Even The DC Universe Is Now More Popular Than Star Wars
A recent Giant Freakin Robot poll found that fans are more excited about the DC franchise than Star Wars.
A recent poll posted by the Giant Freakin Robot Twitter account reveals that fans are more excited about the future of the DC Universe than they are about Star Wars. To quote the opening crawl from The Empire Strikes Back, “It is a dark time for the Rebellion.”
The poll asked, “Which franchise’s future are you most excited about?” and gave four options for fans to vote on: DC, Marvel, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Marvel took the number one spot with 30.8 percent of the votes, surprising no one. What is surprising is the number two spot going to what Stan Lee used to call the “Distinguished Competition” and not a galaxy far, far away.
Star Wars has been divided into two camps, those that like the direction Disney has taken the franchise since purchasing it from George Lucas and those that don’t. Usually, you can tell which kind of fan someone is based on their reaction to The Last Jedi (but not always).
Both DC and Star Wars fandoms have faced complaints that recent movies didn’t feel right. Some DC fans are turned off by Superman and Batman killing bad guys. Meanwhile, many Star Wars fans don’t think Luke would abandon his friends to drink fresh sea-monster milk.
So why would fans pick DC if both franchises suffer from a lack of cohesion? The answer is in the poll itself: the future. Warner Bros. recently put James Gunn in charge of the DCU at Warner Bros., and he’s recently revealed his plans to reboot the whole thing.
Star Wars, on the other hand, has had no such shake-up of leadership. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are still the guiding forces behind Disney’s Star Wars empire. That might sound like a good thing. After all, those are guys responsible for the Mandalorian and Clone Wars.
But they’re also the guys behind The Book of Boba Fett. The show where somebody thought it would be a good idea to take the Neutrinos from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and make them cyborgs.
Jon Favreau, in particular, can’t even give a coherent timeline for the Mandalorian. It’s that lack of attention to detail that makes fans leery of every new Star Wars project that gets announced. Andor was the best Star Wars production to come out of the Disney era, and some fans didn’t even bother to check it out after the disastrous Fett and Obi-Wan series that preceded it.
There have been several rumors that Lucasfilm is considering tearing down the current Disney continuity and starting fresh with Rey and Grogu, two of the few characters from Disney canon that work. Unfortunately, they’re just rumors. Disney won’t commit to anything concrete.
DC, on the other hand, has given James Gunn license to burn everything still tainted with the Snyder stench down to the ground. With the exception of Waller and a couple of other projects, Gunn seems to be doing just that. He’s even set aside the Elseworlds designation for DC projects like The Batman and Joker sequels that will remain unconnected to the larger DCU, something Star Wars needs badly.
In simplest Star Wars terms, Disney needs to get its “poodoo” together if it wants to stop the Star Wars franchise from getting any worse. Lucasfilm needs its own James Gunn to shake things up before it’s too late. Otherwise, the next poll could be so bad Star Wars could get fewer votes than Star Trek!
