Such an overreaction by Disney. Imagine if they'd cancelled the prequels after the reception to Phantom Menace. Heck, nowadays they probably would've. The Stranger has been one of their best received characters in a while; they'd be fools not to release more merch of him. Star Wars has proven time and again that, even if people don't care for a certain movie or show or whatever, the merch will still sell like hotcakes.

I'm still not believing "Disney has pulled all Acolyte merch", since they haven't. I know some are worried the show will be yanked from Disney Plus like Willow as well. It hasn't yet, so I can't get angry with them about that.

I saw someone in one of the comments sections on one of the articles about this I've read lately said the Star Wars franchise is hanging on by a thread and it feels like it could end if Disney doesn't play this just right. But for me... when I was in high school, I finally gave up on Lucas ever making more movies. A few years later, I was shocked and thrilled TPM was coming. It wasn't great to me, it wasn't what I wanted, but I enjoyed it and I was thrilled that Star Wars was back. And it's pretty much never left again since that. (Really since 1996 or so though, but it was just building momentum until the big explosion in 1999.) So, to me, if it 'ends', whatever that looks like these days, I'm kinda fine with that. I've gotten soooooooooo much bonus the last 25 years that I never expected.

I dunno. Maybe it's okay to wrap it up. And even if that happens, they'll still hard-reboot it in the next 5-10 years anyway.

@ru1977 

If the franchise should actually end, it doesn’t mean the toy line will.  Toy companies are still producing product from the classic Star Trek.  If there’s a demand, somebody will step up to fill it.

Free Amaiza!

Posted by: @detectivehoag

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@ru1977 

If the franchise should actually end, it doesn’t mean the toy line will.  Toy companies are still producing product from the classic Star Trek.  If there’s a demand, somebody will step up to fill it.

 

Free Amaiza!

I definitely agree. From my point of view the Jedi are, I mean... from my point of view the toy line has been going strong since the mid 90s, with no support in theaters in those early years and in the middle there too.

Bummer about Acolyte. I really liked the Jedi characters (particularly Sol, Yord, and Jecki) and The Stranger. But maybe it’s understandable since the show went all Red Wedding on the interesting characters. 

Got Sol, and he’s very cool. Excellent head sculpt. Nice brighter colors for a Jedi with the yellow tunic and his metallic gauntlets. 

I'm not really worried about "pulling" items from the Disney online store. They drop items from there HARD. I think it's far more curated than other places to buy Star Wars merch. (I was really enjoying their Toybox line of figures and every few months all of their stock would just delist for a bit, then something new would pop up). If I were to make an educated guess, ShopDisney only offers limited selection of stuff they're actively promoting (probably at the parks, too) and if there's already Acolyte stuff on a factory line in China, we'll see Smilo Ren eventually, just not on ShopDisney. Now if we saw BBTS or Pulse yank all Acolyte stuff I'd be like "okay, they're salting the earth." You can still preorder Bazil and Vernestra on Pulse. 

Not really a fan of ShopDisney. Too limited in selection. 

I suspect it's being 'reported' on specific youtube channels that this stuff is being 'pulled'. So... grain of salt.

@ru1977 Yep. If I could completely remove one thing from my peripheral vision online, it's YouTubers (etc.) who claim to be journalists fanning the flames of rage for clicks. It's an entire sub-industry and it's obnoxious. 

I don't doubt Disney had someone unclick the "Acolyte" keyword on ShopDisney to pull the tee shirts and whatever, but I doubt it's as nuclear an option as those sites are making it out to be. 

I think about the Acolyte items, Disney was just removing it all then putting back up the items that was probably selling. Your right it was a YouTuber who I'm going to call out now. They did a live search on their site for the online store and the search came up with zero items where as now you can find three adult t-shirts and a sweatshirt. It's not a lot but it's there on the site.

There’s nothing on the UK Disney store for it but it’s not uncommon for us to not get things over here, I hate to think of children being disappointed at not being able to get an Acolyte t shirt.

Posted by: @ru1977

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Posted by: @puckace

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Posted by: @docsilence

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The more I learn about these things the more I am convinced in every part of the business all the wrong people are in charge. Nobody running a studio cares about story anymore. It's always been about the money, but there was at least a sense of pride about the craft in decades past. We may never get that back again. 

Sadly, Disney Star Wars is exhibit A.  How you could create three sequel movies without an overall plan/story is just mind-boggling to me.  Really bums me out how they fumbled what should have been a huge success.

 

Right. I get they were in a hurry to make some investment back, but ...well, now here we are. Sometimes it's nice to let creatives do their thing. Then again, it feels like Star Wars shouldn't venture too far into creativity either.

It's the fact that LucasFilm hasn't had a content curator since George Lucas sold it.  He had the final approval over content decisions and steered the ship.  Kevin Feige is that for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Gene Roddenberry was that for Star Trek for a time.  Kathleen Kennedy is the closest to that with Star Wars, but she won't actually give any of her content experts the full keys to the car like Kevin Feige has.  DC Films knows they need a curator and have tried multiple people--Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder, Geoff Johns, and now James Gunn--but none have stuck around for long.

It's clear Leslye Headland had full creative control of the Acolyte.  She has said she worked with Dave Filoni, but she said it was all just with filling her in on the existing canon for the High Republic era in Star Wars, plus some of the ideas about Force covens and Nightsisters that Filoni had established in the Clone Wars cartoon series.  I thought last year Kennedy had finally learned her lesson in naming Dave Filoni the "Chief Creative Officer," but Filoni clearly doesn't have final say for ANYTHING aside from the movies he explicitly produces.  His name isn't anywhere on the Acolyte or multiple other upcoming Star Wars shows and movies like Feige's name is on everything, so clearly Kennedy refuses to cede some control.  And like most studio heads she has very mixed results when she steps in and yays or nays various creative decisions by writers and directors, so at this point it's clear she'll never have the knowledge, desire, and/or talent to be to Star Wars what Kevin Feige is to Marvel.

Ceding control to individual directors is what all studio heads in charge of a large universe of serial content typically do, but that's not the way to do it for reasons you guys already pointed out--it leads to terrible choices like Episode 8 reversing ideas in Episode 7, and Episode 9 reversing them right back again.  Someone has to keep the story straight as directors come and go from movies and television series, but after a decade of mixed success Kennedy hasn't learned her lesson.  At this point I'm guessing she never will, and it's really frustrating given that she has two FANTASTIC people who could be doing it in Pablo Hidalgo and Dave Filoni.  Filoni has the most feathers in his cap and deserves the nod, but Kennedy won't give him the power.  Pablo Hidalgo was Lucas's equivalent to a loremaster, but Lucas had the final say and often injected his own ideas.  I'm guessing Kennedy is modelling Filoni's role after Hidalgo's under Lucas, but she's no Lucas so the role he filled in steering the Star Wars ship is simply at LEAST half-vacant and has been since Disney bought the studio.

It's possible Filoni doesn't really want a Kevin Feige-like producer role.  That's the usual pattern with creatives like him; they don't want to be a suit who runs the ship, they want to get in and do the writing or directing themselves.  I'm pretty sure that's why Geoff Johns gave up that job with DC Films given that he immediately went back to writing after he stepped down from DC Films, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's why Filoni isn't producing all of the Star Wars content.  But that's an educated guess; I don't know whether or not it's him or Kennedy that's keeping him from being the Feige of Star Wars.

I saw something from Marcia Lucas from a few years ago saying she knew Kennedy from back in the day and respected her but she felt Kennedy (and Abrams, as this was specifically about the ST) did not get Star Wars. She essentially did a "give me a call Kathy' as someone who understood the franchise.

I know it will never happen but I'd be incredibly curious to see how that could play out.

I never really got into the Legacy comics, though I was very aware of a lot of the characters. Somehow I fell down a rabbit hole the other night and was looking more into them and thinking...without the benefit of actually reading them, it seems like there was a lot going on and some really cool concepts. I hope the next Rey movie borrows more heavily from that stuff, but I also realized maybe I'd be more excited for some of the Legacy figures than anything from Disney's post-ROTJ era. Am I sliding toward anti-Disney sentiment?!

No... I'm still into Andor and will definitely try Skeleton Crew. Okay, nevermind.

You can dislike some of the Disney stuff without disliking all of it. I for one love Kenobi, Ahsoka, BoBF, Mando (which should be a given) and thought the movies had promise till they got super mixed up and disconnected from each other. I haven't watched Andor, I'll wait till S2 is done, and I'm meh on Acolyte. So just, like what you like. I do think though, alot of the Legacy stuff was much better. The actual "Legacy" comic line itself was really good. Alot of stuff dealing with Mara Jade and the Solo children were all pretty well done. The bounty hunter wars were peak. The YV war was interesting. And Shadows of the Empire was definitely worth a read. The stuff with Thrawn was also quite good. But there was also alot of other stuff that came out that really didn't matter all that much, and some of it was convoluted and also disconnected.

Oh, and KotoR and TFU stuff was also killer. I loved those to death. A little bit of KotoR stuff seems to be coming into canon but it hasn't been expressly stated. And it wouldn't mess with anything Disney did so I don't know why they'd care.

@trunks3540 thank you, I was mostly kidding around though. I am very comfortable liking what I like and dismissing the rest. Even within a show (love most of Obi Wan but ignore the parts I don't). It's an approach more fans should probably consider.

But I do find myself losing interest in the stories about post-rotj. Skeleton Crew is doing something different at least. I'd love for the Mandalorian movie to pull me back in but at present I can muster zero enthusiasm for it.