Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? An Analysis
There’s an exchange in Star Wars: The Force Awakens when Rey and Finn are fleeing from stormtroopers and searching for a way to escape. Rey spots the legendary Millennium Falcon, declares it looks like “garbage,” and then quickly reconsiders: “The garbage will do!”
Increasingly, that’s the attitude some fans have about Disney’s Star Wars programming: “Look, we all know this isn’t fantastic anymore, but Star Wars is still Star Wars, and, therefore, it will do.”
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To be fair, Disney’s Star Wars shows and movies remain far from space junk. Their titles typically get glowing reviews from critics, and generate box office returns and streaming ratings that other studios would envy (though at a high cost).
So let’s run through Disney’s Star Wars legacy to date, from The Force Awakens to The Acolyte, and see what conclusions might be drawn. Because several aspects of the company’s track record admittedly look shaky: A five-movie franchise that was halted after its box office returns trended the wrong direction. Six live-action TV shows, just one of which has been a multi-season hit. A startling number of projects put into development and then abandoned like starships on Bracca. And one wildly ambitious role-play hotel that closed after little more than a year.
It raises a question: Is Disney kind of bad at Star Wars? Or is this a case where a very high bar for success combined with a passionate fandom’s gripes tend to obscure what is otherwise a hugely popular and lucrative franchise? Let’s take a closer look …
THE FILMS: “LET THE PAST DIE, KILL IT IF YOU HAVE TO”
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).
Rian Johnson’s 2017 sequel The Last Jedi took the story in a different direction that many loved and many didn’t. Then Abrams returned with 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker and tried to push the narrative closer to his original intentions. Comedians learn in improv class to always say, “Yes, and …” to any idea introduced during a show, no matter how challenging. The studio and Abrams’ reaction to The Last Jedi was more like, “No, actually …” (Rey is a nobody. No, she’s a Palpatine!) The result was a trilogy that’s a mishmash of dueling creative visions. (Lucas took a similar I’m-making-this-up-as-I-go approach to his original trilogy, but it’s far easier to maintain a saga’s cohesion when all the films are led by the same person.)
The films’ box office also told a story. At a time when Disney’s Marvel movies kept breaking new ticket sales records, Force made an extraordinary $2 billion worldwide, Jedi dropped sharply to a still-huge $1.3 billion, and then Skywalker made $1 billion which is, you know, still $1 billion. These are incredible numbers for any film, but they were going the wrong way — when the third entry in your trilogy launching a new franchise sells half as many tickets as the first, you probably made a wrong turn somewhere.
Around the same time, the studio experimented with two stand-alone titles. There was 2016’s gorgeous-looking and compelling, if wildly uneven, Rogue One, earning $1 billion (a film whose reputation has improved since it was released). And 2018’s widely panned Solo, which made a disastrous-for-the-franchise $393 million (a film whose reputation has not improved since it was released). Both had behind-the-scenes drama and reshoots that saw their original directors being replaced during filming.
After Rise of Skywalker, Disney paused making big-screen Star Wars movies altogether but continued to announce new films in development from top creatives. The list of well-known writers and directors who have come and gone is comically long: Rian Johnson (originally enlisted to make a new trilogy), David Benioff and Dan Weiss (also enlisted for a trilogy), Patty Jenkins, Colin Trevorrow, Damon Lindelof, David S. Goyer, Josh Trank, Guillermo del Toro, Taika Waititi and Marvel chief Kevin Feige. Some of their projects were confidentially announced as movies that were definitely happening until they weren’t. And there are others that were never revealed publicly.
If all this seems rather chaotic for a studio that’s famously meticulous, well, yes, it does. The charitable read is that Star Wars movies should be very special and the studio is determined to get them right. A batch of projects are still the works: James Mangold is developing a Dawn of the Jedi feature, Shawn Levy is working on an untitled film, Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron was resurrected this year, and Lindelof’s feature starring Daisy Ridley’s Rey has shifted to director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. It’s uncertain which of these, if any, will be made.
Even as the studio spat out announcement after announcement on the film side, Disney largely switched its focus to bringing Star Wars to TV for its Disney+ streaming service.
THE SHOWS: “I CAN BRING YOU IN WARM OR I CAN BRING YOU IN COLD”
Once again, Disney came out of the gate incredibly strong. The 2019 debut season of Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian nearly single-handedly made Disney+ an out-of-the box success, charmed critics and audiences, and was even nominated for an Emmy for best drama. Moreover, The Mandalorian proved live-action Star Wars on TV was possible — it’s easy to forget this show was considered a big gamble at the time (given Favreau also launched the MCU with 2008’s Iron Man, he deserves to be honored at one of those medal ceremonies on Yavin). In season three, The Mandalorian creatively stumbled a bit, ratings slipped (a little) and the show received backlash for the first time.
Instead of a fourth season, Disney decided to pivot The Mandalorian to launch its first Star Wars feature film since The Rise of Skywalker. Coming in 2026, The Mandalorian & Grogu will probably perform well. Yet it also looks like Disney spent many years and untold capital struggling develop a new Star Wars movie and its best idea was an extra-long episode of a TV show.
From The Mandalorian came 2021’s spinoff The Book of Boba Fett, which is where some problems with the franchise’s TV efforts first emerged. So much about this brief effort was weirdly clunky. Two Mandalorian episodes were inexplicably sandwiched into the show’s seven, and they felt like a Band-Aid effort to repair a struggling show. The Book of Boba Fett was originally a series, not a miniseries, but it was quickly considered concluded.
There have been four new shows since:
— 2022’s Obi-Wan Kenobi from showrunner-director Deborah Chow. Fans were excited to see Ewan McGregor reprise his role as Obi-Wan and Hayden Christensen return as Darth Vader. The show was likable enough (despite some weak sequences) and a winner in the ratings: Obi-Wan Kenobi opened to 1.03 billion minutes of viewing, according to Nielsen — even bigger than Mando season three’s opening of 823 million — and concluded with a strong 860 million for its finale. Obi-Wan Kenobi was a limited series, however, and there are no current plans for more episodes.
—2022’s Andor from Rogue One fixer Tony Gilroy, who returned to make a prequel series to the film he swooped in to rescue midway through production. Andor was a grown-up Star Wars title that felt grounded and heavily used practical effects and on-location filming (instead of the LED volume wall technology used by the other shows for their backgrounds, which sometimes makes them look like blurry stage plays). The show was also massively expensive, with a budget estimated to be as high as $250 million for 12 episodes. Critics and its fans loved the result, however, and Andor was Emmy nominated for best drama series. At 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Andor is actually the best reviewed live-action Star Wars TV show or movie.
Andor’s ratings did not fully reflect this esteem. It opened with 624 million minutes before falling into the 400 million range for subsequent weeks, then jumping back to 674 million for its finale. There will be a second season in 2025 to conclude the story. Gilroy originally pitched the show as five seasons and has said it was his decision to shorten the project. It would not be surprising if Andor‘s ratings pop for season two as more casual Star Wars fans discover the show.
—2023’s Ahsoka from Clone Wars mastermind and Mandalorian co-chief Dave Filoni, now in the live-action driver’s seat for first time. The show received positive reviews (86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and a somewhat mixed reaction from fans. Ahsoka’s premiere ratings were comparable to The Mandalorian season three opener (829 million minutes), then it declined to average around 570 million minutes for the rest of its run. A second season was announced as in development in January, and sources say the new season will go into production next year.
—2024’s The Acolyte from creator Leslye Headland. The series was set 100 years before The Phantom Menace and had franchise’s most diverse cast along with several female leads. The New York Times revealed the eight-episode series cost $180 million (only $10 million less than Dune: Part Two).
The Acolyte received largely positive critic reviews (78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and sparked a raging culture war battle that once again exposed the ugly side of online fandom. The Acolyte’s backlash and criticism is difficult to parse as many fans detail their creative objections to the show’s storytelling and its bold take on Jedi lore — “just because we didn’t like this doesn’t mean we’re racist,” basically. Some other Acolyte bashers were, well, clearly racist.
The Acolyte’s premiere ratings were the lowest to date for a live-action Star Wars series launch (488 million minutes, according to Nielsen’s U.S. streaming figures). Then the show’s ratings sunk further, with The Acolyte dropping out of Nielsen’s Top 10 entirely for several weeks (not typical for a Star Wars show). It was impossible for Disney to spin this one as a concluded story — the season ended on a cliffhanger — but The Acolyte is not getting a season two. The cancellation has been portrayed by some defenders as baffling, even conspiratorial, but the show’s ratings, trend and reception point to a pragmatic decision on the studio’s part.
On Dec. 3, Disney is launching Jon Watts and Christopher Ford’s Skeleton Crew, which centers on a group of children embarking on a space adventure. Making an all-ages ratings smash is difficult nowadays, so having Skeleton Crew focus on kids — like Andor is targeted to grown-ups — might be a smart play. The creators have strongly suggested the show will be another one-and-done limited series, but Lucasfilm is considering Skeleton Crew a series (unless its ratings decide otherwise).
LOOKING AHEAD: “WE HAVE HOPE. REBELLIONS ARE BUILT ON HOPE!”
So that’s six live-action shows in five years. Just one — The Mandalorian — has been an outright hit with critics and fans and has delivered a multi-season run, which is the traditional model for TV success.
This doesn’t mean a single season of TV cannot be a win; limited series are considered hits all the time. But there’s a reason popular close-ended limited series like the debut seasons of HBO’s The White Lotus and FX’s Shogun were given second season orders and became ongoing series. Making a show that can run for multiple seasons is the typical goal, even for streamers, because it encourages subscribers to stick around. There are also considerable startup costs to making something new, particularly in the fantasy space — enormous amounts of production, costume and prop design, and all-around world building. The Acolyte season one took four years to make, but a second season would have likely only taken half that time. With an ongoing series, a company doesn’t have to work so hard and spend so much to keep re-earning its audience. One would think Disney would have wanted more juice from some of these squeezes.
Because what is left for Disney+ after Skeleton Crew? The final season of Andor and a second season of Ahsoka? In 2020, Disney bullishly announced 10 new Star Wars shows at an investor event, heralding a glorious new era of Star Wars TV. Those entries included Lando (now being re-developed by star Donald Glover and his brother Stephen into a film) and Rangers of the New Republic (scrapped for reasons). The prospect of being left with a single ongoing live-action Star Wars show after Andor concludes surely wasn’t the company’s hope coming out of that announcement.
Hanging over all of this is the increasing suspicion that the company may have wrung out the rag, creatively speaking, on storylines culled from Lucas’ original trilogy and his prequels. Even The Acolyte‘s haters should give the show credit for telling a story that’s far removed from the Skywalker Saga (as does Skeleton Crew). This isn’t entirely Disney’s fault, but it’s one the challenges moving forward. How do you make Star Wars feel fresh and new while still feeling like Star Wars and not like, say, Rebel Moon?
The company has enjoyed more consistent results on the animated side, which has been largely championed by Filoni. Shows such as Rebels (2014), The Bad Batch (2021), Visions (2021) and Tales of the Jedi (2020) were critically acclaimed and well-liked by fans (Visions and Rebels have the highest Rotten Tomatoes scores for Star Wars content; tied at 98 percent). Another title, Resistance (2018), received about one third of the Nielsen viewership of Rebels, and ended after two seasons (with its creators saying that the story was simply finished).
And what about Disney+ subscriptions? Aren’t subscriptions the real coin of the realm here? Disney+ took off like a rocket in 2019, steadily climbed to peak in the fourth quarter of 2022 with 164 million subs worldwide, and then started dropping for the first time to currently settle around 153 million.
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy — who has produced some of the most beloved and iconic movies in cinema history, in addition to successfully relaunching Star Wars in cinemas with Force and trailblazing into TV with Mando — has overseen the Star Wars franchise since 2012. Any mention of Kennedy amid a look at the Star Wars track record cannot be separated from the fact that she has been the target of hateful and ugly fandom attacks. South Park also piled on by mocking her in a recent episode. Still, Kennedy shouldn’t be considered immune from criticism and one thing recent political headlines have shown is the myth of “only I can do it” leadership.
On the parks front, the company doesn’t publicly release its attendance numbers for each “land,” so it’s tough to clock exactly how Star Wars land Galaxy’s Edge is faring at Disneylands across the plant. The company’s third quarter investor report stated the attraction “remains one of the most popular” in the park and ranks No. 1 in guest satisfaction (they also sold 1.2 million lightsabers, so there). But in 2023, the company’s infamous Star Wars interactive hotel experience Galactic Starcruiser, which reportedly cost nearly $1 billion, spectacularly blew up like Alderaan, shuttering its windowless “cabins” and blue-milk-slinging cantinas after one year.
The stealth goldmine of the franchise remains merchandising. Disney typically doesn’t release numbers for individual product lines, but sources say Star Wars merch generated a billion for the company last year. Baby Yoda has surely been a retail godsend (though it’s hard to imagine Bazil action figures flying off the shelves).
During a presentation in March to fight an activist investor who accused the company of overspending, Disney also revealed Lucasfilm has generated nearly $12 billion in total revenue on its $4 billion investment. There’s so much stuffed into this fuzzy umbrella number, however, including non-Star Wars titles and projected future returns, and also so much left out (like, the cost of everything). So it’s tough to know what to make of that $12 billion other than “Star Wars generates a lot of money,” which you probably already knew.
So let us — at long last! — get back to that big question in the headline.
Is Disney bad at Star Wars? … On balance, no.
Disney gave Star Wars fans what they wanted for decades — a lot more Star Wars, from different visionary filmmakers, and some of it has been terrific. A dormant franchise that once followed a single dynastic storyline has exploded into a more diverse galaxy of characters and stories. Even the oft-maligned sequel trilogy has sequences within each film that are inarguably stunning (for all its narrative flaws, The Rise of Skywalker‘s farewell scene between Han Solo and Kylo Ren is as moving as anything in the canon). And shows like The Mandalorian, Andor and Rebels clear even the highest bar a hard-core fan might reasonably set. A lot of the online uproar is a sign audiences are, at least, still very engaged and care about this franchise; a truer sign of failure would be apathy and disinterest.
But here’s another question: Could Disney be better at Star Wars? … Clearly, yes.
The company’s live-action movies and TV efforts, on average, could and should be better. In 2018, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted the company made “a mistake” with Star Wars, making movies “a little too much, too fast.” After Iger temporarily left the company in 2020, Disney/Lucasfilm arguably made the same error again on the TV side. Lucas famously instructed his actors to be “faster and more intense,” but that doesn’t typically work as a franchise strategy (as Marvel has discovered, as well). It’s unclear if Star Wars requires more order or less — more Empire-like corporate oversight or more Rebellion-like creative chaos. But it’s long seemed like there’s somehow too much of both, which has resulted in a master plan that’s constantly being rewritten, and content that sometimes feels undercooked and clunky. It’s not the fault of fans that they increasingly have “a bad feeling about this.”
Any criticism from the sidelines, however, should be tempered with one final point: Making a successful Star Wars project is really hard. Marvel movies — with their iconic stable of heroes who can be portrayed by different actors — are arguably easier. Lucas created this thing and made six live-action Star Wars films over several decades, and only his first two were widely considered excellent by critics and fans alike (many younger fans adore his prequels, though they were never much loved by critics). This is also what makes making more content so tempting — the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were profoundly amazing, and so captivated generations of fans, and have launched literally thousands of products and generated billions in direct and ancillary revenue.
In 1981, Lucas changed the title of his first Star Wars film to A New Hope and the name is apt — it’s literally what’s fueled studio executives, creatives and fans ever since. Each time another Star Wars title opens with a rousing fanfare, a scroll and a star field, all of us get that same feeling — a new hope — over and over again.
Rick Porter contributed to this report.
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