

It's very similar to when The Book of Boba Fett had their version of the 60s scooter scene. It doesn't work and took me completely out of the episode.

Not to say that Disney hasn't mishandled this IP, but Star Wars had bad content before Disney bought it, and has since released projects better than anything Lucasfilm did with it.

The wide variances in quality aren't doing the reputation of Star Wars any favors.

It's not just that they are bad at Star Wars, they have mishandled Marvel too. They went on an IP buying streak but seemed to have been far too focused on generating "content" rather than quality TV and films. However, at least Marvel has a showrunner:

After buying Lucasfilm from George Lucas in 2012, Disney relaunched Star Wars as a franchise trilogy in 2015 with director J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens. The film was an absolute blockbuster. Yet surprisingly — and, as it turned out, problematically — the studio did not have a firm creative plan for the next two films (at least, not one that was followed).

There were a number of mistakes made (including deciding to drop a Star Wars film a year) but this seems one of the biggest unforced errors. I still can't work out what the thinking was there other than "the fans will lap up any old Star Wars so we don't have to put any effort in".

As long as they keep shoving more stories somewhere in between some otherwise inconsequential aspect of the original trilogy it will just keep grinding to nothing. They’ll make an entire movie following the production of an intergalactic cheese pizza so you can understand why the lieutenant commander in the background shot of a scene in episode 4 farted. Tell some fucking new stories already.

tldr: yes.