Ever since Disney took over Star Wars, one of America’s most well-known and cherished franchises, it has been eroding.
Is it dead? Not quite, but I’d say it’s on life support. To be charitable, I could say that it’s a shell of its former self.
It used to have one of the most, if not the most dedicated fanbases in all of film and television, but then, Disney took over. The new trilogy bastardized the established canon and disrespected the original characters. Former President of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy decided to go the woke route by staking the claim that “The Force is Female,” putting an emphasis on female empowerment over proper storytelling and character development.
Disney also unjustifiably fired Gina Carano from The Mandalorian after season 2, Solo bombed, The Acolyte was an abomination that got cancelled after only one season, and the list goes on.
Sure, there have been some bright spots such as “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Andor,” though it’s been a costly show financially that is not watched nearly as much as it should because of Disney’s failure to keep fans interested, and “The Mandalorian” season 1 and parts of season 2.
There’s no better indication that Star Wars is cooked more than what is happening in the box office right now, though.
After a seven-year absence from the box office, where fans were booing in the theater as Rey was revealed to be a Skywalker in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars made its return on Memorial Day weekend with “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.” The title within itself should tell you how far Disney’s Star Wars has fallen into creative bankruptcy. It’s a bloated title with the names of the main characters. Imagine Star Wars Episode VI being called “Luke Skywalker and His Father” instead of “Return of the Jedi”. It’s that bad.
Anyway, the film ended the holiday weekend at the top of the box office, but it performed worse than the massive Disney Star Wars flop, Solo, when you adjust for inflation. Solo actually defeated “The Mandalorian and Grogu” in both nominal dollars and inflation-adjusted dollars. Solo’s $84.4 million three-day opening in 2018 is equivalent to roughly $109–110 million today, about 33% higher than “The Mandalorian and Grogu’s” $82 million opening weekend.
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If you compare the four-day holiday openings (both were Memorial Day releases), the gap is even larger. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” earned about $102 million over the four-day holiday weekend, while inflation-adjusted estimates put Solo’s 2018 Memorial Day debut at roughly $136.6 million in 2026 dollars.
And even worse, an independent horror, “Obsession” just surpassed “The Mandalorian and Grogu” for the top spot at the box office on Wednesday. A film that had a budget reportedly around $750,000, directed by a YouTuber and TikToker, just took out a Star Wars film, which reportedly had a production and marketing budget of more than $300 million. If that’s not a clear indication that Star Wars is on life support, I don’t know what is. Word of mouth just trounced a cultural juggernaut brand.
Where “Mandalorian and Grogu,” and much of Star Wars has gone wrong, is best described in some of the responses to the movie from the media. The BBC said, “It’s felt like homework” to see Star Wars and try to somehow some way connect to stories and characters that aren’t worth loving or caring for at any significant level. Inverse said, “The Mandalorian and Grogu is Barely A Movie,” which is spot on because the movie feels more like a few episodes of a weak Disney+ show that has to be stretched into a movie like butter scraped over too much bread.
Star Wars can no longer print money, simply because of name recognition. The constant reliance on cheap callbacks and recycling characters through cheap imitations is leaving audiences feeling cheated and empty. For example, in this movie, Grogu is a baby version of Yoda, the Hutts are back, the Mandalorian plays a Luke Skywalker figure who falls in a pit to fight a giant monster while visiting the Hutts, there’s a battle on a snow planet calling back to “Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back,” and so on. Baby Yoda was fine for a season or two of the show, but now it just feels as if Disney cannot make compelling original characters, or find a way to properly care for the ones that established this franchise in the first place. Disney can’t even compel audiences to care enough to keep a Star Wars movie at the top of the box office for a whole week. It’s damning.
This is what modern-day Hollywood has done to beloved intellectual properties, though. It has desecrated them with woke nonsense, weak storytelling, uncompelling characters, and a belief that sticking to the source material and respecting established lore is old-fashioned. “Star Trek,” “Doctor Who,” “Marvel: Phase Five” (properly known as the M-She-U), “Lord of the Rings” (Rings of Power), you name it. Hollywood has again and again lit the fire and burned many franchises to the ground to the point they are unrecognizable.
The question is now, “What does Disney do next with Star Wars?” My guess is it tries a reboot of the original trilogy, and the fact that I’m even writing this makes me want to throw up. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see where else Disney goes, especially after the Starfighter movie featuring Ryan Gosling that’ll attract audiences because of the actor, not because they care about the Star Wars brand or story being told. Star Wars is a franchise that should have had a century’s-long staying power, yet its grave is already being dug, with the studio scrambling to find a way to salvage the spare parts like Jawas.
