Survey Reveals Star Wars Is Now Less Popular Than Superman And Batman
A Giant Freakin Robot survey on Twitter showed that fans are way more excited for the DC Universe than they are for more Star Wars content.
The Star Wars universe, like our own, is always expanding. Recently, with a number of recent projects like Season One of Andor, the current Season Three of The Mandalorian, and the upcoming Ahsoka limited series, there’s a lot of news from LucasFilms about the galaxy far, far away. However, according to a recent Giant Freakin Robot poll, data reveals that fans may not be as excited about Star Wars as they are about Superman, Batman, and the DC universe.
According to the Twitter poll, which received over 2,000 votes, fans are most excited about projects within the Marvel universe, with Star Wars and the Superman-led DC rounding out the top three and Star Trek just one percentage behind Star Wars in fourth place.
Star Wars may have the problem that although characters like Superman and Batman can have new adventures from a chronological perspective within the timeline of the DCU, many of the Star Wars franchise’s most beloved characters only exist in the past. Even if they are having adventures that we have not seen before, after the events of the most recent sequel series, most of the franchise’s beloved characters, like Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and others, have passed away.
Star Wars also needs a new big bad: Marvel’s Kang the Conqueror is the driving force behind much of the action and represents a multiversal threat within the Marvel universe, and although DC is rebuilding, with this comes the potential of a DCU-level threat from supervillains like Superman’s Lex Luthor, Doomsday, or General Zod. With the Star Wars franchise, the threat is tepid: we know that Luke and, eventually, Rey Skywalker defeat Emperor Palpatine. With this villain constructed as the biggest threat of their time within the films and with many projects that occur within this timeframe, the threat of any new bad guys is diminished as below the universal threat that Palpatine presented.
Marvel may have the most buzz because it has the most cards on the table: the DCU is in an all-out rebuild, and fans aren’t even sure who the new actor playing Superman will be, let alone the direction this rebuild will go in. Star Trek and Star Wars may have similar problems in that fans aren’t aware of the connective tissue and driving force behind the franchises.
There are some solutions: Star Wars could move forward or backward in the timeline and focus on new characters, fan-favorite characters who haven’t gotten much screen time or character development, or focusing on events and characters that happened before the prequel trilogy and the Skywalker trilogy like the early days of characters like Yoda or Liam Neeson’s Qui Gon Jinn. DC is doing something along these lines by introducing the first live-action film version in decades of Superman’s superpowered cousin Supergirl in the upcoming The Flash film and resetting its universe with the upcoming phase of films. Star Wars could use the “galaxy far, far away” concept to its advantage and focus on characters outside of the Skywalker Saga or in different parts of the galaxy where they could develop entirely new and possibly galaxy-endangering stakes.
