What are the odds that Rian Johnson's trilogy gets cancelled?

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All the people who loved The Last Jedi and Rian Johnson are gonna be unified with a vocal minority if KK and RJ are fired. How does that work?

Based on the IMDb demographic break down it's older men who like TLJ the least with younger audiences and women liking it more. Two thirds of Reddit's traffic is male. Men spend 44 percent more time on YouTube per month, and of 51 categories of YouTube content measured by OpenSlate, men make up the majority of viewers in 90 percent of them. This helps contribute to this idea that TLJ is super divisive. It's more divisive than TFA, but most people like it and aren't going online to complain about it constantly.

I don't think there's a way to unite a diverse fanbase and appease general audiences. TFA was the closest thing we'll see to that.

 

k

 

Ignorance is lack of knowledge. Not lack of agreeing with what you believe is fact.

 

K

 

I don't agree with anyone but I'm done getting ganged up on in the Rian Johnson fanboy thread.

 

I have no idea why the phrasing of this gave me a much needed chuckle

 

First of all, Solo wasn't a safe film. NO ONE wanted it. At least no on on here seemed to want it. Not exactly a safe choice based on that alone. Add in the fact that it meant you would have to recast Han Solo and yeah, strike two. Again not safe.

Johnson seemed to have smooth sailing, but as we have seen with Mark Hamill's response to what was done with Luke, it wasn't really as smooth as we thought.

Yes, it did make a ton of cash. But there are signs of problems. The toy sales were, apparently abysmal. The DVD sales were what 50% less than TFA? Each of these, taken in a vacuum aren't necessarily problematic, but taken together there does appear to be backlash of some sort. It also gives credence to the disparity between what critics thought of the film, and what fans thought of the film.

It may not be a matter of Lucasfilm sacking him due to his proposal. It could be that if/when KK is removed or retires that the new head of LFL decides to go in a different direction. He hasn't helped himself by saying things like he wants to make a film that half of the people dislike, and then gets upset when fans give him crap for making said film. If he wants to make art house films, fine. That is the place for controversial films. Taking that approach with Star Wars? Taking the overall outline for the trilogy and then throwing it out???? Sorry, but that's just stupid.

I said it once and I'll say it again, you DO NOT attack the customers. Instead of doing that he ought to simply answer the questions. It makes him look weak and makes me think he knows there are tons of problems with what he did. Rebooting the reboot? Seriously?

I can only speak for myself, but I would be weary of allowing him anywhere NEAR a new trilogy. If I'm Bob Iger, I'd relieve KK of her duties. Anyone badmouthing fans would be removed as well. You JUST DON'T DO THAT CRAP. I'd also ask George Lucas to come back as a creative consultant. Not a full time job, but to give direction. Yeah, George isn't perfect. But at least he gets it. Obviously RJ doesn't. Just my two pennies worth.

 

I think Solo could have been a safe bet, but Disney sort of let it die on the table with the way they released it with such little and ineffective marketing. The ironic part is that most TLJ critics admit--it's not bad at all. Kennedy pulled a rabbit out of her hat and delivered a film that could have been the quality of a Frankenstein like Suicide Squad and Justice League but instead was very competently made. I think Lucasfilm realized they were screwed late last year when there was no marketing to speak of and needed to let TLJ own December and January.

There are some potential take-aways here. One is that the whole impetus for the movie was George Lucas, it was part of his sale to Disney--make a new Star Wars trilogy and then get Lawrence Kasdan to do a young-Han-Solo film. The man is out of touch. He tried to put a child Han Solo in Episode III but it got cut out even after concept art was done, so it was an idea he was toying with for a long time. I think Lucas has not had his finger on the pulse of Star Wars fans for a long time, and I'm guessing KK and Disney gave him the benefit of the doubt because to a bunch of producers it would seem like a sure-fire thing.

The second is that you cannot just put a Star Wars film out without any hype and marketing. That the film has pulled in close to $300 million would normally be seen as a healthy success in that respect (I know we all know that's a disaster, especially given the cost). You still have to aggressively market these things, and being released in the most crowded month of the year only amplified this need. I think Disney/LFL knew all this but were still secretly hoping it would work itself out better, but now they know for sure. It was a lesson. Disney is still figuring out how to market and make these things, fans expect them to be treated similarly to Marvel Studios, but the Star Wars franchise is such a different beast. Another takeaway is that the SW franchise can't sustain multiple films per year like Marvel can; they seemed to have hit the sweet spot with their one-per-year-in-December approach so far, and now that they messed with that it bit them, so they could look at it from that angle too.

Well, here is the thing about the toy sales, and people will latch onto this fact as a sign of a failure to connect, but there are a lot of factors, and to me it's a really interesting point of analysis of the market.

First of all, TLJ was the least "toyific" film of the new ones, and I would argue of all Star Wars movies. I can't remember who coined that term, toyific, someone at Hasbro I think, but it refers to how easily a movie or show lends itself to merchandizing.

There were very few potential toys to sell to people with TLJ. Part of this is because the film takes place right after TFA so all the characters look the same, and it uses many of the same costumes and sets that were already sold in TFA. Rey, Finn, Captain Phasma, General Hux, Poe, Leia and Kylo Ren all look the same as they did at the end of TFA, and they already released those toys. If you had the Finn toy from TFA, there is no reason to buy the TLJ toy--it's the same figure in a different package. Same with many of the others. That's a big part of why the toy sales slumped--there was nothing to sell. The new AT-ATs were probably added to Crait just create a new toy. That's how these things work--"what can we make a toy out of? What if we added this one vehicle to a scene, it wouldn't change the scene, but we'd make $2.3 million dollars from collectors buying the new toy." It's not something that people involved in movies acknowledge, because it makes it look like they are selling out, but it's how these blockbusters work. It's the same with product placement--"what if the character is holding a Pepsi can instead of a generic water bottle?" These are explicit conversations that they have, and Star Wars shouldn't be any different.

An example is the Transformers toyline from the 1980s. The toys came first, and the show was designed to sell them. As the older toys became less popular because every kid owned them, they had to introduce new ones--this was the notorious reason why they killed off Optimus Prime. The Optimus Prime toy was 2 years old and everyone owned him, so they needed to invent new ones, so on the screen the old character was killed off and new characters introduced. I remember an interview with one of the writers of the 4th season "Headmaster" storyline, where the writer got notes on how many new toys he needed to introduce per episode, and it averaged out to a new toy every 1.5 minutes of screen time, so the only way he could write a story coherently was to introduce the characters in mass waves of 7 or 8 at a time every ten minutes.

One of the classic complaints critics have of Star Wars is that it's just an excuse to sell toys, or if not an excuse then they really, really milk that aspect. Every background player in the cantina scene has five variations of toys. George Lucas made very little percentage of his wealth off the box office, he became a billionaire mostly based off the merchandizing to Star Wars.

So you could argue that Rian Johnson sold out the least by not making TLJ very "toyific". There's Porgs, which they did their best to market, a new speeder and walker on Crait, a new bomber ship, and a few new characters like Rose Tico. The reason that they made so many Rose Tico toys that people point to languishing on the shelf, unsold, is because she is one of the only new characters that they can make toys out of. Her, Luke gets a new costume or two, DJ, Snoke, but otherwise mostly the same TFA figures in a new package. That's why TFA had so much toy sales, everything was new, you could potentially buy every thing you see on screen. TLJ wasn't a film meant for toy sales. That might make it the Star Wars film with the most amount of integrity out of them all, but there were only a few places to really milk the merchandizing aspect.

The other thing is that toy sales are down compared to the previous eras of Star Wars. Kids these days don't play with action figures like they used to. The market is in a very bad place compared to even ten or twelve years ago, I mean Toys R Us is out of business for gods sake. This is a huge factor. Apps have totally altered the childrens toy market, and TLJ has less kids appeal than TFA anyway. It's mainly collectors driving the toy sales. But the collectors already had so many of the toys from TFA. The other thing is that TFA had so much hype and build up around it, especially with the return of the original cast, it was this cultural thing before it was even released. Like Episode I, it was always going to have the most amount of ticket sales and toy sales. I'm not saying the fan bitterness didn't play a role--it must have--but I'm just saying this is vastly overstated by just taking a superficial look at the larger picture and saying "people didn't like the movie." People did like the movie, but it was not a "toyific" movie in the way the previous ones were.

This is similar to the toy thing. Blu-ray sales are dropping year by year. I know very few people that still buy Blu-rays, and I myself haven't bought one since before 2015. I loved TLJ but I didn't buy it on Blu-ray. Everything is now streaming. And, case in point, if I want to watch the new Disney SW films, Netflix is carrying them in my country. I didn't need to buy them.

The Blu-ray market is down 14% compared to last year, and last year was down 11% compared to the year before it. This trend is going to continue, with increasing momentum. Physical media is dying. But beyond that, TLJ sold more Blu-rays from the data we know than Rogue One did, even when the market is plummeting at an exponential rate. The franchise saw an uptick compared to the previous release! That's pretty impressive. And again, with the massive lead-up to TFA it had more hype. Again, I'm not saying that any fan bitterness didn't have some impact, because it must have, but there are other market forces at work.

Like the toys, Disney would have been aware of all this. If I can make this analysis, no doubt they have teams of market scientists studying these things.

Rian Johnson never insulted fans, beyond defending himself from people making very personal attacks on him, the film, and it's stars, and dealing with racism and sexism. I think he handled it with grace and a lot of humor. If I'm not mistaken, the quote you are referring to about enjoying divisive films was from Rian Johnson speaking in like 2009, and was not in regards to TLJ. It's taken out of context, and I think his meaning is being twisted anyway (he was trying to communicate that he would rather make films that are complex and challenging rather than pandering to an audience, and I think this is what the best Star Wars films like ESB have done). He's even gone on record saying:

"I guess the first thing to say is coming into writing this or any story the object is not to subvert expectation, the object is not surprise. I think that would lead to some contrived places. The object is drama. And in this case, the object was figuring out a path for each one of these characters, where we challenge them and thus learn more about each of them by the end of the movie."


*nothing personal Wardawg, I know it seems like attacking you when someone breaks down an entire post point-by-point, these are not uncommon sentiments so just giving my 2 cents on them for all who might see it similarly

 

I wouldn't say tha Rian and JJ were the only directors "LucasFilm" didn't have a problem with but rather Kathleen Kennedy didn't have a problem with. If you're constantly having "creative differences" with a bunch of people then maybe you're the problem. KK burnt through 9 directors in order to produce 4 movies. Any HR department with this kind of hiring an firing quota would be considered as incompetent and rightfully so. What this means is that if KK is no longer in charge of LF (for whatever reason) we could see a lot less "creative differences".

 

Toy sales were bad for Rogue One as well. There's been a 20-30% drop in physical media purchases in that time. Couple that with a 30% drop in box office from the mega event TFA to TLJ then it seems in line with logic. Based on control samples audiences and critics were aligned pretty closely. The average critic score was 8.1 and it's 7.3 on a very male dominated IMDb score (woman liked the movie a lot more apparently).

That quote is from fifteen years ago and has nothing to do with Star Wars.

He didn't throw out the overall outline for the ST.

KK and RJ aren't badmouthing fans. There's a lot of misinformation in most of what you brought to this discussion.

So far Lucasfilm hasn't produced a terrible film. Kennedy has produced 3 mega hits and one film that will probably break even. Unless there's some kind of disaster Episode IX is going to make a ton of money as well. Kennedy isn't going anywhere unless she decides she wants to leave and she'll likely pick her replacement when she does.

 

Can you provide specific examples of KK and RJ badmouthing fans? I mean original quotes and sources, not some clickbaiting third-party articles.

 

One factor to consider....who is most likely to be a star wars fan? A man? A woman? A young person or an older person?

There's some statistics below to look at. Basically, men with high income, ages between 45-64, and hispanics are most likely to like Star Wars "a lot". (Caucasians second) Seems a near even split between democrats and republicans. Now, from the breakdown you posted, it seems the core audience demographics are the ones who disliked TLJ the most. It is no wonder that we see a lot of males posting...if they were the majority of fans through the ages.

Whether you are male or female seems to be the really important factor in your likelihood of liking SW or not. Men are twice as likely to like Star Wars a lot than women. (who are twice as likely to dislike it a lot) That is a huge problem...unless TLJ gets more fans from other groups, especially women, they might have alienated it's core audience.

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n...ent/y97yckktdc/tabs_OP_Star_Wars_20151218.pdf


And, in regards to character popularity...(taken before TLJ):

https://www.quantcast.com/blog/the-fans-behind-the-force/

Surprising that the results are off that much, and I do not fully understand their method in regards to vouching for it. Still, that is not exactly promising for the new protagonists if this is the case. Killing off the old cast basically makes Kylo Ren the only interesting character left for the fans. Interesting that some characters, regardless of male or female, held near the same interest for both genders. Leia stands out though....but it seems Luke and Han appealed to both genders.

From a business perspective...I'm guessing they tried to gain more young fans, and more women with the new directions. That is a risky strategy if you at the same time hurt your existing base. I think you are correct in that TFA was the closest thing we got to a movie that could appeal to everyone. Not so TLJ...I think most will agree it was divisive.

From my point of view, it seems Lucasart might have shotgunned one leg with the general direction trying not to pander to it's core audience too much...an then they shot off the other leg by killing off and tampering with the legacy of the most popular character...by far. They might have very little left to offer in IX to "old fans".

PS! Other media reports SW male fans are likely to have a family. And fans of Luke had the thickest wallets. No need to do the math here in regards to poential loss of business.