> How does Disney fail to make money off Star Wars? Because they decided to build a shitty tech company in-house instead of just doing what they know and licensing their content to the experts.
They may or may not have tech issues. Their issues with Star Wars are far larger than anything having to do with tech, starting from the fact that apparently no-one associated with Star Wars in over a decade appears to like, understand or even be more than superficially familiar with Star Wars.
In the particular case of Rian Johnson, if one only examined The Last Jedi it would not be clear that he is even superficially familiar with cinema, film, science fiction, space opera or simple storytelling. The Force Awakens may have been bad fan fiction, but TLJ was something I’ve never seen before: hate fiction. Actually, maybe ‘hate’ is too strong a word: perhaps TLJ is evidence of a creative team who doesn’t appear to hate Star Wars so much as resent it. They appear to have resented it for existing, for being successful, for being a world they had to tell their stories in. But it’s resentment tinged with something verging into hatred.
I honestly believe that for generations to come Disney’s squandering of the Star Wars franchise will be taught in schools alongside the New Coke fiasco. It’s remarkable: while success would not necessarily have been easy, Disney could have churned out low-effort dreck like TFA for years. It would have been bad, but folks would have eaten it up.