RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
I enjoyed Age of Ultron, but it was no where near as strong as the first Avengers. It existed to introduce additional plot points for the next phase.
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Star Wars Disney Characters Going Away?
- Thread starter Chet Dakota
- Start date
OliveMcFly
Well-Known Member
I love Goofy Vader in his Mickey boxers. 
prberk
Well-Known Member
Well, it may not be Star Wars on Ice, but it does look like they don't think it hurts the brand integrity to have Darth Vader and his friends dance and party for a day on a Disney Caribbean Cruise...
From the Disney Cruise Line website:
https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/onboard-activities/star-wars-at-sea/?CMP=BAC-CRT|9087959|1083781|123043696|69481387
May The Force Sail With You
From January through April 2017, Disney Cruise Line Guests can enjoy the return of the popular Star Wars Day at Sea. Come aboard and experience the heroes, villains and sensational action of the saga up close.
Star Wars Day at Sea —available on select Caribbean cruises—combines the power of the Force and the magic of Disney—in an out-of-this-world adventure unlike any other!
As you enjoy your Caribbean cruise, you’ll be transported to “a galaxy far, far away” for an entire day of fun, including:
- A deck party featuring Star Wars Characters, music, dancing and fireworks
- Photo opportunities with Characters from across the Stars Wars universe
- An onboard version of the Jedi Training Academy, where young Padawans learn lightsaber maneuvers
- Star Wars-themed games and activities at Disney’s Oceaneer Club and Disney’s Oceaneer Lab
- Stellar food and beverage offerings
- Screenings of the Star Wars films plus episodes of Disney’s animated series Star Wars Rebels
- Exclusive themed merchandise
Matt_Black
Well-Known Member
They talk about "brand integrity" then Disney XD cross promotes Star Wars Rebels with friggin' Pickle & Peanut.
prberk
Well-Known Member
I came across this today on Facebook. Any idea how this fits into their stringent brand integrity plan, while Jedi Mickey doesn't? (And, yes, it is real.)
tribbleorlfl
Well-Known Member
It's not officially-licensed by Disney.
prberk
Well-Known Member
Well, it is really out there to be sold. But, I did look for a trademark and did not find it; so if they did not get permission, I am sure Disney will be talking to them.
If so, I stand corrected.
I still don't think that the character mashups do any more brand damage to Star Wars than the crass Star Wars stage shows, fireworks, dance parties, and other things at the Disney resorts and cruise lines.
JohnD
Well-Known Member
What I love about Jedi Mickey, Leia Minnie, Darth Goofy, etc. is that it's like Mickey and Friends are just as much fans of SW as the rest of us. WDW could "split the difference" by keeping the SW Disney characters in the Hollywood Blvd. area or just outside SW land (when opened). Classic SW characters only inside SW land.
danlb_2000
Premium Member
StarWarsStores.com doesn't even work for me.
GiveMeTheMusic
Well-Known Member
These shirts are technically illegal and all over Facebook. Marketers make a t shirt design and then pump it out via ads - the successful ones can make $10K+ off of one Facebook t shirt run. The sites often don't exist - they're just Facebook fan pages created to pimp "viral" t shirts. Disney hasn't taken any action on this kind of thing for years, so not sure why they would start now.
Bolt
Well-Known Member
They've taken action.
asianway
Well-Known Member
Bah. I'll believe it once I don't see low grade Disney crap flash across my screen every time I open the Internet.
AEfx
Well-Known Member
As others have stated, that doesn't appear to be Disney-released product.
That said, let's pretend that it is - I really don't see any relevance to the question of Jedi Mickey/etc. It doesn't involve the mash up of characters but of general concepts.
It's achingly simple - the mash-up of the characters is no longer desirable as both characters are under the same ownership. It serves no purpose, financially or from a narrative stand-point. It simply was done to produce more product to be sold at Disney Parks that Disney had a profit participation in, keeping the in-park Star Wars shops toy selection from being a clearing house for Kenner/Hasbro product or glorified "Toys R Us" outlet. It existed as a product category, nothing else - there were no tie-in films, story-lines, etc. Now that Disney gets all the Star Wars profit, period, it makes little sense for them to continue the co-branding (which, in fact, is dutifully ironic as they are undoing what apparently fanbois did not realize that Lucas had allowed for years; the "fear" of the uninformed fan-folk of what would happen after Disney took over and "Disney-fied" everything).
On the subject of the shirts and their legality, there isn't much likely there in the way of infringement. First and foremost, while I don't know anything about this vendor in particular, a lot of these limited T-shirt/print sellers actually do have some general license agreements with various entities that blanket cover the limited edition stuff they do (viralstyle seems to have some such agreement). They have access to certain clip art libraries (some are even available for you to design yourself, I believe) and many are on the up and up legally. Typically, these types of agreements say as long as they don't print obscenities/etc., don't produce more than X-amount, etc. they are allowed limited production of these novelties. I can't recall the name of the company, but I know I bought a print and a shirt a few years ago when they did the Princess Leia/Haunted Mansion portrait mash-up, given they had other park-related stuff I saw from that vendor it was pretty clear it wasn't bootleg.
But as I said, I don't know about this one in particular - even if they don't have any type of agreement, there really isn't much in that T-shirt Disney could object to legally. It's pretty clearly both a satire and a parody. The main thing to object to would be the image of the Death Star, but to be frank - given that it's a very generic image at this point, used in countless memes and is clearly being used in trans-formative nature here (in forming the mouse ears) that's pretty much the definition of "fair use" (think the "Unofficial Guide" and their sliced orange arranged as a Mickey cover art). The fact that it melds with another well-known image in a clever, arguably political fashion due to the juxtaposition of the two, in fact makes it likely parody as well.
TL, DR? LOL. /nothing more to see here, really.
Last edited:
AEfx
Well-Known Member
But the thing is, Disney would rather you wait in two different lines - one for Luke Skywalker, and one for Mickey Mouse. There is no incentive for them to combine the two when they can get you to spend time in two lines for two "attractions" in your day.
I know it sounds kooky, and perhaps counter-intuitive (at least operationally), but that's the general idea here - to keep the uniqueness of the characters. They don't want a kid to buy a Jedi Mickey figure. They want him to buy a Luke Skywalker figure and a separate Mickey Mouse figure. It serves absolutely no good anymore now that Disney is the sole owner of both for them to mix up the product like that. Before, it was both a revenue share profit benefit (Disney got a higher percentage of the product sales because it was co-branded Disney/Lucasfilm than the Lucasfilm only product) and a way to tie the brands together in the minds of consumers. Both of those concerns are no longer in play, and in a few years once this generation of kids rolls over, it all but disappears into memory.
And that's the third, long term thing here - they will be back, no doubt. With an animated-film tie in, retail (i.e. Wal-mart) toy line, video game, etc. - no question in my mind. In five, seven years - when there is a need for it. Right now, Star Wars has been reborn and very likely hasn't hit it's peak again yet. When you have a red-hot brand, it doesn't need dilution like that when there is no huge financial benefit (i.e. a massive money maker like Angry Birds or the Lego association). I really don't think they are erasing these "characters" - more of putting them on moratorium until they are ready to full exploit them and have a need to do so.
Personally, I do like my Jedi Mickey - I'll miss him. I think the characters in the parks would be fine to have around, that a lot of the corporate thinking I'm talking about above is over-thought - I'm just telling you what the thinking behind it is, and their decisions are logical, from a certain point of view.
Matt_Black
Well-Known Member
That's a good explanation, but it doesn't explain how some of the other light-hearted offerings, like Hyperspace Hoopla, also got the axe.
Cmdr_Crimson
Well-Known Member
AEfx
Well-Known Member
It goes along the same lines.
You need to step back and look at the time frame those things originated in. The post-prequel years where effectively, Star Wars as a serious feature film franchise was dead. Lucasfilm really started loosening up the strings at that point. I saw some of that first hand - I consulted for a Star Wars project circa 06-09, and they were really letting things lose that they hadn't previously done (the "rules" started to disappear, as in, you can't have X-character appear with X, so on). It happened throughout the remnants of the franchise - from video game content, to EU books, and the Disney relationship.
Lucasfilm really never intended to make another live-action Star Wars film. They were intending to do a live-action TV show, but that was the future - in TV. I'm sure you know that there is an entire parody series (of something like 40+ episodes?) that was completed and produced by the Robot Chicken team all about Star Wars that was cancelled and never released - it's the same reason. Lucasfilm was pretty content with just licensing out Star Wars, as broadly as possible.
I don't use "irony" as a term lightly (too jaded by being part of the Alanis Morrisette generation LOL), but it truly was when the Disney acquisition was announced, and suddenly people are posing pictures of the dreaded "future" of what "Disney would do - Lucas would never allow this!" - which was usually accompanied by a clip of Hyperspace Hoopla, in particular. Usually Chewie or Vader. "It was the end of Star Wars now that Mickey has his claws in him!" they cried out, not realizing that it had been around for years and was fully approved by Lucas.
Lucas sold Lucasfilm because he couldn't keep the company running on Clone Wars animated and ancillary products any longer. LucasArts had been set up for failure years before, and the commercially successful games were made by 3rd parties. If Lucasfilm was to survive as a company, it had to go back into the "serious" Star Wars business - which meant the Sequel trilogy - and judging by his statements over the last few years - Lucas just wasn't up for spending another ten years, particularly citing how the reaction to the Prequels made him not want to go through that again. So the logical option was to sell - his only choice besides to spin off ILM and close the rest of the place down, just having lawyers take care of the licensing deals (which is practically what the rest of Lucasfilm had become anyway).
Now, things have radically changed. Disney is smack dab in the middle of the complete resurgence of Star Wars as more than just a nostalgia trip or kids fare. You don't really encourage the "silly" side or the parody/satire so much yourself when you are running a serious franchise - unless you are making gobs of money at it, like the Lego-stuff (which is also a good intro to the larger universe for the kiddos). So no, when Darth Vader is again a serious screen character (sorry, @PhotoDave219 - hope you've seen the trailer) you don't exactly want him performing 80's hits in a theme park.
Make sense?
JohnD
Well-Known Member
Cmdr_Crimson
Well-Known Member
For anyone who has not seen it. It was called Star Wars Detours...It was litteraly a Robot Chicken jr. Same actors and same humor..
Last edited:
rob0519
Well-Known Member
So "I hope we never lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse.” is now taking the mouse out of their newest multiple billion dollar acquisition? This ranks up there as one of the most questionable decisions I can remember. I'm glad my son got his Jedi-Mickey plush a few trips ago. Yet you can still buy a Jedi or Darth Build-a-Bear. Sigh.