For me, and just my opinion.

The biggest mistake that Kennedy made was not recognizing who the core audience was, and not growing with them. either in casting or in an actual adult plot.

Overall, they seem to go out of their way to take their core audience, the group that made the franchise, for granted. This series was just the ultimate manifestation of that and why I just gave up early, it was finally enough. Why should we be invested in it if they are no longer invested in us? You can't simply slap a Star Wars tag on something and think you are entitled to make money.

My wife and I both fell asleep multiple times watching the final episode. The sith dude just did not seem evil at all, and the switch to having Osha be on the dark side now was just so unbelievably bad. Even Mae was not believable as an evil character.

And what was the point of showing Darth Plagueis in a cave? It seemed like a pretty lame hook to get people to have interest in season 2 (which I find hard to believe is possible after this trainwreck).

The yoda back of the head cameo at the end was also lame. It was not exciting whatsoever. I literally do not care what the charisma sink bald green lady is going to talk to him about if there is a season 2.

It does seem that the lesbian space witches living in seclusion on a remote planet coven would be wild and interesting and not what was presented which seemed as angry and rigid as the Democrat Women's Caucus. One piece of retcon that did annoy me was why would her saber turn red while Anakin's was blue throughout the Mustafar battle? It's clear there is not a nerd high enough in the pecking order at Disney to stop that sort of nonsense from taking place.

Hang on a sec! Did you miss all of the pressers before the series started emphasizing that Leslye is totally a SW lifelong fan and expert? Her knowledge of SW lore is second only to George Lucas, which is why all that we saw on the screen felt totally authentic. Don't blame her if you just didn't get it.

Quote:

---

It's also convenient how you completely ignored my point about Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Snow White and the Huntsman, etc all being "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure," all being various levels of successful (some massively so

---

I'm not Urban Ag but I would counter that in each of the series you mention romance is a large component. Especially in Twilight.

I don't see how Star Wars compares to those at all when it comes to that.

redline248 said:

---

Quote:

---

Jon Boyega, and Oscar Isaacs, each having major roles in all three movies

---

Debatable

---

They were throw away character on the peripheral that no one really cared about and doesn't now.

They were close to useless.

The series was about Rey and therefore a "girl" dominated movie/series.

It may very well be a stupid argument but it doesn't change my point. Until they start attracting the young, male, audience again, these series and movies will underperform.

TCTTS said:

---

It seems to me, the perfect level romance in the earlier movies was the Han/Leia relationship. Anything like that in the sequel trilogy would have gone a long way. One thing I think we can all agree on is that damn near all of these Disney Star Wars movies/shows are, for some inexplicable reason, utterly sexless/romance-less, to their detriment. While they obviously shouldn't be defined by their romance, they should have at least featured romance in some form or fashion. The Han/Qi'ra relationship in Solo is just about the only one I can think of, and their relationship is fleeting at that. Otherwise, the whole endeavor has been sterile as hell.

---

I agree with this and I would go further and add that most of the female roles can be played by a male actor and you'd never know the difference. This is/was part of a larger trend in Hollywood, where nearly every woman in an action role is Ellen Ripley. It's becoming a trope, now.

It's not any more complex than what I am saying.

Do you really watch movies like Twilight? I going to guess you don't unless it was work related.

That stuff is by design for tweenage-teenage girls. It does well enough to keep making them, I guess.

Boys, by instinct, are not interested unless going to the movie is going to help them with a girl of interest.

Sorry, I just seem perplexed that so many men age 30-50 ish post on this board but seem so removed from what young men like. I drove my 15 year old and two of his friends to Top Golf in Austin this morning and the smartass in the group, who knows I love SW (the Stormtrooper keychain is a giveaway) tried to talk sh** to me about The Acolyte. I laughed and told him I passed on it. Then all three boys started sh** talking Disney SW. I asked, not one of them watched any of the series except Mando but they genuinely like clowning on the Youtubers that mock all of this stuff.

Not sorry. MCU, SW, sh** like Furiosa, without young males it will continue to flounder. But by all means enjoy those movies with the chick Aaron Rodgers dumped.

/kind of kidding, kind of not

And like that you make it personal again. Notice I don't do that to you?

Who cares. I am right on this.

Romance attracts younger women. Big explosions attract younger men.

Science.

Again, your insistence on defining all of pop culture only by what your son and his friends like is a super flawed way of interpreting this stuff and looking at the world.

Beyond that, in the most general terms, I'm not saying I disagree with you, but that's also not the argument you were making earlier.

Anyway, it seems we're having two different conversations at this point, so I'll bow out once more.

I thought this dude summed it up pretty well



It was a combination of a lame, disjointed story with a slowly unraveling "mystery" you could tell was going to suck from episode 2 forward, pretty lame characters, awful writing and acting outside of a few exceptions, and underwhelming visuals. Unless your standards for what you want to watch are extremely low, you have a very high cringe tolerance level, or you're under 13, it's rough.

TCTTS said:

---

It's not that Star Wars compares, it's that those franchises proved that there's a massive female audience who will show up for "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure" movies, which directly contradicts Urban Ag's argument. Yes, all of those franchises also had a large romance component, but they're still "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure" movies at their core.

To your point, though, Disney's/Lucasfilm's flaw was their failure to recognize exactly what you're saying. They thought they could have just the female lead element, and none of the romance, and at least initially they were right. But as time went on, and they produced more content in hopes of attracting a female audience, they continued to ignore the romance element, and women stopped caring, if they ever really did in the first place. That's not to say that any of these movies should have had a big romance element - that's not what Star Wars inherently is - but I do agree that was the crucial missing ingredient.

---

Disagree with the first part because of the second. Those may all be movies in the "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure," genre, but they're not, "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure," movies at their core. At their core, they're mostly (3/4) adaptations of teen/young adult romance novels geared towards young women that just happen to be in a, "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure," setting (like how The Lion King is really just a combination of Hamlet/Macbeth set on the savannah). The stories were written for women. That's why female audiences showed up. As you mention, take out the critical romance element, and women stop caring. That's why they tend to not show up to, "sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure," movies that usually lack such story elements that appeal to women.

Lego's famous study on the differences in how boys and girls play gives us some insight into why there's such a difference between men and women when it comes to story interest. Boys play with toys/characters and try to emulate or become them. Girls play with toys/characters and try to make them like themselves. It stands to reason that men would be attracted to stories with characters involved in action and doing and that are something they aren't (I wanna be that guy), and women would be attracted to stories with characters that they can more directly relate to (That's totally me!). "Sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure," movies are much more suited to the former than the latter, and to UrbanAg's point, are generally more interesting to men and boys. That's not to say that exceptions don't exist, but from a general standpoint, that's why, IMO, they skew that way.

And to illustrate that, look at The Marvels' audience. It was heavily skewed male and reflected the core Marvel audience. It bombed, for one, because women didn't show up to see it even though it had 3 female leads and a female director. Women didn't show up because they can't really relate to a character like Captain Marvel that is really just a gender swapped, masculine superhero. The male skewed, hardcore Marvel audience showed up to see it because it was a Marvel movie, but the wider male audience that typically accounts for the revenue of Marvel blockbusters didn't because they would more readily be a Tony or Steve than a Carol. I think Wonder Woman is the only superhero movie that didn't skew male, and, unsurprisingly, the plot was partially centered around Diana's romance with Steve.

Cliff.Booth said:

---

Leslye's explanation for Osha executing Sol. Makes sense.

https://thatparkplace.com/showrunner-leslye-headland-claims-ohsa-killed-sol-in-the-acolyte-because-he-was-imposing-benign-sexism-on-her/

---

Yeah, she's not a woke show runner and there wasn't much of anything woke about it at all. We're just reading too much into it and projecting...

Holy hell the entire show was made because she has daddy issues.

Quote:

---

"Ultimately, what happens is again, this is a father-daughter relationship as women evolve in their lives and develop their own personalities separate from their fathers, at some point, they have to reject that protectionism," she asserted..................

"The daughter has to surpass him in some way," she explained. "She cannot stay a little girl or an adolescent or young adult. She has to, at some point, say, 'I reject what you have told me I need to do to make you proud, to follow in your footsteps.' She has to do that."

Headland concluded, "I do think when he says, 'It's okay,' I think you're right. He is imposing on her agency at that point. But I do think, in a weird way, she needed it. She needed his acceptance. Not his approval, but his acceptance of his fate, I think, is what gives her that energy to do the final fist clench."..................

Headland appears to be confirming that the entire show is about her own personal experiences rather than any kind of universal experience between fathers and daughters.

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Cliff.Booth said:

---

Leslye's explanation for Osha executing Sol. Makes sense.

https://thatparkplace.com/showrunner-leslye-headland-claims-ohsa-killed-sol-in-the-acolyte-because-he-was-imposing-benign-sexism-on-her/

---

Yeah, she's not a woke show runner and there wasn't much of anything woke about it at all. We're just reading too much into it and projecting...

---

This whole show was some kind of personal catharsis that Disney blew $180 million on.

Sea Speed said:

---

Holy hell the entire show was made because she has daddy issues.

Quote:

---

"Ultimately, what happens is again, this is a father-daughter relationship as women evolve in their lives and develop their own personalities separate from their fathers, at some point, they have to reject that protectionism," she asserted..................

"The daughter has to surpass him in some way," she explained. "She cannot stay a little girl or an adolescent or young adult. She has to, at some point, say, 'I reject what you have told me I need to do to make you proud, to follow in your footsteps.' She has to do that."

Headland concluded, "I do think when he says, 'It's okay,' I think you're right. He is imposing on her agency at that point. But I do think, in a weird way, she needed it. She needed his acceptance. Not his approval, but his acceptance of his fate, I think, is what gives her that energy to do the final fist clench."..................

Headland appears to be confirming that the entire show is about her own personal experiences rather than any kind of universal experience between fathers and daughters.

---

---

JFC

In the full interview we also get a fun discussion about the lightsaber as a phallic symbol that we get to look inside and references to the "moist cave" in TLJ. Wowzers.

I didn't watch the show but have enjoyed "spectating" from the sidelines. What a freaking mess.

BQRyno said:

---

In the full interview we also get a fun discussion about the lightsaber as a phallic symbol that we get to look inside and references to the "moist cave" in TLJ. Wowzers.

---

Cliff.Booth said:

---

Leslye's explanation for Osha executing Sol. Makes sense.

https://thatparkplace.com/showrunner-leslye-headland-claims-ohsa-killed-sol-in-the-acolyte-because-he-was-imposing-benign-sexism-on-her/

---

Great. The entire show was her life.

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Cliff.Booth said:

---

Leslye's explanation for Osha executing Sol. Makes sense.

https://thatparkplace.com/showrunner-leslye-headland-claims-ohsa-killed-sol-in-the-acolyte-because-he-was-imposing-benign-sexism-on-her/

---

Yeah, she's not a woke show runner and there wasn't much of anything woke about it at all. We're just reading too much into it and projecting...

---

Totally not a woke show, guys.

Quote:

---

And again, Manny was giving this incredible performance all through this, so I'm like, "How do I live up to this performance?" My wife was like, "What do you want to say?" I was like, "I wanna say that people don't want me to exist as a gay woman, as a woman in this particular space, working in this wild sandbox."

---

Quote:

---

"I wanna say that people don't want me to exist as a gay woman, as a woman in this particular space, working in this wild sandbox."

---

Holy **** this is dumb.

Sea Speed said:

---

Holy hell the entire show was made because she has daddy issues.

Quote:

---

"Ultimately, what happens is again, this is a father-daughter relationship as women evolve in their lives and develop their own personalities separate from their fathers, at some point, they have to reject that protectionism," she asserted..................

"The daughter has to surpass him in some way," she explained. "She cannot stay a little girl or an adolescent or young adult. She has to, at some point, say, 'I reject what you have told me I need to do to make you proud, to follow in your footsteps.' She has to do that."

Headland concluded, "I do think when he says, 'It's okay,' I think you're right. He is imposing on her agency at that point. But I do think, in a weird way, she needed it. She needed his acceptance. Not his approval, but his acceptance of his fate, I think, is what gives her that energy to do the final fist clench."..................

Headland appears to be confirming that the entire show is about her own personal experiences rather than any kind of universal experience between fathers and daughters.

---

---

Disney paid $180mm for 8 therapy sessions for Headland.

Y'all need to stop sucking the life out of this thread. It was just bad writing.

TCTTS said:

---

In other words, Headlund didn't fail because she's a lesbian with an agenda or whatever. She failed because her skillset doesn't gel with blockbuster storytelling (something that is sometimes impossible to know until given the opportunity), while Lucasfilm's ineptness/stodginess didn't do her any favors either.

Yes, things like Headlund casting her wife in a terribly written role she was unsuited for didn't help. But, by and large, making the show as "minority as possible" wasn't what did it in. Rather, it was ill-conceived from the jump, on a core level, for reasons that have nothing to do with "woke."

It simply wasn't an inherently "woke" story.

It was just a poorly written one.

---

Tell that to Leslye Headland.

I feel so vindicated right now...

yeeeeup

TCTTS said:

---

It seems to me, the perfect level romance in the earlier movies was the Han/Leia relationship. Anything like that in the sequel trilogy would have gone a long way. One thing I think we can all agree on is that damn near all of these Disney Star Wars movies/shows are, for some inexplicable reason, utterly sexless/romance-less, to their detriment. While they obviously shouldn't be defined by their romance, they should have at least featured romance in some form or fashion. The Han/Qi'ra relationship in Solo is just about the only one I can think of, and their relationship is fleeting at that. Otherwise, the whole endeavor has been sterile as hell.

---

Comes from the same Disney who thinks Prince Charming stalked Snow White in the original