What Disney Got Wrong about Star Wars Fans

you checked out at the right time. it's worth remembering that a jedi does not have attachments, including to pop culture

Disney likes [blind] consumers, not so much [loyal] fans

I think the biggest mistake was, that they didn't made a sequel but tried a reboot with less interesting characters. We wanted to know what happened after the fall of the empire. What did we got? A new empire with a different name and also a third death star. And then they portrayed the old beloved heroes as losers and killed them as an offence to the original fans. What did they thought? That anyone would cheer about it? Yes, it was an action packed scifi movie, set in the Star Wars universe. But nothing more.

The Heir to Empire trilogy sold 15 million copies before the prequals. That was Star Wars at its peak value.

Disney assumed we’d gulp up anything without thinking about it. Turns out Star Wars fan actually care about quality and continuity, something Disney clearly despises.

What did they get wrong about the fans? You mean…everything?!🤨😂

I got into Star Wars because my aunt cajoled my mother for a year to let her take me to see this amazing new movie that was getting re-released in 1978. My kids got into Star Wars because I watched it all the time on VHS and then on DVD. I was able to sit and watch Young Jedi Adventures with them until their free D+ subscription vanished. Star Wars had GENERATIONAL appeal. I don’t know anyone who,liked the Disney sequels who would ever want their kids to watch with them.

Feels like Disney dont want us to be fans anymore. Avengers, Starwars...Disney gives us abominations until we leave for good.

I went to see Star Wars on opening night in 1977 as a six year old kid. Disney screwed up by the willful mistreatment of the original characters in the sequels. The way they handled Rey was pretty bad too, she somehow learned to be the most powerful force user ever without any training, which was pretty weak. That entire sequence of films, along with most of the Disney produced stuff, seems like they were trying to kill off the original fanbase on purpose. Almost like their entire thought pattern was "This will piss everybody off". Kathleen Kennedy always acts like there were no "strong women" in Star Wars before she took over, which is completely ridiculous Leia was the leader of the rebellion, Mon Mothma was another powerful member of the leadership. Padme was a heroine of the prequels as well. So either she was being intentionally and willfully ignorant of the property she was handed, or she is an outright liar with an agenda. Where Star Wars lost me is when they stopped telling good stories, and Started cranking out nothing but second rate, generic content. I think the Acolyte is it for me, that show just sucked from start to finish, and in every single way that a production could suck. Up until the sequels I never had a problem with ay Star Wars, except the racist trope that they forced on Jar Jar. I like the Mandalorian, but the rest was just bad. I have heard Andor was pretty good, but I am done with having my intelligence insulted by the stories they are trying to tell. They are tone deaf at Disney and seem dead set on alienating the demographic that cares about the franchise for a "modern audience" that they will find out doesn't even exist.

You're absolutely right about picking and choosing what you want. I'm old enough to have watched and loved the original 'Star Wars', later 'Episode IV - A New Hope'. I'm really just a sci-fi fan. I didn't care for V or VI, didn't watch I, II or III, gave VII a chance, but not VIII or IX, and loved 'Rogue One', perhaps my favourite movie in the franchise. I wasn't the target audience for the books, cartoons and comics. So for me, Star Wars is 'Rogue One' and 'A New Hope'. I simply ignore the rest, and don't care about the terrible prequels, sequels, and TV series, with their poor scripts, lore busting plots, and lamentable acting. 'Rogue One' and 'A New Hope' tell a complete and compelling story, and for me, Star Wars ends when the medals get handed out...

The thing is that to gain the existing fans back... they'll have to change so much, that it probably isn't possible. They took the extended universe and turned it into a loud fart. The sequels are a dead end with no real place to go except this "Twilight" version Star Wars that nobody cares about.

Fans spend money...Fans care... This is absolutely true and it would behoove every studio to remember that...

Disney missed by rejecting the OG dedicated FANs, who are sharing the OG love and Passion with their CHILDREN, passing it on.   Disney marketing is in search of a fan base that does not exist or is apathetic too SW and do not care to understand WHY people love the OG.  DISNEY WANTS SW to BEND to the latest Culture trends instead of just making a good story. When OG fans point out that Disney is NOT doing a good job, Disney marketing BLAMES the fans. ESB is bar. DISNEY is treating SW like any other product, like Soap, Beverages, bad Kids TV, Stuffed Animals, iPhones, any movie, and have NO IDEA why fans love it..... TLJ was proof they could give a crap, write and directed by the Marketing committee to sell some stuffed toys. OG fans refused to eat the crap Disney has turned the thing they love into.

Honestly, they could have gotten away with doing almost anything in terms of the plot, if they'd actually had a plan for the whole trilogy and really nailed the writing and character development. I think most of the fandom was willing to be convinced, at least in the beginning, but Disney did nothing to convince anyone to go along with its vision for the future of the Star Wars universe, because it didn't actually have one (other than "make boatloads of money"). Instead they let J.J. Abrams wing it on TFA with no actual plan for the whole-trilogy story arc, and it devolved into the cinematic equivalent of two kids arguing about how to play with their toys the "right" way.

main thing Disney got wrong was star wars was always inclusive and watched worldwide by every demographic. Star Wars is one of the few movies you could travel to almost anywhere in the world and people would know the franchise. Disney changed the formula and now people don't like the cake as much. There is an old saying if it ain't broke don't fix it and Hollywood should take note of that because if you turn a billion dollar franchise into a million dollar franchise then it wasn't broke you shouldn't have tried to fix it. Disney can double down and argue the message as much as they like but money and ratings don't care or lie

Yep, I'm that guy. I actually enjoyed Force Awakens for the nostalgia hit, the relaunching of a new age, brand new exciting characters, so many questions to be answered. But I had this niggling problem I couldn't let go of. Why did everything feel so small? 30 years after the rebels defeat the Empire and take over the government, they are all able to be wiped out on a few planets right next to each other. Where is the space fleet from Mon Cala? Was that Coruscant getting destroyed? If yes, then the Corellia space yards might still be fine. If not then 3 trillion people are still in control on a concrete / metal world. Will Black Sun or the Hutts take this as an opportunity to seize control of some Republic settlements? How have the First Order been allowed to exist and build a planet sized super weapon without government oversight? It just felt very thin and empty. I didn't need a nod to the original film with the the Dejarik table turning on. I needed to hear that Ilum had been harvested and turned into Star Killer base as an affront to the Jedi.

The quality of the tv shows is categorically not improving

"How do you go back from that?" I guess you mean from the mess Disney created. The answer is simple. Simple in concept, at least, but difficult to make happen. Disney is forced to sell Lucas Films and the buyer; let us say Apple, declares that everything that is Disney Star Wars, is no longer cannon. Problem solved, at least in the short run. Whether Apple or anyone else can bring back the magic of Star Wars is anyone's guess.

Correction: Star Wars has been cultivating super-fans since 1977---that's a bit more than the last 20 years. And all of those books and games have been flooding the market since then. It by no means started with the prequels.

The MCU gave tons of nods to the comic fans. Plots, locations, etc. taken from iconic comics, but tweaked to fit a single universe instead of the fractured mess that comics can be. They essentially distilled the best of the Marvel Comics down into their movies. So they could please any superfan who was willing to give it a chance. The Star Wars sequels threw out the baby with the bathwater by completely discarding the SWEU. Sure, they're a mess. Sure, some of it is shit... but plenty of it isn't crap, and by pretending it doesn't matter, they spit in the face of the people who cared about it. Obviously they couldn't follow 1:1 because they needed to timeskip further than the EU did to account for the actors ages... but the new generation could have been known characters like Corran Horn, with background edits to make them fit this new timeline. ...and then they proved they didn't have a plan. If the sequels had been tight stories that obviously had a great story to tell that wouldn't work with the EU, they could have convinced people. But it was directionless mess, making the "well the EU was a mess" argument ring hollow.