Star Wars, Jonathan Majors, The Last of Us, and Rick and Morty

In the wake of Victoria Alonso's firing (she is not taking it well), there was news from Disney that Damon Lindelof had been released from his Star Wars film (which was going to happen right after Watchman season two...). This cancellation has been expected for some time, but Lindelof kept talking about it as if it would happen (ala Rian Johnson) until recently (cf). This brings to mind Star Wars, which I don't discuss often as I'm not a superfan (I hated the prequels, sequels, and the shows). The bungling IP deserves at least a re-visit because of its impact on Disney (I've enjoyed the cycle of outrage YTers adopting someone--George Lucas, John Favreau, etc--and then rejecting them as their work inevitably falls off a cliff). Let's look at the cancellation slate (which is mostly echoed in the image above):

Michael Arndt's episode seven (2013) - no one knows why he left, but he was replaced by Abrams

Josh Trank's Boba Fett film (2015) - ditched in the wake of the Fan4stic disaster

Gareth Edwards' version of Rogue One (2016) - partially reshot and edited by Tony Gilroy

Colin Trevorrow's episode nine (2017) - he couldn't adjust to Johnson's radial departure from Abrams' storyline

Original version of Solo by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (2017) - film completely reshot by Ron Howard

James Mangold's Boba Fett film (2018) - eventually became the laughable D+ show from Favreau

Stephen Daldry's Kenobi trilogy (2018) - cancelled in the wake of Solo bombing, becoming the horrendous D+ show from Joby Harold

Benioff & Weiss prequel trilogy (2019) - cancelled in the wake of Game of Thrones season eight bombing

Rangers D+ show (2021) - cancelled because it was going to star fired actress Gina Carano

Petty Jenkins Rogue Squadron (2022) - fired as a result of Wonder Woman 1984 bombing (from this and her entire slate of projects)

J. D. Dillard project (2022) - an Abrams acolyte, no one knows what this was

Kevin Feige/Michael Waldron's Star Wars film (2023) - cancelled in the wake of Marvel's disastrous Phase Four

Rian Johnson trilogy (2023) - Johnson's theatrical film career has been essentially dead since his Star Wars effort

Damon Lindelof/Justin Britt-Gibson's film (2023) - Lindelof's nightmarish efforts over the last eight years caught up to him (2012's Prometheus should have ended his career long ago)

The public has missed nothing of value here, but the comical ineptitude at LucasFilm (currently undergoing an audit in light of the lawsuit against The Acolyte--see below) was not echoed by Marvel until we reached Phase Four. Star Wars is a listless, aimless mess with the IP in such a bad state it can't support films and it's D+ efforts went from mediocre to unwatchable. Inexplicably, Taika Waititi's project is still officially ongoing, despite the reaction to Thor 3--it's unclear if Waititi will sleep with one of his actresses for this project too (no MeToo worries for Taika--maybe Tessa Thompson's vacuous acting is related to no one caring).

According to Kamran Pasha, The Acolyte is not truly in production, with the filming that's ongoing being akin to a demo reel to try and get it funded by Iger, something that's very unlikely because of the lawsuit against it.

In an 'uh-oh' moment, the MCU's Kang, Jonathan Majors (Lovecraft Country fame), was arrested for assaulting a woman. We have no idea if it's true or not and we're beyond the public reaction of 'believe all women' (unless it's Justin Roiland--see below), but it puts Marvel in a difficult situation. Kang is the major villain going forward in the MCU (despite Ant-Man 3 bombing), so what do you do? Should the charges be true (or the accusations drag on), Marvel could re-cast and move on, but it would be quite a blow to the plans Feige had in place for his supposed Thanos-replacement. On the plus side, re-casting also means re-introducing him in a film that people might actually watch--that's the glass-half-full way of looking at it. More seriously, let's hope the woman is okay and that the charges aren't true.

It's time to update HBO's The Last of Us. We saw a hike in viewerhip for episode four (cf), but it's declined through episode six (15% down from earlier, still up 12% from its opener). In terms of trends, the finale (Nielsen hasn't reached the finale yet) only brought it up to 60% of the interest when the show debuted. I feel like that's a pretty good representation of the audience that stuck with it. Does it warrant its second season? I think so. Has it become a cultural phenomena like Stranger Things? Absolutely not. Will I watch it? When Pedro Pascal gets introduced to towels and a golf club, yes (which will amusingly mirror his Game of Thrones exit).

I haven't watched Rick & Morty in quite some time, but I did see that Justin Roiland was getting universally dogpiled after domestic abuse allegations came out. He's just been cleared and in response those denouncing him have decided that, well, we can't really know if that clears him, so best to assume he's an abuser anyway. The lessons of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard can be ignored because there are no cameras in a courtroom and that's just sad. I have learned my lesson: I don't know what happened and the charges weren't worthy of court, so as far as I'm concerned, all we have against Roiland is that some people thought he was odd on set (very much like Josh Trank, for those who remember those complaints)--odd behaviour doesn't equate to condemnation for me.

This article was written by Peter Levi