Caesars Entertainment - Gaming History (Win/Loss Statement)

Disclaimer: This in no way is intended to represent CCP and or CSM members. It is clearly a shit post and probably not a very good one at that. Please don't ban me CCP.
CSM 14
3 Mar 2020
There was a tense feeling in the air as the room was being filled for the CSM leadership AMA. This one had all the major decision makers from CCP/PA and the CSM knew this was a meeting that would be the most important of the summit.
CCP Hellmar starts the meeting off with a round of introductions and ends with a small prepared speech.
CSM 14,
As your well aware Eve online is not doing well in the post blackout stages. We have consistently lost PCU and DCU numbers for the last several years and it seems like PA is looking to minimize the losses. We are going to be relying on you guys to help us transition to a state in which we can all win eve finally. I know this may come as a shock to you, but after PA finally made it through the new tutorial they have decided that we can not be trusted to make another game. All they kept talking about was how bad the UI is, what is this default overview, why do I need to have a 3rd party app/website for everything in this game, why does TiDi suck and finally the dreaded question of why does the rorqual have excavators.
As you and most of the rest of the eve players know, CCP doesn’t play eve. We were completely unprepared to answer questions about the actual game play. Of course I tried to segue the conversation to Planetary Interaction but they were uninterested in the amount of button clicks it took. We also tried to discuss PVE but they kept saying they don’t want to stare at red crosses all day. Alas, after 20 minutes of fumbling through ship balance questions like why is the munnin still the meta ship, why do T2 BS cost as much as a dread but aren’t worth it, why certain ships aren’t flown while others are over used, and the normal ramblings that Eve Online players constantly complain about, they found out our biggest weakness. That we don’t actually know what we are doing. We even used the standard POS Code excuse, I mean eve players have always bought it. So it is with my largest regret (and profit) that I must inform you that we will be looking to transition eve online to eve offline (please go outside you fucking neckbeards) in the near future. I’m sure you guys have tons of questions and we have absolutely zero answers so let’s get this AMA started.
Obviously shocked by this statement the CSM has been left speechless, except one. CSM Omeca Gold starts audibly regurgitating stats about supers dying in delve and how the small gang communities can see Eve through. Of course, other CSM members at the table are feverishly checking RMT prices of plex. The multidollar empire must survive. While the last of them just looked on in utter disbelief.
After a few short minutes, the one true eve online hero raises his voice.
Vily: What if we start a nullbloc war?
CCP Hellmar: We have specifically made this game into empire building and a friendship machine. I mean look 3 timers for a structure and a damage cap, it’s pretty clear what we were doing. We are not looking to destroy the empires and the friendships we have made. I mean just look at me for instance I have 400 million green friends from this game and I would like to keep them.
Vily: No, I’m serious. What if Test joins up with PL and goes after goons?
Aryth and Merkelchen in unison: Yes, that will drive plex prices up. We can even sound the horn of Goondoor and bring old players back from the dead. That will save our precious multidollar empire.
Gobbins: I don’t know Vily, I’ll reach out to PL but we all know those guys won eve a long time ago. It will be like waking a sleeping paper tiger with a steak. They could eat the steak or they could eat you.
Sort Dragon: I say we just let the game die. It’s had a good run and I’m tired of structure bashes in the AUTZ because everyone time zone tanks.
Vily: Well sort, your opinion is as irrelevant as your alliance. Guess I fuck better than you fight wars.
Omeca Gold: Can you imagine how many supers will die in delve? It will be glorious.
Vily: Omeca why is it always about supers dying in delve with you? Anyway, we need a badass name for the PL, Test, PH, Frat, NC. Coalition. Also, we need an amazing name for this war. We need something that screams to all eve players, this is the war of a life time. This is the war to end all wars, an extermination, a hell war.
Merkelchen: We also need a reason.
Exookiz: Let’s start off with the coalition name. I was thinking Pandemic Please Ignore.
Dunk Dinkle: That hits a little close to home for us Americans.
Vily: Yeah Dunk your probably right. CCP Hellmar, are you even paying attention.
Hellmar: Umm yeah, sorry I was just showing Pearl Abyss Planetary Interaction steps. They don’t seem to understand how enjoyable it is.
Vily: We are trying to come up with a name for our coalition. Got anything useful to add?
Hellmar: How about .....Pearl...Abyss......Planetary... Interaction. That will show them how awesome PI is and how all of Eve loves how many times you have to click the same damn planet. We can call it P.A.P.I. For short.
Vily: We can leave it on the drawing board and see what everyone else comes up with. Anyone else?
Aryth: You guys can sort that out later, what are we going to call this war. I mean the casino war didn’t ring true to a lot of eve, so we need to pick a good name.
Steve Ronuken: How about The New Eden Armageddon? Both because it represents what happens if this doesn’t work, but also because if all the bees die it will be an Armageddon.
Innominate: Just got off the phone with Mittens. He said the wars on but the name is WWB because there has never been a WWB before.
Vily: Alright look that’s a terrible name Innominate We can agree to disagree about the war name and coalition name for now. I just talked to PGL and Creecher. PGL just said: We BETTER have a sub cap fight too.
Aryth: And Creecher?
Vily: He said: I’M GOING TO CUM.
Vily: Now what about a public reason.
Dunk: Vily, blame it on goons for dropping on us from a nip citadel. Legacy is getting super tired of that shit.
Vily: You know what, we will just end the nip give goons plenty of time to get ready publicly and get this war started. Goons, how soon can you be ready?
Aryth: We need time to replace our stockpiles. How about 3-4 months?
Vily: Sounds great, July 4th?
Aryth: Sure, great.
Vily: Hellmar, hows that sound? Test is starting a massive war and we will save eve. You will have more players logging in than ever.
Hellmar: Yeah, that sounds great. Sorry I was looking at the abyss stuff. We can push back the full scale invasion like we were planning on using to shut the servers off for a few months to see if this is going to work. Just got off the phone with PA. They said you have to be looking at record breaking fights by the end of 2020 or it’s over.
Vily: 1DQ BY CHRISTMAS THEN BOYS!!! The exterminator has arrived.
Edit: spelling issue.

In December, it's been seven years since Disney acquired the Star Wars brand from George Lucas. The whole operation cost $ 4.08 billion. Of course, this money was an expensive but not too risky investment. Star Wars is one of the most loved and recognizable brands in the world. It seemed that the Star Wars logo combined with almost unlimited Disney financial resources could give us Star Wars we have never had before. And in the end I think it gave exactly that. Only was it in good sense? In this article I do not want to deal with television, toys and other gadgets and focus on movies. We have received five of these over the past five years. Have they achieved their intended success and won the hearts of fans? That will depend on who will you ask. Below I would like to present my point on this matter, I invite you to read and comment.
I will start with one aspect of the dispute around the new trilogy that often appears in other people's statements. Are sequels better than prequels? I think that this dispute does not make much sense. The biggest problem of prequels is their quality. It is different with sequels. And I do not mean that they are better because it is not so simple. My main point is that the prequels were not unnecessary. They are boring, have wooden dialogues (Anakin seducing Padme comparing her to the sand he has in his underpants ...), an action that often was far from thrilling... but they tell an important part of the story that we saw in the OT. I can't say the same about the sequels. They were unnecessary. Which does not mean that they should not exist. But they should be created with the intention of adding another important element of the saga story and making a profit as a bonus. Unfortunately, the desire for profit was the decisive factor, and story did not even come second.
So as I mentioned above, with all their flaws prequels are an important part of the saga. They tell about events that we only heard about in OT and we could only imagine tchem (maybe it's a shame it didn't stay that way). The fall of the Jedi order and of the republic. Anakin becomes Darth Vader. Palpatine seizes power, creates an empire and rules it supreme. These are all events no less important than those of OT. It is a pity that they were not presented better. I think it would change a lot for the better if we didn't lose one film for Anakin's preschool years. Then there would be enough time to present the war of the republic against separatists without having to rely on cartoons. It would be a key movie between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Siths. However, even when episodes 1-3 look like they are today, they still form a coherent and fascinating story. And I don't deny myself saying that. Just because story was told in a boring way doesn't mean it's not interesting. Palpetin's path from a little-known politician to the galaxy ruler is downright fascinating. Each part of this trilogy builds a story for the next, which in turn ends with one of the most important moments of the whole saga (the birth of Vader) and at the same time is a good starting point for the New Hope.
I don't want to write a lot about the original trilogy. We all know what a cultural phenomenon it was. I will raise only two issues that I cannot ignore. First, OT was not planned as a trilogy. New Hope had no subtitle or a number. It was just "Star Wars" and that's it. I know this is common knowledge and I'm not trying to be smartass. The point is that even though it all started from self-contained movie from which they later decided to make a trilogy and despite the fact that each part had a different director, OT is one of the most beautiful trilogies in the history of cinema. Each movie can be watched separately and be enjoyable. But they create a coherent and competently written story. The characters of this story and their adventures are timeless. Han - for me he was always a favorite hero. I was very happy that he, not Luke, got Leia (especially when I found out that she is Luk's sister).
- I love You
- I know
For me, these words have even more weight than "I am your father". However, although Han was mine favorite character, Luke is the most important hero of the trilogy. He started as an orphan raised by relatives. A brave boy with a good heart, but a weakling. Ordinary man not a perfect hero. A random sand people knocked him out. In the canteen, Obi Wan saved him from the thugs. The fact that we know how modest (and I do not mean the financial situation) were his beginnings makes his development more beautiful. First a brave but physically weak teenager. Then a competent soldier, a beginner Jedi to finally achieve a master level of force mastery in Return of the Jedi. His way to the final of the story was not easy. Along the way, he suffered many defeats, lost his hand and almost lost his life when he tried to save his friends, knowing he was not ready for what awaited him. But their lives were more important to him than his own. In the final he defeated Vader. He could kill him, but he decided to spare him. He threw away his lightsaber and allowed Palpetine to torture him. When I was a child/teenager I didn't understand it. I thought Luke was a wimp who instead of beating Palpetine moans only for Dad to save him. Now I know I was foolish. I didn't understand that Luke cutting down Palpetine with his lightsaber would be a satisfying ending, but much less valuable than what we got. Luke believed in the goodness that was deep inside Vader, which the whole world (and Vader himself) considered to be the greatest monster in the galaxy. And he risked his life to prove it. And he was right. Vader made a choice, saved his son by sacrificing his own life, and killed the emperor ending 20 years of the empire's rule over the galaxy. The return of the Jedi has many disadvantages (half of this movie is in the land of discount care bears), but it is at least a good film and its finale is simply wonderful.
And this is how the saga had ended when George Lucas sold his rights to Disney. Who did not spend more than 4 billion not to try to make money on the brand by making more films. But was it really a good idea to start from episode 7? Wouldn't it be better to shoot spin-offs first? Obi Wan, Boba Fett, Rogue1… Or maybe a new trilogy right away, but taking place in the world of the old republic? Kotor 1 and 2 are great stories, well known to players and only players, for casual viewers that would avoid spoilers Revan saga could be both fascinating and surprising. Of course, you could take a chance and start by continuing the saga, but after meeting several conditions. The most important of them is to have a story you want to tell. Heroes you want to introduce. Some plan about where this story will start and where it is going to go. What adventures, challenges, successes and failures will affect our heroes and how they will change them. Unfortunately, all of this was lacking. And this is the biggest sin of the Disney trilogy. They knew they were making a trilogy. And they began to shoot a story written without much thought for which they had no plan so each subsequent film was written and shot by completely different people without any plan.
I do not intend to write about all the flaws of the new trilogy because it was supposed to be an article and not a book. Anyway, there are people who have fulfilled this task movie after movie. And probably none did it better than Mauler whose reviews, although longer than the movies themselves are far more interesting. However, in a few words I would like to refer to each part of new trilogy, but before I do it I would like to mention spin-offs.
Rogue 1 - a movie that is widely regarded as the best of the Disney era in Star Wars. Personally, I am not a fan of it. First of all, the best scene of this film is when Vader slaughtered rebels. 5 years of making movies under the Disney banner and is it not a shame that with all these new heroes and adventures the best moment of the best film is the reinterpretation of one of the first OT scenes with the participation of the OT hero? 160 km (over 100 miles if I'm not mistaken) in diameter. Enormous firepower allowing it to fight and win against enemy fleets. In addition, it was so large that it could carry own fleets that guarded it. Although it was not prepared to fight with enemy fighters (due to its size, it is difficult to properly completely fill its surface with anti-aircraft turrets), it could carry huge amounts of alied fighters that provided protection against enemy fighters. And with the enormous size of the object, its armor, firepower and fleet support, to destroy it enemy would had to get its plans, analyze them, discover a way to destroy it, and then hit the target with size of one meter in a 160 km fortress under fire from the entire empire might. I believe that the ventilation shaft was simply a feature and not a defect deliberately placed by the spy. And attempts to explain this defect are all the more comical when we consider the finale of one of the later films ...
Solo - this movie is the biggest financial disaster in the history of Star Wars. It's not the worst of the movies, but firstly few people wanted to see the movie about Han's youth and secondly it came out in the shadow of TLJ. Which could be a huge advantage, but it turned out to be the main cause of this disaster. Although the movie wasn't so bad and it didn't deserve such himiliation, it didn't deserve a success either. It answered questions that nobody was interested in having answered. Where does Han get the blaster, where did his name come from (someone got paid for writing that scene…), but it doesn't explain how Han knows the Wookie language. He just know it. He grew up on Corelia, we have never seen him meet another Wookie before Chevie, and yet he knows their language that is based on snarls and roars. Drama.
Since these less important movies are out of the way (I’m talking about spinoffs and not the first two trilogies), let's move on to the most important element of the Disney project – the New Trilogy.
The Force Awakens – for me, the problems had already began in opening crawl of this movie. Prequels began in a republic so used to peace and stabilization that it was completely unprepared for a war. And in the subsequent movies we watched the course of the conflict, one of the largest in the history of the republic and yet only a background for the machinations of Palpetine. The New Hope comes quite naturally from the events shown in Revenge of the Sith, and the entire OT, as I wrote earlier, is a coherent and fascinating story. Anyway, even before the prequels were created and New Hope was the beginning of the saga, although we were entering a completely unknown world we were introduced to it so effectively that after a few minutes we felt at home. Meanwhile, the Return of the Jedi ends with the defeat of the Empire and the beginning of the rebuilding of the republic under the watchful eyes of our heroes. Episode 7 should take place in a world reminiscent of that from episode 1. But the creators insisted on making a worse version of the New Hope and the power balance on both sides resembles that of it. The republic controls resources of the entire galaxy, and First Order tries to overthrow it. And yet the republic's power when compared to First Order power looks more or less like the power of the rebel forces when compared to the empire. To the extent that the main forces fighting the First Order on behalf of the republic are called “resistance”. The beginning of this movie completely does not match with the ending of the previous one. But it is already a tradition in this trilogy that no subsequent movie matches the previous one. In a nutshell, The Force Awakens is a worse clone of the New Hope with some names changed. Rebellion is now the Resistance. Empire is now the First Order. Death Star is now Starkillers base. Tatooine is Jakku. Luke is Rey. Vader is Kylo Ren. The Emperor is Snoke. Tarkin is Huggs. Honestly? I never understood people who justified the cloning the script of the New Hope in TFA as sensible because it was safe. It was supposed to be the beginning of a new trilogy being part of one of the most important sagas in the history of cinema. They should try harder than that. Even worse, TFA has no story to tell. Jar Jar Abrams decided to go the easy way and the whole movie revolves around searching for mcguffin - a map to Luke Skywalker. Despite all the disadvantages of this movie - new heroes seemed interesting. The potential was there. The beginning was not the best, but from this ugly duckling a wonderful swan could grow up. Especially since the financial result was excellent (I will write about the Disney SW box office after discussing movies) and the film ended with an intriguing cliffhanger.
TLJ - for me this movie killed the entire Disney SW project. And before all the fans of this terrible movie jump on me and write that I'm telling nonsense, consider a few things. First of all, the film had an excellent box office opening and ended with a result well below expectations. Why? For me and for many other people who felt the same reason is clear. We wanted to see what would happen next, but when it turned out how awful this movie was, many OT fans decided not to watch it - except for those who did it in the first few days before the reviews and opinions came out (hence the successful start and then the abyss). Also the Solo box office result should make you think. Rogue 1 entered theaters after TFA and made a lot of money, Solo entered theaters after TLJ and failed. Many people claimed that the poor TLJ result was the result of the syndrome of the second part of the trilogy and that Solo was guilty itself for own disaster, and that ep. 9 was to prove it all. We now know that ep. 9 also fell victim to the crisis into which the brand fell after TLJ. Do you remember Disney's plans for Star Wars before it came to light what damage TLJ did? 2019 ep. 9, 2020 Kenobi, 2021 first part of the new trilogy, 2022 spinoff, 2023 second part of the new trilogy, 2024 spinoff, 2025 third part of the new trilogy, 2026 spinoff. And this was the end of only this phase of Disney plans for SW, in the future they were planning even more movies. Meanwhile, after Solo, all these projects were canceled, and Ruin Johnson (who was to get his own trilogy as a reward for TLJ) may forget that anyone will let him ever approach this brand, unless he buys a cinema ticket. Which is so funny because I remember interviews with Johnson in which he claimed that SW is a huge brand and is so great that they will never stop making more movies… Not a year has passed since these interviews and it turned out that he killed the Disney SW project and movies that were supposed to never stop making will indeed stop after episode 9. I don't want to write about the film itself because we devote much more attention to it than it deserved. . Anyway, I'm not able to express in words how terrible this movie is as well as people like Mauler, Plinket, and Wolf. But I have to deal with a few issues related to this film.
First, what has been done with Luke Skywalker is a true desecration. The way TFA treated Leia and Han was terrible, but what this movie did with the most important hero of the saga ... He was changed into a coward and a bum who escaped to the end of the world to avoid fighting, leaving his beloved sister to fight alone against the overwhelming evil forces and watching the world burn while drinking blue milk from the boobs of the disgusting mutant. As if that wasn't enough, he was portrayed as a sick psychopath who sneacked into the bedroom of his nephew (and son of a friend whom Luke loved as a brother and with whom he saved each other's lives many times) to murder him in his sleep because he sensed darkness inside him. In the context of what we know about Luke and how far he is ready to sacrifice himself for a little good hidden in the embodiment of evil, it is hard to accept that he was portrayed as a murderer who would kill an innocent young man for a little evil hidden in a good person (and do nottell me that he thought Ben could not be saved because he was too evil - few years and billions of victims later Rey saved his soul without any problem). I will never forgive this movie. But equally terrible is that this solution makes the plot of the previous film completely unnecessary. Not only the TFA final where the rebel destroys the Starkiller base and with it the main enemy forces do not seem to matter, because somehow in TLJ the First Order's advantage over the Resistance is even greater than it was (the logic in the context of the forces that the warring parties have at the moment is at the level of the last season of the Game of Thrones). The map to Luke around which the whole episode 7 revolved does not seem to make any sense because Luke did not set off to prepare himself to fight the First Order but fled from it and did not intend to be found. Disney SW is a parasite that kills Star Wars, but it is mainly the fault of this film, which completely ignored the threads started in the previous one, at the same time it was so hopeless that the final part had to completely cut off from it. The new trilogy consists of 3 films, each of which pretends that the previous one does not matter (and therefore none of them matter).
TRoS - this is probably the worst film in the whole cycle. But I must admit that watching it is less painful than the previous part. On the one hand, I have no grudge against Abrams for this film. He undertook the impossible task so it is hard to blame him for failing. There is no man in the world who would save this trilogy after what the TLJ did with it. And although almost all the disadvantages of ep. 9 can be justified by the fact that it tried to fix the errors of the previous one, many things cannot be forgiven. As long as the new trilogy was only destroying itself, there was less of a problem. Palpetine's return completely ruins the importance of OT and the value of its final. Luke's heroism and Anakin's redemption do not matter because the emperor outlived them both and laughed as their corpses were cooling down. The movie itself was so terrible and shallow (again, we don't have a plot, only more mcguffins we are looking for, one more stupid than the other) that it would take more time to list all its flaws than someone devoted to writing the script of this terrible movie. As part of saving time I will focus on the final battle. Palpetine - a man who controlled two sides of the war in prequels from the shadow - a republic and separatists were both manipulated and all this under the eyes of the Jedi council. He manipulated everyone to the end then and now he eventually lost because before he attacked the defenseless republic he sent her a notice of the date of the future invasion giving them time and reason to find him and beat him. Not to mention that he had a huge fleet of star destroyers each of whom could destroy entire planets, but none had their own navigation system so they could not leave their planet because the crew of none knew which direction is “up” (apparently they did not understand the relationship of such directions as "Top" and "bottom" with concepts such as "ceiling" and "floor"). Disney SW brazenly treated a one-meter weak spot in a 160 km death star as a plot hole and yet ends with a battle in which any shot into the main cannon of each of the star destroyers of the Emperor destroys them because all their ultimate weapons are also weak points. Fact that the Palpetine family in the form of Rey appropriates the name Skywalker and falls into the favor of the republic, and yet the film has the audacity to be called The Rise of Skywalker is a scandal. Also although the return of Palpetine was forced by the death of snoke at the hands of a moron (I mean Johnson not Kylo), it was not necessary at all. I once said that the return of Jar Jar Binks as the main villain of the new trilogy would made as much sense as the return of Palpetine. Like many other people, I treated it as a joke. But from the perspective of time... Darth Jar Jar would not ruin OT with his presence. It would be surprising, but not in some bad sense. It would be controversial, but it could be seen as a tribute to George Lucas. Once a negative reaction from fans prevented him from realizing the story of Darth Jar Jar in prequels, now Disney could do it for him in the sequels. Did they had so much to lose? I know that the idea doesn't sound very reasonable, but the longer I think about it, the more I like it and I'm curious about your opinions on it.
Prequels were boring, but they were not superfluous because they tell an important part of the story contained in the saga. These are my words from the introduction. Sequels can be boring, none is a good movie, but the worst part is that they don't add anything to the history of the saga. Although that is no longer truth. It turned out that the worst thing is that they not only add nothing, but destroyed many valuable elements of the old saga. Could it have been avoided? Sure! Do not give this project to the incompetent hands of Abrams and Johnson (but it was hard to expect intelligent decisions from even less competent Kathleen Kennedy). Find someone who could write a better story that matches the beginning of the Return of the Jedi. It wasn't difficult at all ...
A republic 30 years after the fall of the empire would control the most important regions of the galaxy, but would struggle to gain and retain control on the rim where lawlessness ruled and power struggle between the Hutt cartel, the Exchange, etc. would rage on. However, peace and order would prevail in the most important and most developed regions. And in such galaxy ep. 7 could begin. Leia and Han would still be together, she could be the chancellor of the republic, he could be the person responsible for combating lawlessness at the galaxy borders (not like a sheriff with a blaster in his hand, but like a competent commander who knows the tricks of the criminal world from the inside and thus is able to fight them more effectively than ordinary republic commanders often deprived of war experience and having only education in the republic's military academies). Luke would rest on a distant planet away from civilization. The academy created by him would have its own council of masters (a place in which he abandoned to finally relax), dozens of full-fledged knights and hundreds of young students. And at this point - somewhere at the end of the second act or at the beginning of the third act First Order attacks. An organization that was created secretly by fanatics of the former empire - military commanders, politicians, businessmen, Siths. They would gather strength and resources in secret for 30 years. They placed their own agents in the most important links of the republic - army, senate, even Jedi academy. One day, at one time, the First Order agents bombs the republic's most important military bases, its fleet, senate and Jedi academy. Armed traitors after eliminating security would conquer senate, while the army, and the fleet would suffer enormous losses in this surprise bombing and would have to rely on the return of the forces operating on the borders of the galaxy, while in the Jedi academy Siths pretending to be ordinary knights (one could even be in the council) suddenly attacks surprised colleagues and they carry out a massacre from which only a few refugees would survive. Meanwhile, on far away world Rey had been attacked by mysterious masked men and saved by Luke who had covertly watch over her lately. Maybe retirement was just an excuse to disappear from the radar? Maybe he sensed something was wrong and wanted to keep her safe? Rey would be an anonymous orphan only safe until the wrong people don’t know her true identity that even she would not know. Without revealing what he knew about her, he would take her with him. He would see her potential. He wouldn't tell her aboutit. Certainly not as awkwardly as in TLJ (you have such potential that it scared sh*t out of me – Luke Skywalker). He would train her. But not like the students at the academy were training. He would do it like Miyagi in a karate kid (if I remember the story correctly) who taught his student karate forcing him to perform his daily duties - so that he trained unconsciously and living with the conviction that he was used to work by this old jerk. Their joint escape and the beginning of training would end ep. 7. In ep. 8 First Order after a surprising attack and the destruction of the republic's government would take control from it. The survivors of the republic's troops and fleets would have to decide whether to follow the new galaxy's power, which would be now restored empire, or to fight for the reconstruction of the republic. There would be fratricidal clashes between Republican warships and even on the ships themselves there would be clashes between crew and officers divided between both factions. Meanwhile, Luke would officially train Rey and stand on the side of the republic led by Leia (the attack on the Senate may have been surprising, but in her life she came out safe from bigger dangers and with age she did not become more tired but more experienced and wiser). At some point after being attacked by the Sith and having no chance of victory they would have to make difficult decisions. Luke against Rey's will would force her to run away and he would buy her time standing alone to fight the enemy forces. His heroic last stand would be the end of ep.8. In ep. 9 Rey would join Jedi disciples and knights planning to attack the new emperor in his palace and defeat the empire by depriving them of leader. During the mission, its commander would fall in battle and the other companions would see that this new one surpasses their own skills. And it wouldn't be Merry Sue effect. Luke probably had many students he had trained for years. But if you train someone for a long time, but in a larger group it may be less effective than training lasting several months, but individual and given to someone extremely talented. Rey and her companions would defeat the new emperor and the fleet of the republic commanded by Han (fleet in the battle would be led by Han, but the whole of the republic's forces and the bigger picture would be under Leia's command). The saga could end up regaining control over the core of the republic by forces loyal to it, but the new Empire, though defeated, would not be destroyed and would lick wounds in the frontiers allied with cartels, while the victorious republic would be catastrophically weakened. I think that the outline of the story I presented here and it took me longer to write it down than to imagine it was not worse than what we got in sequels. In addition to Rey, it would be possible to portray many other characters on the both sides and the struggle of the new empire with the new republic one day there could be shown in other films from their perspective.
I think Disney Star Wars is a completely unsuccessful project. But it couldn't be otherwise since it was in so many incompetent hands. I do blame Abrams, but less so. I have many more serious accusations against Johnson. People defend his film saying that is was bold and surprising. But the truth is that being notoriously surprising is not an indicator of the quality of a movie. This is a feature of parodies, not of decent movies. Naked Weapons or Space Balls can boast with the number of stupid gags, but not the middle episode of the Star Wars trilogy. Because those were all those "bold" and "surprising" moments. Stupid gags that fit more into a parody of Star Wars than this saga. Luke hilariously throwing out his lightsaber, Finn leaking hilariously after leaving the hospital, Snoke with the tongue hanging out hilariously after death. Stop using “subverting expectations” as a universally positive aspect. If you go to the restaurant, order a decent meal and would get a steaming pile of sh*t on the plate – your expectations would be subverted but would that make You happy?
And since I already touched on the subject of characters of those movies. The new trilogy shamefully treated the heroes of the original trilogy. Han and Leia are after a divorce. Old. Tired. Incompetent. He dies in the middle of the first movie killed by his own neglect of contraception. Although in her youth she was so intelligent, resourceful and effective now she behaves like a sad grandmother and not like a respectable commander with more experience than all her staff combined. I already wrote about Luke. Let me just add that the way he was treated is not an accident. All OT heroes were depicted as old incompetent mushrooms so that new heroes would perform better in comparison. In addition, Luke was not only destroyed as a character, but killed so that he couldn't train Rey. Kathleen Kennedy is a feminist. I do not mind that. I don't mind that she insisted that the main character would be a woman. But it bothers me that this ignorant feminism led to the destruction of Luke as a character so that he couldn't train Rey. Because a strong independent woman will not learn from a guy. Although from the death of Carrie Fisher there was a year to the premiere of TLJ so there was enough time to change the script:
- let Leia die in the explosion of her command deck (thereby eliminating the hated scene of Leia Poppins)
- let Luke survive the scene of imagining that he helps at the end of this movie so that his character has a chance to redeem himself - train Rey and help in the battle for real this time, let him die a heroic death.
It would be easier than leaving Leia alive after Carrie's death and at the same time more sensible (Luke was more suited to be Rey's teacher than Leia). But what makes sense does not matter in this project ... only the selfish decisions of Kathleen and Ruin do matter
While writing about heroes I can't forget about Poe and Finn. Both are played by charismatic actors without whom (and Adam Driver) this trilogy would have virtually no advantages. It is a pity that they too were sacrificed on the altar to the glory of Merry Sue Rey Palpetine Skywalker Solo Binks. Finn in particular was treated cruelly. He held a lightsaber on TFA posters suggesting he might be the protagonist. It turned out to be another one of stupid diversions from Abrams who likes his mistery boxes. At TLJ Finn became a parody of himself. For political reasons, the movie introduced character of Rose Tico for which there was no place in the script, so jut for her sake the whole absurd and unnecessary plot of Kanto Byte was filmed. And as this character was so not important Finn was demoted to justifying her existence by taking part in her adventures. I am sure that if not for Rose there would not be a casino thread and thus there would be no absurd dispute between Poe and Holdo on the topic "do we have a plan?". Because there would be no point in making the plan a secret since there would be nobody to be sent on a side mission. Everyone seems to think that Finn would be a great protagonist because as a former Storm Trooper he aroused great interest. I would add that since he was kidnapped as an infant, he was also an orphan. Meanwhile, last 4 years everyone asked who Rey's parents were and no one asked who Finn's parents were. But it's not our fault, the movies themselves drilled one question and ignored the other. Returning to Rey - the character is terrible. I like her anyway. If someone competent could write it in their own way and not under the dictation of an old feminist who believes that the best heroine is a strong independent woman who cannot lose because strong women do not lose and do not have to train because strong women can do everything anyway... Taking away from Rey the opportunity to fail and develop internally, improve her skill through hard training has made a potentially fascinating character a boring vegetable. Therefore, people without imagination and a voice of reason but full of arrogance like Kathleen Kennedy should not control such projects as Star Wars.
Let's move on to the most important determinant of success (or lack thereof) of Disney SW, namely finances. Disney paid e4.08 billion to buy the brand from George Lucas. Already after TLJ I saw a lot of articles saying that the investment paid back because 4.3 billion in 3 years was earned by 3 movies. It's totally wrong. Movies cost money. And their budget which we officially get to know is only the cost of production. Marketing usually consumes just as much. In addition, not every dollar earned returns to the creators because distribution costs and cinema margins consume some of the income. Although this is not a 100% effective method, for some time I have been using the formula to count the profits of films in which the result from the box office is divided in half and I subtract from it the doubled production budget (to include marketing) and I only treat the obtained result as the actual profit of the film. What does Disney SW's profit look like under these rules?
TFA: WWG: 2,068,223,624/2=1,034,111,812 Budget: 245kk x2 = 490 kk 1,034,111,812 - 490kk = 544,111,812 Rogue1: WWG: 1,056,057,273/2=528,028,636.5 Budget:200kk x2 = 400 kk 528,028,636.5-400kk=128,028,636.5 TLJ: WWG: 1,332,539,889/2=666,269,944.5 Budget: 317kk x2 = 634 kk 666,269,944.5-634kk=32,269,944.5 Solo: 392,924,807/2=196,462,403.5 Budget: 275kk x2 = 550 kk 196,462,403.5-550kk=-353 537 596,5
According to my calculations, after 3 movies, the profit was about 700 million, but half of that was lost by Solo, and the rest could be lost by the defeat of TRoS. I will not count income (or rather losses) of TRoS until Disney admits how much they really spent on this movie because the official budget is not known and previously published versions seemed definitely underestimated given the long and turbulent production and numerous changes in the script. Do not let yourself be convinced that the billion earned by ep.9 is a success. For Joker, a billion was a success because it was category R, it did not premiere in China and its budget was at least six times smaller than ep. 9. And we're talking about the final episode of Star Wars saga. The movie that should be the second Endgame.
Probably some of you think that comparing TRoS with Endgame is an exaggeration because Star Wars is not MCU. And the weaker financial results of this movie will be justified with something called “Star Wars faigue”. Because such an absurd explanation for Solo's defeat was very popular. MCU's is a good example – franchise which in 11 years made 24 films, each of which achieved smaller or larger financial success and won the hearts of viewers. Does the Endgame result suggest that viewers were tired of the MCU or comic book adaptations in general? No. Because good movies do not tire us at all. That's why the public still isn’t bored with MCU despite 24 movies, but we got bored with Disney SW after three movies. Anyway SW fans seem to love The Mandalorian show which proves that the fans are not tired of Star Wars at all, only of SW miserable form tainted by Kathleen Kennedy's touch. That's all about SW fatigue – it’s a BS. And now about how big Star Wars are when compared to Marvel. The Avengers is a movie that fans have been waiting for several years, hype for it was built by several earlier warmly received movies. The film made 1.5 billion, which was a huge success. The second part is mentioned much less warmly (I personally like Age of Ultron a lot) and earned 1.4 billion - less than the first, but still a lot. Infinity War, the finale of 10 years of building this universe earned 2 billion. A great success that was the result of the 10 years of hard work and numerous previous films. A decade of work and success has given Marvel these 2 billion. TFA earned more for just being created. The brand was in new hands, a new film was made and we didn't need to know more. Star Wars ep. 7 achieved a better result in cinemas 10 years after previous movie (which was the last of the “hated” prequels btw) than the fruit of 10 years of hard work on the MCU and around 20 movies that helped shaping it. Despite this, 4 years from the premiere of TFA and a year from the premiere of Infinity War, the competition of Star Wars with MCU ends in a massacre. Why? Well Endgame sips the cream of MCU's 11 years of success, but above all the great situation in which Infinity War left it. TRoS drinks the rare feces left to it by TLJ. The TFA score compared to The Avengers shows the difference between the two brands at the beginning of their new path. The TRoS result compared to Endgame shows how much can be lost when a project worth billions goes into the hands of idiots without a plan while Marvel entrusted his films to the right people, had a plan and consistently implemented it under the watchful eye of Kevin Feigi. Who unlike Kathleen Kennedy multiplied the value of the project he was in charge of instead of destroying it.
To sum up - I think that Star Wars has never been in worse spot. Prequels were rated low by fans, but earned cash. Disney SW stopped earning after 2 years and 2 movies (TLJ broke even rather than was profitable). In addition, the incompetent policies of Mrs. Kennedy and Mr. Johnson led to a split among fans. In response to their negative reception of TLJ Kennedy and Johnson began a campaign to throw mud on fans, to present them as racists, extreme right-wing enemies of women. This stupid reaction to honest criticism led to a catastrophic split between TLJ fans and OT fans who were disgusted with this movie. Kathleen Kennedy in her pursuit of attracting new fans (especially women) to Star Wars forgot about two important things. The first rule of show business is not to sacrifice fans you already have to try to get new ones. And most importantly - the fans whose opinions didn’t matter to Kathleen Kennedy because she underestimated them… they were the reason why this brand was worth the 4 billion at all. You don't need Star Wars brand to make a movie about wars in space and space wizards. The same could have been achieved with Mass Effect (which by the way I love except the third part finale and Andromeda) or some new IP. But Star Wars had a multitude of loyal fans who did not skimp on their passion. And it was thanks to them that this brand was so valuable. And Mrs. Kennedy forgot about it, ignored them, allowed them to ne attacked by her subordinates. And all this to have a chance to win a new generation of fans, which even if it succed they could not be equally devoted as the old fans. For casual buyers yesterday there could have been new star wars at the top, today marvel and tomorrow another part of transformers or fast and furious. People for whom SW in many cases was most important passion in live were abandoned to please the people for whom SW is one of the many brands in the cinema. You can watch it, sure, but if You don’t You will not miss it.