Tag: Disney

The Magic of Disney Imagineers: Enjoying a world where creativity is unleashed and money is not an obstical

For me, the most enjoyable parts of life come from cultures that are “can doers” as opposed to those who use every excuse in existence not to do something. Whether its family, friends, co-workers, political alliances, or just basic economic considerations, I enjoy most what can be done and hate the most when people point barriers as to why something can’t. That is why so many of my articles are about taxes, politics and prohibitive psychology. The people I like most in the world are those who find ways to do something. Those I like the least are those who must be drug through the mud on everything, whether it’s a movie, buying a new car or house, or just going to the shopping center to purchase socks or something iniquitous toward daily life. Therefor, when it comes to my own needs to recharge my batteries, I find places full of energy and creativity the best for me and is my idea of a vacation. And more specifically, I love the type of people that the Disney Company hires as Imagineers, very imaginative and whimsical people who are also very smart on the engineering side of things. I enjoy the products they create and is my idea of a vacation to see their work.

With all that said my two favorite kinds of people are very creative types, and engineers, very smart and logical people. Sadly, for me, those traits often don’t exist in the same people, so I have to speak to a lot of people to get all those elements in my life. But in doing that, it takes time away from other things, which for me there never is enough of it to give. I fly in and out of meetings with people because there is always something going on that I need to do and in my own pursuits of these creative things, it’s a lot like digging for gold, you put a lot of effort into getting just a little bit. However, at places like Disney World, the reason things cost so much money ultimately is because the entertainment company tends to hire just the kind of people I have said I like the most and over the last decade, under the guidance of Bob Iger the Disney Imagineers have been given a lot to do and I enjoy watching them do it.

I think Bob Iger as the CEO of Disney has done a great job and in many ways I am thankful for him and the chances he has taken to advance the input Imagineers have had on the company. I’m not at all crazy that Iger is a Democrat. For this series of articles, I won’t hold that against him because he has made some great decisions to free the type of people I am talking about up so that they could do the best work possible. So for my vacation this year I have been at the Disney World complex in Orlando which I make no mistake in loving as I’ve said many times in the past. But this time the scope of my visit has been to enjoy the work of the Disney Imagineers in the way that one might enjoy the Mona Lisa at the Louvre or any other place where great creativity is on display. I consider the work of Disney Imagineers to be far better and superior to other acts of human endeavor and capitalism is the fuel they have to create such fantastic attributes. So under that definition, I have always loved Disney World and that is an emotion that grows as time advances.

I timed my visit to the parks this time to match the opening of the new Rise of the Resistance ride at Hollywood Studios and to enjoy the new Star Wars land that its in called Galaxy’s Edge. But its more than just geeking out on Star Wars, for me its all about the Imagineers who have been turned loose by the Disney Company to make so many great creations over the last decade that I have been so excited to see on a whirlwind trip that I had been looking forward to for a long time. Disney+ the new streaming service showcasing the many products of Disney over the years has a great show they produce dedicated to their Imagineers which I would highly recommend watching, even for a casual observer. If the world had more people like those Imagineers in it, everything would be better. And in spite of my thoughts on how the Disney Company has handled Star Wars, by introducing way too much social justice into the franchise and pushing it to near ruin, the vast financial resources that Disney has can not be understated in giving their Imagineers the time and money to make some of the neatest creations on planet earth, which I think is far more significant.

So this vacation of mine has nothing to do with rest and relaxation, or unplugging from the world, its all about relishing the products of raw creativity and vast amounts of financial resources. For instance, the new Star Wars land at Hollywood Studios and the park in Anaheim, California cost around $1 billion. No company on earth in any country could do something like that, so I can think of no place anywhere to visit that is better for my purpose, and that is to enjoy as much Imagineering created by raw capitalism that could be found anywhere. And for me, the first stop was to the newly renovated Disney Springs shopping complex where a bar was dedicated to one of my favorite movie characters of all time, Indiana Jones called Jock Lindsey’s Bar and Grill. I literally got off the airplane at the Orlando airport and headed there first because it’s something I’ve been wanting to see for a few years now.

The restaurants and shopping district of Disney Springs is what I would call a perfect marriage of the kind of world we should have everywhere. Because of the way Walt Disney bought the property in Florida, they have their own central government which helps with their regulatory burdens. When they need to fix a road or get a permit for a new building, the amount of land they control has given them their own governing ability, which keeps the bureaucracy to a minimum. A place like Disney Springs would not have happened any other way, and certainly nothing like Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar would have never been born from the minds of Disney Imagineers. But its not just that, all around the complex the input of the Imagineers is everywhere, most spectacularly in a recreation of the kind of springs that are so popular in Florida as the centerpiece. It was spectacularly beautiful and in a lot of ways much better than nature itself. The marriage of so much creativity with corporate capitalism at Disney Springs is something that was just wonderful in so many ways, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be to recharge my own batteries.

Politicians and other bureaucrats in any community anywhere in the world would find a million reasons not to build something like Disney Springs. And that is just the reason I love going to those types of places, because the level of creativity and the money to spend on it is so abundant, it is great to see what the human mind can produce if only they are allowed to. And in no place in the world are imaginative engineering types even employed, let alone turned loose to create so many fine works of art for the purpose of entertainment. And in our American culture, that is something to cherish, and to provide plenty of reverence, which I do.

Rich Hoffman

The Mandalorian: One great show on Disney+

So the Mandalorian television show for Star Wars showing on Disney+ continues to impress me and make me very happy to have the new streaming service option as part of a massive collection of entertainment options. At this point there have been five episodes and its quite clear that the creators understand what Star Wars is all about, even if critics are still mystified as to the magic. Most people love the show, many of them like it. I have yet to hear from people who hate it. Critics in the industry continue to measure “greatness” by the amount of social justice in any entertainment product, and Star Wars has never been about that. When Disney has tried to make social justice part of the experience, Star Wars fails. And that is not the case with The Mandalorian. I wouldn’t say that Episode 5 was my favorite so far, but I do love the title, “The Gunslinger.”

It was fun to travel back to Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine from the original Star Wars movie and see the cantina, the Dewbacks, and the docking bays that originally started us all on this massive journey. This particular episode reminded me again of many of the great westerns that I grew up loving, specifically in this case, The Unforgiven with the stupid young kid playing off the much more experienced gunfighter. Critics keep providing a disclaimer that this series is Saturday morning cartoon material, and more specifically, Saturday morning matinee material which George Lucas grew up on. OK, so what? That’s what makes this kind of entertainment so special. That’s how Star Wars was born to begin with, so its not surprising that the creators are trying to get back to the roots of what makes the brand so special. Sometimes its good to tell a story without trying to change a public narrative, but one that reflects the one we have. Disney has certainly listened to the fans even if the industry is still trying to scratch their heads at why returning back to Mos Eisley was so much fun for fans.

I think its great that female directors are working on The Mandalorian. I thought Bryce Dallas Howard did a great job with Episode 4, brilliant even. It doesn’t matter to me if the director is a man or a woman, what matters is if the content is good, and with this show, it is. So long as nobody tries to turn the show into something that its not, The Mandalorian will continue to be a hit. I found myself looking forward to this latest episode all week and its been a very long time since I’ve had that experience, especially these days with all the on demand content that you can binge watch. Having a show that is this much fun to look forward to after a long hard work week is a wonderful thing to have, and I must thank Disney+ for giving it to us.

What is unexpected by me at this point in the show’s run is the popularity of Baby Yoda which is all anybody who is anyone is talking about. The little creature from The Mandalorian is taking over the internet and people are falling all over themselves for a chance to get the first merchandise that goes on sale. The Mandalorian is a cool show, so it’s a bit odd that such a cute character that so many people love has come out of it is the surprise. At this point in the season I wouldn’t have guessed that so many people would be talking about it. I would say the character is so popular that if we put Baby Yoda on the ballot for the next presidential election, that he’d win. That is the state of our political life these days, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The value of something from a scientific perspective is whether or not its fun. In a society of thinking human beings, we all need a little fun in our lives, and anything that gives that to us is a tremendous benefit. Having fun gives us the ability to set perspective and manage stress, so in that regard, The Mandalorian is better than just a show, it’s a wonderful stress management tool full of big ideas as this gunfighter/bounty hunter travels around a galaxy in a cool starship and interacts with all kinds of challenges without getting too emotional. That makes these shows fun and a great relief from the mundane outside world that is addicted to problems and stagnant thinking. So far, The Mandalorian never seems too far from a solution no matter how great the problem has been. In this Episode 5 The Mandalorian gets into a dogfight in space with someone trying to collect a bounty on him, and his ship is knocked out stranding him. He doesn’t panic and cry to his mom, he just calmly fixes his ship and gets going again. Traditionally, that is what the Saturday morning serials did for young people, show them how to deal with tragedy with a kind of bravado that made all their normal problems seem small, and in that way, solutions were easy to find.

Everyone in entertainment could take a lessen from The Mandalorian. Nobody says that a good show must have a huge budget and a bunch of cry baby characters to be good. Just giving the audience what they are looking for is the most important thing. Nothing about The Mandalorian is trying to be the next critically acclaimed show, it’s just having fun being what it is and its kind of strange to find that so refreshing because when I was growing up, most everything that was produced had that kind of whimsical quality. Most of the time, the best things are the things that critics don’t like, because many of them have some social agenda they are trying to steer creative people to, such as social justice concerns that are here today and gone tomorrow as a political priority. The things that matter most to people are things that last no matter how politics are aligned.

If Disney keeps up this kind of production I will be firmly in their camp. I have been skeptical about them as a company as they have been way to political for me, even as recently as Frozen II. I am very much a lover of traditional Walt Disney productions, and this Mandalorian title and the direction of Star Wars recently gives me hope that we can get back to that kind of story telling and cultural reverence. But I’m bound to like anything that has the title, “The Gunslinger.” Kids need a lot more entertainment like that, the values extend deep into our culture not just into our past, but for our future. But heck with the kids, I need more of this, and apparently so do many other fans of the show. Baby Yoda is cute, and it makes the show better. However, what makes the show good is that its fun, and its not afraid to take some chances which is why I look forward to it all week long, and watch it at my first available moment every Friday.

Rich Hoffman

How to Kill a Bear: Disney+, Congressional Impeachment, and a Metrosexual invasion caused by our education system

I was reminded of something while watching the old Davy Crockett shows on Disney+. While its obvious that Disney has been part of the problem lately regarding social justice, and that disclaimer certainly comes with their views on some of their older products, like Crockett, they do have a vast body of work that has been very good and now that they are all in one place, its been very enjoyable for me. I have been able to go back and watch the old Zorro television shows and other wonderful, old fashioned stories from a one stop shop reconnecting me to many of the good memories of my childhood. Yet even then, as a child, my thoughts were out of step with the rest of the world. Not that they were wrong, just out of step. In Sunday school, which I attended most of my youth along with church most Sundays, I always skipped the line about Jesus Christ, “we are weak, but he is strong” because that was never my plan, even as a five-year-old. But in the first episode of Davy Crockett from the Disney television show where he single handedly wrestled a bear and turned it into “table meat” with his bare hands—well that was something I could admire. And I did as many young people did.

My thoughts about public education go back to the very beginning. I hated it from day one of my very first hour in kindergarten and I never warmed up to it. I would describe my experience as a kind of Papillion complex where I felt imprisoned and intent to wait out my enemies with sheer endurance. But conversion over to their way of thinking was never on my radar, nor was compliance to their stupid rules and modes of thinking. I can’t say that my parents did anything to me to make me think this way. I’ve always been a very private thinker with a lot on my mind and the very first hour of public school with a bunch of other lazy minded kids was not pleasant. Nor being told that I was expected to limit my own growth to their parameters. The result of that was that I grew up always in trouble because compliance to a norm was the parameters of success and honor, which I never accepted.

My parents ground me from everything I enjoyed which only made matters worse. From their point of view they had to get me compliant to the social norms of kids my age so I spent most of my youth grounded from television and other things kids do, because of all the trouble I had at school. I was allowed to read books so that was what I did. But when I wasn’t grounded and could watch television with the family, shows like Davy Crockett and other great old westerns were things I soaked up for all I could get before my teachers would call my parents again over some disciplinary action that would put me back into solitary confinement again. When I could drive a car and get away from all those restrictions I did, and in a big way. I’ve told the stories elsewhere, but I drove everywhere very fast. I got into a lot more trouble legally by almost every county in southern Ohio but I had no regrets. I’m proud to have survived it all with my mind intact. I would say my situation is very unusual, but the sentiment is not uncommon. Most people have thoughts of such a preservation of their intellect, but along the way they get broken by the compliance track. And now as adults they know of nothing else and it is destroying the world in ways that I’ve been warning about my entire life.

Watching the impeachment hearings has brought all this up in a raw form because of my ruthless dedication to the cause. I joke about an invasion of metrosexuals but even so, it is clear that they are numerous and were raised to think the way they do from our very deficient education system. Some get out of it alive, but most don’t and it’s getting worse. You get a stable measure when something like Disney+ comes out and you can see what people used to value as opposed to what they value today, and the cause of that difference is the influences kids get as a youth. If the entertainment culture and education system are all saying to conform to some rules and regulations that were created by bureaucrats to impose order as opposed to freedom of thought, then the result will be obvious, and we are seeing it during the impeachment trial.

Women have always had it in their DNA to be something of a compliant figure. Their biological job has been to give birth, and nurture that family. Anything away from that is a matter of human invention created by political movements, not aligned with human biological need. They’d look to their husband, their social network, and their larger regional identification for the rules to raise their family within for the sake of their children’s safety. Even now they are the helicopter moms that are putting pillows next to their kids to break their every move from the possibility of danger. With that being said, men were the dynamic influences that balanced out danger from safety. Danger is always a good learning opportunity especially if the goal is to become more individually independent, which all minds yearn to be in some way or another.

The trend of public education was always to built compliant people, not necessarily thinking ones, and that is most obvious by the actions of this current congress and the media dialogue that is spawning off it. People not broken by their pasts are not buying into it, but for those who have yielded to the pressures of their youth, they are obviously lost as to how a president like Trump could act so easily on his own and think so confidently in his own thoughts. That bewilderment is the root of their entire case and it really goes back to the kind of thinking where Davy Crockett killed a bear with his hands all by himself. Today’s metrosexual male trained in the ways of the tyrannical public education system would have to get a group of people to build a concession plan as to whether or not to kill the bear, and while doing so, they’d have to plan how to do it. By the time they would get to actually killing the bear the creature would die of old age. And that is the expectation of our education system. To destroy the ambition to kill bears with one’s own ambition and skill, and turn all individuals into a compliant blob where nobody can do anything without anybody elses’ permission. It is the same kind of thinking that went into building the United Nations. Nobody goes ahead of any others. Nobody has more or less and in that way, there will never be any conflict. But at the expense of progress.

Young people no longer have such influences of Davy Crockett to tell them that maybe they could grow up to kill a bear with their hands alone, but the message is that they are chained to their neighbors and community members and their limits. And that we should be happy to reside there unquestioning. That is why congress thinks they can turn the message of the impeachment attempt against President Trump, because they trust that system so much that they assume it will work. But what they fail to realize is that even though many people have been intellectually broken they still have that deep fantasy as people of being free of that burden and Trump offers through his brand a release from that prison. And that is what our modern political movement is based on. People are rejecting that education system of compliance. While some have found success in learning the rules and being nice compliant shrimps such as these metrosexual types, most are resentful of the intrusion and they escape from the rigors of life to their televisions where Disney+ now has so many offerings. But among them are not the progressive garbage of our modern age, but of the traditions that made Disney such a great company to begin with. And that is something that can only be good for the vast amount of minds imprisoned otherwise to faulty modes of thinking, and providing an option they have desperately been in need of.

Rich Hoffman

D23 and Star Wars: Liberal ideas are rejected everywhere, especially in a galaxy far, far away

It’s important because it involves so many parts of our culture, but as I occasionally do write about Star Wars it is interesting to watch as how its meaning has changed for people over time. Personally, when people ask me how I’m able to do so much on such a range of things, it’s because I use mythology to grasp concepts so that there is room for ideas to be conceived and to grow. I would compare it to a bowl to hold something like popcorn in, the bigger the bowl, the more ideas you can hold. Mythology is how the human race holds ideas that it can then grasp and work with, and the bigger the ideas, the better functioning the society. In a lot of ways young people have more than ever lots of vehicles to invest ideas into, not just the movies that we all grew up on, but video games, a lot of literature, and all the streaming services that are available such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. And to make those streaming services flourish there has to be a lot of content and Hollywood, as I have been saying for years, is struggling to produce. We live in one of the most creative times in human history, but we have more than ever also witnessed how liberalism in general in a culture of mass competition for ideas shows the trends of society and nothing more vividly displays that trend like Star Wars, because it is at least a cultural measure that everyone can pretty much agree is a standard mythology of our culture. Not everyone likes it, but it manages to touch most people in some way or another making a great platform for analysis.

So to catch everyone up on where Star Wars is, there is a movie coming out this December, it’s the last film of the nine part series that has been going on for 40 years. It’s an important key to whether or not Star Wars survives into the future because as of now, it only has nostalgic value. Young people don’t necessarily like it on its own, its more something that they can share with their parents and grandparents, so the brand is struggling. Watching all the D23 news from Disney over this past weekend there is a lot to look forward to from arguably the largest media company in the world. But the evidence that as a very progressive company that has lost their way into making new and fresh ideas is obvious. Disney as a company is living off their legacy properties and what they’ve done many years ago, not what they have been able to do lately. With the exception of the Marvel movies, there hasn’t been anything fresh from Disney for years as they have taken for granted that people will buy into their products even though they are spewing with progressive political causes, such as race diversity, sex issues such as feminism, and elements of gay rights that most people just aren’t comfortable with. Disney as a company has tried to hide their massive appetite for capitalism behind progressive causes and it has hurt them tremendously—because they weren’t honest about it. They would have been better off to proclaim that they are happy to make money and not ashamed of it one bit instead of trying to sell themselves off as progressive activists laboring for every liberal cause known to mankind. Not so much at the stock exchange rate yet, but that is coming just as I stated years ago after the first new age Star Wars film came out, that Disney has really screwed up the multi billion dollar franchise leaving them desperate to fix it, which is what they are promising to do on several fronts starting with the new film coming out this December in addition to several live action television shows coming to their new streaming service, such as The Mandalorian, and a new show just about Obi-Wan Kenobi played by Ewen McGregor which fans have wanted for over 20 years.

Star Wars, especially the best parts of it such as the cantina scenes where Obi-Wan cuts off the arm of an assailant in A New Hope, then shortly thereafter Han Solo kills the bounty hunter Greedo in a blaze of gun fire, these modern progressive filmmakers thought that what they had made with Star Wars could be that bowl I was talking about that could hold lots of ideas including copious amounts of progressive sentiment. Even with the billions of dollars that Disney has put into Star Wars the fans have responded flat which was most notable with the most recent Star Wars movie, which I loved, Solo: A Star Wars Story. After The Last Jedi, which I enjoyed, fans had shown they had enough of Disney tampering with something they loved and they were rejecting the Disneyification of Star Wars outright, and not buying the toys, and merchandise at the levels that Disney needed them to in order to justify their investment. This has been obvious now that the big Star Wars lands that have opened in California and now in Disney World in Orlando and people aren’t that interested. I warned everyone way back in 2015 on radio and several articles, that the key to the franchise wasn’t Luke Skywalker, it was Han Solo, the space cowboy that reflected the American values of Ayn Rand and John Wayne, which has always been at the heart of Star Wars. Star Wars for people is best when it has those elements, not actors that were cast because they were Latino, or because they were women—but because the characters were good and the actors fit the part. When Disney essentially killed off the angry white guy characters and failed to replace them with new ones, they lost their audience. The Last Jedi was essentially a movie where all the white men were killed and the crazy progressive women were all in charge and people, real people who are out there voting for Donald Trump don’t want to see movies and stories about that kind of topic, and it has really hurt the Star Wars brand.

But I am encouraged, this year at D23 Disney is showing that they can take their money and do great things with it. I am rooting for them to get it right, I want their Star Wars Land of Galaxy’s Edge to be successful, I want to see Star Wars make a strong comeback for that next generation because it is still one of the best things out there to take our culture from where it was to where it needs to go in science and thought. There is room for big ideas in Star Wars, which is what I use it for as a mythology. It’s a big story with lots of bold concepts, but at its heart it was and continues to be a space western. So long as that formula is stuck to, Star Wars will be successful. If progressive concepts are placed above that formula, then its over for Disney and they seem to understand that now, after a decade of hard lessons.

I was enjoying all the news coming out of D23 and I sort of celebrated by picking up the Lenovo Star Wars Jedi Challenges video game which converts your smart phone into an augmented reality simulator and I have to say it is extremely impressive. But you can see clearly the hit Star Wars has taken to their brand. The unit just a year ago was being sold at Target for $200 and I picked it up this week for less than $50. I figured that for that much money I could take a risk and buy the Disney product and I’m glad I did. But considering what they had done to the legacy fans with the books and previous comics and other merchandise then gave those same fans a mess of a movie in The Force Awakens, which essentially killed all the old white guys and put progressive diversity in charge only to lose over and over again to a very inept First Order, not even I would pay that much money for a new Star Wars game. That’s unfortunate, because the game itself is just amazing, a real technical marvel and exhibition of mythology pushed to its absolute limits. Big ideas, big fun, and a major advancement of the story telling experience.

The lesson here is that progressive, or even liberal ideas cannot fill up that bowl of thought, and people won’t just accept those concepts because they like Star Wars. They like Star Wars because it represents values that most people share, small government, independence, and you gotta have guns. The anti-gun policies and hippie like love your neighbor stuff doesn’t go well with a franchise that is all about war and why wars happen. When you can’t even where a gun on your hip in cosplay to the new Star Wars land in Florida because everyone is crazy over weapons and terrorism, Disney has to understand that you can’t tell a story about peace, love, and trusting the government without weapons, and expect people to spend millions of dollars of their hard earned money on it, just so they can eat colored popcorn and drink blue milk. Star Wars is about fighting for independence, especially personal independence. In all Star Wars stories that are good are examples of institutional failure, even among the Jedi Council, and that is the heart of the entire franchise. Unfortunately, Disney was a part of that institutional thinking and it took them a long time to come close to figuring out the problem. I just hope its not too late. It would be a shame if it is.

Rich Hoffman

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The Black Spire Outpost–the roots of genius

Most of my readers are over 50, but I do have quite a few that are under that number and they are likely as excited as I am about the opening of the Black Spire Outpost in Disneyland, which happens next week. That is of course the new Star Wars Land called Galaxy’s Edge which is finally opening after Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 and now six years later is about to be opened. I had a lot to say on the matter back then and just as I hoped, it will prove to be not only a technical marvel, but an important contributor to human mythology. Additionally, it centerpieces an enthusiasm for the imagination which I think is critical to the production of genius in our culture. A free roaming imagination has many safe places in the Star Wars stories, so being able to actually visit such a place with all the authentic detail that fans and just park goers can share with this new Disney contribution to the live action myth building that they are so well known for is a really exciting enterprise. So for the sake of people thinking of visiting it in the weeks to come, or over the course of this upcoming year the video below is a good place to start just to get the basics of a successful visit.

As many also know I have a small obsession with the concept of genius and growing older to me can be a blessing if the elements of childhood have not been lost in the process. However, I view most human beings as being at their peek around the ages of 6 to 10. After that, most of us slowly decline over time. We may gain more responsibilities and wisdom, but usually it’s at the sacrifice of thoughtful imagination and wonder. Being older of course has more fiscal opportunities, but I sort of drew the line at 50 because at that age people become much more reflective and my readers come here to think about the things in their life that they neglected before getting to an age where its too late to change anything quickly. Most of my fans don’t want to leave the world worse off for their children and grand children so they start thinking of politics and what they can do to help.

Unfortunately, everyone under 50 is mostly concerned with social statuses and where they fit on the pecking order of existence where it is generally accepted that elected offices are something that most people don’t want to think about. Rather than talking about politics they reside to the safe topics of sports and grilling hamburgers or steaks in their back yards. It continues to amaze me how much conversation is generated among people in this age group, between 30 and 50 years of age about grilling out in the back yard. And these same people detest any talk of politics, because they fear it will harm their climb up whatever social ladder of influence they are concerned with navigating. Then of course there are the people of the previous twenty years, from the ages of 10 to about 30 that are nearly obsessed with their newly turned on sexual attributes. The race to find a mate to have children with, or to just use sex as a tool of manipulation and control becomes their dominate thinking. Watching all this from my perspective is disgusting and I never accepted any of those social gates. Instead my mind has always been more on books and other mythic entertainments because those were the values of my youth and I never let go of them. And I see quite clearly that the path to genius is through retaining that child-like “Peter Pan” element of perpetual curiosity.

Star Wars is a great vehicle for refining that genius. Some of the smartest people I know are comic book geeks and pimple faced readers of Star Wars books. Most of these people are extremely overweight and don’t get out in the sun much, but they don’t care. They have made decisions to not care about their places in the pecking order of our civilization and they get made fun of for not participating. But most of these people are extremely intelligent and rather childlike. It’s a shame that they are so stigmatized in society because they could bring to the world great things if only, they cared to participate. But the world to them is often a disappointment and nowhere near as exciting as the Star Wars stories they read about and enjoy in the movies. But that trend has been changing and places like this Black Spire Outpost is the latest effort to allow people to revisit their childhood hopes and to actually put their hands on what used to be only a fantasy, and I think that is a very good thing.

Star Wars was and has always been very political. After all, if there is a war, there must be something to fight over and those stories often reflect the politics of our day. As much as people think of George Lucas, the creator as a hippie of his generation concerned over Watergate and the Vietnam War, I see in him a pretty conservative hot rodder who came to age through racing cars and learning to work on them who also had an active, very childlike imagination, which is why Star Wars turned out to be so special. And so the seeds for the Black Spire Outpost were born from the burnout smoke of his race cars and a keen interest in anthropology. Unlike many filmmakers these days who are obsessed with film trivia George Lucas made Star Wars from a perspective of genius by carrying with him into adulthood the hope that most young people have, that they may have the opportunity to change the world as an individual.

Of course, genius doesn’t stay with people. It can be lost in a puff of instant smoke. Once the values of genius are lost, people usually revert back to some biological timeline of age ward progression. But it doesn’t have to be that way and every time a big amusement park land like the Black Spire Outpost comes on the scene it reveals some of the best elements of our culture. And that excites me greatly as I enjoy the enthusiasm that comes with such ambitions. This particular creation at Disenyland is a huge cultural element that when I was a kid wasn’t even thought possible. I remember going to Universal Studios in Hollywood and looking forward for months beforehand to see the full-sized star fighters from the television show Battlestar Galactica—the Colonial Vipers. I think it was one of the most exciting things I had seen as a young person and I never really forgot it, even though the thing was just a prop from the television show’s set. To be able to see the Millennium Falcon sitting in a free state and to be able to actually ride it in an active way is extremely exciting and we can only imagine what impact that will have on future generations . One way or the other, the opening of the Black Spire Outpost is a very significant cultural event that will likely have long standing consequences for the better. So for those planning to visit, enjoy it! It is truly something special!

Rich Hoffman

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The Hope of Comics

Even though it’s not why I do it, because in the beginning I considered this blog to be a fun extension of my life and my many interests, it has become something bigger and much more literate. And with that come judgments from people who just aren’t very intellectual presently, or perhaps never will be which I consider worthless. The difference between me writing these many articles for myself, which I have for many, many years and sharing them in the form of a blog is that in the back of my mind I hope to help people realize that there is more to life than what they are presently living. I think by any measure I am a very well-balanced person and an excellent thinker. True, I could be another Alex Jones, I certainly have interests in that direction, but I could also be a sports star, or any number of things. But what I am is a lot of things and I like it that way. And I share those things with my audience purely for the sake of their own uses, certainly not mine. What I do for myself is know that I am trying to help people live better and more authentically, and when the refusal of that offer is openly rejected I do get mad about it. I don’t force people to do anything and they certainly shouldn’t expect such a thing from me. The things I do object to in life however is anything that leads to below the line thinking and when I see such a thing I do get pretty vocal about a need to rebel against it erupts. But sometimes even for me the disappointments about how people choose to live and paint themselves into a corner gets to be too much and on those moments I give myself a breath by going to my local comic book store.

As I’ve said before, I like every sport there is. The reason I didn’t enter professional sports as a young person was that while I liked the objectives of winning, I didn’t like the compliance of building a team. I always related more to the coaches than the players and the elements of leadership so sports took up too much time and there were too many social stigmas about what success or failure meant and I had other things I wanted to spend time on. But I’m certainly not one who is an either or person, either the life of a jock or the life of the geek who hangs out in comic book stores avoiding life while others chase balls around and get headlines in the newspapers because of it. Those divisions were always absurd to me and still are. I enjoy reading all types of things, including comic books. They are usually full of ambition and the artwork is usually very energetic.

So it was with that zeal that my oldest daughter, my youngest grandson and my wife went to two comic book stores on Saturday which was a combination of Star Wars day and free comic book day. What I really wanted was the new comic about the new Star Wars land at their theme parks called Galaxy’s Edge. I’ve always been a Han Solo guy so I am quite excited that the plot of the new land was featuring him and that it was highlighted in the new comic, and I wanted to get it. I can’t recall the last time a theme park decided to tie modern mythology in this way and I found it very interesting. So for the history of it I wanted to collect it for reflection 50 or 60 years from now in the future. I was also curious how Disney would attempt to tie all these media platforms together into a big unified story.

Much to my surprise they were sold out of the Galaxy’s Edge comic that I wanted at the first comic store, but otherwise it was a very bustling place. I didn’t see any kids there, but a lot of adults and they were all talking quite vibrantly about various comics, the recent Game of Thrones episode, the Avengers climax with Endgame and the upcoming Cincinnati Comic Con which my other daughter is planning to attend as an exhibitor. I couldn’t help but wonder if Socrates ever thought for a second that any culture on earth would have so much mythology produced and that people would gather in a comic book store to talk about them with such passion. I am encouraged by such places, they often restore my thoughts that people are worth saving when I read comics and see the bold desires there that are unfurled by obscure artists revealing their hopes and dreams through fantastic characters that are translated onto colorful pages full of art. There was more art produced just in that one comic book store than the entire Renaissance period of Europe, which I think is every bit as good.

We ultimately had to go to a comic book store in Mason to get my Galaxy’s Edge comic. I picked up far more than I had planned to and I enjoyed reading them later while I watched the Reds game on television and for me, all was right with the world. But more than anything I enjoyed the people. There were a lot more people participating in the free comic book day events than I would have thought which led to a lot of contemplation for me. My daughter and I discussed it over lunch. Her generation has grown up in a lot of hapless situations. The political system has let them down, their educations were a joke, their parental structure often broken. It was in their last hopes for participating in mankind that they go to the comic book store looking for heroes to believe in. Some people would say they were escaping from reality, but what I saw was that it was for their own good. Their love of comics was a survival mechanism to the disappointments of life and I saw in all those people a desire to not just accept a “bla” existence, but to at least learn through the mythology of fantasy characters that there was more to the human experience than just accepting defeat then eventually death.

To say I’m excited about Disney’s new Galaxy’s Edge would be a severe understatement. I read the comic pretty much in the car on the way home because I couldn’t wait to see how everything would be tied together and I was happy with the ambition of it all. I personally needed the break in thought myself. For me it’s never about going backwards. When I get disappointed in the ambitions of the human species, I too look for reasons to feel good about it all again and comic book stores do it for me. They are filled with hope not just in the artists who produce the content, but in the participants. In all their geekdom, they are essentially out for the same thing that the baseball player is, or the golf enthusiast, or Fantasy Football player, everyone wants a win. And if there are things that comics are typically selling, its victories of the human soul overcoming adversity. And unfortunately for most, such concepts are a fantasy. But at least they haven’t lost sight of the need for such a thing.

Rich Hoffman

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The Exciting Cultural Promises of Galaxy’s Edge

I realize that many of my daily readers cringe when I do a Star Wars article, but its important that it is understood cultural trends as they emerge and how those new ideas will shape the world of tomorrow. I have enjoyed the last week or so in witnessing all the many aspects of modern mythology that are exploding onto the scene. We are talking about more than just a little influence culturally, which will eventually build up the political mentality and philosophy of the next century, that is emerging in our various art forms, particularly in movies, television streaming, table top gaming and video game options. We are experiencing a very rich culture of thought that is emerging and is shaping the world right under our feet so I consider all these things to be very important. I will have to say that my ability to predict events and understand the deeper meanings of every day observances come from my love of global mythology, the stories of humanity that transcends time and space. In that regard the things that happened this past week with the release of Episode One of the Game of Thrones and the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago unleashed a different kind of hope that I found extremely encouraging, which I wanted to share here.

As I’ve said before I work in an industry full of very, very smart people who have a great love for technology and innovation. And among them I was even surprised how excited they were to watch Game of Thrones and how many of them were live streaming the events of the Star Wars Celebration from their office work areas. It used to be that I was the only one who cared about things like that, 20 to 30 years ago, but now its quite a common thing, especially among intelligent people. Fans of these entertainment options are looking for intellectual fulfillment that they aren’t getting from regular life. It’s not escapism as it was classically defined, it’s a hunger for new ideas to see in conceptual reality the things they are naturally thinking. But even saying that, it has been the news of the new Star Wars land at the Disney Parks titled Galaxy’s Edge that impressed me the most.

When Disney first acquired Lucasfilm and the Star Wars property way back in 2012 I made my predictions on what impact that would have on the future. Since then of course Universal Studios had taken the Harry Potter experience to the next level of reality based mythic involvements, where consumers weren’t just passively enjoying the product and the stories of the product, but were now part of the story themselves. From a mythology perspective I see this as a huge leap in human experience, which comes at a good time. The human race is at a point where it has more options to build from than ever before, so our mythologies naturally need to grow to deal with those concerns at a pace more rapidly than those experiences are occurring. So knowing that this construction of Galaxy’s Edge is just remarkable because it’s not just about visiting an amusement park and reliving some favorite movie, and looking at movie props to rekindle the memory of the experience. What Disney has done is build as close to a living breathing off-world outpost that puts the consumers in the story of mythology itself in real-time and what impact that will have on human mythology for the future has some very exciting prospects, and I’m very excited about it.

When I was a kid and first went to Universal Studios in Los Angeles I found if very thrilling to see the real movie props of my favorite movies. I was so impressed with it that for the last thirty years or so those initial impressions stayed with me as very good memories. I can say that when I had a chance to see the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios in Florida it was a magical experience for me, which should be evident by the pictures in my “Who is Rich Hoffman” blog posting seen on the sidebar. I have always enjoyed movies and when there was some kind of Star Wars exhibit that showed the real movie props from the films I have always found the experience stimulating and as a family we have gone to as many of those things as possible. So I am very aware how little kids fresh with ideas feel about these kinds of things. Even as adults, the feelings don’t go away which is quite evident as the participants of the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago was not geared for children, but many of the adult fans who really want to immerse themselves into the Star Wars mythology. Knowing all that, Galaxy’s Edge in both Disneyland and Disney World this year will allow visitors to get museum quality props and to accept the Star Wars universe as a reality not just a nostalgic recollection.

Specifically the two rides that are going to be featured, Smuggler’s Run where everyone will have a chance to ride in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, or the Rise of the Resistance ride where participants will actually be in the middle of a Star Wars battle are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the details of buying and building droids, constructions of personal lightsabers, and the acquisition of real Star Wars merchandise purchased as if it really existed in that galaxy far, far away—Disney has gone way over the top and far exceeded my expectations. They are going for a level of authenticity that has experimental results not yet measured culturally and I think it’s very healthy for all of us. To not only ask what if, but to say, “how about that” in the context of a simulated reality can really have a dramatic increase in our technical expansion and that is very exciting.

I’m also not one who believes that growing up is such a great thing. I personally think we are at our best as people before the age of 10 when our minds are growing and fully alive. Our stories in society are sort of based on the very old or the very young, but not so much for those who have reached puberty and are in the realm of career building and procreation. I have seen so many people who just don’t know what to do with themselves in that large in-between age but to pursue a course of self-destruction. But that is changing and has dramatically over the course of time that I have conducted this blog site. Entertainment and mythology are better merged together than they ever have been and I see that increasing the quality of the human condition, not regressing it. It’s impossible to tell what impact Galaxy’s Edge will have on future engineers and space explorers, but one thing’s for sure, there will be growth and it will move in a very positive direction. In the past many of these kinds of things weren’t talked about much, people didn’t binge watch shows like Game of Thrones for entire weekends, and those types of options weren’t even available. But now they are and it is changing everything in a positive way. Which is very, very exciting.

Rich Hoffman

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An Open Letter to Alan Horn at Diseny, More ‘Solo’ Please

This article is a bit different from my usual quandaries into the depths of human imagination, behavior, and cultural ramifications because it’s not directed at a general readership, but as a person I admire quite a lot, Alan Horn, the Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios Film Division. Horn unlike me is a liberal in Hollywood functioning from his known parameters which I was thinking about a lot yesterday as I was at a Tractor Supply. To a large degree the surface of our political natures comes from our regional influences. I grew up around guns, farmers and old westerns on television so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am now very much a Trump country conservative. Horn and his Hollywood friends have spent most of their lives around people who want to save the planet and protest straws in the ocean. But getting deeper into the motivations of the human race I find that I have a lot in common with people like Alan Horn. I have known them and still do when I was active with the Joseph Campbell Foundation years ago, because it is in my real love of mythology that I respect the work that Horn does. And it is in that regard that I want to ask him to climb out on the limb and find a way to make a few more Han Solo films. Solo: A Star Wars Story was a great movie, it has held up well over this year and deserves another crack at becoming a major part of the Star Wars cannon. I don’t care about it so much for myself, but for my grandchildren. One of my grandsons is absolutely obsessed with Solo: A Star Wars Story and I think for his sake, more myths from the line of stories would be a wonderful thing and Horn is in a position to pull the trigger on that type of endeavor.

I have had my problems with Disney’s handling of the EU in Star Wars, but I’ll make another one of my big predictions, the Episode 9 that is currently wrapping up for a December release is going to be a champion that will heal a lot of the Star Wars trouble that has erupted over the last several years. I have been paying attention to the Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing game and of course the projected opening of Galaxy’s Edge at the Disney Parks and thinking about my background in mythology and comparative religious studies, I see a great enlightenment movement emerging that is unparalleled in all of human history. Star Wars and the films that come from them as I have said many, many times over multi-thousand word articles is many people’s gateway to the sciences. Every day I deal with very smart people all over the world, especially well-educated engineers and they all have in common a love for Star Wars, for the most part. The concepts introduced to them in those movies inspired them to get into the field of engineering, so that they could figure out how to build all the cool things they see in those movies. And of course on the serious side of economics and politics, our culture requires more smart people with playful spirits to emerge into careers that develop new technology. And the way those people are created is with films like Star Wars, so I view what Alan Horn does to be very important to the building of our culture.

My grandson which I referred to, has an obsession with the Millennium Falcon which has carried over into actual space travel. His favorite current activity at the age of 2 going onto 3 is in watching rocket launches on YouTube. When he’s not watching those rocket launches he watches over and over and over again the Kessel Run from the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story. I can see igniting in him all the things that will make a future genius and it starts with that childlike love that is generated by a good story full of new ideas. Even as my wife and I plan to visit Disney World at the opening of the new Galaxy’s Edge to see the full-scale Millennium Falcon and to actually go into it and fly it is to me mind-blowing considering the evolution of myth through human experience from stories told around a campfire to actual experiences like what Disney will offer in their new Star Wars land. It is putting thought on a scale that we’ve never seen before on earth. I think of that kind of thing often because I spend most of my time contemplating about mythologies, religion, and politics. To me they are all connected, they are what build culture. And to have such young minds able to participate in myth the way that young people currently do is very, very exciting.

There were lots of reasons that Solo: A Star Wars Story didn’t make a billion dollars at the box office. Mary Poppins Returns didn’t even come as close to a decent ROI than Solo did, so for Horn, the film business is tricky. The real problem, especially with the oversea markets was the rejection of a Star Wars film that was so rooted in the values of Western Civilization. That was the reason China rejected the film, but so what. A good film finds a way and through Blue Ray sales and Netflix, Solo has done a great job for the Star Wars franchise. I’m sure that other kids are doing just as my grandson is doing, watching it over and over all day long for weeks on end. They aren’t doing that with other movies, that’s for sure. I think J.J. Abrams will fix a lot of the Star Wars problems in the next film and on the backs of that, there is room for more Han Solo stories that can unleash so many countless adventures and other movies.

The end result of all this of course is the expansion of the human intellect which is and has always been an obsession of mine. I think we are all better and smarter when we have good things to think about, and these Star Wars movies are good foundations for thinking about the right kinds of things, such as exploring Mars, what kind of religion we will all have once we discover that there was life there and that the moon has been visited often by life from far away destinations. When we are no longer calling angels from our Bible stories such superficial references and come to understand that there were always life forms that our primitive people encountered but had no name for, a lot of those problems get explored in science fiction. And with Galaxy’s Edge about to open with a new Star Wars film this year on the back of a great Solo movie playing on Netflix for kids to watch over and over again, I can see a lot of these problems being solved by our civilization of tomorrow. The ability to go and touch that Star Wars world that is going to be offered by the Disney Company is a technical achievement that mythology has never had the ability to render up to this point so effectively.

So Alan Horn, I hope you will get another Solo movie into the pipeline. There is room for it and I still think it could be a billion dollar winner at the box office. If the fan base can be united behind Episode 9 and the problems of the EU fixed, there is great opportunity for more Han Solo movies, and many others. But for my grandson’s sake, he would greatly benefit from more exciting adventures in the Millennium Falcon. And I’m sure he’s not the only one out there. It’s probably the safest bet you could make.

Rich Hoffman

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Disney Should make another Han Solo Movie: The executives messed up the profit distribution, but the fans liked the film–especially 2 year olds

It’s a shame that Disney mishandled the Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, because it’s a pretty good science fiction movie. I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old grandson that loves the movie and wants to watch it over and over again. As a movie it does what its supposed to, it inspires young people to think about complicated engineering and physics problems while they are still conceptual kids framing their entire lives in front of them. Big colorful movies like that particular Star Wars film are great as change agents in our culture for positive outlooks. The movie is by far one of the best Star Wars films in general but unfortunately it looks like it will be the last one. By reading the many articles on a year in review for 2018 Solo: A Star Wars Story was considered a financial bomb by current analytical standards but what I see is a huge campaign by a bunch of screwy Disney executives to save their jobs because it was they who screwed up the movie in the short run. But in the context of history Solo: A Star Wars Story will be one of the better ones and will be remembered for many years to come. Disney if they were smart would make more of them while they can still get the actors.

Problem number one is that movies now are based on international box office results, which means many communist and socialist countries have a say in whether movies do well or not. I would argue that none of the original Star Wars movies or Indiana Jones films for that matter would have done well in a market that considered international box office as a driver of success. To do that a film has to represent all the people of the world in some way, and that isn’t easy to do. It’s an unrealistic expectation for a company like Disney to do it over and over again. In their titles that are directed specifically to children, all children of the world want the same kinds of things, so billion-dollar money makers are more obtainable. But a Star Wars film with mature content in them is a different story. I think the world would have eventually accepted Solo: A Star Wars Story but the ideas of Han Solo are not universally global, they are specifically American—so international markets have a difficult time relating. Disney should have had a longer view of what Solo was and not expected it to perform well on a first run in international markets.

The other thing is that Disney screwed up the Star Wars fan base. First they put out the new films not consistent with the books that fans grew up with—which was a real problem. Then they released The Last Jedi before Solo: A Star Wars Story. If they were going to mess with the formula of Star Wars, they should have given fans the traditional Star Wars story before changing the game on them with The Last Jedi. When Solo: A Star Wars Story came out 6 months after The Last Jedi people were still very angry at the trilogy film that embarked on the further journeys of Rey, Finn and Kylo Ryn. The direction of that film was too drastic, unsatisfying, and way too politically progressive. Not even my two-year-old grandson likes that movie. I have tried to show it to him, but its slow, the action scenes aren’t often enough, and it just has a heavy hand thematically. It’s not light on its feet the way Star Wars movies are supposed to be and it hurts the film. I personally think it’s a pretty good movie with ambitious ideas, but these movies have to realize that it is children who are their target audience, and to stick with it.

A huge mistake that was made in connection to the sequencing of releases was that Disney should not have tried to rush Solo: A Star Wars Story to theaters for a summer release. They should have waited until Christmas. Disney for whatever reason thought that a Mary Poppins sequel was going to be really successful. But as of the turn of the year the film has only made around $100 million domestically. Around $170 million internationally. Those are actually really bad numbers considering Disney wanted to clear the slate for Mary Poppins to do well over the holiday season. Auquaman didn’t do much better which was the other big release. These films aren’t exactly lighting it up at the box office and these are the best that studios are putting out. Disney should have put Solo out over Christmas and the numbers would have been much better. They needed time to repair the Star Wars brand after The Last Jedi and to take away the summer competition which had a lot of really good films to compete with including an Avengers film which soaked up the box office in the previous weekends then had another Jurassic World film hitting a few weeks after Solo. Too many movies and not enough dollars to spend on them all. In a world of such tight competition, people weren’t sure they were ready to see someone besides Harrison Ford play Han Solo, so they went to see other films instead. But that people weren’t ready doesn’t mean the movie was bad, it was just going to take some time to get used to.

I know there are some high-level Disney execs who read here and are curious as to what happened to them in 2018. I tried to tell you guys—don’t make movies at the back of the train, get to the front. Solo was a good movie and you should do more of them. Cut the budget to half what you had in the first film and just let the movies do their thing. Movies like that are change agents which set the industry standards. They don’t always have it built-in where they can make a market splash within two weeks on their way toward a billion dollars. Sometimes it takes people time to figure out that they love a movie and those are the ones that stick around. If you are going to make Star Wars movies look to change the rules of box office acquisition, don’t try to follow them. While we wait for more Star Wars films, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have more movies with Han and Chewie to fill story gaps that will still be fun to watch thirty years from now. Just don’t spend a fortune on them and keep them lean on the business end and let them do their thing. I think Disney would find them to be enormously successful. Just don’t listen to the media critics, they don’t know what they are talking about. Show the films to 2-year olds and if they want to watch them over and over again, then you can know you have a good Star Wars movie. It’s not really any more complicated than that. So don’t make it that way. But you should do it quickly because those actors are getting old, and there are still some great fun stories about Han Chewie and the Millennium Falcon that need to be told.

Rich Hoffman

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The Box Office Trouble for ‘Solo’ is Not the Movie’s Fault: Free advice to Disney on how to proceed forward–I just want it to work

I’d like to thank Disney and Lucasfilm for making the new Star Wars film Solo: A Star Wars Story. I am very sorry that financially it didn’t work out the way they needed it to. It was a bold film for them to make in these highly politically charged times and I’m amazed by the product that ended up on the screen. I’ve seen it many times now and after taking some of the emotion out of it, I think it’s the best Star Wars movie to date. It’s certainly in my top ten movies of all time. Part of that is that Han Solo is my favorite character but a lot of it is that it is a wonderful anthology film put together at a breakneck pace that was very positive. The characters are fun, the scenarios entertaining and the scope of it is just jaw dropping. Its science fiction and adventure on a top-tier level and is on par with the first two Indiana Jones films from back in the 1980s. I think the movie will go a long way to repairing the Star Wars brand which was severely damaged by The Last Jedi which came out just 5 months prior. I hope that Disney still gives Lucasfilm the latitude to continue making Star Wars films—because they are valuable. Solo: A Star Wars Story may have fallen short of expectations financially, but I think in the long run will prove to be one of the most important. It may have taken everyone three prior films to find their footing, but they certainly did—unfortunately the fan base was already damaged which played a major part in the poor financial outing of this latest movie.

The hatred and rebellion that many fans showed toward Disney and Lucasfilm prior to the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story is complicated and filled with many contemporary minefields that are specific to our times. I knew what was going on during the second weekend of the film’s release when Forbes, The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair all did hit pieces on Solo: A Star Wars Story about the weekend box office take before anybody really had a chance to get to the theater. Clearly, they were trying to shape the story as the media picked up and created a narrative that actually contributed to low ticket sales. Many people who I talked to on Saturday June 2nd who had not yet seen the film told me they hadn’t gone because they heard the movie wasn’t very good and was struggling financially, so they were holding out for Jurassic World or seeing The Avengers again. I was thinking that this situation was very much an Ellsworth Toohey moment from the great American novel, The Fountainhead. It didn’t matter how good Solo: A Star Wars Story was, critics intended to torpedo the film due to their own political activism and it was having an impact. People who might otherwise want to see the film weren’t going because they got caught up in the narrative created by the entertainment press that was using the power of their media to instigate more Star Wars films without “white” heroes in them and more gay characters focused on diversity, not unrealistic adolescent popcorn action sequences.

Even with all that against it, a movie like this can still make a billion dollars at the box office, but Solo: A Star Wars Story unfortunately was the victim of a massive rebellion of fan wrath that I was afraid was going to happen. If Solo: A Star Wars Story had come out in December of 2017 and The Last Jedi had come out this past May 25th, the fan base might have been aligned more than it was. But as it stood, the fan base for Star Wars was split and a percentage of fans just were not going to see Solo no matter how much they wanted to. That in itself was complicated as there are many cultural trends locked up in that protest intention—for instance the belief that big companies like Disney should not be in the movie making business to make a profit. But if the real roots of the narrative were explored there was a very legitimate fan complaint that Disney had ejected the previous expanded universe of Star Wars and had stuffed the new era films with political activism that just didn’t fit.

Politics has always been a part of Star Wars, but the vantage point has always been on the big scale. For instance, the Empire was always reminiscent of Nazi Germany and most everyone going to the movies could agree that Hitler and the Nazis were evil. However, these days not even the filmmakers at Disney and Lucasfilm can agree on what a Nazi is. To liberal filmmakers like Jon Kasden and the director Ron Howard, Nazis are Trump Republicans while Republicans from the flyover states see the Empire as the tenants of liberalism. George Soros is the ultimate Emperor in the eyes of the Midwest so there is already a divide in the fan base that was exacerbated by the filmmakers due to their liberal activism, such as Jon Kasden, the writer of Solo: A Star Wars Story letting it leak ahead of the film’s release that the character of Lando was pansexual. I understand why he said what he did—he was looking for a way to appeal to the liberal critics and get better reviews on the Rotten Tomato meter—which didn’t work. But it was worth a shot, I can’t blame him. Then Ron Howard Tweeted nearly the same day a bunch of anti-Trump information that fed into the story of Solo: A Star Wars Story, that the Empire was like the United States and taking over domestic planets against their will. In the Han Solo film, the political activism wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in The Last Jedi, but it was there certainly as a distraction, something that just wasn’t done back in the days of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Once the makers of Star Wars allowed it to be known that they were all liberals, they turned off half the American nation to their product and if the Americans weren’t going to support such a movie then the oversea markets certainly weren’t going to give it a chance.

Then there are the fans who just wanted to protest this film by denying it support. They are angry, and I understand it. I was one of those guys after The Force Awakens. I took a whole year off Star Wars and it was only about a month before Rogue One was released that I decided to give the movie a chance, and it was good and did win my approval. So I decided to give The Last Jedi a chance, which I thought was good enough to enjoy. It’s my least favorite Star Wars movie by far, but it was worth the attention. Solo: A Star Wars Story however won me back. I felt that Lucasfilm and Disney went well out of their way to win back fans, but for many it came too late. So Disney is going to have to keep listening and work hard to build back the fan base. They did for me with Solo, hopefully they stick with it and give people the films they want, not the political activism that they think the fans will just take so they can get a Star Wars fix—which is what I think Kathy Kennedy got caught doing. She and many of the top executives at Disney thought that Star Wars fans would put up with gay characters, progressive plot points, and the complete eradication of 30 years of books and comics just so they could get another Star Wars movie and that turned out not to be the case. Many people just didn’t even give Solo: A Star Wars Story a chance, they were intent from the beginning to protest the film to force Disney to make executive level decisions about the entire franchise.

If I were Disney I would let Lucasfilm make more films like Solo: A Star Wars Story. I’d set a budget cap at a $150 million and force the filmmakers to stay under it. I wouldn’t let any Star Wars film go up over $200 million assuming that the movies will make over a billion dollars each. That may not be the case even when the fans come back to Star Wars, I’d keep the projects down to something reasonable and focus on rebuilding the franchise, because the nostalgia factor is no longer there. It’s time to make movies that make history not ones that remember it. Solo: A Star Wars Story had both elements in it, and if Disney made more movies like it, the fan base would expand, not contract. But its going to take time, I just hope they have the patience to follow through on it. Three Star Wars movies a year with budgets of $150 million each and a box office take of $500 million each globally would do a lot more for the franchise than one movie a year that makes a billion. It’s just simple math, but the fans need to be fed. If Disney is smart, they’ll give the fans what they want, and then everyone can be happy. Solo: A Star Wars Story was certainly a step in the right direction. The fans will agree once the politics of the moment drift into history. But not until then.

Rich Hoffman