Tag: Solo: A Star Wars Story

The Republicans of Star Wars: Expanding the base with new voters inspired to action by fantasy meeting reality

It was good to see that two Republican politicians that are notable in Ohio politics took a moment on May 4th 2018 to honor the now official Star Wars holiday which takes place every year on that date. Jim Renacci who is running for the Senate seat in Ohio to challenge Sharrod Brown put out the press release displayed below, and Sheriff Jones put out a Tweet that was well received by Star Wars fans. It would be easy for either politician to ignore the Star Wars holiday as both men are over 60 and could plead ignorance to the cultural changes that are taking place artistically by the Disney franchise but they wisely embraced the holiday which was very smart–politically.

Good afternoon,

Today is Friday, May 4th a normal day for many, but die-hard fans of the Rebel Alliance will tell you: it’s Star Wars Day.

The first Star Wars movie to hit theaters (eventually subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope) was released in 1977, 41 years ago. Though this blockbuster franchise has existed for over four decades, career politician Sherrod Brown has worked in politics even longer, first being sworn into office in 1975.

“While Brown has lived in a political bubble for the last 44 years—never bothering to develop real-world experience—Jim Renacci has worked as an entrepreneur for the last three decades, creating more than 1,500 jobs and employing over 3,000 Ohioans.”

— Brittany Martinez, Renacci for Senate Communications Director

I’ve been writing a lot about Star Wars lately for a lot of reasons. Not only am I excited for the new Han Solo movie that is about to come out, but I can’t help but notice a number of things that are happening where politics and entertainment are coalescing together in new and unusual ways. I personally think that the new film Solo: A Star Wars Story will be one of those special movies similar to what happened when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981 and was one of those movies that everyone went to see and was a kind of unifying factor in our society culturally. Most movies that come out don’t have the potential to touch just about everyone who watches them the way that I think this Solo Star Wars film will. When Raiders came out it was a year and a half into the Reagan White House and looking back at how politics and entertainment came together to create a positive decade for America, I can’t help but notice the similarities happening now in 2018. Only I think the potential now is much greater than it was back then. So that prospect has given me great excitement. We are facing a new decade that will not only see mankind visit Mars, but there will be economic expansion that will touch literally every country in the world and their point of entry into those new opportunities will come ironically from Star Wars. People in China and India don’t watch Fox News but they will see Star Wars and be touched by it likely in some way and that will shape their politics in ways that aren’t explored under normal circumstances. But these are not normal days of political development.

I recently wrote of the nature of the Star Wars stories as being best when they are anti-authoritarian, because that was the original vision George Lucas brought to the film series. When Star Wars works best, they are anti-authoritarian art. When Star Wars fails, they are saturated with progressive politics reflective of the creative people who work in the film business. The new people running Lucasfilm and Disney these days are starting to understand that relationship through trial and error, and I think we will see those results in the new Solo: A Star Wars Story movie. Star Wars is not a form of liberal art, it’s a conservative endeavor by its very nature. Even though George Lucas meant it as a reflective form of art from the counter-culture, it was his love of old westerns and 1950s science fiction that set Star Wars apart from everything else that was being produced by Hollywood.

It is hard for liberals to look at themselves and admit that it is the Democratic Party that is all about tyranny and attempting to control people’s lives. They sold the Democratic Party to themselves as the part of civil rights and empowerment, but it was always the Republicans who truly stood for all the things that gave power to individuals and philosophically relied on smaller government to advance a country’s needs. That is why Republicans tend to love Star Wars. Even though the creative people behind Star Wars self-identify as Democrats they philosophically have been making Republican movies because the stories have always been rooted in the traditions of mid-20th Century America. The rejection by fans of elements of Star Wars since the Disney acquisition have been those Democratic elements that just don’t fit with the traditions of the old Saturday morning matinees that inspired George Lucas. Just as Disney would never have been such a massive company if it started out as a liberal enterprise, the origins of both film franchises was rooted in traditional America which Republicans represent.

This is important because if you look at the pod cast shown below where a big show was recorded in a Denny’s to celebrate the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story which the restaurant chain is promoting, there is a represented fan base there which I would bet are all potential Republicans, yet they don’t currently vote. If you listen to them speak, they sound like Republicans, they are certainly not collectivists, but the political party structure as it currently is does not inspire them to participate. Getting to know elements about the Star Wars movies are much more interesting to them. And I can say that there are many millions of these people out there, they are politically disconnected from the real world, but the politics of Star Wars as a functional mythology philosophically grounded in the traditions of America and being shown all over the world culturally are aligned with them. It would not take much to convince these people to vote Republican, because in so many ways they are already there.

Until Donald Trump came along Republicans allowed themselves to have their messaging controlled by the Democrats who tend to be better at marketing themselves even if they steal all the good stuff from Republicans—like civil rights, women’s rights, and small government ideas. What I see happening is now with a year and a half of Donald Trump and Star Wars really dominating the entertainment landscape, those two things are coming together in a way that should expand party affiliations in favor of the Republicans. Smart Republicans like Jim Renacci and Sheriff Jones already understand that the way to expand their party base is to reach out to Star Wars fans and get them out voting for Republicans in elections.

Even through Bob Iger at Disney is a Democrat, and Ron Howard who directed Solo: A Star Wars Story is not a Donald Trump lover, they have both done a really good job for their responsibilities in the movie business. If they behaved like liberals in their jobs, they obviously would not have done such a good job so it doesn’t take much to win them over too. The new Republican Party under the Donald Trump White House is actually something that social liberals but business conservatives could sign up to be a part of and that would truly be a unifying factor nationally. I think that’s where everything is headed in 2018 so it would be wise to make strategic alignments that would allow for some really special things to happen at this year’s midterms. There are a lot of new voters out there, and in many cases people who have never even thought about voting who could be recruited once they had the doors opened to them by a party who understands them. Republicans are the party for Star Wars fans and any candidate who wants to expand their base should do so with that understanding. While Star Wars is for kids, it has an epistemology that is rooted in American tradition for which the Republican Party best articulates, and that means that special things can happen politically if everything were aligned properly. So it made me very proud to see that Sheriff Jones and Jim Renacci are some of the first party heads to understand that real potential that exists just beyond our fingertips. We are truly in a new age and those who survive best use all the tools in the tool box, not just the ones that used to be cool—but the ones that are cool now.

Rich Hoffman

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It’s all about Resisting Authoritarianism: Star Wars, George Lucas, Donald Trump and what we all see in the mirrior each day

Of course, it’s an official Star Wars Holiday, May the 4th, 2018 and at the precise moment that tickets went up for sale on Fandango I bought mine for Solo: A Star Wars Story. I am more excited for this movie than any one that I have thought about for over two decades now, so it made me very happy to get my tickets. Financial projections for the movie were released yesterday and they are predicting that Solo: A Star Wars Story will make in the $150 million-dollar range on its opening weekend. I honestly think it will be higher and will surprise a lot of people and here’s the reason why. Within this interview shown below that George Lucas and James Cameron did together for an AMC series is everything that is needed to be known as to why I love Star Wars so much and why it’s so successful. I know quite a lot about George Lucas and share with him some very basic foundation ideas about life. But ironically, both he and Cameron have evolved into Hollywood liberals over time and it is there where they depart from the rest of American society and have lost touch. All that is revealed in this short 3-minute clip, it is quite fascinating to watch.

Like George Lucas for me Star Wars is the most anti-authoritarian art that I can think of displayed on a mass scale—and that is what I love about it. That’s why even as a grown man, I still get excited about new Star Wars stories. Star Wars at its best is a warning against authoritarianism. And within Star Wars there’s no character more anti-authoritarian than Han Solo—he’s a free spirit to an almost extreme and most represents that young George Lucas who used to race cars and fight movie studios to make his movies. Deep in their hearts, most people yearn to be like Han Solo—even though they won’t always admit it, they don’t like authority figures, especially now in the United States with all the trouble we are discovering with our FBI and Deep State revelations. This new Han Solo movie comes at a particularly powerful time for movie audiences and I think its going to do some big business and may set Star Wars right again after starting off the new generation in a rough way under Kathy Kennedy. All the progressive messages that Disney and Lucasfilm stationed in San Francisco have not resonated with movie fans because it steps away from the formula of what makes Star Wars so great, something that I think George Lucas himself began to forget as he got older. So did James Cameron, I don’t think his new Avatar films will do quite so well as they did back in 2009 because he is a much less anti-authoritarian director than he used to be.

Where liberals like Cameron and Lucas go wrong is in their assumption that Democrats are the anti-authoritarians and that progressive society is the vessel to hold their message into the future. It actually is quite the opposite and I find it astonishing that being smart people, that they don’t see it. I would attribute their blindness to the fact that by working in the entertainment industry they are regionally surrounded by liberal types of people so they have lost touch with the origins of their anti-authoritarian roots and mistakenly associate all Republican ideas on the Nixon administration, which was the era for which they came of age. As creative people, they can see the need for anti-authoritarian ideas, but they can’t apply them to the world around them which is why neither filmmaker has made a hit in around a decade now.

Lucas made in Han Solo that young 1950s rebel that we know from race car tracks all across the country, the main character in Grease that John Travolta played, and the character from Happy Days that was played by Henry Winkler, the Fonz. When Ron Howard was brought in to direct this Solo: A Star Wars Story I knew immediately what was happening, and I am very excited to see those results not just because it goes back to a time in cinema that I grew up watching, but because all these very unique elements were coming together to give audiences something they just weren’t getting anywhere else in any other media format. There is a tremendous need for anti-authoritarian drama, maybe more now than ever, and while many of the modern filmmakers have forgotten what it was that made them great in the first place, Ron Howard is one of those pure directors who has liberal sentiments, but at his core he understands all this anti-authoritarian stuff better than anybody.

Like George Lucas Star Wars for me was always about pushing back against authoritarian influences and hod rod space ships. I enjoy greatly the imagination that comes from Star Wars productions, but nothing more than in their various vehicle designs. I’m a huge fan of their Incredible Cross Section books published for the Star Wars movies by DK and have spent many hours looking at them and thinking about how those vehicles could be made in real life. Hot rods and anti-authority sentiments go hand in hand in American society and are very much part of our own love of car culture. We love our cars, our ability to go where we want, when we want to, and still maintain our personal space. In the 1950s up to the 1970s cruising in our fixed-up cars was very important to Americans, especially young people. I would attribute this deep love to the success of the Fast and Furious movies, which also make a lot of money even though the plots aren’t that good. They touch on that deep love of cars and how they give individuals space against the authority figures in their lives.

However, as political reality would have it, there isn’t a more authoritarian political party than what the Democrats have turned out to be. Their authority has become the influence of mob rule where they shout down anybody who doesn’t fall in line and that is where the George Lucas and James Cameron political ideology falls apart and why they struggle with films in the modern age because the world has moved in a very different direction. All these filmmakers are anti-Trump when in reality it is the new president who like the Fonz has stepped onto the world stage and spit in the face of all authority figures. Donald Trump has a lot more in common with Han Solo than George Lucas or Stephen Colbert, yet at some deep level they understand it enough to put it down on paper in script form, but they can’t apply it to the political world around them due to their regional influences. It’s quite fascinating to watch.

But I couldn’t be happier with the result—I think for this movie Solo: A Star Wars Story that all the right creative pieces came together to really make something special that audiences are deeply craving. I think this movie is going to take a lot of people by surprise and is going to really reignite what Star Wars movies mean to people, and what sets these off from other forms of science fiction. Especially in the age of Trump where all the authority which has been built by political progressives—people who used to think they were part of the counter-culture, the old hippies from the youth of George Lucas and James Cameron, the new flower children, the environmental radicalism and the green is the new red movement people who gave birth to people like James Comey, Clapper and Mueller, I think Solo: A Star Wars Story will be best served as a mirror for us all to look at and realize how far many have drifted from the original idea of what we all truly desire to be—free people able to do what we want when we want to do it and that the real tyrants in our lives sometimes are those people who look back at us in the mirror every day.

Rich Hoffman

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The Millennium Falcon at NKU in Cincinnati: A look into penetrating the frontier of space

A17A55B5-5A01-4ECC-9F65-FC439E915ADFThe first thought I had while touring The Millennium Falcon Experience at the Northern Kentucky University campus was that this fictional ship from the Star Wars stories would be the best way to travel from Earth to Mars, or the moon and some more distant destination within our solar system. I thought of Jules Verne’s great book From the Earth to the Moon where he conceived of the rocket design that would be used 100 years later when NASA would eventually launch people into space and land on the moon. Star Wars was much more than just geek fandom. While I had personally thought about sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon from the movies most of my life, and never thought I’d ever get a chance to actually do so, when the time did come I couldn’t help but think of real space travel using the actual design of the Millennium Falcon to serve as a foundation for a fleet of ships that would take commercial space travel to the next level.

I have been enjoying all this Han Solo media ahead of the new movie coming out on May 25th. Han Solo and his Millennium Falcon are some of my favorite fictional things in entertainment so I have been looking forward to a movie dedicated just to him and his famous starship. When I was a kid and was watching these movies for the first time I’d spend a lot of hours thinking of how to build the Millennium Falcon and trying to figure out the engineering of it. Obviously, I wasn’t alone, millions of people have been so enamored. It is a wonderful thing to see imaginations sparked to life by what they see in a movie. Over the years there have been attempts to build elements of the Millennium Falcon by the legions of fans that follow the Star Wars movies and I have enjoyed their attempts. Most notably I have been very excited to learn that a full-sized Millennium Falcon will appear at the new Disney Parks called Galaxy’s Edge. I can’t help but think that the human race is on a similar trajectory as it was with the Jules Verne novels and how NASA emerged.FAF7429F-2F17-4AA5-A1D5-0F18BE3AAEDC

I was one of the first in line to see the exhibit at NKU on Friday at 11 AM. I’m a very busy person but not too busy to see the interior of the actual Millennium Falcon as it goes on a five-city tour promoting the new Solo: A Star Wars Story all through the month of May. The Millennium Falcon is after all my favorite ship in science fiction and this whole tour started in my home town, so I had to take a moment to go see it, and it was quite impressive. It was really cool to visit the cockpit that was only seen in the movies from a few points of view, which have become iconic over the years. But it didn’t take long for the nostalgia to wear off for me and to look at the display put on by Lucasfilm as a film promotion to begin to take it all very seriously.22A06ED2-4BFA-4A6E-8D7B-95B09621330C

What’s really unique about this new film set before the events of the original movies is that the Millennium Falcon is presented not as a hunk of junk, but as the best and most exquisite of ships from its era. The Millennium Falcon becomes a junkie star ship because of the rough lifestyle of Han Solo, but this new movie goes to the start of all that, before a time when the popular Star Wars character owned the ship. As presented the Millennium Falcon was well made and bright white looking like an icon of luxury. It looked like the ship I remembered from my childhood only it looked much better. When I think of the Millennium Falcon I think of a dirty interior of a couple of friends living without women flying from one end of the galaxy to the other and not carrying to clean up after themselves. But presented the way it was for this promotional tour, the Millennium Falcon looked like a realistic offering for our own modern space travel.1C6066F4-14CD-4858-A108-532E87172C9A

It is a little ironic to me that it was the year of 2018 that Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars franchise seems to start paying off. I think this new Solo movie will be one of the most popular and will ignite a fresh start for the popular films. It’s the first time that there have ever been two Star Wars films within one year of each other and the impact that has had on merchandising has been remarkable. It’s hard to go to Wal-Mart or Target these days without seeing something regarding Star Wars. And all this is happening as commercial space endeavors are literally starting to take off. Later this year Virgin Galactic will begin their commercial flights for space tourism and Space X is preparing to send people around the moon. All this is happening while a Trump presidency has thrown its weight behind a reinvigorated NASA space program and a hot economy that is redefining employment statistics. The iWatch has essentially turned us all into Dick Tracy speaking on the phone to others from our wrists, things are moving very quickly these days.

I find it all very exciting. It won’t be long before Elon Musk has a colony on Mars and commercial industry begins to move into space. The next 50 years will explode along the frontier of space much like it did in America once humans began westward expansion free of European kings for the first time in known history. Space will bring much of the same ambition for adventure and profit. But people won’t want to fly in the kind of cramped quarters that we see with ship designs so far offered. Likely we’ll resort to what we know from films and literature, and the Millennium Falcon looks to me to have solved many of those long-distance space traveling problems.

You can make a starship in really any design you want, what you’ll need for long distance space travel is something that humans are comfortable in, that can use its external surfaces to generate power and have lots of surface area for controllable thrust. The design of the Millennium Falcon presents a lot of options for hauling freight to and from places like Mars over 18-month visits one way. Sitting in the cockpit and forgetting about the hyperspace jumps we see in the movies it wasn’t hard for me to consider spinning the Falcon to produce gravity until it arrives at its destination around Mars. Hooking up to whatever cargo it needs to bring back to earth then resuming that spinning effect all the way back with the crew living in relative luxury inside the whole time. Because of Star Wars we have a whole generation of people who are intellectually ready to accept such a deep space reality.

The Millennium Falcon’s interior as it was presented at NKU was certainly something I could live in for the long back and forth journeys to Mars that are about to become quite a reality. The Millennium Falcon already has practical docking clamps as part of its design. Solar panels could easily be incorporated into the outer shell to provide power and the interior is large enough to not go crazy in over such a long voyage. It’s round and interesting taking away the boxy designs that are offered in the International Space Station which is not conducive for long periods in space where people want to gather in a common room, but also want to be able to have their personal space as well. People need to get away from each other as well as communicate in common ways. The Falcon’s interior design goes a long way to solving lots of deep space traveling problems for a functional freighter.

Looking at that exhibit at NKU I could easily see some eccentric future billionaire building a fleet of Millennium Falcon style ships to essentially become like tractor trailers hauling rare minerals from the moon and Mars to enrich life on earth then use that wealth creation to catapult mankind even deeper into space. I could live on the Millennium Falcon with the amenities that were presented in the exhibit for many months, even years on end. Normally when we see designs for space, the environment has a military look to everything which makes it so that only the most disciplined space travelers could endure the experience. But that will have to change, and it is in our science fiction designs. 22DE3546-0899-498D-BBEB-53258B13B08CTo me the most impressive thing about the Millennium Falcon Experience was that after only 50 years of film history fans of the movies have finally figured out how to make the ships that were shown in Star Wars, and now artists and craftsmen are able to actually recreate what we see in the movies in real life. The next steps become rather obvious at that point and that is truly exciting. The Millennium Falcon Experience at NKU advertising a new Han Solo movie was something I personally never thought I’d see. But after seeing it, and touching it, and soaking it all in—I have a feeling that we will all be seeing a lot more of it in the years to come. As I left that exhibit I had the strange feeling that I may just own my own Millennium Falcon in a few years that can fly to Mars and back many times over as routinely as we can now drive to Florida now in a car. And I think I would like that world very much!

Rich Hoffman
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Han Solo’s New Landspeeder: The reason young men have for racing, risking their lives, and proving themselves

Institutionalism has been on my mind a lot lately. It has always bees something I was concerned with—it’s a huge part of culture building and there is need for some of it to keep an orderly society organized and effective. But all too often it is a destructive device that robs individuality from the human race which limits the output of potential available to mankind. Obviously the Comey situation with the current FBI is the most clear-cut case of institutional failure at so many levels and that is exactly what was on my mind as I went to Target as a 50-year-old man and bought the new Han Solo Landspeeder toy from Hasbro that I have been looking forward to being released. As I write often my favorite Star Wars character is Han Solo and I continue to think that the entire franchise under Disney ownership will depend on the quality of this new Solo: A Star Wars Story movie coming up on May 25th. For the movie to work, it has to tell the story of a young man who is so rebellious against institutionalism that he drives that inner need for the audience to yearn for individual freedom. It’s a tough game for Disney because they are an institution all on their own, and it has been a real challenge for the filmmakers to capture that proper “Han Solo” spirit produced by such an institutionalized production company. But they have worked hard at it and I think the selection of Ron Howard to be the final director was crucial to making this upcoming film positioned to be the best product possible. To get Han Solo right, the filmmakers must understand that he is a person fighting the mundane clutches of institutionalism which is the key to understanding what makes Star Wars different from other science fiction, and additionally makes it one of the most valuable elements for shaping modern society. It’s a very delicate balance and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that toy car so I could get up and close to it to get some questions answered.

Much to my delight it exceeded my expectations. Most young men—not girls—but boys, desire to obtain a car, customize it to some degree to represent their personalities and to apply that effort to the world so that they might come out on top. Girls typically think of wedding dresses, getting invited to prom and play with toys that lead them to domestic lives as young married women. No matter how much we tamper with that basic human yearning, those fundamental differences between boys and girls are obvious. Boys have that pressure to rebel from what they’ve known so that they can launch themselves into a position to acquire a wife, build a family, and live life on their own terms for that family—and a car is that first big step. So in a movie that deals with a younger version of Han Solo, a guy who has to acquire all the things that led him to a marriage to Princess Leia, The Millennium Falcon, his DL-44 gun, his years of experience at getting out of dangerous situations, what would his very first car look like? Getting that right would go a long way to telling me that these modern filmmakers understood the character of Han Solo well enough to not screw up the movie.

Ever since I saw the footage from the filming of the Solo movie I have been curious about this car. It’s square in design and looks pretty junkie for what you might expect from Han Solo. But then the Millennium Falcon was pretty beat up by the time the original movies were made—so this is a theme for Han Solo. He is a character not limited to the designs of the original manufacturer of his vehicles, some institutional engineer who works for a big company and rigidly gets all their drawings approved for production. Han Solo as a young man would acquire a speeder like this vehicle probably used because that’s all he could afford and he’d make it into something of his own design—to imprint his character on it. He would then use that vehicle to make a name for himself out in the world. This is very important to young men—really important. So getting Han Solo’s car right in a design tells me that they would also get it right in the movie and that this thing was going to be good.

When I was a young guy, 16 to 20 years of age I raced everyone everywhere. I seldom ever drove at speeds less than 100 MPH and I was in trouble with the police most of the time. I think it is safe to say that I was the fastest driver in the city of Cincinnati during that time frame who lived to talk about it. I know a lot of people I knew back then who died in car wrecks or ended up in jail for the rest of their lives so I can understand the background of a young Han Solo who was addicted to speed and competition. Young men must have some way to prove themselves because only the best have access to the best females. The way we all work biologically is that the most attractive females usually like the guys who are the most daring and ambitious acquiring the most wealth. Of course, the reason is so that a young female can build a family using the guy to give her children and financial resources. Having young men run around racing each other for the opportunity to make a lot of money so they can have access to the best females is a very primal sentiment. It’s not the way political progressives want things to be, and Disney has become a very progressive company so that makes the stakes of this Solo Star Wars film very high. Progressives would like to erase masculinity from the face of the earth yet Han Solo is a very masculine figure which makes him very popular among young males looking to make their mark in the world. I’ve been very skeptical especially the way The Last Jedi embraced so many progressive values. I didn’t think it hurt the value of Star Wars culturally, but it was noticeable. The same kind of anti-male sentiment won’t work in a movie starring Han Solo. I am happy to say from what I have seen by reading the latest Han Solo book Last Shot and going through some of the toy releases, I think they have nailed Han Solo in this new film. We’ll have to see how it is, but so far, the hot rod speeders are there, the souped-up star ships, the guns and the attitude are all there, so I am excited, more so than I was even a month ago.

I was in England for a good part of the Han Solo filming at Pinewood and I read all the news I could from the set as it was happening. It was exciting for me to be that close to the movie. One of my methods of stress management is to play a lot, whether it is video games, toys with my grandkids, or just roaming around at the store looking at new toys coming out. I particularly like the Star Wars section and the Lego sections of toy stores. Playing with ideas and massaging my imagination helps me solve complicated problems in real life, so there is a method I use to make those experiences productive in the real world. The Han Solo Landspeeder was very exciting for me personally because it has a lot of design in it that reflects the Han Solo character in all the ways that I enjoy. While everyone doesn’t get as excited about toys and Star Wars that as I do, the people who do are often those who advance human civilization in positive ways, engineers, creative people, and authors. Star Wars is such a major contributor to modern literature and the sciences that I get excited with each new film because of the cultural impacts that naturally spawn off them. Solo: A Star Wars Story however has more pressure on it than any movie yet has. How this one goes will determine the future of Star Wars forever, so there is a lot on the table. From what I have seen so far, I don’t think anybody will be disappointed.

Rich Hoffman
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A Trip to Denny’s For Han Solo Merchendise: Why all the fuss?

It wasn’t just this that we did for my 50th birthday this past week, my family did a lot of things for me to show how much they appreciate me. But when they asked me what I wanted to do, I said that I wanted to find a Denny’s near our home so I could get a Millennium Falcon cup from the new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the new Topps collecting cards that you can only get at the promotional event that they are doing at most Denny’s restaurants. And I wasn’t kidding about it. If we were planning to do a dinner for my birthday and go out somewhere anyway, I wanted to do something fun that I’d like, and could share with my kids and grandkids. After all, we all like Star Wars. I always used it in the way it was intended, as a modern mythology that had embedded in those kid’s films an essential epistemology in regard to philosophy that is needed in this fast-moving world, so one of my daughters found a nice one about an hour and a half outside of downtown Cincinnati, just outside the city limits of Indianapolis, Indiana. Han Solo was always my favorite character from the Star Wars movies so it was fun to make the Denny’s promotion a fun birthday event that everyone could enjoy. As an added benefit Disney had released the last trailer before the new movie opens on May 25th, just over a month from this writing so it made for an interesting birthday dinner at Denny’s. We didn’t hold back on the Solo merchandise!

I think Alden Ehrenreich will do a great job playing Han Solo as a younger man, a tough job to take over from one of the most iconic film roles Harrison Ford brought to life. It’s a tough job that everyone has in their head differently, so no matter what Ehrenreich does, someone isn’t going to like it. But, from what I’ve seen, the kid gets it—and that’s all that matters. It works for me and I hope it leads to a lot more Han Solo in movies that take place before the events of episode 4. I like the new pointy nose on the Millennium Falcon, I like the idea of new Star Wars music about to be released. I love the DLCs that will be downloaded on Star Wars: Battlefront 2. I love all the toys being released for the movie, its more generational stuff to share with my grandchildren for which all this is new to them so they are having fun with it for the first time. I see it all as very positive and it generally puts a smile on my face to have a new Han Solo movie because that character represents everything I love about Star Wars.

Of course, part of what makes 50th birthday celebrations what they are is in the reflection that you have about your life up to that moment and what might be ahead. For many it’s a time when they look at their life and consider that their best days are behind them. But not me. I have had a lot of very good days and I am sure there are a lot more ahead of me, and the Denny’s meal day was surprisingly fulfilling, not just from the Han Solo gear, but I enjoyed eating Denny’s food again after not having it for over 25 years. Denny’s was one of those places I used to go because they were open all night where I’d go to read after I’d get off work from my second shift jobs. When I was young and worked two fulltime jobs to make ends meet and our house was too small to leave a light on otherwise it would wake up the whole house at night, I’d read my books at all night restaurants like Waffle House, Perkins and Denny’s to make myself tired enough to wind down for bed. After a good meal and about 10 refills of a Coke at 2 am I’d go home and sleep for three or four hours and do it all again at the crack of dawn. Somewhere over that 25-year span Denny’s left the Cincinnati area so it was fun to have it again on my birthday. It was even more fun to have a Star Wars inspired menu with the new Han Solo on the cover. I had the “Two Moons Skillet” which was Heaven on earth for me.

All this of course led me to consider how much Star Wars had evolved over time and what role it plays in a modern sense. I’ve written many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of words as to what Star Wars means culturally, but I think I’ve been leaving out the epistemological definition in referring to it. After all, I write about some pretty serious subjects most of the time, so when I switch gears and do these Star Wars articles, to some it seems out of character, but to me it all runs together. It’s relevant to the missile attacks of Syria this past weekend, the teacher strikes in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona, the opioid epidemic—just about every topic one might consider can be traced back to the epistemological failures of modern society—and Star Wars was created, and does a good job of maintaining it for children a basic epistemology of values that are designed for modern life. The world is otherwise very confused, their religious values are all over the map, politically we have factions that want to take mankind back to a theology while others are wanting to plant flags into anarchy, democracy and those who presently have power want to keep everything in an aristocracy. We are moving to space as a species while the political powers in office want to cling to mother earth and environmental concerns because that is how their power bases were established—on earth with earthly rules. The truly wonderful thing about Star Wars is that it takes all the value of the world’s mythology and applies it into a modern context, which is why kids, and kids at heart love it so much. It’s a much different thing than other pop culture rituals. This one is actually very healthy for modern human beings. It’s meant for kids, but it works for adults too in very meaningful ways.

When I was in grade school showing a love for Star Wars was extremely taboo. I make no attempt to hide my contempt for the way public school operates—I often say that public school is like using a public restroom or a drinking fountain. Yeah, it does the basics, but not very well. In public school, too many people establish their basic epistemological essence in those public institutions because they don’t have reliable families at home to help them, or other positive influences. The school becomes the basic foundation for that while it was quite clear that George Lucas was intent to provide a competing epistemology for young people, so the pubic school system rejected the competition instead of embracing it, the way they should have. However, I was never one who backed down from a fight—never one day in my life. The more kids made fun of me for wearing my favorite Han Solo t-shirts to school, the more I did it, and my love for Star Wars actually got me into a lot of trouble. It’s not like that today, kids can show their enjoyment of such things without getting into fights over it, and that is actually some real progress. Concerning education, I see that Star Wars has given many people who missing epistemology that they should have been getting from school, or their families and the stories are keeping pace with the concerns of our modern age that is coming at us much faster than ever. It’s really the only thing that is—which to me makes it extremely important culturally.

One of my many hobbies is the study of world cultures and religions. It doesn’t pay much money otherwise I’d do that task fulltime because as I say here often, mythology is my favorite topic. I could talk about world culture all day long and what the pros and cons are. You can often read in hindsight why cultures failed if you know the details and why that’s important is so that you can prevent it in your own culture. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the American Indian or Roman and Greek societies, you can see through the gifts of historical hindsight why they all failed, and I apply those lessons daily with the millions and millions of words I have provided for free to my readers—because I don’t want to see people fail. Professionally, I don’t have to read in a Denny’s at 2 AM anymore because the lights in the house keep everyone awake. I’m doing well at age 50, as is expected given my role in our family, and my community. So I don’t mind sharing things I love in writing and mythology if it might improve the life of one person—let alone helping many people. The human race in spite of all the faults we could list off for hours on end is actually plotting into positive uncharted territories for the first time in history and it is really only the epistemological values of Star Wars that are successfully preparing the minds of our modern age with the intellectual means to deal with everything in a positive way.

This morning I was at the Target department store near my house shopping for Han Solo toys and I couldn’t help but notice that The Last Jedi just hit the shelves from its Blue-Ray release, and here we are talking about another Star Wars movie being released in a month. The cultural values of the last Star Wars movie are still simmering, Lego hasn’t even put out their video game yet for The Last Jedi. And there are lots of beach towels and clothing out for consumers to enjoy and all this is happening as Space X and Virgin Galactic are taking over the civilian colonization of space and Amazon is delivering packages within hours of ordering from virtually anywhere in the world. Artificial intelligence is taking over as the new rudimentary task supplier in a rapidly expanding economy where there simply aren’t enough workers in the world to do all the jobs coming available. I’m not kidding when I say Alexia could take over the teaching profession. With a second Star Wars moving coming out and all that comes with it culturally, it will be interesting to see what happens. And that’s not all, there are at least eight more Star Wars movies in development right now, along with Star Wars television, video games, books, music and so many other items. What impact that has on the human race I think is a fascinating topic on the epistemological level of consciousness.

As I was paying the check at Denny’s it was a big one, and many of the Indiana farmers looked at me a little side-eyed. My oldest grandson and I were very openly showing our excitement at getting the Han Solo card in the stack I bought. I of course was hoping to get that particular entry. Those are the same kind of people who used to make fun of my Han Solo shirts on the school bus—they didn’t understand what all the fuss was about and thought I should be thinking about something more—real. But little did they know, or little did they know that day in Denny’s that what I was excited about was more real than just about anything they were considering and Han Solo has always best exemplified my excitement for it—the optimism of what is always potentially just around the corner. Han Solo is a very positive character who believes he can get out of anything he gets into under any circumstances and in so many ways, he represents the current position of mankind on planet earth in the early parts of the 21st century. That makes these movies more important than just an entertainment option. Even more than that, it made for me a really fun birthday!

Rich Hoffman

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A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow: The new toy Millennium Falcon, Star Wars land in Orlando, Trump, and resolving cognitive dissidence

I understand why President Trump is frustrated with the negative slant of all media coverage, the kind of America he is trying to resurrect is a lot like the one I used to watch on The Wonderful World of Disney shows that came on every Sunday night when I was a kid, of which my favorites were the World of Tomorrow episodes. I am an extremely positive person—the world could literally be on fire and the demons of hell decapitating people in the streets with no hope for anyone anywhere and I’d find something positive to attribute to it. And I would attribute that to Walt Disney and how open I was to his message very early in my life. But when it comes to dealing with other people, I am quick to get rid of people in my life who are not positive people—who drag on a culture and I think Trump is a person of the same type of mind—a very positive person who wants to share with America that same sentiment. Yet when you are a president of everyone, even those who hate you, it can be a real challenge.

I see hope everywhere I look however, as dire as things may seem at the time. For instance, I don’t see in people’s addictions to cell phones as being a major problem. I see an education system that is not aligned with the needs of modern people—which because of that villain John Dewey attempted to instruct children into the merits of collectivism instead of individualism. Technology, especially phone apps and computer games are all about re-centering the individual needs to its consumers and that puts most people into a schizophrenic relationship with themselves. They have this very negative self that is against their individual tastes which measures everything against the values of the group, then there are the natural needs of the individual that are always crying for attention. I most recently saw this in the movie reviews of the new Tomb Raider film where reviews where pretty negative but the film itself was quite a crowd pleaser. The duality that we see in the media and in politics is a short-term aspect of a society reclaiming itself and the world of tomorrow is shaping up to be quite extraordinary. To that observation I have to turn once again to what we are seeing from Disney’s Star Wars franchise. I’m not talking about the progressive board of directors’ approach of appeasing all their gay creative talent with left winged sentiment, but the old hooks into ancient mythology and the most creative aspects of human achievement that comes out in each new project.

I’ll admit that I am very excited about the new movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story which comes out in May of 2018. I’ve long talked about my love of The Millennium Falcon as a movie icon that I relate a lot with. In this new movie The Millennium Falcon is a much younger ship than the one from the classic series and it has a new design to the front of it that I find very interesting. Recently at the New York Toy Fair Hasbro released a lot of the new toys for the new Solo film and I found myself enchanted with the new Millennium Falcon toy, which I will surely get the moment I can get my hands on it. I just recently spent the weekend playing Star Wars figures with my grandkids and we had a great time. They love playing with my collection of Star Wars toys and I enjoy sharing that experience with them. And with each new movie is a chance to communicate with those kids something new and exciting, so I really enjoy the positive energy of Star Wars products because they are very classical in how Wal Disney thought of things. I really think the love of the Millennium Falcon that people have for it will greatly influence real spaceship design over the next several decades and these toys are creating in the minds of so many people young and old alike new engineers that aren’t nearly as stuffy as the older generation. The same day that I was watching footage of the New York toy show I had hired a really sharp engineer for a project I have been working on. The kid had a master’s and was wanting to go further but he had no pretentious aspect to himself. He was just sharp and in love with engineering. He is very much a product of these modern Star Wars influences. He loves to solve problems and young kids like him are the kind of geeks that have Millennium Falcons all over their work cubicles. They are the kind of kids who wear t-shirts saying, “My other vehicle is The Millennium Falcon,” as they show up to work in a piece of junk car. Even though they are paid well and could afford a Corvette, they could care less about impressing members of the opposite sex, the way people did thirty years ago. They save all their money for Jabba’s Sail Barge, also shown at the same toy fair. And to be honest, I may buy one myself—because its pretty damn cool.

I see people of today accelerating in the kinds of things they want to learn much, much faster—much faster than the media can keep up with. In some ways people are dumber—socially, and politically. But individually, they are asking questions of the world around them that has never before occurred, and a lot of it has to do with the astonishing exposure they are getting from their movies, home streamed video content, personal communication devices, the Internet and of course movies. The motion picture industry as a whole is collapsing, and it really can’t be saved at this point. The future is very much what Disney is doing where a two-hour movie introduces content that plays out over multiple platforms, books, comics, television shows, and video games—toys, etc. But the real product is in generating imaginative cognitive essence—the ability to think creatively, like children do but were taught against over the last four decades of public education.

Right after the New York Toy Fair Disney released drone footage of their new Star Wars lands in Orlando and California. To have a place like that where people can go and play out a fantasy of thought against the illusion of reality is really a work of art for cognitive dissidence. The negativism that the Trump administration is at war with will work itself out I think over the next ten years and things like the opening of that Star Wars land in the Disney parks will take giant steps in launching humanity toward a new phase of development. Playing with Star Wars toys for me was very important when I was a kid—it really launched my imagination into a place that helps me every single day of my current life. Having a great attitude about life and always finding something positive about it combined with a boundless imagination has given me a great life and lets me share that with other people. But playing with my grandkids with all the tools I’ve had combined with the ones they have which are new, and I see something really special happening. What a simple toy can do to the imagination can’t be understated, and the desire to play with that toy as a young person comes from these movies and video games. But also, to walk around and interact in those actual environments is bound to unlock potential that we never thought possible as human beings.

The conflicts of today will not be the conflicts of tomorrow. The bra-burning feminists, the gay rights cries to make everyone into a rainbow, and the fights between liberalism and conservatism will fall away to this next age. Our thoughts and imaginations are inventing tomorrow right before our eyes and the story of our species is being written fast. So fast that no newspaper or television company in the world has managed to get their arms around the true potential. But I see that glimmer of hope and potential in the simplest things, like that new Millennium Falcon toy shown at the Hasbro booth. In the methods of play, even as adults, we work out complicated problems, and the most intelligent people I have come to know in some of the advanced technical fields are the types of people who would much rather watch footage from the New York Toy Fair than to watch video porn of some people having sex. The toys are much more exciting and in that realizing, there is great hope for our future—if we can just last long enough to get there.

Rich Hoffman

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Tough Pick Between Donald Trump and Han Solo: Thoughts on the new movie and the context of historical perspective

Who could blame me, after all it has been a busy week, with a presidential visit to Cincinnati, the FBI getting caught in the biggest scandal in American history, a Super Bowl, a stock market plunge and a snow storm with frigid temperatures that have rocked North America into a perilous freeze. Not to mention a brutal week in the business world where next to nothing came easy and everything was at stake, I have taken a few days to talk about my thoughts about the new Han Solo movie which unleashed its first movie preview Monday morning on Good Morning America, just hours after a 45 second preview of the preview during the Super Bowl the night before. I was in fact on my way to meet President Trump at Lunken Airport when I watched the Solo preview while in the car waiting to get through security. My lack of comments on the movie were not because I didn’t like it, it was just due to the enormous number of other things going on.

I normally talk about lofty topics that range in subject matter but generally contain thematic elements that are more philosophical in nature. And my readers don’t typically like it when I stray away and talk about Star Wars. But as I see in it the greatest modern mythology we have as a human race even though the film series these days is largely made by progressive liberals from the San Francisco region, there is a core of tradition that sets Star Wars apart from all other forms of entertainment that makes it an important subject—and I find it very fascinating. I was even thinking about the new Solo movie as the hand of the president of the United States was right in front of me extending a greeting—and anybody who reads here often knows how much I think of President Trump and his wife—who was with him.

Han Solo is my favorite Star Wars character without a close second. Without Han Solo, there really isn’t a Star Wars in my option. I like Star Wars without Han Solo, but I don’t love it. But when Solo is part of a story, I’m much more interested—so a movie about the freedom fighting smuggler as a young man is something I am very interested in—and have been for a long time. Because of The Last Jedi, I have had low expectations for this movie called Solo: A Star Wars Story—but as the release date gets closer, I am getting more excited. And now with this preview, I am actually intrigued because this may actually be the best “western” to come out of Hollywood in decades.

Han Solo is all about living free, hot rod star ships, and guns. He is a character taken out of 1950s American values when westerns were almost all there was on television and at the movie theaters, and people drove in fixed up cars overcharged with horsepower to get to them. In the context of the saga which over the years has filled more and more with progressive political values as the franchise increased in popularity, Han Solo was the Ayn Rand contribution of the times who was living in a bad world and was just too good to be good at living life as a pirate, but too bad to join an organized effort—unless he fell in love with some girl. The values of Han Solo are essentially the values of Americana, so it is interesting that Lucasfilm made the decision to make a young Han Solo movie even as they have flooded their recent films with progressive inclusiveness even to the point of being uncomfortable because it often feels forced on the viewer—such as in The Last Jedi.

In the preview the Millennium Falcon is a new ship, which any Star Wars fan knows only as a beat-up wreck that is the fastest hung of junk in the galaxy. Only now the famous ship has a long point at the front instead of the mandibles that everyone has come to associate with it. Also the interior is a bright white instead of a grungy offering that we saw from an older Han Solo who had spent much of his life running from everyone who wanted to throw restraints on him. It is a strange thing to see how something we all know so well can be taken back in time and presented as a younger version of itself—its an interesting study about behavior. Obviously like most of us, Han Solo loves his ship and as an older man he sees only the beauty of it while everyone else sees junk. Solo obviously is hanging on to a period of his life where the ship was new and him acquiring it was one of the most important accomplishments he had undertaken. In this new movie we get to see why, which goes a long way to explaining the character.

Lucasfilm has foolishly played along with the national divide going on presently and have picked a more liberal political stance. Many of their actors are anti-Trumpers, even the original directors of Solo before Ron Howard came along to save the production a few weeks before the end of filming. I was in London while Lucasfilm was shooting Solo and I could see in the news reports there that members of the cast and crew where cheering on anti-Trump protests in the streets of the famous English city. That has led to a strong rebuke from conservatives about anything involving Star Wars—especially young people like Ben Shapiro who were pretty hard on this Han Solo proposal. But I think this film can go a long way to repairing that relationship and I sincerely hope it does. There is a lot of good that Star Wars can do in the world and I’d hate to see it wasted on partisan events that will dissipate completely 40 years from now when these stories will still have value to people.

It was just announced this week that there will be yet another Star Wars trilogy produced by Lucasfilm, this time by the makers of Game of Thrones. That is exciting news to me, and I think there really can’t be enough Star Wars for our modern culture. MANKIND—not Justin’s “peoplekind” is on the precipice of a very evolutionary period. Things are happening very fast these days, even in the context of the news announced at the start of this article, Elon Musk launched a luxury sports car into space as a display of audacious technical undertaking of excess bringing many people into a space age not built on Cold War hostilities but sheer curiosity and adventure. And to bridge that gulf we need a mythology that helps us through these times of very complicated technical innovation that needs a religious grounding not set in a Middle East desert—but in space where our future resides. For all of us Han Solo is a way to bring our traditional values into the context of anything that can happen and through that character we can project ourselves into the yet undiscovered worlds that are before us. That is a curious case indeed that eclipses the moments of our immediate consciousness placing our concerns into the ever after which is coming at us at a speed faster than light.

Rich Hoffman
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