I think I see where the conflict/confusion is. I was specifically speaking about live action films and series on D+ (since that seemed to be relevant). As someone mentioned above, there is a very very high overhead for such projects, so you have to have bigger scope/stakes involved to bring in the viewers to justify that cost.

You can absolutely do less large scale stories in a written or animated format. But that's not what I was trying to zero in on. It may not have been super clear what I was talking about initially though.

A story about a Jedi tracking down local smugglers/thieves causing problems for a friend works in an episode of Clone Wars. It does not have enough gravitas to stand alone as a feature film, or major story arc in a live action series. That's what I was getting at with my comments. You can absolutely have these elments in there, but somewhere there must be something "bigger" to make the whole project worth the cost.

And yeah. To follow some of my other posts a bit, that is going to include a lot of the iconic things from the SW universe that people, well, expect to see. So if your complaint about SW shows is "too much Jedi vs Sith", and "too much Rebels vs Imperials", or some relatively minor variation/replacement thereof, you're probably going to just be out of luck. That's literally what the franchise was created with, and it's what the vast majority of the paying customers expect to see.

You think Grogu being the same species as Yoda was just an accident? Nope. It's this same principle in action. You think Luke showing up at the end of season 2 was an accident? Again. No. Andor could be about a guy living during the Imperial period, but have him entirely engaged in smuggling for some previously unheard of criminal cartel out on the rim, with no mention or interaction with the Empire or the growing Rebellion at all. You know how well that series would do? Poorly. I'm sure some hard core fans would love it. The vast majority of the viewing audience would be like "this isn't SW". That's why the story is about his gradual involvement in and recruitment by the rebellion.

Take those elements away, and you have a generic sci-fi story. Might be very good even. But it wont be viewed as a "SW story" by most people, if it doesn't contain those elements. Again. You can do this in a short story, or novel, or animated episode or even arc, and that's fine. Once you get into the realm of live action films/series though, you're pretty much throwing money away if you don't include the very identifiable elements that the franchise is known for and identified with. Fair or not, that's how you get audiences.


Which, just to follow my logic to an end point, means that removing those things will not fix any of the problems that recent D+ SW projects have had. If anything, they would make them worse (at least from a monetary pov). The actual problems lie elsewhere. Which, I suppose, means that this specific project is not going to succeed or fail based on the fact that it is about members of the Jedi order, nor about conflict with a rising Sith threat, much less one tied directly to the eventual Emperor Palpatine. If anything, those tie ins are a positive in terms of viewership. What will cause it to succeed or fail is how well the material is treated, how well the charcters and plot/story are written, and whether or not they inject silly/dumb/idiot-ball elements into it.


Just looking at Ahsoka. The actual plot of the series? Perfectly fine. Heck. Very good really. Fills in some gaps. Continues the story left off from Rebels. Adds in some additional Evil/Grey force wielders. All good so far. It's the execution of that plot, and the specifics of the character choices, actions, and dialogue that makes it not a great series. It has pacing problems (serious pacing problems!) as well. We had a whole thread about it, and IMO, it wasn't really the fact of the inclusion of Ahsoka, nor of Baylin, nor of Wren (though some issues with what they did with that character), nor the Night Sisters, nor Hera, nor the New Republic fleet/politics. None of that simply existing in the story was the problem. It was how those things were used that was.

The series would have been just as poorly recieved if every one of those characters was replaced with some altnerative that wasn't an iconic standard trope of SW, but otherwise had the same pacing, dialogue, and action/decision issues that the actual series had. We'd still be complaining about how stupid X action was, or Y dialogue was, or that some episodes were pure filler, or the dumb actions by the bad guys, or equally dumb actions by the good guys. But there would also probably be fewer people who watched it to complain about those things in the first place.