Drinker's Chasers - The Star Wars You Grew Up With Is Gone, And It's Not Coming Back 

Ironically, Star Wars fanfiction is more faithful to Star Wars than Disney ever did.

The moment Mark Hamil was forced to throw that lightsaber over his shoulder is the literal personification of what they are doing to Star Wars

It's not about the money. It's about The Message. We are currently watching what happens when demons, who would destroy a ship if they cannot be captain, do when they actually manage to become captain any way.

It's impressive how much Disney successfully acquired the rights to Star Wars and then successfully *destroyed* everything in almost a decade.

You know you fkd up Star Wars when the movie Space Balls is more Star Wars than modern Star Wars is.

Guys, it's over. I remember a few years ago, I would think, "Maybe they can turn this around. Maybe they can still fix this". Not anymore. I don't even want them to fix it anymore. I just want it to be over. I've got my books that don't exist. That's all I really need.

I realized this in 2017 when I watched the Last Jedi. I was like "Oh, they're not making these movies for me anymore". I haven't watched anything star wars related since except the first season of the mandalorian.

Harvey takes advantage of young women = monster. Leslie ALLOWS young women to be taken advantage of = Nah, it'll be fine.

Disney paid $4 billion for a franchise that they didn't understand and whose characters they despised. It's like buying a Kentucky Derby winner and using it to pull a cart.

I'm in my 50's now and was fortunate to experience 'The Real Star Wars' in 1977 as a child. Stars Wars was a huge part of my youth and into adulthood. I still have all my vintage figures etc. Santa photos at XMAS wearing Star Wars tee-shirts. Star Wars wallpaper in my bedroom, you name it I wanted it. Now Star Wars is now the laughing stock of Hollywood. Shame Disney! Sadly I have now let Star Wars go.

"It's like you put all of your favorite childhood toys and memorabilia in a room and some drunk guy walks through it with a baseball bat and he can just destroy things as he sees fit" - Drinker; yep that pretty much sums up what they've done to Star Wars and all our classic beloved IP's. 😨

"A Wank Over Lizzo" is one of Hemingway's unreleased masterpieces.

Truly, we live in the Dark Ages of entertainment

The last decade has been an exercise in learning how to let things go.

Hi guys, Drinker, you summed up my feelings in the first 1 minute 13 seconds of your video. I was there on May 25, 1977, sixth row center for the first sold out show. Along with millions of other fans, I was blown away by the opening crawl followed by the blockade runner and star destroyer flying in from above. This was very special. I went back to see it 10 more times that summer (which was a low number compared to a few of my friends) and a few more times by the end of the year. We had to wait 3 years for Empire but it was well worth it. I didn’t enjoy Jedi as much (I felt that the Ewoks were a bit silly) but it was still very good and was a good ending for the trilogy. Fast forward to 1999, the prequels. I enjoyed them for the most part, I guess it was important to see the evolution of Anakin/Vader come to life, something that was written about for years. In my view, it should have ended there. Then, years later, it all started to fall apart. I did watch the final trilogy (The Force Awakens is the only one I saw in a theater) and like millions of other fans was deeply disappointed. I enjoyed the Clone Wars and Rebels but the live action shows on Disney+ were for the most part disappointing. (I did like Endor however) As a franchise, Star Wars (in my view) is going from bad to worse and I don’t know if it will ever turn around. The one hope that I have had for years is that a live action version of ‘Shadows of the Empire’ would be produced. It is a proven property with an interesting story line and characters. But I guess at this point political correctness is more important than interesting content.

My de-specialized Blu-ray set grows more precious to me every day

An empire destroyed from outside can always come back. But an empire destroyed from within? That's gone. Forever.

Star Wars was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before it died

I read an article that was titled “The Importance of The End”, which goes into detail of why endings to any story, especially books and movies, are so important. And that’s something that Hollywood has lost long since. I remember when Harry Potter was ending and it was a great finale, only for a new stage play to come out later and ruin the ending. Not to mention the prequel movies they did to the movies as well. No matter the excuse to bring something back, if the finale has already happened, then anything that comes after only waters it down and makes it less impactful. The ending is mention to be exactly that, the end.

Thank you! I don’t hear a lot of people talking about how JJ Abram’s copied A New Hope with the Force Awakens.

Mom always said "Nothing lasts forever". We'll just have to watch the originals we have, and enjoy the memories of what we've had. Nothing can take those away.

In the 90’s, when I was a preteen, the Star Wars Expanded Universe was my Harry Potter. It’s what got me reading books all the time. The fact that Disney dismissed it at first and is now bastardizing bits and pieces of it is a big reason I can’t watch any of it.

Bantam Spectra and Dark Horse Comics during the 90s wove together a cotinuing canon for Star Wars that is amazing in its continuity and variety of stories. People are free to criticize the quality of the EU and the eventual directions it went in - but the fact that both Lucasflim and Disney have stolen from the EU sources shows how creatively bankrupt the people managing Star Wars are. I remember buying the Micro-Machines models for the EU, the Essential Guide technical books, etc etc. The 90s was the real renaissance of Star Wars. The reality is that Star Wars has always been a battle between creatives. Lucas was always jealous of people with more talent than him - Marcia Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Steven Speilberg, Genndy Tartakovsky, etc etc. That spite led him down the path of sole creative for the Prequels - which suffered because of Lucas' "lack of vision". And now it's in the hands of Kennedy who has systematically destroyed one property after another because "the message" is more important than anything else - there's nobody in the company to question or challenge the direction. And these people know nothing about the creative process, oh sure they know the technical process of putting together a story and filming it - but everything they make will fail because they don't understand how necessary conflict is to creation - and these people would never dare to challenge their own ideas.

Last year's Star Wars Celebration really solidified this. Regardless of how bad Obi-Wan and Boba Fett were, at least they were still about legacy characters. Now, it's veered so far from that, it doesn't even look like Star Wars anymore.

I have considered, and accepted Star Wars to be dead for a while now. And if it was just dead, Id be okay with it. But for some reason, Disney keeps digging up the decaying corpse and raping it, over and over again. It makes me sad

Not having Mara Jade, an actual hot female character, in there somewhere and in fact making her impossible is a crime against humanity

I won’t believe the Rey trilogy is actually being released until it is literally in theaters. At that point I will have lost faith in humanity.

Rewatching the good stuff and hearing everyone say "May the force be with you, always" knowing that in real life that the "force"/magic is gone is.... very sad...

Everyone to EU Legends: "Perhaps we treated you too harshly."

I no longer care about Star Wars. I also no longer care about Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, Pixar, Disney, blockbuster movies, movie stars, musicians, pro athletes, science fiction, and the list goes on. And gets bigger every day. It's sad, but when I look at the people who *do* still care about those things, I realize they are even sadder.

I was watching the "making of" documentaries of Aliens over the weekend and was so impressed with the talent and passion of everyone involved. They all came together and created one of the best science fiction movies of all time. I couldn't help but notice, however, that they were mostly older white guys and as a result wouldn't be hired in today's environment. Imagine trying to create something like Aliens these days when you automatically eliminate a significant section of the industry because DEI is the major factor in your hiring process. It would be a farce...just like Disney Star Wars.

Thrawn was a very real, very calculating villian. He was more of a real person than a cartoon character Ruthless but not inflexible. He would kill some of his men on the spot for failures, but others he would encourage and point out their mistakes if he thought they had room to grow. Seeing him like a cardboard cutout smurf is a horrible insult for those of us who grew up with those books.

As parent, I went from so excited to share star wars with my kids to practically avoiding it altogether in the span of 10 years. Feels bad.

When I first saw "The Force Awakens," I knew it wasn't going to pan out well in their subsequent sequels. The prequels "worked" in terms of, at least, the Revenge of the Sith, with the exception of that Vader scene where he asks about Padme. But I digress. I concur with the Critical Drinker.

STAR WARS died a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.......

The fact it hasn't been corrected yet proves it's not 'an incompetence issue'. It's all by design; and the true root factor is 'letting corporations consolidate other corporations until the entire economy is the sandbox of a handful of people; who know they can use the public sector to cover their loses in the private'.

At least the prequels give us memes.

Aside from the horrid dialogue, the prequels were actually pretty good movies. They were so rich in story and spectacle! You got all these beautiful, unique planets with beautiful, unique architecture, and relentlessly creative alien design. There's something to look at in every frame. The Jedi at their height were *scary*, formidable, a force. The choreography was excellent and you felt and knew the weight of each battle. ROTS opens with three straight incredible action scenes. The final battle between Vader and Kenobi was epic and rose to the moment - the moment being, *this is the creation of Darth Vader.* Obviously no one really cares about the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems, but George just needed a reason for war, and George chose a boring reason.. Now - nothing new. No spectacle. The choreography makes it seems they were like, "Ok, then maybe you swing - and you block it. Then you swing - not too fast, though!" The best they could do for Luke's exile planet (can't remember name) was stone huts... like, wtf? No spectacle? Nothing makes me say, "that's a great design," or, "wow, that was a cool idea..." Think of that shot in ROTS where their craft finally dive into what is a raging battle we were yet unaware of. Jesus - at least the prequels were creative. The pod racing scene is cool. The sound design is state-of-the-art, top notch. ... I think I might binge the prequels today...

I think Drinker is similar ages with me, (42) and as a young lad growing up in Aberdeen in the early 90's, as a huge Star wars fan, anything you got was treasured, and seeing stuff the USA had like toys etc we never got was a wonder. Shadows of the Empire was all the trappings of a SW film, but without the film, soundtrack, book, games, toys etc etc and it was still successful. I was a big EU book fan, read almost all of them, and seeing so many things from the EU books be picked out and bastardized into something to fit new disney it doesn't work, as the groundwork isn't there. Its just sad now, my 4 year old likes watching "Daddys favourite" A new hope, and he can watch what he wants but he will see the first 3 films first. Thrawn was also my favourite villain but from the OG Zahn books, and even in the new Thrawn series books he still very capable, but the one in the shows is an idiot, this is a guy who almost single handedly restructured the remnant empire into almost beating the new republic and only lost due to hubris and not expecting betrayal.

"Everything has its time and everything dies." -The 9th Doctor

I’m currently in the acceptance stage of grief when it comes to Star Wars. It’s dead, and I know it will never be revived. But at least I’ll always have the original 6 movies and the EU. #RIPStarWars

Disney buying Star Wars is like buying a Kentucky Derby winner, and instead of breeding it to make future champions...you grind it up and turn it into dog food, or you end up breeding it with donkeys instead.

I feel the same way about Disney Star Wars as Rick James felt about Eddie Murphy’s white couch.

It’s not incompetence. It’s deliberate.

Infinite money and unlimited resources. Hundreds of books, novels and comics to take great stories from and characters to use and explore, and this is the crap they make. Over, and over, and over. It would make sense to some degree if it made them money, but it does the exact opposite. When you see who is in charge and who they hire to do this junk, and how everything is now obviously ran by activists or people are selected simply by the color of their skin for a social credit score, it's no wonder that everything is crap. They got rid of all the skilled talent, and replaced them with the dumbest people that don't even deserve to be there in the first place. What a sad time to be alive, watching the world do this. 20 years ago, I thought the future looked pretty bright. Then everyone decided to regress and start moving backwards again. The only thing that can turn it around is a nuclear war or a asteroid smashing into Hollyweird's "heiney-ho."

Things like the treatment of Star Wars makes me somewhat thankful of the things I like that weren't successful but had brief runs that I enjoyed. Inhumanoids is a great example. Ran for 13 episodes, didn't make much of a splash, but it brought me joy by showcasing monsters and weird creatures for its short run. I remember it fondly and it not being successful means I won't get more and based on how everything else has been treated, I'm kind of thankful for that.

"Welcome to the party pal!" This thumbnail headline became clear as day when George said he would never re-release the OG trilogy as it was originally shown in theaters, fans be damned. That was years before he sold it to Disney. Our Star Wars ended with the Episode 4 re-release. Been waiting for y'all to catch up since the "special edition" theater releases back in the late 90s. It's been frustrating watching everyone maintain this codependent and abusive relationship with Star Wars for decades. Happy you have finally accepted the reality. ❤️🎬 Acceptance is the hardest part.

It would be so easy for Iger to fix this: ”Kathleen? Hi, Bob here. I’m sorry, we have to let you go. Take care and enjoy your retirement. Bye. OK, people listen up. Get me the talent who made Andor, show them the trailer for The Force Awakens - not the movie - and tell them this is what we’re aiming for. Make a movie. And remember - as of now we don’t care about DEI anymore. Get going.”

I knew this the moment i walked out of The Last Jedi. I haven’t watched one star wars related thing since.

RIP Star Wars. I remember drawing bad x-wings all over my folders in elementary school. Sad kids these days won't get the joy.

“If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences-and infer the motivation.” -Carl Jung

It's like Disney are trying to piss us off. It's been overload. I was last hyped when The Force Awakens trailers came out and it certainly looked good. But there is more to Star Wars than just the art. The original films had such spectacle and charm that entices you to a galaxy far, far away. But Disney, my God. They just churn out project after project with hardly any sense of fun or thrill for a new viewer let alone a Star Wars follower. You're right, it is depressing. All that money thrown on the screen and no soul. I accepted The Force Awakens to an extent but when The Last Jedi happened, the nail hit the coffin for me. I just knew Star Wars was never going to be the same in Disney's hands. They haven't got a clue.

The only Star Wars Trilogy I truly care about is on VHS before enhanced versions and prequels and I feel lucky to have them.

Obi-Wan should’ve been about finding his brother. Having Zero interaction with OT and Prequel characters, except storm troopers and officers but their just in the background. He first has to go back to Coruscant to get the files from the Jedi temple on the planet he came from. The running joke is that Obi-Wan doesn’t pay for anything, he over uses Jedi mind tricks. The reason to find his brother is to have him be a back up in case he doesn’t survive getting Luke where he needed to be.

14:59 Mauler bang on. For nearly a decade now - especially after TLJ - the backlash to “Star Wars” has been far more entertaining than the properties themselves.

At this point the only thing that could reignite my interest in Star Wars would be something about Stormtroopers in the vein of 'Band Of Brothers' or 'All Quiet On The Western Front'

The Disney Star Wars is a Masterpiece. It deserves a CW Live Action Show

The star wars fanbase has collectively gone through the 5 stages of Grief these past few years. And we are now reaching acceptance.

Throwing your light saber over your shoulder and drinking green milk is 100% Star Wars now 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I don’t know if George was going to give us anything better than Disney. It was a perfect storm in the 70’s and 80’s. I’m ok with saying there were only 3 movies like how the Indiana Jones only has 3. Everything has it’s time and I’m happy to have gotten to enjoy it when it was something.

I was rewatching the scene from New Hope when the Death Star gets destroyed and I had forgotten how that whole scene is so intense from the moment they announce the Death Star has cleared the planet, right up until it blows up. There wasn’t anything from the sequel trilogy which made me feel that at all. In fact it didn’t come close to making me sit on the edge of my seat. The whole thing was ridiculous. The prequels had plenty of faults (terrible dialogue), but the fight scenes were something else. Duel of the Fates was brilliant, Yoda vs Count Dooku was incredible for 10 year old me and the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan is still one of the best of all time.

I was born in 2004 and the Prequels, the Clone Wars (including season 7), the Original Trilogy, and all pre-Disney video games will all always be a package deal as being my childhood. This is the Star Wars I will always remember and enjoy.

I’ll never understand the hate for the prequels

When I was three years old I went to see Star Wars in the theaters. I was scared to death of Vader but I LOVED the series! 30 years later I introduced my son, who was 3, to Star wars, he LOVED it and ran the tape into the ground watching it. We have watched it evolve over the years and have seen the demise of the greatest story of all time. I recenly purchased the Mandelorian on blu ray and he was slightly insulted by it. I thought this was in a galaxy far far away, they don't have the garbage we deal with....

The Star Wars I grew up with is always with me. I still have the DVDs that have the original theatricals as special features. I still have my memories. I even have the RU-vid videos of people going on the old Disney World ride. I don't engage with the new stuff, but they can never take the old stuff away from me.

Great as always. The Lizzo reference I laughed so hard that I had to pause this. I keep wondering if the point is to kill off the Star Wars IP, that that has some big advantage for them like not having to follow a universe's history etc? That would give some sense to what they've been doing. Thank you as always for articulating what so many of us feel like!

As a kid, the OT and PT felt genuinely special, there was nothing like them. I don’t feel that way about the ST, the magic is gone

Star Wars in the 90s was actually thriving, as we had the special editions, video games, “Essential Guide To” book series, and of course the novels. Heck LucasArts kept Star Wars relevant almost all by itself for years. Yet now, even with lots of tv shows being released, interest (and fan goodwill) are at an all time low. I mean, The Bad Batch animated series is going on, and almost no one (aside from Thor Skywalker) is talking about it (he’s someone who would be a great guest for Star Wars talk). Partially since EA has an exclusive license with Star Wars, throttling how many games can be made. Just a few years ago I was still hopeful that some good could come of it, and we would see fan favorites show up (like Kyle Katarn in Rangers of the New Republic). Now, I don’t want them to go anywhere near them. They already ruined my favorite villain Thrawn, they had better not touch Mara Jade!

As a Transformers fan, this is how it’s been since the first live action Transformers movie in 2007. At first I was cautiously optimistic, but as the sequels have trudged out, I find myself dreading that they’ll put my favorite characters into these movies. They’ve already destroyed so many of my favs. I’d rather the ones they haven’t gotten to yet stay forgotten in their little cartoons from eras gone by.

Even the classic Battlefront games from back in the day arent safe.

Hearing people like Leslie Headland saying Star Wars changed her life and she’s been a big Star Wars fan since she was a kid, reminds me of that time when I wanted to start DJing for my elementary school house parties and the only mixer I can afford was between two generic Radio Shack mixers and the middle aged sales man pitching the more expensive one telling me « I’m a DJ and I use this one. »

It’s gone 😢

The Acolyte trailer has a lot of hilarious punchlines at its deserved expense.

Star Wars died for me when Disney took over, and I decided there and then that I was never going back. And if I look at the old movies now, I realize how silly and "soft" sci-fi they really are. But I still have the Dark Horse comics, and Disney can't ruin those.

Star Wars was dead to me when Han Solo died. Never watched the other two in that trilogy and never will. I gave them a second chance with Obi-wan, because the continuation of him and Vader was something I had wanted for years. After that load, I consider myself an OT Star Wars fan, and will never watch anything that Disney is attached to again.

I grew up with the OG movies. There was real love that went into Star Wars, and now it's just product.

What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women. And to know that, like Indiana Jones, there are only three Star Wars movies.

Hey Drinker, I'm stopping this at 11:49 to comment now. I am a Gen X, born in Ontario Canada in the Summer of 1968. Star Wars Changed my Life. I Bleed it more than Trek, and that Star Wars Poster on my Bedroom door of Darth Vader flanked by 2 Storm Troopers holding blasters was even more terrifying for "little me" after Return of the Jedi. That being said, I am like you. There must be some sort of Dark Corruption going on, or Disney just Loves to Loose Money. I actually heard Timothy Zahn talking at a Toronto Trek Convention in Toronto around 1994 or so. He talked about his experience writing in George Lucas's Star Wars Universe as akin to playing in the driveway. Whenever George backed out his truck your stuff was at risk. I bet he never even Dreamed Disney would pick and choose from his Iconic Novels to feed their Lawyers Dreams... Disney is Far, Far, FAR more Evil than Darth Vader ever was...

Speaking as someone who remembers the carnival atmosphere just queuing around the block for Star Wars in 1977 it's not that I don't care for Disney Star Wars, I don't care about any of it any more. I might have watched the OT hundreds of times and the prequels a fair bit too, but I'm not bothered to watch any of it any now... that's the damage the evil mouse has wrought. The only reason Star Wars isn't completely dead to me is I get to point and laugh every time the evil mouse shits out another disaster. Even if by some miracle somebody came along, bought Star Wars and de-canonised everything Disney has done, then released a trilogy of the best Star Wars films ever released, I don't think I could be bothered to go see them such is my disinterest and apathy.

Disney bought Star Wars, it couldn't buy its fans tho.

I remember the first time I played all the way through Dark Forces and how Star Wars it felt and sounded, but an original story line and it just fed into my Star Wars obsession. It hasn’t felt like star wars for a long time now 😢

Just like with the recent Percy Jackson series on TV. Imagine watching it then you read the book and suddenly, it's like....WAIT!!!ANNABETH IS BLONDE, WHITE ,AND GREY EYES!!!! NOT BLACK AND STUPID

Star Wars prequels became amazing in time. Every sentence is a meme. I will die on that hill.

I watched the 3 originals in the theaters, many times, and still would. All the prequels were VHS and the sequels …. No. And nothing since then. Like you said, dead and buried.

They completely fucked marvel up too. Initially I was soooooo excited at the prospect of countless projects. But....pretty much all ended up being shit. Almost all of it

I still have my original Lego star wars. That's the only story you'll ever need ❤

I truly can’t wait to see South Parks version of Leslye Headland. It will be glorious.

"May the Schwartz be with you."

The entire business model is broken. How many action figures, Blu-Ray sets, and Disney Plus Subscriptions will the "Acolyte" sell? NONE. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, this show doesn't have any possibility of paying off its massive budget. The production of these shows is indeed some sort of boondoggle or scam.

This was a great clip! Everyone had great points and well said. More of this please!

RIP Star Wars from a 1st Generation Star Wars fan who remembers when I was in 7 years old and saw Star Wars for the first time like it was yesterday.

There was great point made here… that there are people who *actively enjoy seeing these properties destroyed.* How is it that no one in charge can see that running off long-time fans can only ruin a brand’s value?

The _Star Wars_ I grew up with has been gone since 1983.

I'll be sitting in the orchestra for a screening of Return of the Jedi with NJSO in little more than a week, so there IS something to be excited about...

Star Wars died a long time ago, but we can still watch the original trilogy and smile. No need to worry about what came after 👌🏼

I accepted this a while ago. Obvious they are more interested in sending a message than money. And my hope is in God, not the movie industry or Star Wars. May the Lord be with You.

Freddy Mercury was right. About not liking Star Wars, I mean. Not about the whole unprotected butt sex thing. He was wrong about that.

When I was a kid, I would’ve lost my mind at the idea of any of the following getting new shows, movies, or sequels, and now I hate them all Halo Resident evil Scooby doo (Velma) Avatar the last air bender (twice) Mortal Kombat Lord of the rings (rings of power) Harry Potter (tbd) Star Wars Every Disney live action remake Pirates of the Caribbean (no depp, no chance) Wonka Halloween (imo) Dumb and dumber Zoolander Hocus pocus Anchorman Hellboy Power rangers movie The last of us Assassins creed The haunted mansion Indiana jones Full house That 70s show Boy meets world I could honestly keep going

There must be one Executive, one staff member, one stakeholder that’ll just come out one day and say “Yeah.. we fucked up”

It’s sad how many people can’t let go even though they hate modern SW.