Wouldn’t the issue be that the message of the prequels was too muddied and not understood by general audiences? Like I feel Lucas really did try and put together a story about how fascism can flourish in the face of weak liberalism, democracy dying in thunderous applause, etc but it didn’t quite land because almost all the dialogue was written by an alien.

Theres no universe where the sequels are good. For film, books, video games, or any art medium to be good they have to have something they want to share/say/show to the world, and wanting to show a film to make a bunch of money is not one of the passions that makes art good. You want Star Wars to be good again? Give them 25 dollars and hire Palestinians directly from Gaza as the writers. It’ll come with the bonus of everyone hating Israel more.

This is an inoperable case of idealism.

If the sequels were successful, it likely would mean there weren’t a bunch of mediocre to terrible star wars shows dumped on Disney plus. That would mean there’s less blatant culture war bullshit out in the universe, which would reduce the backlash which Trump leveraged to win.

If the sequels were successful there would be less corporate shills calling people to stupid, sexist, racist, or bigoted to understand it. That leads to less people spiraling into the extreme right.

If the sequels were successful, it may have helped movie and theaters remain more relevant through Covid. This could lead to more of the social contract remaining intact post 2020. Trump wouldn’t be as able to effectively weaponize the loss of the social contract preventing a 2024 reelection.

If the sequels were successful, Disney would have more money and goodwill. That could lead to more effective lobbying for non trump candidates.

If the sequels were successful, we could have gotten a grnf story of the old heroes transferring the reigns to the young new heroes to lead the next generation. This could have had a substantial effect on the psyche of elderly leaders who bow out of races to support younger candidates that are far more appealing than Trump vs Hillary.

Maybe there is a point to this.

Trump was in office when new stars wars became controversial. People generally thought Force Awakens was alright at the time, cause they thought the story was gonna progress

Baudrillard this is your fault