Disney Star Wars Is It Actually That Bad?

[Zardnaar]

How good or bad is Star Wars post Disney in term of TV shows and movies?

It's probably safe to say there's been some misfires. BUT Lucas himself made multiple erm crap Star Wars content. I would argue the worst of Disney Star Wars is no worse than the worst of what Lucas came up with.

There's only one thing to do. Tier list!!! Not covering things like video games, comics, books etc or the Stat Wars Holiday special only the movies and TV shows.

The tier levels

S: Best of the Best

A: Very good but there's better.

B: Still generally good

C: Has some major problems the negatives outweigh the good.

D: Generally a hard movie to watch. Might have a great scene or two but overall a bad movie possibly even painful to watch.

 

[Zardnaar]

The List.

S Tier: Star Wars: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Rebels, The Mandalorian

A Tier: Return of the Jedi. The Clone Wars, Obi Wan

B Tier: Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens, Solo

C Tier: The Phantom Menace, The Last Jedi, Book of Boba Fett.

D Tier: Attack of the Clones, Ewoks Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor, Clone Wars (animated film). Rise of Skywalker

 

[Zardnaar]

Star Wars Episode IV a New Hope

Gotta start somewhere. A reasonably basic and traditional tale set against the back drop of well Star Wars. For it's time it had amazing special effects (cf Logan's Run the year before).

Minor negatives somewhat predictable the heroes win, rescue the princess, cue credits but it was released in 1977.

S tier.

 

[Dioltach]

My ranking:
S Tier: Ep IV, Ep V, Rogue One and The Mandalorian
A Tier: Ep VI, Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi
B Tier: Ep III
C Tier: Ep II, Ep VII and Book of Boba Fett (dragged up from D Tier by the chapters dealing exclusively with Mando)
D Tier: Ep VIII and Ep IX

 

[Zardnaar]

My ranking:
S Tier: Ep IV, Ep V, Rogue One and The Mandalorian
A Tier: Ep VI, Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi
B Tier: Ep III
C Tier: Ep II, Ep VII and Book of Boba Fett (dragged up from D Tier by the chapters dealing exclusively with Mando)
D Tier: Ep VIII and Ep IX

Mines probably similar +/- one place and I'll be including Ewok Movies and the animated clone wars movie.

So a few of those movies gain a place not because they're great there's just worse in a whole new level of bad.

Quite a bit of Disney will likely make it into B+ tiers.

 

[Retreater]

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back
A: Mandalorian, Obi-Wan
B: Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, Rogue One
C: The Last Jedi, Revenge of the Sith
D: Solo, Rise of Skywalker, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones

Edit: Forgot the prequels - which is a regular occurrence.

 

[RuinousPowers]

S: Episode V
A Episode IV
B: Episode VII, Mandalorian
C: Episode VI, Episode VIII, Kenobi, Solo
D: Episode IX, Book of Boba Fett, Rogue One

 

[delericho]

How good or bad is Star Wars post Disney in term of TV shows and movies?

After a strong start it has been generally disappointing - Ep7 was very much "Star Wars Greatest Hits", but that was probably what was needed at the time, "Rogue One" was great. But Ep8 was fairly disastrous and Ep9 tied itself in knots trying desperately to 'fix' it. "Solo" was okay, but completely pointless.

In terms of series, the record is a bit better: Rebels, the final series of Clone Wars, and Bad Batch were all good, Visions was mixed but interesting, and most of "The Mandalorian" was decent. "Book of Boba Fett" had potential but largely failed, while "Kenobi" was mostly good but seriously flawed.

In terms of tiers:

S: Ep4&5
A: Ep 6, Rebels, Clone Wars (both pre- and post-Disney), Bad Batch, Mandalorian, Rogue One
B: Kenobi, Ep 7&1, Visions
C: Ep 2&3&8&9, BoBF
D: Nothing

Solo doesn't fit in a tier - it's just too pointless even to consider. And I haven't rated things like the old Droids or Ewoks cartoons - those are too old for me to really remember.

 

[Jer]

The thing about Star Wars is that the further you get from the original movies, the better Disney has been able to do with it.

The Mandalorian plays in the universe of the films but is not trying to tie directly into the films. It's the best live action Star Wars thing Disney has produced. The Book of Boba Fett is not nearly as good for a few reasons but a chunk of it is that it's picking up something directly from the movies instead of playing with something new in the universe.

Rogue One ties into the movies, and does it better than Boba Fett, but where it's good is where it's not really playing in the original movie space. Where it fails IMO is where it has to tie things back into the original movies and where it makes winks and nods.

The new trilogy is a mess mostly because they decided to "Exquisite Corpse" a "Mystery Box" idea from JJ Abrams instead of actually having, you know, a story to tell (how can you plan to spend nearly 1 billion dollars and not even have an outline of what you're planning to spend it on? How?). But it's also not good because it tries to tie too much into a story that is finished. It's over - we're done with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and the rest. Their story is done, let them retire. There should be new challenges and new heroes and new villains. And they don't all have to be from the same family.

And then there's Solo. What can we say about Solo? It's the one that is most tied to the original movies and frankly it's the one that I find to be the most disappointing. At least the first two films of the sequel trilogy tried to do some new things. Solo is a movie where they felt like they had to give an origin to his name. "Why is he called Solo?" is a question that I never even thought to ask because I just figured it was his last name and the author was engaging in some cute wordplay. When you're making a movie at that level of explaining things about the previous movies rather than doing something creative and interesting, you really have to ask yourself why you're bothering. (I contend that the only way Solo would have worked is if they'd ramped up the humor in it and then, in a mid-credits scene, had Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Billy Dee Williams as Lando walking out of a holo theater playing "Solo" with Han complaining that they got everything wrong and it was nothing like that. Even then it wouldn't have been necessarily good but at least they could have had some fun with it instead of what it was)

(I haven't watched Kenobi yet. I just haven't had the energy to be disappointed by yet another Star Wars thing and I've been spending more of my sci-fi time on Star Trek instead.)

So my advice for Disney would be a) ask John Favreau if he has any other ideas for Star Wars Universe things and if he does maybe put him into the Kevin Feige role over Star Wars if he wants it because he of all of them seems to know what he's doing and b) do more things set in the Star Wars universe but that aren't just strip mining the movies for stuff. Just do some adventure stories set in the Star Wars universe! That's literally all I'm asking for.

 

[schneeland]

The only thing that really stands out for me is Mandalorian, so I'll go with:

S: EP IV, V
A: EP VI, Mandalorian (individual episodes would also be S or B)
B: First Ewok Movie, Rogue One
C: EP I, Second Ewok Movie, Book of Boba Fett
D: EP II, EP VIII

Based on my current knowledge, Obi Wan would get a D, but it's so boring I cannot find the motivation to watch the second half of the first episode, so it's perfectly possible it will get better later.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

(The following list of all Star Wars stuff was determined by Colosson the Numberwang Robot and as the product of Maths cannot be argued with.)


1. Empire Strikes Back.
2. A New Hope
3. The Last Jedi.
4. 3 3/4" Star Wars Action Figures
4. Rogue One.
5. The Mandalorian.
6. Star Wars Bed Sheets. Search your feelings. You know this to be true.
7. Various animated Star Wars shows, such as Clone Wars.
8. The Force Awakens. Needz moar lenz flarez.
9. Going to any Star Wars movie with a friend who keeps asking you if Yoda is related to Hulk. Because Green?
10. Return of the Jedi. Ain't no party like an Ewok party 'cuz an Ewok party can't stop. Yub nub, eee chop yub nub.
11. That recurring nightmare that George Lucas has invented time travel and is going to use it to improve Cinema by re-writing the dialogue of Casablanca and Glengarry Glen Ross and adding wipes for transitions in all Kubrick movies.
12. Revenge of the Sith.
13. Obi Wan. Perfectly cromulent.
14. Reading Simon Pegg's statement that Star Wars has the most toxic fanbase and thinking ... eh, he's not wrong, but still feeling the need to write a 10,000 word rebuttal.
15. The Phantom Menace.
16. Solo (except Lando ... Lando is cool).
17. Going into your attic and finding that all of your Star Wars collectibles that you never played with because of their value have melted in the latest heatwave into a large Jabba-like mass on top of your vintage Kenner Millenium Falcon, and recognizing that this a metaphor for your childhood.
17. Caravan of Courage.
18. Realizing that not only is Disney recycling all the Star Wars characters you grew up with, but that the actors that played those characters are dying too, and that the abyss you are staring into is staring back at you.
19. Book of Boba Fett.
20. Battle of Endor.
21. Holiday Special.
22. George Lucas’s proposed sequels about the midi-chlorians. Because that's the one part of Star Wars I really wanted to know more about. For whatever wrongs Disney has done, they didn't do this.
23. Finally recognizing that a space opera that you enjoyed for a few years in your youth and still appreciate to this day is not only nothing more than more corporate IP that Disney is using to take over the world and everyone’s brains, but is also the breeding ground for a peculiar and nasty strain of nerd-rage with a side-dose of toxic masculinity that frightens the hell out of you- and trying to come to an understanding that Star Wars has always been primarily about and for young people.
24. Attack of the Clones.

 

[Retreater]

I could not rank Book of Boba Fett or the animated Clone Wars series - they were too boring to watch more than about 2 episodes. Rebels - I didn't finish that series either - but I preferred it to the others.

 

[Gradine]

S: V, VIII
A: IV, VI, VII, Mandalorian, Rebels
B: Rogue One*, Kenobi
C: Solo, IX, I
D: III
Trash Tier: II

*Rogue One is hard to evaluate; the first 60% or so of the movie is somewhere in C or D, but the last act is solid S-tier.

IX earns its placement on the astral-projection lightsaber duel alone, which is some of the coolest sh*t I've seen in Star Wars. It is otherwise a better acted prequel film in terms of quality.

 

[MoonSong]

Looks fun!

S. Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, The Mandalorian
A. Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, Rebels, some Anime shorts.
B. New Hope, Attack of the Clones, Solo, Caravan of Courage, Tartakovskis's Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, Obi Wan, the rest of the anime shorts.
C. The Force Awakens, Book of Bobba Fett.
D. The Last Jedi (but with some editing could improve to C), Rise of Skywalker (it's a mess), Battle for Endor (too bleak, way to ruin the previous movie)

 

[Guest 7034872]

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back
A: Mandalorian, Rogue One
B: Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan, Revenge of the Sith
C: Attack of the Clones, Book of Boba Fett
D: Phantom Menace, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, Solo

Note, though, that between A and B my judgments would fit a continuum better than discrete categories.

 

[Hex08]

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One
A: Mandalorian, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, Clone Wars, Rebels
B: Obi-Wan, The Last Jedi
C: Revenge of the Sith, The Book of Boba Fett, Solo
D: Rise of Skywalker, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones

I haven't watched the Bad Batch yet so can't rate it

 

[Davies]

B: Everything that's not Phantom Menace.
C: Phantom Menace.

 

[Eltab]

Besides "no plan for $1B trilogy", the other critical Disney error out of the gate was "destroy everything the heros spent three movies trying to accomplish and leave them wandering amidst the wreckage".

If the backstory had been "the heros succeeded but the upcoming generation lost their vision; we begin with the generation after that" it could have worked. See IRL Charlemagne and his heirs for ideas.

 

[Mezuka]

S: New Hope, Empire Strikes Back
A: Return of the Jedi, Rogue One, Solo
B: Prequels, Mandalorian, Obi-Wan
C: Boba Fett
D: Sequels, they are equally bad.

I can't watch the animation shows. I fall asleep everytime. SW is live action.

 

[Retreater]

I can't watch the animation shows. I fall asleep everytime. SW is live action.

I'm the same way. No kidding - when I was suffering from insomnia, I'd put on the Clone Wars and pass out before the opening WW2 announcer guy started giving the voice over.