Star Wars has been having a bit of a problem lately but one with a silver lining. On the one hand, the new movies are profitable but not extremely well received by audiences, with the Sequel Trilogy teaching Lucasfilm some valuable lessons. The silver lining is the Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars's final season, and Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Fans have loved these spin-offs unequivocally and they've pretty much saved the reputation of Disney's Lucasfilm.
While the future of the movies remains uncertain, the Disney+ shows' future remains bright. There are a lot of great reasons that Lucasfilm should focus exclusively on these shows and leave movies behind.
10 Fans Like The Characters More
One of the problems with the Sequels is that when it comes right down to it, people didn't like the characters a lot. Rey and Kylo Ren were the most popular, which makes sense since they got the lion's share of the focus. Finn and Poe had their fans, but they were so badly bungled as characters that fans noticed. This is very different from the Disney+ shows.
The Clone Wars has introduced loads of fan favorites over the years, The Mandalorian is a phenomenon because of the characters, and people love the Bad Batch. The shows have done a way better job of creating new characters that fans love than the movies.
9 The Sequel Trilogy Turned Off A Lot Of Fans So Change Might Be Good
The Sequel Trilogy's biggest legacy will be the way it divided the fanbase. There's really no way to argue with this supposition. While Star Wars fans have always been a taciturn lot, the reaction to the Sequels changed the fandom forever, with most preferring spin-offs to that trilogy. Fans love Rogue One but Solo was the first Star Wars movie to ever flop.
The Disney+ shows have all been successes, making the fans happy again after the Sequels turned them into squabbling factions. It might be time to abandon the movies entirely and focus on the proven successes of the shows.
8 The Behind The Camera Talent Has Done A Better Job
It's safe to say that fans aren't entirely happy with JJ Abrams or Rian Johnson. Abrams's nostalgia-heavy approach covered yawning plot chasms that forced Johnson to go in directions that made some fans angry and it didn't get any better when Abrams returned for The Rise of Skywalker. Compare the fan reaction to them to that of the behind-the-camera talent of the shows.
Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau are universally praised by fans and the directing talent of The Mandalorian has included veterans like Taika Watiti and Bryce Dallas-Howard. Fans love what the shows have done and the talent working on them is a big reason for that.
7 Special Effects Are So Good Now That The Shows Look As Great As The Movies
For a long time, doing live-action Star Wars on a TV budget would have been impossible. Special effects technology just wasn't there and more than any other sci-fi property, Star Wars lives and dies by special effects-driven spectacle and storytelling. In recent years, special effects technology has caught up and made it possible for live-action Star Wars shows to look just as good as movies.
The Mandalorian looks amazing and the show wouldn't have been possible without modern special effects. The digital revolution has allowed the shows to catch up to the movies, so using the special effects argument to keep making movies is laughable.
6 The Shows Have Done A Better Job Of Engaging The Audience Emotionally
The Sequels have their moments but their slavish devotion to mimicking plot structure from the Original Trilogy, a sin that even The Last Jedi committed though it has a reputation for being an "unconventional" Star Wars movie, lessened the emotional impact of the films. While segments of the fandom engaged with the Trilogy on a deeper level, most fans didn't.
The shows have done an amazing job of connecting with fans on an emotional level. The Clone Wars is full of amazingly sad moments and The Mandalorian lives and dies by how it engages with the audience's feelings. The shows have engaged the audience on levels the movies don't anymore.
5 The Creatives Seem To Care About Star Wars More
It's hard to find people who aren't fans of Star Wars in some way, especially in the film industry, but it often felt like Abrams and Johnson weren't the biggest Star Wars fans. Abrams played the nostalgia cards hard, but it felt like his nostalgia only extended to parts of the OT. Johnson visibly loved working on a Star Wars movie but his filmmaking and writing style created a product that lovingly reproduced plot beats while tearing them down, confusing the audience.
The people working on the shows seem to unequivocally love Star Wars, stuffing the shows with Easter eggs from all time periods and producing a product that serves the fans while still surprising them.
4 They're A Marketing Phenomena In A Way The Movies Aren't
Another place where the movies have fallen behind is in merchandise sales. Fans weren't happy with them and that affected merch sales hard, with Sequel merchandise languishing on shelves before being sent to discount stores. The Mandalorian changed all of that with one character: Grogu. The little alien is a worldwide phenomenon and has singlehandedly saved Star Wars merchandising.
Fans enjoy the shows' content more and so they buy more merchandise. Star Wars has always lived and died by merch sales, so if the shows can move more, they should be the focus.
3 They Carried Disney+ For The Service's First Two Years
Disney+ is one of the biggest stars of the streaming world and the main reason for that is Star Wars. Sure, access to the Disney library was a selling point but The Mandalorian, to use a tech term, was the killer app that drove customers to the platform in a way nothing else did, followed by the last season of The Clone Wars.
Disney+ carried the company through the pandemic and the Star Wars content made sure of that. The movies were successful but with the way Disney has backed off from them, even they realize that they aren't the cornerstone they should be.
2 The Shows' Fan Engagement Is Overwhelmingly Positive
Since Disney took over, the discourse around Star Wars movies has mostly been negative and contentious. Fans were either arguing if they were good at all or which one was the worst, with only Rogue One escaping this negative response. This is in contrast to the shows, where fan engagement is overwhelmingly positive.
With the shows, fans argue about which one is better. Fans bond over their love of the relationship of Din Djarin and Grogu or the way they're happy Darth Maul was finally been made into a great villain or how great Ahsoka is. With Obi-Wan Kenobi and Book Of Boba Fett forthcoming, things are about to get even more positive. To steal a phrase from The Mandalorian: "This is the way."
1 It's A Better Storytelling Medium
Since The Sopranos, viewers have been living in a Golden Age of TV, where creative have finally realized the power of the medium of episodic content to tell amazing stories. TV and streaming shows have become the place to go for great storytelling and while some film franchises are better than others, for the most part, people agree that shows work better for long-form storytelling.
Star Wars has always been a saga, a grand unfolding tale with multiple parts. Star Wars shows in recent years have proven to be better places to tell these kinds of stories than the movies. The characters and plots have more time to develop and this has made a massive difference. Star Wars has always been episodic in nature, so making the switch to shows makes way more sense.