Entertainment
New Star Wars Movie Proves That Disney's Failure Is Complete
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Star Wars is a franchise full of quotable lines, which is why the Prequel Trilogy became the center of so many hilarious memes. One of my favorites comes from the Original Trilogy, when Darth Vader disses his old master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, with the hard line, “Now, his failure is complete.”
Even as a kid, I was fascinated by the idea that failure was not necessarily a fixed state. Just as the Dark Lord of the Sith could slip further and further into the Dark Side, it’s possible for a smaller failure to get increasingly worse over time.
Ironically enough, this line perfectly sums up the Disney era of Star Wars. The House of Mouse made some major mistakes with this franchise early on with a Sequel Trilogy so bad that it drove Star Wars out of theaters for the better part of a decade. They had to pivot to making TV shows, and the only real unqualified success was The Mandalorian. Now unable to get any new ideas to the big screen, Disney is about to premiere The Mandalorian and Grogu, and the fact that their last hope is to make a movie based on a past-its-prime series proves one thing: Disney’s failure is now complete.
The Beginning of the End
In retrospect, it’s clear that the beginning of the end for Star Wars was 2017’s The Last Jedi. While I personally enjoyed the film (it was beautifully shot and took big, creative swings), the majority of fans didn’t agree. The film subverted expectations in several hated ways, including killing Snoke and transforming Luke Skywalker into a cranky curmudgeon.
The second Sequel Trilogy film yielded solid box-office returns ($1.3 billion), but it generated enough negative word of mouth that the next movie suffered. Solo: A Star Wars Story made only $393 million against a $366 million budget, meaning it actually lost money once you factor in marketing and distribution costs.
This failure caused Disney to pivot, transforming several intended film projects (including movies featuring Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi) into TV shows. On paper, this was supposed to help drive subscribers to Disney+, letting the studio have it both ways: audiences would get their Star Wars fix at home through these series and in theaters through movies like 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. However, that final sequel film was a critical and commercial failure (it made “only” a billion and has a 51 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes), which is why we haven’t seen a new Star Wars film in theaters since 2019.
See You, Space Cowboy
The Star Wars shows on Disney+ have proven to be a decidedly mixed bag. Some series that seemed like they’d be surefire hits failed to energize the fandom, including Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett. Some shows were hard to appreciate if you didn’t know the deep lore.
For example, you might be lost watching Ahsoka if you didn’t previously watch the entirety of Rebels. Meanwhile, The Acolyte was a complete and mind-bogglingly expensive failure. Ultimately, the only breakout success was The Mandalorian, which focused (at least, at first) on episodic adventures in the vein of a Firefly-esque space western.
Now, Disney is bringing that show’s two main characters to the big screen later this month with The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s the kind of film that fans would have eaten up a few years ago, back when The Mandalorian was the hottest show in a galaxy far, far away.
The show fell off in a big way over time. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first two seasons had both fan and critical ratings above 90 percent. But critics gave Season 3 an 84 percent, while fans gave it a much lower, much harsher 51 percent.
In other words, Disney waited until half the fandom hated The Mandalorian before deciding to bring its heroes to the big screen. Furthermore, even most fans looking forward to The Mandalorian and Grogu are worried it will feel more like an extended TV episode than a blockbuster feature film.
These factors at least partially explain why the film is projected to earn only $80 million in its opening weekend. That’s $4 million less than Solo: A Star Wars Story earned, meaning The Mandalorian and Grogu is on track to earn less money than any live-action Star Wars movie in cinematic history.
Disney’s Failure Is Complete
Now, it’s clear that Disney’s failure is complete when it comes to Star Wars. The failure of the Sequel Trilogy created a ripple effect that turned Solo into a box-office bomb, ultimately canceling a series of intended films. After the failure of The Rise of Skywalker, execs kept canceling exciting movie projects, including Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron. Disney was forced to focus entirely on Star Wars TV shows, which generated mostly disappointment and failures after the initial success of The Mandalorian.
Disney is now forced to put The Mandalorian on the big screen as a Hail Mary attempt to make Star Wars relevant to moviegoing audiences again. But after over a decade of mishandling the franchise, they have ensured that The Mandalorian and Grogu will have the worst opening of any live-action Star Wars film. Sure, more projects are in development (like Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling), but Disney is in a precarious place. Should The Mandalorian and Grogu bomb as Solo did, it may poison future box office returns just like The Last Jedi did.
That would make this more than just another cinematic failure for this galaxy far, far away. After nearly half a century of entertaining fans, we may actually be witnessing the end of the Star Wars franchise as we know it.