Ep. 1784 - This Is How Disney Destroyed Star Wars

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And we know that the murderous plot is now complete. Time of death can officially be recorded on the coroner's report. And we know that because the new Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is out in theaters this weekend and absolutely no one cares. No one is even pretending to care. The executives at Disney and Lucasfilm managed to completely annihilate perhaps the most beloved entertainment franchise in American history, which would have been totally unthinkable back in the 1990s. And anyone who grew up in the 90s, you well remember this. When people were lining up at midnight to get into the premiere of The Phantom Menace, this now looking at this, it's like lost footage from another civilization. Watch. It's one of the biggest premieres of all time. The level of sustained interest in this franchise over time was unlike anything else in the history of filmmaking. It was at the time by far the way the most wildly popular and iconic movie series ever. It was basically the Michael Jackson of film franchises. And like Michael Jackson, it is now dead under nefarious circumstances. Now you can see some photos from the 1983 premiere of the Return of the Jedi on the screen right there. 16 years later, The Phantom Menace drew similar crowds. In fact, even before its release, episode one was packing theaters. A lot of people don't remember this, but in 1999, almost nobody had high speed internet. So if you wanted to see a movie trailer, you had two options. You could wait, you know, approximately 17.5 thousand hours to download it. And if somebody calls you in the meantime, you know, on your phone line, then you'd have to start all over again. Or you could buy a ticket to a movie. And in the case of The Phantom Menace in November of 1998, the teaser trailer was apparently attached to Meet Joe Black, The Siege, and The Water Boy. And according to a variety, around 500 people in Los Angeles bought tickets to The Siege at a theater and a third of them walked out when The Phantom Menace trailer was over, because that's the only reason they went to the movie. It became so common that theaters began promising audiences that they would re-air the trailer after the movie so they could get a second look. Although no such bribe should have been needed to convince people to sit through The Water Boy, perhaps the dumbest comedy ever made, which makes it a cinematic masterpiece in a certain kind of way. In any case, again, nothing like this had ever happened before. People were so pumped for Star Wars that they bought tickets to other movies just to see a commercial for Star Wars. Now compare that enthusiasm for the original trilogy and the prequels to this audience reaction to the finale of Rise of Skywalker. This is to be one of the one of the better audience reaction videos we've seen. If only because the comedic timing couldn't be any better. Watch. Please don't say it. Oh god, no. They all anticipate what Rey is going to say, like a detainee at a CIA black site who knows the waterboarding is coming. The sheer stupidity and predictability of the line is overwhelming everybody in the theater. They're hoping it won't happen, even though it's inevitable. And then after the moment finally comes, the revolt begins and someone yells, I effing hate Star Wars. And right on cue, the orchestra kicks in and you're informed that the film was directed by the one and only J.J. Abrams. But even J.J. Abrams, as talented as he supposedly is, couldn't direct an audience reaction video as good as this one. And it's a funny thing because at the time, everybody assumed that this was kind of rock bottom for Star Wars. After all, it's hard to get any worse than fans walking out of the theater and taunting your film in viral social media videos. But somehow under the stewardship of Disney executive Star Wars has been subjected to countless additional, even more extraordinary humiliations since the 2019 release of Rise of Skywalker. And now those humiliations, which we're going to talk about in detail, have finally brought the Star Wars franchise to the point that it's not even hated anymore. It's not despised. It's simply ignored. So here's a picture somebody uploaded of an early release midnight screening of the Mandalorian the other day. There it is there. Compare this to the footage we saw from the Phantom Menace. There's one guy in the entire theater, which probably is not a great sign. Certainly quite a contrast to what we saw with every other Star Wars film, particularly the good ones. And there's plenty of other posts like this. Here's another. He writes, quote, Wife and I at the premiere of Mando and Grogu, a lot of different premiere, a lot different premiere than other Star Wars openings. And once again, no one is there. Even if you don't care at all about Star Wars, these images are still depressing because again, they represent the death of an iconic part of American culture. And they keep coming. You can go online to book tickets at your local theater as seen here. And you'll probably find that most of the seats are empty. And meanwhile, the guys at Film Threat also went to an early screening of this movie. And as you listen to their extremely unimpressed reaction, notice that the lobby is mostly empty in the background. Watch. All right, Alan, we got out of the Mandalorian and Grogu, what are your social media out of the theater reaction? Mine is I don't hate it. It was OK. And it was very long. It was for kids. I agree. I think this is definitely for kids. It's like three or four episodes of the show stitched together into a movie. And I thought it was small and underwhelming. As underwhelmed as they were, the review was actually positive. It was on the positive end of the spectrum for this film compared to other reviews. Slate had a more definitive reaction, quote, my expectations were fairly low, but I am genuinely stunned how bad the Mandalorian and Grogu is. That's enough Star Wars for now. Thanks. IGN writes, this is a Star Wars movie missing the thrill, surprises, challenges, addition of really anything of note to the franchise, not to mention a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change. The Mandalorian and Grogu is the most boring Star Wars movie yet. A variety raves, quote, an efficient adventure that only pretends to be a real Star Wars movie. It's basically the most positive thing anyone could say about it, inefficient. It's efficient. If that's the best thing anyone could say about your movie is that it's efficient, then that's again a bad sign. Now, first of all, before we go any further, I have to ask, who exactly decided that the Mandalorian and Grogu is a good idea for a movie title? It might honestly be, without hyperbole, the worst title ever. I mean, from a pure aesthetic perspective, it's a nightmare. It's obnoxious, it's too long, it's clunky. Said out loud, it has all the melody and grace of like a box full of silverware tumbling down the stairs. Most people, myself included, don't know who Grogu is, but he's a character in the movie and so is the Mandalorian. So that's good enough for the title, apparently. What else do you need? Imagine if they named the original films like this, you know, you'd have Star Wars, Luke and Leia, then maybe you'd have Star Wars, Han and Chewie, and then the grand finale Star Wars, Darth Vader and Palpatine. It's a mystery why they didn't do it that way. And by the way, if you're going to have a character in your movie named Grogu, which you probably shouldn't, the worst thing you could do is put that character's name in the title of your film. Grogu sounds like, it sounds like, it sounds like your least favorite dish that your Polish grandmother cooks. Now, Star Wars titles, The New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Even the Phantom Menace, used to have a certain vibe, you know, they evoked a particular feeling, they sounded operatic and epic and fun. And now they just named the two main characters and that's it. Instead of bringing to mind an epic space opera, they bring to mind, you know, children's cartoons from the 90s. The Mandalorian and Grogu sounds like, it sounds like it belongs in the same pantheon as Pinky and the Brain, Ren and Stimpy, Cow and Chicken, except worse than all of those. Now, to be clear, as bad as that title is, there is a reason why they chose it. And it's entirely related to priorities like merchandising and brand recognition and algorithms and so on. That's the whole problem with Star Wars and most Hollywood films generally. They are constructed in corporate boardrooms by non-creative people who are trying to figure out how to monetize a brand. No good movie has ever been made that way or could be made that way. You know, good movies must originate from the creative inspiration of a single artist, but under Disney's leadership, it's not what happened with Star Wars. Are you paying $90 a month for your phone service or more? Now, at a certain point, you have to recognize that you are just getting ripped off as simple as that, especially when companies like Pure Talk exist. Pure Talk is my wireless company and right now, they're giving you unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99 a month. Meanwhile, the big wireless companies keep charging more and more like they're providing some kind of luxury service. Pure Talk used to charge $55 a month for unlimited high-speed data, but they've been actively working to give their customers more service for less cost. 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So instead of coming up with an original story with a detailed plan for an entire trilogy, he copied a new hope. His only real contributions were a Black Stormtrooper, a few relatively uninteresting mysteries with no answers at all. He simply didn't have time to do anything else. Or at least that's the official excuse. I mean, the truth is based on J.J. Abrams' history in the industry, he probably would have copied a new hope anyway, even if he had an extra decade to produce this film. We all remember Lost, which was the classic example of his storytelling, if you can call it that. Simply raise a bunch of questions without knowing where they lead because he doesn't care. You know, his only goal is to get audiences to watch the next episode or the next film, which is the cheapest and laziest way to tell a story. Anybody can tell a story where weird stuff happens. Right? Anyone can get people interested in a story by just having weird stuff happening all the time or mysteries. Oh, what does that mean? That's easy to anyone can do that. The challenge, the part where you have to be an artist in a real story teller, is in landing the plane, bringing all the threads together in a coherent and meaningful way, which J.J. Abrams doesn't know how to do and has no interest in doing. What makes all this even more confusing is that in an interview with Collider after the conclusion of the sequel trilogy, Abrams explained that when you're making movies, it's really important to have a plan before you start. And he treats this like a massive revelation that he's only figuring out now after making multiple blockbusters and television shows over a period of several decades. And here's what he said, quote, I feel like what I've learned as a lesson a few times now, and it's something that especially in this pandemic year, working with writers has become clear. The lesson is that you have to plan things as best you can. And you always need to be able to respond to the unexpected. Having a plan I've learned in some cases the hard way is the most critical thing because otherwise you don't know what you're setting up. You don't know what to emphasize because if you don't know the inevitable of the story, you're just as good as your last sequencer effect or joke or whatever, but you want to be leading to something inevitable. I mean, this has to be one of the worst quotes from any director. This is the like storytelling insight that you're offering. It's a bit like hearing a director say, you know, it's really important to have a camera. The lesson I've learned after all my experience directing multimillion dollar projects, the lesson I learned is that really without a camera, well, you can't shoot anything. I had to learn that lesson the hard way a few times, showed up on set without a camera. They said, well, where's your camera? How are you going to film this? And I said, oh, man, you're right. Never going to forget my camera again. Yes, JJ, it's very important to have a plan when you make movies. Put another way, it's crucial to have some kind of overarching artistic vision so that you actually are telling a story because otherwise you're just playing Maddlet's. And if the executives at Disney knew what they were doing, they would have demanded that JJ Abrams come up with some kind of plan before they hired him, but that was never their goal. They simply wanted to produce the safest moneymaker they possibly could. So they, so they, you know, came up with a technically competent but completely empty series of movies. They assembled the movies from preexisting parts, according to a formula like Ikea furniture. And the end result had all the artistic inspiration and beauty of Ikea furniture. A part of the explanation here other than a time crunch might be that Disney was simply too afraid to do anything else. You probably remember, you might remember the red letter media review of the Phantom Menace where the guy uses the weird voice to deconstruct the film. It was an effective takedown. It went viral before viral videos were really a thing. And we can assume that everybody at Disney saw it and reactions like it. The video opens by saying George Lucas is basically an idiot surrounded by yes men. Watch. So where do I possibly start? Nothing in the Phantom Menace makes any sense at all. It comes off like a script written by an eight year old. It's like George Lucas finished the script in one draft, like he turned it in and they decided to go with it without anyone saying that it made no sense at all or was a stupid incoherent mess. I guess at this point who's gonna question George or tell him what to do? He controls every aspect of the movie. He probably got rid of those people that questioned him creatively a long time ago. I also think that everyone just assumed that a Star Wars prick will be an instant hit regardless of what the plot was. Really, how hard could it be to screw up? From there, you know, basic point, the basic point of the review was that Lucas's film strayed too far from the formula that most successful movies use where there's a clear protagonist who experiences some kind of hardship, conquers adversity and gets the girl in the end. The video acknowledged that some directors constrain from the formula because they're talented but George Lucas doesn't have that talent. Watch. Let's start at movie making 101, shall we? You see, in most movies, the audience needs a character to connect with. Typically, this character is something called a protagonist. When you're in a weird movie with like aliens, monsters and weirdos, the audience really needs someone who's like a normal person like them to guide them through the story. So in addition to being like an everyday kind of slob, usually the pro-protagonist is someone that's down in their luck, in a bad place in their lives, or someone where everything just doesn't always go perfectly for them. Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Well, maybe it's time to get a real job. Eventually, they'll be confronted with some kind of obstacle or struggle that they gotta deal with. Eventually, our bro... man... will find themselves in the lowest point where it seems like all is lost. But eventually, they'll pull through and conquer whatever force opposes them. So unless they're the Cohen brothers, David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Lars von Trier, David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sand, Quentin Tarantino, John Water, Wes Anderson, Sam Peckinpaw, Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, or Jim Jarmusch, you really shouldn't stray away too far from this kind of formula. Now this came out just a couple of years before Disney purchased the rights to Star Wars. It quickly racked up millions of views, became, you know, kind of defined the consensus opinion about the Phantom Menace. Pretty much everyone agreed with it. And I'm not going to defend the prequels here. I think most of the criticisms in the review make sense. I've made many of the same criticisms myself. But Disney and J.J. Abrams drew the wrong conclusions from the video. They decided that based on the popularity of that video and other reactions like it, Star Wars fans simply want a very predictable stock adventure story that follows a familiar arc. And on top of that, Disney most likely concluded that everybody hates George Lucas, and that it's a bad idea to entrust a single figure with total creative control over the franchise. So they allowed J.J. Abrams to make the first film, then handed the second film to Brian Johnson without any coordination or planning whatsoever. And the result was a trilogy that made the prequels, which mostly did suck, in my opinion, look like classics in comparison. Because you see, even when the prequels didn't work, and they often didn't work, they didn't work because the artist George Lucas made bizarre creative choices. But at least it's still art. At least they were creative choices, which is a lot better than a film that's too afraid to make any choices and has no creativity at all. You know, when a film with a bad creative vision, when the creative vision is bad, it's at least bad in kind of an interesting and distinctive way. But this Disney slop now is bad in the most generic and bland way possible, because there's no creative vision behind it. Now if you get a chance, pull up some behind the scenes videos of how Lucas made the prequels. Here's a few of them. Watch. I feel there's more to this, my master. The two Jedi, maybe using the Queen for their own purposes. The main things here, we have the walking hologram generator, which will be added in computer graphics, but it's in front of everybody's walking. We have a map painting of Thede City to put back there, and the light fixtures on the hallway are not what George wants, so we're going to replace them with something else. When the camera pans over to look out this archway, we want to have filled that archway full of tanks and battle droids. So it's relatively straightforward shot. Even the pass by shots go from the sound to loudest sound you ever heard, to no sound, within the sound shot. Well, see what you can do with it. Okay, ready, set. Here's ready. Kind of starts quietly. The wind's bulb comes right up behind Anakin. It's almost like the bulbous sound should be making cool up and down, but it should always be there. Now it's there when you see it, it's not there when you don't. You want to build that tension of the fact that it's right on his tail there, and if you don't hear it, you don't really get the sense that it's right there all the time, and it's going to eat him up. And if anything, that giant sound, you can get him bigger and bigger during the whole thing, is he's struggling to stay ahead of him, because that's the thing that you're afraid of, is the fact that that guy's just going to push him. The engine's going to come right over and right into his head. Whatever you think of the finished product, they're hammering out new scenes and new locations. They were working out the details of the pod racing scene and all the sound effects that would play throughout. They wanted to get the lighting of the palace just right. They weren't preoccupied with recreating the original trilogy. They wanted to make something new, and that's what they did. Was the dialogue kind of stilted? Yes. Were many of the characters weak? Yes. Was a lot of the acting not great? Yes. Was the opening crawl about a trade war pretty, you know, pretty boring? Yes. But no one can accuse the prequels of trying to rip off the original trilogy. The choreography was different. The set pieces were different. And if you happen to be a fan of trade wars and political debates, you know, which is possible, and now tariffs are all the rage again, then, you know, there's something here for you to watch that wasn't in the original films. By contrast, take a look at the making of documentary for the Force Awakens. The entire time, they're fixated on what happened before on nostalgia. You can't go five seconds without talking about the older films and how badly they want to emulate them. They come across like people who are desperate to figure out what made Star Wars appealing so they can copy as much of the original films as possible. They never talk about any of their bold new ideas because they don't have any watch. What we would do is we would have sort of weekly check-in meetings with JJ, where we'd have a conference call, you know, video conference call, and we would go through the art. JJ is very adamant that we kind of go back to the core aesthetics that made the original trilogy so great. And a lot of that was driven by Ralph and his sensibility. And for us, it's kind of going back home in many ways, both for the visual look and the style of the movie. There was a feeling when I was a kid, when I saw Star Wars for the first time, that it was all practical and real. I mean, there are things like being outside the Sandcrawler and seeing those treads, those massive treads right there. It was a physical, tangible, real thing. You knew it when you saw the movie. So we wanted to go back and embrace the look of those original films, which was all part of the feeling of how they were able to transport you into that universe. There are things that are relevant, things you're identifying with. Certainly for all young kids when the movie came out, they either wanted to be Luke Skywalker or they saw themselves as Han Solo. And I think that was a part of our challenge, was how are we going to bring new characters into this series that had that same kind of power? What was made clear to me very early on was that it was going to be shot on film, which is something that I love. I love working with film. When you're making Star Wars, there's really no choice but to shoot it on film. You have to, because the originals were shot on film, and it's very much part of how we remember them looking and feeling. There's something that you need to capture on Celluloid, no question. The villain in training is interesting for me because in talking about villains in Star Wars, you don't and can't get better than Darth Vader. It's sort of the thing. They had created an image that was unmistakable. You don't need any explanation. The guy walks through the smoke, you get the whole thing, and he's the most threatening villain of all time. The idea that this is a character who's influenced by that darkness started to allow a masked villain, which feels essential in a Star Wars universe, to take form and not feel like we were being naive and acting like there wasn't a Darth Vader. Maybe putting on the mask makes him feel more powerful. It makes perfect sense that this guy has had a huge impact on everybody, and yes, this figure looms large for our villain too. There's so many nods to Vader and how he first met him, and I think JJ was after something more youthful and unpredictable and someone who wasn't polished and even in his lightsaber, it's not quite finished. The scene that made me feel like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. It's when all of the cast are around that table planning. The moment that meant the most to me personally was Akbar was on set. And you know, security's been so tight, we're not allowed to take pictures or anything, but I had to take a picture of Akbar on set and show it to my brothers because we loved Akbar. It's a trap. It's a powerful power weapon of that size. They're fangirling about Admiral Akbar being on set, they're making sure all the visuals look like the original trilogy. One callback after another without any new ideas. From a business perspective, it makes sense, at least in the short term. The film made $2 billion, and as a result, Disney decided that there must be insatiable demand for Star Wars products, even if they're unoriginal and uninteresting. Having no respect for the audience at all, which is another problem with all these companies, they have no respect for the audience. I think the audience is stupid. And so they think that, well, you'll just guzzle down whatever slop they give you, and it doesn't matter. A lot of the criticism directed towards higher education is deserved. Many universities charge absurd amounts of money to teach students things that won't help them get a job, and probably shouldn't have been majors in the first place. Meanwhile, half the country is buried in student debt. So when a university actually tries to do things differently, it stands out. My show is proud to be sponsored by Grand Canyon University. GCU is a private, non-profit Christian university based in Phoenix, Arizona. Unlike a lot of schools, GCU seems to understand that education is supposed to prepare people for real life. GCU is one of the largest universities in the country with more than 132,000 students attending either online or on campus. It's not some tiny commuter school pretending to be a university. 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And to that end, Disney created something called the volume, which is basically a cylindrical sound stage that's surrounded by LED screens that display video game style CGI backgrounds. It was supposed to be much better than a traditional green screen, and it would fool audiences into thinking that Disney was shooting on location or building complicated sets, which they weren't. Watch. While filming this scene from Disney's The Mandalorian, the actors could see their surroundings, but the surroundings weren't actually there. All of this is just LED screens, displaying backgrounds pre-made in a video game engine. Compare that with this fight scene from Avengers Endgame, where actors jumped around in a sea of green imagining how VFX artists would make this planet look once filming had ended. The Mandalorian is one of the first major productions to choose LED walls over green screens, and the benefits for the actors are just the tip of the iceberg. LED walls make the lighting better, filming smoother, and in certain cases cost a lot less than using green screens. Now, you may be thinking, this isn't so new. I've seen something like this before, and you're right, kind of. The predecessor to what we see on The Mandalorian is a driving scene like this one from Doctor No. You've got the actor in the car, and behind them, a screen with footage of the road they've travelled. But the technology was limited. Say you want to move the camera angle during the scene. That projected footage can't move with the camera. But by using Unreal Engine, tech borrowed from the video game field, that problem is solved. Artists can create a photorealistic 3D background that moves strictly with the camera's field of view, known as the frustum. So if the camera swings around and changes angles, the background shifts in precisely the same way. This allows motion-tracked cameras to execute traditional cinematography techniques within the virtual set. Achieving cinematic movements like the parallax effect, where an object in the foreground moves at a different speed than the background, amplifies the illusion of filming at an actual location. He says lighting is one of the key benefits of working with virtual sets. The light coming from the LEDs provide realistic colors and reflections on the actors and props, something you simply can't achieve with green screen. Like most tech demos, it sounds convincing enough, it seems to solve all the problems of traditional green screens. The executives at Disney concluded that it would help them mass produce shows like Kenobi and The Mandalorian, and nobody would notice that they were cheaping out. But actually, people did notice. This is a video from the YouTuber Zax, giving a few examples of how using the volume for some very awkward staging decisions that made no sense in the context of the story. And full disclosure, once you watch this video, there's a good chance you won't be able to stomach any of these Disney Star Wars shows anymore if somehow you were able to do that to begin with. Here it is. The volume is basically a sound stage that's run by ILM under their brand StageCraft. It's a super cool technology, but it can be super limiting. But with the volume in StageCraft, there's no choice. It can look like your characters are anywhere, but they're really on a small stage. And you can change the backdrop, but it's always a circle. Remember that. But if you need more than one actor to move through that space, it gets silly fast. And so what you get is scenes like this from Kenobi, the one that launched a thousand memes. The chase starts in a circle, and that's because the actors can't gain or lose any distance between each other because there's no distance to gain. So they look like parents who are trying to lose a race to their kid to boost their self-esteem. So now he's got to escape, but there's a freaking laser fence. Yeah, those are hard to get around. They are, except for this one, which is very easy to walk around. Oh, well good. Yeah, so they panic for a second trying to get through, but then Obi-Wan realizes he can shoot the control panel and get through. Why don't you just walk around? Well, this is much more exciting, sir. I don't know, man. Just walk around the hill. But it gets even dumber. With all the stormtroopers taken out, Obi-Wan runs up to the checkpoint, which is made of powerful lasers, and he can't quite figure out how to shut them off. So he decides to shoot the controls and hope that it will deactivate the lasers. Now, I want you to take a very close look at this image right here and tell me, what do you think Obi-Wan should have done? Now, Mike makes sense for Obi-Wan to want to disable these lasers if he had intended on using the vehicle, but he doesn't. To be fair, bringing the truck through wasn't the volume's fault. No, there was a scripted reason for that. Not a good reason, but a scripted reason. And what possible reason could they have? I'm gonna have to circle back to that. So I'm gonna guess that the reason that he didn't go around the laser fence was because there is no around the laser fence. And they also couldn't go over it because there is no over it. It's a curved LED screen, and I'm gonna pause it that these are the edges of that screen. And once you can recognize it, you start seeing it everywhere. Like maybe if it's not in the volume, you have them be shrouded by a dozen stormtroopers, and he has no chance, or they have Leia or something, because it's the volume, they're coming from one direction and there's only three of them. With this filming technique, you can't have actors enter or exit that circle while on camera. So they kind of got a teleport. Outside the volume circle, perspective change, Obi-Wan and Leia are saved, and now all the performers are inside that circle and so they can interact. That's another example where Vader's in front of a wall of flames, but he could clearly just walk around it if he wanted to. But with the volume, the actors can't walk around anything. Now, with the exception of Andor, pretty much all of Disney Star Wars shows have relied on this crutch, and it's obviously making the shows worse. Now, for comparison, here's how Lucas was filming his big climactic showdowns 27 years ago, and this is what filmmaking looked like in the pre-Disney era. Watch. And action! Now, with the wonders of modern technology embraced by Disney, none of this is possible anymore. Characters can't fall from heights or chase each other around because they're confined to a tiny stage surrounded by LED screens on all sides. And by the way, since the moment topic of CGI, it needs to be said that the prequels actually had some extremely well done sequences. The opening of Revenge of the Sith is one of them. So was the lightsaber duel at the end of Phantom Menace and the pod racing. Somehow a movie from three decades ago in several respects looks better than what Disney is producing now, but the Star Wars content isn't only terrible because of bad CGI and staging, it's also terrible because the characters are atrocious. This is one of those things that very clearly Disney miscalculated, and they have no idea what they did wrong. And you can tell because Disney built this massive billion dollar theme park called Galaxy's Edge in California and Florida, and it was intended to highlight all the new characters in the sequel trilogy, you know, Kylo Ren and Rey the girl and so on. And for the same reason, Disney built a Star Wars hotel that was set in the timeline of the new trilogy and which forced guests to be locked away in a windowless building that was supposed to resemble a spaceship. The whole pitch was that you get to hang out with Rey and all these great new characters, but their fans didn't respond to any of this because all of these new characters are garbage and the hotel was frankly insane idea because who doesn't want to stay in a hotel with no windows. And so they shut down the hotel and now they're bringing back characters from the original trilogy for their theme park, and this is how they're introducing them. Watch. So they don't look anything like the, you know, actual characters, but I guess these are the best actors Disney could find. They were desperate to give their customers an alternative to Kylo Ren and so they had to scramble. Now think about what a humiliating about face this is. They were convinced to the point that they spent a billion dollars on the idea that people were clamoring to walk around the Disney Star Wars universe they created, and now they're realizing that actually nobody wants to do that. It's quite likely that no one at Disney has any idea what went wrong. In fact, it's guaranteed they have no idea. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. This is from an exit interview that Kathleen Kennedy did with Deadline a few months ago after announcing her departure from Lucasfilm. She was asked about the low points in her tenure and this is what she said, quote, the lows are that you've got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. And if you're not going to do that, then you know going in that you're going to disappoint them. I'm not sure there's anything you could do about that because you can't please everybody. All you can do is try to tell good stories and try to stick to the essence of what George created. He embedded incredible values into Star Wars and what it has to say. The whole idea of hope and fun and entertainment and what he's done over all these years, that's what I tried to preserve and I wouldn't do that any differently and I wouldn't change anything that we've done over the years. No, of course you wouldn't Kathleen. Yes, according to Kathleen Kennedy, a very, very small percentage of angry fans who she's previously suggested are misogynists are upset because they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. Apparently the backlash is coming from a tiny sliver of the Star Wars fan base, which perfectly explains why the entire franchise is bombing right now, which, you know, makes a lot of sense. One percent of fans hate change and therefore nobody cares about a Star Wars movie for the first time ever. Never mind the fact that Kathleen Kennedy's idea of new and interesting content is a cheap looking LED wall along with shows built around the trials and tribulations of black lesbian witches. Actually, that's selling the acolytes short. They also manage to shoehorn gender-neutral pronouns into the show as well, as you've probably seen, but if you haven't, here it is again. Now this kind of dialogue was inserted into these shows as a deliberate effort by Kathleen Kennedy to make a political point and here's what she told the New York Times, quote, my belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people. That's an easy decision for me. Operating within these giant franchises now with social media and the level of expectation, it's terrifying. I think Leslie, the showrunner of the acolyte, has struggled a little bit with it. I think a lot of the women who step into Star Wars struggle with this a bit more because of the fan base being so male dominated they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal. Now it's actually difficult to string together so many idiotic comments in a row, even if you're trying to. No, storytelling does not need to be representative of all people. It's impossible for storytelling to be representative of all people. For one thing, there are more than 8 billion people on the planet and as a practical matter, no film or television show can represent whatever that means, all of them. But even if it were somehow possible to say cast all 8 billion people in your show and represent every single one of them, that would not improve the storytelling at all. It's irrelevant to this. In fact, it's not just irrelevant to storytelling. Representation is not just irrelevant to storytelling, it's anti-storytelling. Okay, a story should not represent the wishes and desires and fantasies, much less political ideologies of every single person who hears the story. It should instead represent the singular and distinct vision of the storyteller. That's what a story is, that's what art is. When people go to a movie, a good storyteller is saying, hey, I've got a great story to tell you and everybody gathers around because they want to hear that person's story. I want to hear your story and if I'm sitting around the campfire to hear your great story, I don't want other people around the campfire to chime in and add to it. No, I don't want to hear their stories, I want to hear your story. That's what we're all sitting here for. Does the godfather represent all people? Does Moby Dick represent all people? Does Michelangelo's David? Does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Do any of these iconic works of art through their various different mediums represent everyone on the planet? Were they crowdsourced? Were they made democratically after taking into account the priorities and preferences of the voting majority? No, clearly not. If Francis Ford Coppola or Melville or Michelangelo had taken that approach, their masterpieces never would have been made and if they had been made, they wouldn't be masterpieces. They would be watered down lowest combat denominator sludge, stripped of everything challenging and distinct about them in an attempt to appeal to the largest number of people. That's not how artists create. They create based on their distinctive vision and if their vision is brilliant and beautiful and their skills can match it, then their creation will be representative of no one's desires but their own and yet will connect with and inspire and fascinate billions of humans for centuries. Now, George Lucas obviously created something like that with his original series. He obviously created something that connected with billions of people for, if not centuries, decades. Disney used to create art like that decades ago but they along with most of the rest of Mainstream Hollywood today no longer create art that inspires and fascinates billions across generations because they no longer create art at all. Art is not something, again, that can be constructed strategically in a boardroom as part of a strategy to monetize your IP. No art has ever been made that way or could ever be made that way. It cannot work that way. That's not what art is. So if you're making films that fail to connect and fail to rise to the level of art at all, then what do you do? Well, Disney decided that the best strategy was to yell at the audience for not liking their product enough and this has been the pitch for years now. You know, if you hate the terrible product, then you hate women, which is something that everybody associated with the Acolyte of course kept saying very explicitly, watch. I want to ask you both because this is, I would say arguably the gayest Star Wars, I think, but a considerable margin and are you excited about that? Are you bracing yourself? Nothing. It's pretty gay, let's be honest. Leslie, are you, how do you feel? Am I gay? Yes. No, I know you are gay, but I'm asking, are you excited about putting this, you know, this is going to be a talking point. Is it going to be a talking point? I'm sure some, because nerds are gay. Well, some nerds are very not gay and are very threatened by gay stuff. Well, that's true, but in my world, nerds are gay. Was this the fun element of, no, I don't think so. And yet people have told me that it's the gayest Star Wars and I frankly, you're offended. Into it. No, I think that Star Wars is so gay already. Okay. I mean, have you seen the fits? We'd be like, look how gay this is and then send each other a reference photo. And are you telling me with a straight face that C-3PO is straight? They're a couple. That's what I think. This is more outward. I think it's canon that R2-D2 is a lesbian. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Ask Filoni. Okay. Ask Filoni. Can you imagine? Now, if you think that all these people should never work in Hollywood again, then according to Kathleen Kennedy, you simply hate women. You also hate anything that's new. You want to be told the same stories over and over again. I mean, that's how completely retarded these people are. That obviously they're also completely missing the point. The problem is not that the audience wants to see the same thing over and over again. It's actually the opposite of that. Like, what you're doing is the same thing over and over again. Okay. Just using the same formula and plugging in different characters and then throwing in some gender pronoun nonsense, throwing in a lesbian or a black person. That's not something new. That's not a whole bold new vision. But this was their strategy to take the formula, to take a formula that they didn't create, and then make it new by like, oh, we're going to have more black people and lesbians in it than before. And what you need to realize is that these dumb narcissistic destructive women are in charge of pretty much every corporation in the country right now. I mean, Star Wars is the least of our problems in that respect. Actually, Kathleen, the problem with the Disney content is that it's terrible. Let's go back to that red letter media video for a second. It's true that the original films were formulaic, but they also executed the formula well. Luke goes through the hero's journey suffers, loses his hand before triumphing in the end. That's classic storytelling. Now Ray, on the other hand, was created in a lab by Kathleen Kennedy and the Feminist at Disney. Her arc makes no sense. She learns the Force one minute and she's defeating Kylo Ren in one-on-one combat the next. For his part, Finn kind of does nothing after the first movie. Movie Poe was written as a Han Solo clone. They completely changed Luke's personality. Han Solo doesn't evolve either. Basically at every turn, you can tell that Disney was winging the new films. It's not that they had a new vision. The problem against it, they had no vision whatsoever. Their only goal was just pumping out as much content as possible as a monetization strategy. And here's a post from a Disney official X account dated December 2020. Quote, over the next few years, roughly 10 Marvel series, 10 Star Wars series, 15 Disney live action Disney animation and Pixar series plus 15 all new Disney live action Disney animation and Pixar features will be released directly on Disney Plus. Now almost six years later out of 10 Star Wars series, we're finally getting a movie. They apparently canceled a bunch of other projects for one reason or another. And this grand new movie after all this time is a repackaged season four of the show, The Mandalorian. That's what The Mandalorian and Grogu is. The budget of this alleged major motion picture is less than $170 million, which is a fraction of the budget of every other modern Star Wars film. Disney is throwing this on the screen because they're out of ideas. They figure they might as well try to sell some toys before the franchise is put on an indefinite hiatus. So that's exactly what they're going to do. Now George Lucas was attacked rightly so for including Ewoks in Return of the Jedi and Jar Jar Binks and Phantom Menace as a cynical ploy to sell merchandise, which is a significant reason for his enormous wealth. But Lucas never made an entire movie from start to finish solely to sell toys without any meaningful plot characterization or reason to care about anything that happens. It took a series of catastrophic decisions by Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy, JJ Abrams, Ryan Johnson and company to get us to this point, but we're definitely here. One of the most recognizable stories in modern American history has been destroyed. Disney has created in its place a political project that reflects the absolute worst impulses of progressivism and feminism, and they've demanded that we indoctrinate our children with it. Now there's one silver lining in this entire saga. It's that contrary that Kathleen Kennedy expected. Millions of Americans are refusing to go along with it. They're making it very clear that, you know, this is not about hating women or hating new ideas. They just hate the bastardized, pointless, insulting, trashy, low IQ mess that this franchise has to become, has become. Which is to say that Star Wars is dead and Disney killed it. So I'll do it for the show today and this week. Talk to you next week. Have a great weekend. Godspeed. Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon, widely considered one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. A man who had a vision for a colorblind society, a post-racial America. He had a dream. It's just not the dream you thought it was. Were his true aims a colorblind society or something far more radical? Who bankrolled him? What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful? We wanted to show you a clip of the I Have a Dream speech, but according to our lawyers, we can't. In fact, King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets. They want to silence critics like us. What they're doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King Jr. Not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. Is America today stronger, more unified, and racially equal than before King's rise? These questions demand answers and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the civil rights movement and its consequences. King's movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government. I speak as a citizen of the world. Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases, though the cause of evil is a cross. The first part of our two-part special on the civil rights movement, a new constitution available now on Daily Wire+. Start the spring season off right with a new pair of Tukovas' western boots. Hand-crafted and over 200 steps from genuine leather, they're built to last and feel broken in the moment you put them on. From cow hide to exotic leathers, Tukovas blends timeless style with all-day comfort. Pair them with premium denim, western shirts, and accessories for an effortless polished look. Shop quality western goods in store or online at tukovas.com. Who answers America's call for more energy? Our people do. They've helped boost Chevron's U.S. energy production by nearly 60% in the past three years, helping fuel national energy security, and drives down the open roads that make America. Learn more about what our people do at chevron.com slash america.