When Disney released The Force Awakens in 2015 the box office caught on fire again for a Star Wars movie, though after the dust settled and whilst everyone admitted they had a good time, subsequent viewing led many to feel it was too much alike to A New Hope to really stand on its own. However, the hope was that The Last Jedi would start to craft a story very different form that of the original trilogy, and whilst it did achieve that, it was also met with some severe criticism by fans and now a couple of years later, it feels like the majority of Star Wars fans were unhappy with that movie, whilst the minority loved it as the best Star Wars film since the original trilogy. That conversation will likely outlive most of us before it ever gets resolved.
Now the question becomes whether the finale of this trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will take those fan criticisms into consideration and craft a film more accepted by the fan base at large? Though don’t expect Disney to have admitted defeat and cow before that fan criticism, as Bob Iger says, they simply cannot afford to take all the fan criticism too seriously. The Disney CEO recently spoke with Variety at the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker and had this to say.
“We don’t overreact, we respect fans of Star Wars, that’s really important to us, to Lucasfilm, to the franchise,” he said. “But we do the best job we can, we think we had a very hard job in bringing this forward, ‘The Force Awakens,’ satisfying the traditional fans and touching on themes and characters and places they were familiar with, but introducing the new places, new stories, new characters. And I think over the three that we’ve produced, those three, we’ve done a really good job of threading that needle, walking that fine line. We know we’re never going to please everybody all the time, and we see that with Disney films, with Marvel films. So I don’t mean to suggest that I’m dismissive of it because we respect our fans, but we don’t overreact either.”
Ok, that’s probably a reasonable standpoint to take because not all fan criticism is constructive. How many readers have come on these very comments rooms to declare that Star Wars is dead and at this point there is nothing Disney can do to save the franchise, so, therefore, it is time to watch it crash and burn. I certainly don’t think it wise that Bob Iger tries to adhere to these fans’ wishes at that would mean canceling any future Star Wars projects and, well, that ain’t happening any time soon.
The early reactions to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker from a select band of critics should be up on the site today as soon as possible, what will critics think of the movie and does it even matter considering the critic versus fan reactions to The Last Jedi? Iger’s last ‘reaction’ to fan criticism was to announce that perhaps they did too much, too fast with Star Wars and it was time to “Slow this muthaf****r down, because they was hitting them corners too damn fast“, (geek points if you can pick the film that quote is from in the comments). Here is what Iger told THR after the flop of Solo at the box office.
“I made the timing decision, and as I look back, I think the mistake that I made — I take the blame — was a little too much, too fast. You can expect some slowdown, but that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna make films. J.J. [Abrams] is busy making [Episode] IX. We have creative entities, including [Game of Thrones creators David] Benioff and [D.B.] Weiss, who are developing sagas of their own, which we haven’t been specific about. And we are just at the point where we’re gonna start making decisions about what comes next after J.J.’s. But I think we’re gonna be a little bit more careful about volume and timing. And the buck stops here on that.”
Since then the Game of Thrones showrunners have left their Star Wars movies and right now, Disney has no one place to develop whatever the next Star Wars movie will be, a movie that still had a December 2022 release date set. I suspect Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will do better than The Last Jedi at the box office, because that’s a trend that tends to follow Star Wars trilogies, but will it do the business Disney are hoping for, I guess we will find out in around a month’s time after the dust begins to settle?
RELATED: Star Wars: J.J. Abrams And Rise Of Skywalker Co-Writer, Chris Terrio, Met With George Lucas
What do you think of Iger’s comments on fan criticisms? Share your thoughts in the usual spot below.
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SOURCE: Variety
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