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You're forgetting the most important aspect for an entertainment company. Disney under Iger produced good content. Disney under Chapek didn't.
Except Iger was responsible for some horrible content like Star Wars, which he rushed into production - which caused a cascade of production issues and failures. Which then basically killed the movie side
I’m kinda wondering why Disney didn’t look at the cash cow they acquired and turn the actually good parts of the EU(which are after all known quantities) into GoT like series- HBO’s success was about the same time. It seems like an obstinate refusal to do the boring, safe thing made Disney blow what should have been a sure bet.
I think it's a combination of arrogance and general "Prequels PTSD"'.
The arrogance is not just in Iger rushing it to have it out in his time. It's also in the fact that the people on the A-side - the movies - just didn't give a shit about any of this. Joss Whedon admitted as much about the original MCU shows like Agents of Shield. They're lower budget fanfiction that just interfere with their canon (which is the real canon) and may confuse fans but they have to pretend to indulge because some nerds buy the tie-ins. In that way, they treat it much like Lucas did. They just didn't care. Especially since there's just so much you can point to to shit on the EU.
The second thing is that basically everyone old enough to work on these films either hates the Prequels or remembers the absolute, wall-to-wall hate the Prequels got. Simon Pegg is a friend of Abrams and look how he talks about them in an otherwise diplomatic industry.
But people disagree on what exactly was bad about the Prequels. As someone who grew up with them I hated the dialogue and characterization. I was not only fine with but loved the Republic era - plenty of us found some quality in the games, books or The Clone Wars show even if we agreed with the criticisms of the mainline films.
The message Disney apparently took was that they were bad in their essence: people didn't just hate the prequels cause of bad execution, they hated the idea. What everyone wanted more OT-like stuff, fewer Jedi, less of a Republic, more Empire v. Rebels, less shiny CGI Coruscant so give them a ton of that, at least at the start. Well, that led to the derivative mess we got and the insistence on movies like Rogue One and Solo which all stayed in the very safe "post-Revenge of the Sith, pre-A New Hope" space.
Which would have perhaps been survivable (The Force Awakens made too much money) but the rush meant no ability to plan for a coherent trilogy and each movie not only pissed off fans of anything original, it even pissed off fans of the previous movie.
The prequels were bloated movies with a decent concept and terrible execution. A strong editor and better action would’ve led to a great set of movies.
The sequels lacked even the decent concept.
A better editor would have helped, yes, but IMO the critical flaw in the Prequels was that George Lucas originally intended for the Big Bad Guy to be Darth Jar Jar Binks. The theory is that he chickened out when he saw the overwhelmingly bad fan reaction to the character in The Phantom Menace. But ironically the only thing that would have redeemed the character and the whole trilogy is if this bumbling idiot was just a Kaiser Soze-esque mask for Palpatine's master. Cowardly scrapping that left Episode II without a memorable villain.
For those who haven't seen it already: https://old.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/
That is a desperate fanfiction looking for some explanation why story was so terrible.
Is any indicator for that being true rather than fanfiction surpassing lousy original?
I think there's more than a little evidence. Maybe the single strongest piece is Jar Jar's lip syncing to other characters talking:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NvyPYQ4BtZQJar Jar's lips were animated on purpose, and not a motion capture. In addition, there's lots of little little things that /u/Lumpawarroo didn't mention in his reddit post. Any individually are not that indicative, but taken as a whole are quite suggestive. I'm fairly convinced.
Edit: @basalisk_respecter has the right link.
That youtube link is an hour long video on a different topic. Did you mean this? https://youtube.com/watch?v=WUOwsRv6MLc
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