Every single thing points to Disney’s decade-long project with Star Wars being dead. It has utterly failed. Follow along as we detail just how spectacularly it died this week.
It would be hard to have missed all the developments surrounding Lucasfilm, Star Wars and Disney over the last week-or-so. After having set up the idea that (lead?) actress Moses Ingram would face racism from Star Wars fans, the trigger was pulled and the plan was put into action. It was all over the mainstream media and talk shows, including Disney-owned Good Morning America, that Ingram had indeed received racist messages to her in her social media inbox. We don’t know where these anonymous messages came from but that doesn’t seem to be something we’ll receive soon. And though any public figure can count on getting strange or mean messages from the mix of weirdos and bots that exist out there in social media world, it did seem odd that Ingram was checking messages from strangers that cannot be confirmed to even be real people. We’re not trying to diminish what she received, only point on that there’s no way to gauge this because it’s strictly dependent on anonymous online accounts. In the real world with real people, we don’t know of anyone who is being mean to Ingram.
Though some have been pulled into this Catch 22 by Lucasfilm, we’ve tried to stay completely out of the foray. We don’t enjoy a strategy that says either you like a product or you’re automatically a bigot, so we don’t want to play. It doesn’t help that Obi-Wan Kenobi is largely being panned at this point. Take this fantastic article from Bounding Into Comics that gained trending status:
Shout out to @BoundingComics for this synopsis of the new #ObiWan episode. Saved me time. Another garbage bait and switch show by @Disney/@starwars. Now I know why they tried to introduce baseless controversy. It was to cover their incompetence. https://t.co/tT4hozNr2l
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) June 2, 2022
From author John F. Trent:
This episode is the worst piece of Star Wars created because it breaks long-lasting Star Wars continuity, treats its characters like idiots, and has a nonsensical plot that even the smallest questions expose it.
The Imperials can’t track a cargo ship. Obi-Wan allows the cargo ship to fly on auto-pilot. Leia bosses Obi-Wan around. Obi-Wan is routinely saved by Tala. Characters teleport around the planet. Freck informs one group of Stormtroopers that Kenobi and Leia are suspicious, but another. One group of Stormtroopers call in a probe droid while another don’t.
Yes, that seems about right. And of course, ultra-popular YouTube channel Overlord DVD is in full agreement. You know it’s bad when people are saying this is the reincarnation of The Last Jedi.
On top of all that, Lucasfilm and Disney have dug themselves into an awful, awful hole. They have claimed that Obi-Wan Kenobi broke the record for most-watched hours in a debut weekend for an original series on Disney+. That might seem impressive until you figure out the number of caveats they’ve used. For one, this is the first series they’ve launched on a weekend. Every other original series was launched on a Wednesday. That meant most of the viewership happened before a weekend. We’re already in apples to oranges territory. But then they also released two episodes on a single weekend. All other shows have had a single episode to get people started. So just think about how silly this is in that case. They’re comparing shows with a Wednesday opening and a single hour of content to a show they purposefully launched on a Friday with two hours of content.
In other words, this is a record of such specificity as to be totally and utterly worthless. That’s why Netflix released the total number of hours for Stranger Things — a clear dare to Disney to do the same with Obi-Wan Kenobi. And it’s a dare that Disney has yet to accept. It’s doubtful they will. Because the emperor here has no clothes and everyone now knows it. This house of cards has fallen down in epic fashion.
If you thought it was bad thus far, get ready… it’s going to get even worse.
Disney then had their new business partner, Samba TV, come out with a statement that made it seem Obi-Wan Kenobi came close to Stranger Things in ratings. There’s just one problem: the numbers didn’t make sense at all.
Netflix reported 286M global watch hours. That translates to a minimum of 30M Netflix accounts that watched if ALL of those accounts binged the entire season. US reps 1/3 of Netflix subs. So how are you guys arriving at this figure? Cuz that isnt even close to what NFLX reports
— Valliant Renegade (@ValliantRenegad) June 1, 2022
It turns out this behavior from Samba TV of releasing information that doesn’t add up and then is hard-countered by the much-more-trusted Nielsen Ratings is a pattern. A pattern that seem to constantly favor Disney, the company they have a business partnership with:
That’s creating interesting bedfellows as openings appear in the market. Samba TV (a Nielsen competitor), for example, has a quirky little way of measuring viewership. If someone watches a show for five minutes, they count it as someone having watched the property. More quirky, however, is how they report the ratings.
Twice now, they have provided information on The Book of Boba Fett in a way that really must have pleased Disney… and not necessarily been the whole truth. When it came to the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett, Samba TV provided information to Deadline that indicated the show was a heck of a hit. The problem was that when you really dug into the details, the show didn’t open so well, even if you accepted that “watching five minutes” should count.
The way that was accomplished was by releasing Samba TV data for Hawkeye and then comparing it to Samba TV data for The Book of Boba Fett. However, because Samba TV doesn’t typically come out with data so quickly, it was a bit strange to get that comparison so fast. And because the comparison was to Hawkeye, perhaps Marvel’s least popular series on Disney+, it was favorable comparison… without disclosing that Hawkeye hadn’t been a hit either. That’s sort of the kind of thing that Disney would really like out there.
That’s data that is accompanied by misleading context. So why would Samba TV want to make it seem like The Book of Boba Fett jumped out to a great start when that wasn’t really the case?
So, Samba TV, that’s cute that you say 2.9M US households tuned into Stranger Things. It’s also cute that you say 2.1M US households tuned into Obi-Wan Kenobi. But why should we believe you? After all, you’ve been severely wrong in the past and the released official hours for Stranger Things means your big press release makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever.
In review, here is what Lucasfilm has done to try to help Obi-Wan Kenobi and how bad they have failed:
- Set up an entire Star Wars Celebration around it to capitalize on marketing.
- Released the show on a Friday with two episodes included.
- Came in third place behind Top Gun Maverick and Stranger Things for online interest.
- Decimated in ratings by Stranger Things.
- Claimed the (lead?) actress would be accosted by racists online.
- Proceeded to claim she was, in fact, accosted by racists online.
- Had a marketing push across mass-media to make it so that those who dislike Obi-Wan Kenobi are “racists.”
- Released a silly statement about breaking a record that is worthless and meaningless. Did it break the 24 or 48 hour record or not? It did not.
- Samba TV came out with a nothingburger statement that draws even more scrutiny.
And after aaaaall that… how did the third episode perform in terms of online interest?
That’s right. Even though all of Stranger Thing’s new episodes have been released for nearly a week, and even though Top Gun Maverick is in its second week… Obi-Wan Kenobi did not top either one of them with a new episode that has legacy characters battle for the first time in fifteen years.
There is no greater way to know that Star Wars is absolutely dead now. It is dead. It is not hyperbole. It is unsustainably finished. All that is left now are the Nielsen Ratings to be released in a few weeks. At that point, the whole push by Disney and Lucasfilm that has been the leading arcon for how to move Marvel, Pixar, Disney Animation, and Disney Parks into a new woke storytelling future… it’s all collapsed. It’s all collapsed.
And that means it’s over. Even if they continue on with this strategy, even if they push harder, it’s over. And all this stuff about calling the fans bad names, it’s all just the death throws of a strategy that is utterly finished.
So keep your head up if you loved Star Wars. They have no other choice than to resurrect what it once was… or else it will stay in the grave where that chart shows it most surely is.
For all the news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place! As always, drop a comment in the section down below!
Lucasfilm using the title of “Obi Wan” was bait n’ switch and probably done because they know deep in their heart, Lucasfilm is creatively bankrupt. A decent creative would have made the show about Inquisitor’s and really fleshed out the Reva character. Instead she is left to be a schlocky one note “bad guy”. Further, denigrating the character of Obi Wan in an effect to humanize him was silly and made no sense. He was sent to Tatooine to protect Luke but, in reality he can only run away from things in this show.
Disney’s version of Starwars is at a dead end and the Mouse is digging through the corpses pockets looking for loose change now.
Except he has more screen time than Reva has. How can it be a bait and switch like that? What you’re saying makes no sense.
Jake Tepper: The internet is full of racists. Sigh. This is just reality and everybody knows it. Sigh. I can’t believe I have to explain this completely obvious and mundane fact to you people. Sigh.
Also Jake Tepper: Of course Disney had to very publicly warn this poor woman about online racist trolls!!!!! They didn’t want her to get blindsided by racism on the internet!! C’mon you guys!!!
There’s more troubling racists that think Obi-Wan can’t carry a show on his own without the new trope of a black woman as the bait and switch star of the show. Then there’s the awful Pinocchio trailer that I can unsee the black and blue and ambiguous gender fairy.
Before I talk about Star Wars, I have an honest question for you all. How is it that in the U.S.A employees, applicants, etc. are protected from employment discrimination under federal employment discrimination laws, yet a company can publicly say they are promoting/hiring/advocating for “diverse” employees? Is it that they can play loosely legally with the words “diverse”, “inclusive”, “under-represented”, etc? It seems this would be setting companies up for massive class-action labor lawsuits, similar to the to the black managers suit against the company Sedexo years ago, millions paid out is settlement/damages.
IF, and it’s a big “IF”…I was watching Obi Wan Kenobi back in the late 90s, or at least before social media, twitter-mob strong arming companies, etc….then I don’t think I’d have as much of an issue with it as I do.
Back then I’d have seen the character Reva the inquisitor/sister very differently than I do now. I’d have thought “Ok, who is this new character, newly created for the show, what’s her story, etc?” I think it was perhaps a bit odd that she was the only Inquisitor without noticeably alien features, and why a new one? But perhaps they’d explain that she is the only “human-esque” being to be an Inquisitor, and have a good story behind it (hey, perhaps they will still have a good story behind this aspect of the character)
But, because it is 2022…and Disney had decided a few short years ago to enter the left-agendist arena…I can’t help but see Reva the Inquisitor very differently. Hey, call it what you want but it indeed IS a liberal, left position to promote/advocate/etc. actors, employees, and “messages” based on a human’s skin color and culture. It’s hidden behind such aqueous words like “representation”, but It should be very much illegal to due so.
So now, it becomes “Jeez, they’re pushing a current-day political idea of skin-‘representation'” So much so, that that and only that stands out as the reason for 1.) the characters existence, 2) her human appearance, her 3) from the ‘gutter’ and treated so poorly by authority/society, etc. So by the behind-the-scenes work Disney has done, THEY have set-up this character to be stand in for their latest political idea. I’d be PISSED if I was this actress Moses Ingram. Disney set you up to fail here.
So what will happen when we’re back in a vacuum again?
I wouldn’t say that Disney Star Wars is all bad.
The Phineas and Ferb Star Wars Special was respectful of source material and the fan base. It didn’t ravage canon and holds up better than the entire third trilogy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDGTFNM37c
If you think Disney is going to not stop creating woke Star Wars I have a bridge to sell you. They will NEVER stop the woke. It’s not about money. It’s about sending a message. Identity politics is that message.
Dead yet there are still things people are hyped for like Jedi Survivor or even Andor now after the trailer.
Dead.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=US&q=%2Fg%2F11qpsdzw80,%2Fg%2F11j2vvpd0t,%2Fm%2F0mztk28
Trends don’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things. That’s like saying polls are the be all end all when it comes to politics. How can Kenobi be proof it’s dead if there’s already reports of a second season being confirmed? I’m just waiting for you, Pro, to make it either you gloating that it “fails” or go on a rant that a second season even exists.
Trends are directly measuring people looking to find the show. Go in the details on the searches and you’ll see. They don’t directly correlate but they do approximate.
As for “gloating,” I’ll accurately report what Nielsen releases like always, whether it confirms or negates my premise.
Okay and? I thought YouTube and whatever comments and views determine the popularity of a show, not necessarily trends even with key words being used. That’s how I see it at least. Even with Nielsen, you’re going to be waiting for a long while before it gets to Obi Wan since they’re still on the first week of May last I checked. But regardless I still fail to see how Star Wars is dead because of it.
Trends is aggregated search data. It’s far superior video results that provide subjective conclusions.
Nielsen receipts are coming. :)