Chat corner 135: possibilities

[annathecrow]

Welcome to the Monday chat corner!

This week, my choice of canon media is a little questionable: the three movies announced by Disney this April - one by James Mangold, to be set in the far history of the Galaxy Far Far Away, one by Dave Filoni, meant to tie into his TV shows, and the last, by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, which is supposed to continue Rey’s story as she rebuilds the Jedi Order.

…okay, so I opened my trusty timeline of canon media, found the Mangold movie as the first item, and went “wait, what?”. I am not the most well-informed of fans. I figure you might not be either - or you might enjoy speculating about projects that might never see the light of day (still waiting on my Rogue Squadron movie, Disney!)

What are your thoughts?

Comments

[atamascolily]

Yeah, I think the success of the early phases of the MCU (culminating in Avengers: Endgame) made Disney overconfident that they could keep doing that kind of thing indefinitely across multiple franchises... without doing the necessary groundwork that made those films such a success. We are seeing the fallout in both the recent MCU phases and Star Wars, albeit for vastly different reasons. But I agree, the interlocking serial nature does not help one bit!

Re: release format, I agree with you completely, and I think the question ultimately comes down to where the money lies. Theatrical releases are going to have a higher quality (and thus budget) compared to their TV counterparts and take longer to make, but also have potential for larger profits. I have no idea how the economics of streaming works (poorly, I suspect) or if Disney+ actually makes money, but I think they have an incentive to keep releasing new content on a regular basis to keep subscribers, which favors shorter installments over films. And so on.

However, out of all the projects announced, the David Filoni movie has the best possible chance of actually seeing the light of day, if only because Filoni has been working to this for a long time, and has the charisma and clout to see it through. I'm not so sure about these new directors who don't have that same working relationship with Disney.

It's ironic that A New Hope was inspired in part by Flash Gordon serials, which are themselves essentially comics in film form. I think the difference between comics in general and recent films is that most comics (at least the ones that I'm familiar with) are designed so that any reader picking up any given issue for the first time can follow the plot. However, there are a number of tricks for this, such as footnotes referencing specific issues, that are less feasible for cinema.

Bringing comics to the movies turned out to be a brilliant and extremely lucrative move... but they may have gone just a bit too far.