On the other hand, I trust them to make better Star Wars content than Lucas, and I enjoy the Marvel movies.
They may be evil incarnate but they do know how to tell (and sell) a good story.
On the other hand, I trust them to make better Star Wars content than Lucas, and I enjoy the Marvel movies.
They may be evil incarnate but they do know how to tell (and sell) a good story.
There’s a good guy, there’s a bad guy, there’s the struggle and sacrifice of the good guy, which eventually trumps the bad guy leading to a rich life.
They are selling you American mythology 101.
The fact that you enjoy these myths isn’t a problem, they are literally manufactured to have as broad an appeal as possible.
What is a problem is you excusing the dilution of nuance in our culture that is used to perpetuate western hegemony which directly leads to our politicians doing literally whatever they want for themselves.
These are tropes and elements common to almost all storytelling, and certainly to fairy tales and myths. Americans didn't invent any of that, and neither did Disney.
And as far as Star Wars goes, the Empire are the Bad Guys, basically Space Nazis who dress in black and white and hang around starkly brutalist technology which doesn't even have basic OSHA compliance because they're just that evil.
The Jedi are the Good Guys. They dress in earth tones. Or, at least, the two we meet in the OT do. But they must be the Good Guys because they're fighting the Bad Guys.
And the Rebel Alliance are also the Good Guys. No one thinks twice about the morality of blowing up the Death Star and all of the hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people on board, because those are Bad Guys. Luke Skywalker force chokes two Gammorean guards in Jabba's palace, but that's fine, because just look at how ugly they are. They're basically orcs, obviously Bad Guys.
Luke Skywalker and the entire Skywalker clan are an elite bloodline more or less chosen by "God" (The Force) and morality in their universe is based on divine law and destiny. That only changes and really begins to be examined and deconstructed after the franchise leaves Lucas' hands. The whole story is a pastiche of the Hero's Journey.
Does Disney assimilate, homogenize, ruthlessly brand and churn out artifacts of myth and storytelling? Yes.
Are they also capable of telling a good story? Also yes.
Perhaps you need to find a bit more nuance.
Really? I mean, have you seen the last one? I wish I didn't...
Reasonable people can disagree, but I'll take subjectively bad over objectively bad any day. And I happen to be a bit of a fan of deconstructionist narratives, anyway.
Good and bad are inherently subjective. There are objective features of things, but ascribing good or bad to them is a subjective association.
My opinion is the prequels are bad for technical reasons. I think they're just badly written and acted, the plot is incoherent and contrived, the dialogue is terrible, Anakin and Padme's romance is awkward and his fall to the dark side is unconvincing.
And as far as the new movies go, I think they (and The Force Awakens definitely) suffer (as did the prequels) from the need to shoehorn in references to OT characters just for the sake of pandering to fan nostalgia, but they still seem like competently structured movies.
Between the two, I think the post Disney movies are better because they better tell the stories they intend to.