Calling me an idiot is pretty ridiculous. I came here in good faith, but your points don't even stand up to scrutiny.
While you claim the "old" stories are milked and dead, 2025 Disney+ streaming data proves the exact opposite. People are voting with their remotes, look at this top 5, and they are choosing the "Lord of the Rings" equivalent in worldbuilding while rejecting the "Hobbit" cash grab.
- #1 The Phantom Menace
- #2 Revenge of the Sith
- #3 Attack of the Clones
- #4 A New Hope
- #5 The Empire Strikes Back
Notice what isn't there? The sequels. The Last Jedi and Solo are legitimate streaming black holes. Disney built a land based on the franchise's least popular era which is not future-proofing but more like ignoring the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to build a land based solely on The Hobbit sequels because they were "newer." It’s betting on the filler instead of the foundation.
I have zero against creating new stories, but even if they turned out to be good, I question the judgment to lock them in a Sequel timeline without including much of the most expansive worldbuilding of any world in human history, which has taken decades, literally cast aside in favor of a safe, puritan-friendly land.
Further, Mando is literally Bobba Fett and Yoda basically, Ahsoka leans into the Clone Wars, and Kenobi of course leans into the OG trilogy and Clone Wars. Despite them not being peak quality Star Wars (well Mando season 1 was still great), it is clear their popularity is intrinsically tied to the better, Star Wars of yesterday.
How many more points do you want to fall flat on your face?
Let's find out!
No, this comment proves you don't understand the point to begin with.
Your comment proves I’m the only one looking at the math while you swallow marketing terms. You’re arguing from a 2018 theoretical playbook; I’m citing the 2025 reality that anyone with a brain saw coming under Iger.
The goal of a $2B+ investment across two identical lands was to actually resonate, and the data proves this strategy failed. The Sequel Trilogy bled half its audience (
dropping from $2B to $1B—an insane decline in a year with Frozen 2 or Endgame making $1.4B and $2.7B). Consequently, the land failed to capture non-Disney fans the way Harry Potter did for non-Universal fans and just based on anecdotal discussions in my own life and reading online, this seems very apparent it's because a lot of people were sort of sick of the direction things went.
Contrast that with Pandora! Cameron demanded strict quality control, and the result was higher attendance from a smaller, cheaper land based on a 'weaker' franchise domestically. Almost like it could be foretold as well...
Disney’s Star Wars Sequel merch and cosplay appeal cratered because the stories, characters, and worldbuilding were weak, rather than admitting the films were directionless slop.
Don't tell me I 'don't understand' when Disney is currently scrambling to retrofit Smuggler's Run with Mando. They remain too stubborn to abandon their strict timeline for characters people actually love just walking around still, but see that they botched Falcon's execution and popularity of characters tied to that attraction. Why give us Hondo in the first place instead of Maul or Ahsoka if you're going to pull in actual Clone Wars characters? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Imagine if they decided ahead of time to make an Acolyte retheme for Falcon instead... rather than them finally waking up and giving us the Clone Wars or OT content fans actually want. Mando is obviously a compromise based on popularity, but tomorrow they could redo Rise with either of those timelines and it would also become more popular. I mean you could literally market it, and attract new people potentially.
The land is something that was intended to be around for DECADES. Disney was taking Star Wars into new content that would be usable for decades to come and a fresh space. An animated film isn't something hinged on actors who are already in the 70s, and a story that has already been milked and is already over 40 years old.
This is a false dichotomy that has collapsed in real time.
Timeless themed environments aren’t built around specific actors’ faces as they’re built around icons: planets, ships, mythology.
Nobody in 2019 was demanding a Harrison Ford animatronic in his 70s; having a younger character animatronic would function just like
Indiana Jones Adventure, which opens in 2027...
People wanted design elements and the worldbuilding from Tatooine, Endor, Hoth, Naboo, and Coruscant. You can literally make up an entirely new location if it just takes design cues from them rather than focusing on one specifically, but they really didn't at all. Instead, the only lore it really relishes is Episode 8. Does anyone even know new planets from the new trilogy? Just plopping down the Falcon in the land without little attachment to the characters that made Falcon itself interesting? Rise is elite, but it would be better if set in a different time period. I don't even know how it's up for debate, or why you feel the need to defend their decision to the end. You can admit they made a mistake you know and shouldn't double down.
The land itself is mostly beige, flat walls anyway, and experiences like the Cantina are just so utterly disappointing. There's no walkthroughs at all either, it just all feels so strange given their original plans were so interesting.
A Jedi Temple, an actually well-done Cantina band, Jawas walking through a market, a nightlife dinner show like something straight off Coruscant, places and vibes that don’t age basically.
Iger chose the one option that guaranteed obsolescence: a made-up planet locked in a narrow window between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. You can tell they've corrected course with Villains Land because it's not based on the 2014 remake, is a 1950 film not older than Star Wars' 2000s Prequel films?
Disney created new stories in Star Wars.. and the problem was they simply they weren't good stories they came up with. If you fault them for wanting to create new opportunities instead of just rehashing the same thing for the next 30yrs... frankly you're an idiot.
I don't fault them for wanting new opportunities; I fault them for ignoring the emotional core of the franchise, which was so numerous in material to pull from while pretending like it doesn't even exist, literally becasue of an arbitrary mandate.
It’s the difference between building a land for Monsters Inc. vs. Monsters University that is the juggernaut with the emotional resonance and instant iconography. University is a solid prequel, but it’s a side story. Disney built the University version of Star Wars—a fringe timeline with very little cultural footprint—while the main timeline was left to rot.
If the goal was "new stories," why isn't there a single reference to Exegol or the High Republic in the land today? Because even Disney knows that "new" generally stuff isn't working, and calling me an idiot doesn't change the fact that
Imagineering’s original plan was exactly what I described. It was a timeless mix of eras up until Bob Iger vetoed it because he didn't want another Tatooine, or even a new land with these worldbuilding and lore elements. He chose ego over the audience at every turn.
It feels like Nintendo prioritized interactive elements just as arbitrarily as Disney prioritized their timeline mandate with Disney ignoring the very IP they spent $4B to acquire, but the difference is, Super Nintendo World itself actually stuck the landing.
There is no reason Disney couldn't have matched that density. Compare the vibrant energy of the Donkey Kong mini-land to the sterile area around Rise of the Resistance and it’s not even close. They should have stuck to the lusher concept art for the Falcon area and built a land steeped in lore from all eras—Prequels, OT, and even the mediocre Sequels—rather than restricting themselves. Rise specifically could have been an Original Trilogy mission set between Empire and Jedi or an active Clone Wars battle. Absolutely ZERO excuse to not do so.
Hey, remember when Walt said "You can't top pigs with pigs"? You don't just listen to what the mob tells you they want. Because the mob only knows what they've already gotten.
Walt understood the concept that Familiarity and Excellence trumps Forced Originality.
Walt amplified timeless tales. Iger greenlit a land that deliberately ignored 40 years of beloved stories for a blank slate that had zero cultural footprint except for being "New Star Wars," not because it was inherently better but becasue of arrogance, which in of itself literally just relies on better movies and worldbuilding to even exist. That’s not what Walt did at all. It's purely arrogance by Iger, and the market punished it with attendance coming in 20-30% below projections in year one AFAIK.
Walt used steamboats and Tom Sawyer because Mark Twain was still relevant nearly 100 years later, because he made them immersive experiences, which oftentimes relied on classic stories and Americana. Mysterious Island in Tokyo, based on Jules Verne is arguably the best land ever made, but also engages with its source material. Rise is a unique story, that's how it should be no one wanted a book report Star Wars ride, but people also didn't want to ignore the lore of Star Wars.
Star Wars is as culturally relevant Americana as you can get, and it has only been hurt by poor storytelling if anything, despite creating new fans along the way. The principle isn't to "never reuse anything," it's "don't serve mediocre sanitised slop and call it visionary just to trash on anyone who calls out the corporate-MBA-led push a racist or misogynist." We were both there, you remember that. I have to believe that Disney just had people on their payroll because it seemed so organized.
You’re quoting Walt to defend a CEO who is in real-time sandblasting Walt’s legacy. George Lucas should've been a chief creative consultant with creative vetoes, otherwise the land obviously turned out to be a misfire as Iger meddled. I just can't get over the corporate propaganda on their own documentaries to push your view, and you just eat it up.
No? You didn't see all the complaints about no one caring about Paris, or Fantastic Beasts, etc? They were doing the same thing with HP - you can't just keep telling the same story with the same actors... you need to expand to new lores in the universe.
This is completely wrong.
Universal built Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, which were 100% classic era before they touched Fantastic Beasts.
The Ministry of Magic ride is based on Order of the Phoenix with Beasts just as seasoning in the land, expanding the worldbuilding. They never told fans, "Forget Harry Potter, here's a random wizard post office in the 1920s with no main characters allowed."
That is exactly what Disney did, which is why we ended up with what we did; ironically, so much of the Sequels relied on having Han Solo, Luke, and Leia all come back for marketing only to somehow squander that too. I just look back to the teaser for Force Awakens and it's like man, they could've taken it in an interesting direction.
It would be like building a Middle-earth land and banning Aragorn, Gandalf, and the Shire to focus exclusively on the political squabbles of Lake-town from the Hobbit movies. No one wants that. Look at lands built/building since: Isle of Berk, Monstropolis, Villains Land—they are all leaning hard into the most iconic, beloved versions of the IP and what makes them special. Disney learned the lesson Galaxy's Edge ignored. If you use an IP, actually do it right.
Star Wars was like the only IP I was really begging for the parks to have. I generally prefer original ideas, but this was not the thing to experiment on by starting from scratch. It almost feels like cultural genocide in a way, like we're supposed to just accept a money-hungry corporation's take and shove it down our throat.
Star Wars, like Potter, has been begging for theme park lands, but only one fanbase got the lands they deserved, and Star Wars is
far more popular in America than Potter, but when you have an animosity towards fans themselves, why do you think this is the approach that we should think is acceptable? The worldbuilding in Star Wars was the best part, this isn't the Snyderverse where you forget existed because they were so bland.
This just looks so much more interesting:
