Tag: Star Wars

Bob Iger’s ‘The Ride of a Lifetime’: Forget the social justice, just tell the story

I am not an anti-Bob Iger guy. As the head of Disney, I have been willing to forgive that he’s a liberal because I think he has done a pretty good job as a CEO in making that company one of the most powerful media companies in the world—arguably the biggest. Personally, I love Disney, but my interests often dwell in the challenges that corporations have in creative endeavors which obviously is a challenge the bigger a company gets. In that regard, Disney has been an interesting study and its not easy. After all, media is changing and its hard to get out in front of that change, and Iger has tried to do his best, and most of the time, he’s been right. However, with Star Wars he did blow it which I have talked about many different ways and I was very interested this week in reading his new book, ‘The Ride of a Lifetime’ that he admitted as best he could that he had some regrets about not following George Lucas’ story treatment for the latest trilogy. Clearly if Disney had handled that situation better, the Star Wars brand would not be as fractured as it is now. Iger took this opportunity in writing this book to throw the fans a bone and offer an apology which should take the edge off the activism for the upcoming The Rise of Skywalker film coming in December.

Iger’s book was good and insightful providing several examples of learning as he went along especially handling characters of great talent, like Steve Jobs and George Lucas in painting a picture of that very fine line in using massive corporate power to tell a story, when the best of what a story is comes from individual experience. Personally, after The Force Awakens came out, I was not happy and it took me a long time to give Star Wars a chance again. Largely for me it was that I had grandchildren who could use the stories the way I had shared them with my own kids. I raised my family on Star Wars so it seemed like a shame to throw everything out the window just because Bob Iger thought he needed to corporatize Star Wars to protect the brand. After all, from his point of view, Lucas was selling off the Star Wars property to let Disney take all the risk of making the next trilogy even if they might not be big billion dollar sellers at the box office the way that the market is lined up these days. Lucas thought he was selling Star Wars to a friend who would protect the brand for the long view. And the fans split along those lines. Now before the next film Bob Iger is doing just that, he’s reaching something of a compromise in getting back to the original Lucas vision, but it may be too late. Or maybe not. I’m willing to give it a chance for the reasons I mentioned. Because the upside is far too valuable.

I often talk about Star Wars as being more than just an entertainment franchise. Mythologically Star Wars is one of the hottest modes of storytelling that we have seen in all our human lifetimes. Even screwing up the canon storyline which takes place over thousands of years, Star Wars and the power of Disney and Lucasfilm before it, produces an enormous amount of cultural content, from books, television, video games, to of course the movies. The amount of material that there is from Star Wars has more of an impact on our culture than most religions and has far more power than governments over the minds of a population. And Star Wars is truly a global endeavor, no matter where in the world that you go, people know the brand and something about the stories. There are very few entertainment options that have that kind of power, so managing all that power is tricky business under even the best conditions. But at the heart of the Star Wars debate is the long desired human trait to understand free will, immortality, and the nature of spirituality. Even though the stories are kid’s stories, the questions they ask are quite large and have the tools to put minds on a higher place, exhibiting the best attributes of science fiction as a platform.

Iger’s mistake was that the very same skills that have made him a great CEO, that certain ruthlessness that you have to have to trust your own instincts are the same problems that caused him to second guess the Lucas story treatments which have now alienated fans. The Lucas story was set to take the characters that had been built through many decades of novels right into a philosophical story that might have been more like The Empire Strikes Back and less like a Star Wars greatest hits like The Force Awakens was. Iger had doubts that people would spend a billion dollars at the box office to explore the nature of the Whills and the concept of immortality within the universe. But in the end, because he held everything too tight, Disney killed the property anyway.

For me the interesting thing that Star Wars explores, that isn’t covered anywhere else in all earthly cultures is the very different approaches between oriental philosophies and the occident. Oriental obviously being collectivist in nature and the occident, focused on individual free will. The parts of Star Wars that works is the occidental part. The parts that people often don’t like even if they don’t consciously understand why is the oriental portions. However, the oriental aspects are important to the story telling so not every Star Wars story can be a billion-dollar grosser which is hard for a corporate spreadsheet to show to investors. But the study of the philosophy does drive merchandise sales for decades if done properly, and now ultimately Iger appears to understand that the Lucas vision should have been followed without his tampering.

Even for those not too interested in entertainment and pop culture aspects, the Bob Iger book is a good read and well worth the time. The selling of ideas is a tricky business after all. Speaking for myself my dealing with some of the people mentioned in Iger’s book left me wanting to live in exile just as Luke decided to do in both versions of the cannon, the extended universe and these Disney stories. And that is a challenge explored in the great book of philosophy called Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The problem remains and this is true of both Lucas and Steve Jobs who merged with Disney while he knew he was dying of cancer so that their companies could live—no matter how much liberal Hollywood types and creative geniuses want to talk about the independence of their craft and the superiority of ownership over corporate rule, ultimately the temptation to use big corporate engines to assume risk is where they always go wrong. Or is it really wrong? If Iger does make things right with fans I would argue that there are many more Star Wars story telling options for the future because of Disney ownership than without it. Many more books, more theme park tie ins, and many, many more visual mediums than if George Lucas had held onto the Star Wars brand. And with something with as much story to tell as Star Wars can tell Lucas was right to sell it to Disney. The mythology can explode so long as everyone understands the objective. And after reading the Iger book, I am sure he does. The question is, is it already too late? I certainly hope not. I’m rooting for him; I’d like to see everyone come out well in the end.

Rich Hoffman
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Corporations are Great: Star Wars, Disney and all the great things that come from making money

I personally love corporations, even though most of them function as socialist organizations. And it is difficult for a company like Disney to be creative as a result, as opposed to the early days when Walt Disney guided a much more capitalist enterprise. All large corporations have the same trouble when they become more socialist than capitalist for a lot of reasons which I am covering in my upcoming book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. But I couldn’t help but notice that the Star Wars problem and overall fan reaction to the new Black Spire Outpost in Disney World has an anti-corporation bias which goes completely against the nature of what many Star Wars fans stand for. Reading recently the Black Spire Outpost novel about the new Star Wars land the situation was obvious for which we see muddled in most of our understandings of corporate culture and everyone gets it wrong.

In the new version of Star Wars, the post Disney purchase, which I think they have gotten wrong, but more because of their own cultural limits than out of maliciousness the various factions of population are the Resistance, which many liberals directly attribute to our contemporary president of Donald Trump. The First Order, which is an authoritarian regime of micro controlling government which Tea Party types would associate with the Progressive Movement. Then there are the scum and villainy—the smugglers and bounty hunters who live outside the law always running from the law as space bound pirates roaming about freely, but often without a sense of family or home. I personally relate to this last faction, but in all three I see a kind of infantile understanding of human existence, however compared to other art forms, its much more sophisticated than any other entertainment option. For instance, I think the prequal films, especially Revenge of the Sith is a very sophisticated examination into how government can be a good entity one day, then the enemy of the people on the very next.

The problem Disney has is that they try to appeal to all the leftist types, the transgenders, the feminists, the socialist Democrats which all corporations can relate to, so to disguise their need to make money—which is the goal of all corporations. The problem is the dysfunctional relationship that corporations have with appeasement politics so that they can earn the right to do what they do, and that is to be a profit driven enterprise. The Disney problem with Star Wars is the same one that George Lucas could never deal with, that was to use the great money generated off of Star Wars and its merchandise to continue expanding the ability to create great mythology, because it takes money to tell these stories. So there is nothing shameful about turning a profit even though Disney and now Star Wars seems ashamed of it.

Out of those three factions the stories never deal with people’s need to make a living. The members of the Resistance don’t have jobs, they are given shelter and camaraderie for their efforts in fighting for the cause, but they aren’t out building families, buying starships or buying property. And that is the same for the First Order and the Empire that came before them. The members of the order are corporate in their design, but the individuals aren’t interested in buying houses and using their finances to gain prestige in the greater society. It is among the bounty hunters and smugglers that we can most relate because they are concerned about personal gain, which says a lot about a science fiction story because at least there is room for such contemplations.

In that way the Black Spire Outpost built by Disney is unique because the Resistance and First Order are present, but the town belongs to the pirates, criminals and smugglers who really make that galaxy an interesting place to visit. That’s interesting because even as a massive corporation who is out to make a lot of profit, and deserve to, Disney understands that at the heart of Star Wars is the every day people just trying to make a few bucks so they can live in the universe and if that is the baseline of understanding, then we can all build off it toward a mythic masterpiece that can mean a great deal to the customers.

In the book The Black Spire Outpost I enjoyed the corporate namedropping of all the things that can be done in the actual Disney Park, the names of the drinks you could buy in the cantina, the clothes and other souvenirs. There is nothing wrong with Disney selling merchandise and wanting to make money. The problem is, Disney has allowed for their own shaming by trying to appeal to leftist anti-capitalist groups to prove that they aren’t bad people, like many corporations are pushed into liberal causes to show that they aren’t big mean capitalists. However at the heart of what consumers want is those very traits and if the bottom line is so important, then Disney and all corporations should embrace capitalism publicly, and not hide their real desires behind masks of socialism. Its OK to want to make a profit and people don’t mind paying. But where the fears of corporate Disney ruining Star Wars reside is the real fear is in losing what the stories really meant to people. Nobody is interested in a bunch of altruistic self sacrificers. They want characters who are driven by the same needs they are in real life.

Only Disney and the incredible amount of money they can make could have built something like a real Black Spire Outpost and if it wasn’t profitable, they couldn’t do it. So for the benefit of everyone, we all need to drop the socialist perspective, which the Resistance certain is and the First Order and just admit that Star Wars as a property is all about making money then reinvesting that money into something good, like expanding the myth. Disney shouldn’t be shy about that and neither should their fans. I was talking to a person the other day who spent $800 in the Oga’s Cantina, which I understand completely. I mean where else could you sit down and have some exotic drinks to play Sabacc with the Millennium Falcon parked right outside? It takes money to build all that stuff and to maintain that reality to enjoy leisurely. If not for all the money that the Disney corporation has made, nothing at the Black Spire would be possible.

Corporations are not evil, making money is not wrong. But trying to adopt socialist ideas in the products that the corporation produces is bad because its not honest. And that’s when Disney gets scrutinized by its own fan base who have been told that the Resistance is all about being altruistic yet the company itself wants to make all the money it can. Well, yes, of course they are. We have allowed our society to criticize the very thing we enjoy most, we like to make money and we like to see companies become wealthy so they can create things we ultimately enjoy. The ideas of the Resistance and the First Order are not completely fleshed out ideas, but in the aspects of Star Wars that has received some of the best attention are the parts that involve the them of the Black Spire Outpost and that is a good sign for the future not just of Star Wars and Disney, but for corporations in general.

Rich Hoffman
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The Black Spire Outpost: Mythology on a whole new level

It was a tough week last week, and as I say often, when I have one of those weeks where I must put my mind up over the turmoil, I commonly turn to a good Star Wars book to ease things contextually. So I took that opportunity to spend a few days reading the new Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire, which is a new Star Wars novel by Delilah Dawson which is a direct tie in to the new land which recently opened at Disney World. My wife and I are planning a visit there soon so I’m starting to let myself enjoy the hype a bit, and I wanted to know the back story of the place, mythically. My impressions of Star Wars these days are that it is a lot weaker than it was when I was a kid, it used to be a place where boys could get away from the turmoil of thinking about girls. Girls have always had their things, their Barbies that want to do domestic things, where boys are wired for war and aggression. Star Wars gave young boys a place to go think about other things away from girls. But that’s not the way Disney wants to be, they want to reach everyone, especially girls. Their political activism has washed out Star Wars a lot, its more of a “pew, pew, pew” that girls make when the guns fire than a “boom, breerach, or a twew,” that come out of a boy’s mouth. To that effect the Black Spire book had very little action, and a lot of girly feelings but to be honest, I enjoyed it anyway and think the book, the amusement park and the upcoming movie are amazing in how mythology is taking the mind of mankind to a truly new level.

A lot of people are mad at Star Wars, and especially at Disney for taking away this boy refuge from them and making it much more girl friendly. They are also mad at the gender politics that is so heavy at Disney with everything they do, after all they want the whole audience, not just the boys. Like lots of traditional fans I am still mad that Disney turned their backs on the old fans of the Extended Universe and wrecked the cannon. I still have a hard time accepting as cannon any of the new stories, but I do think that Star Wars is worth working out the details, because it is inspiring in people a love of science that they really don’t get anywhere else. I get to talk to people all over the world each week and I have not found anybody who calls themselves an engineer who doesn’t love Star Wars. Disney may have screwed up the timeline and cannon of the stories, but this opportunity to build a new Star Wars land that people can visit, see and touch that ties into the rest of the greater mythology is just an astonishing opportunity. In a world where everyone seems to be getting dumber, Star Wars fans tend to be the exception and I think that’s wonderful and worth any bumps in the road that it took to get here.

Also, Star Wars and Disney are the last of the traditional ways of getting source entertainment material, whether it’s a book from a bookstore, or a destination vacation, or a movie released at the theater that still have a profit model. The trend is that some people have Amazon Prime accounts and are streaming movies directly. Others have Netflix. But not everyone has the same unified source material. We’ve certainly gained more freedom of entertainment options, but we no longer share the same options. So I found it very fascinating to read this backstory of the Black Spire ahead of our visit there to understand what the heck Disney was thinking in creating a Star Wars land that was never a part of any of the previous movies, but for stories not yet told, then to sell it off as Star Wars. It was a pretty big gamble that I hope pays off for them.

Sure enough, the Black Spire book was a fascinating journey to a new Star Wars world that is literally quite real in both the California and Florida parks. It introduced the main characters that are a part of the Disney Parks lands and explained why anyone would care about the backstory while visiting. Obviously, there is some kind of tie-in to the upcoming movie this December, which has a lot riding on it. It is truly an amazing time that we live in where such a mythology could be enjoyed at these various levels that are all tied together through story. While reading the Black Spire I couldn’t help but think of previous literary efforts well before movies became the dominate entertainment, such as Jules Verne’s work. Disney would later make movies out of them, but their enjoyment only lasted while the film was playing. What we are doing now is enjoying a fine new book then actually visiting the places in that book, eating in the restaurants talked about there, then seeing movies and television shows that then become part of the shared experience. It is exciting to consider how these new mythic tools might build up the mind of the people who enjoy them in a positive way.

Even if Star Wars is more girly now than when I was growing up, the idea of a type 3 civilization that harnesses all the various powers of their galaxy yet still be concerned about human problems is a very fascinating study. The Black Spire being a bit of a wild west town on the outskirts of such a society and the problems of government that come with managing all those people and juggling their natural autonomy is a good thing to think about. We are moving at such a pace these days that the best way to see what’s coming is to put your mind someplace where everything can be viewed together, and in spite of the Disney handling of Star Wars not being equal to fan expectations, what has been gained is more than worth it. I would have loved when I was a kid to have the opportunity to visit any kind of Star Wars land. Now I can, but not only that, but that land is in books and comics to enjoy across multiple platforms of entertainment. And for our entertainment of tomorrow, this is the way that mythology will be told best.

Mythology has always been the platform that mankind has used to think from and is what makes all of us different than every other kind of animal. People need to think about something before they can do it, and what Disney is providing is not only to think about it, but to see and feel it on a scale that just has never been possible before. The stories that the Black Spire Outpost isn’t doing well, and that Star Wars in general is struggling to refind its fanbase are part of that political activism I was talking about, in making it too girl friendly and robbing it as a refuge for boys to get away from the girls and their domestic problems. But what has been gained has truly been worth it. I enjoyed the Black Spire book and can’t wait to visit the park. Even as a hard-core older fan, I can forgive many of the fumbles that Disney has had because of the epic scale of mythology telling that they are now conducting. And I’m looking forward to a lot more.

Rich Hoffman

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People’s Desire for Freedom Overtakes Their Need for Institutionalism: Why the Fox Polls don’t matter and why Star Wars must turn things around

There is certainly a lot to learn from an event like the D23 Expo, especially in regard to a pop culture entertainment like Star Wars is. At that event, it was obvious that Disney and Lucasfilm in general are finally doing what they should have all along, and that is get the franchise back to what it was in the beginning, a story about the dangers of too much institutionalism and the higher spiritual essence of individualism. But why did it take so long, because the answer is of course the same one Donald Trump is asking about why Fox News has turned toward the left, and why so many politicians think that gun control is an option in the future. In the case of Disney and Star Wars, something that should have been full proof, before they came out with their version of a third trilogy, they thought they could put all these progressive themes into the movies and that people would still buy into the concept. Disney thought Star Wars was all about old puppet props and blue milk, not the excitement of a shootout in a cantina and rugged individualists cutting their own way on the frontiers of space, such as what is obvious about the new Star Wars show coming to their streaming network, The Mandalorian.

Over this last decade with literally millions and millions of dollars of payroll to work with nobody within the Disney organization was able to put their finger on why Star Wars was successful and what it would take to bring the fans back to the franchise after they had alienated them with their progressive approach to the material. At the 2019 D23 it was obvious that Disney was trying to fix that problem and who could blame them? They didn’t see all this coming, the planning for all these movies was taking place before Donald Trump was president, before the economy in America spiked off in a positive direction and before Hong Kong decided they loved America more than China. The world as they thought it would be under a Clinton presidency never happened and that has been reflected in the Star Wars movies—and pop culture in general.

Because of D23 there was a triple XP weekend on Star Wars Battlefront II, the video game and my grandson and I were having fun raking up points on the multiplayer mode. I play the game more than most people do in my position in life, but not nearly as much as I’d like and in playing this past weekend I was thinking about gun control. The reports are indicating that the video game generation of these current young people are growing up to be quite aggressive capitalists and you can see that in the video game markets. Video games especially in multiplayer modes whether its Battlefront II or Fortnite is all about rewards for the work done and video game players are coming to expect the same thing in real life. Even the most recent Madden offering is loaded with lots of unlocks and special features that you can only get to after you’ve played the game for many hundreds of hours. The socialism that was taught in schools to kids growing up in the 90s with the grunge rock bands out of Seattle are not the kids of Fortnite. The contrasts are quite obvious and finally the people at Disney are seeing it too. They have no choice if they want to stay relevant in the future of entertainment. I would argue that its too late for them, but I don’t want to see them lose the game because I think they bring a lot to the table culturally. I just wish they had listened initially when people like me were screaming it at them.

The same type of over thinkers and academic idiots who worked at Disney and thought it was smart to alienate most of the Star Wars audience are the same losers who think Donald Trump is bad for America as a president and don’t understand why he continues to survive no matter what the political left has thrown at him. They are also the same people who think that gun control is a topic that people care about. Let me say something about guns, the video game generations love guns, they think about them all the time, just differently than when I might have been a kid. These kids are playing with guns in video games all the time and they are likely to have a greater appetite for guns than even past generation did. That is something that Disney completely missed when they were setting up their new theme park attractions to not have guns, even with Woody from Toy Story. I always thought it was weird that Woody had a holster but never a gun, and Disney went along thinking that was appropriate in this sensitive age of political correctness. But Star Wars fans saw through that phony behavior as just another mechanism of institutionalism gone crazy. Its not the blue milk that people wanted to feel at the new Star Wars Land called Galaxy’s Edge, it’s the feeling of being an outlaw of the system and on the run from the “establishment.” That is the fantasy element that makes Star Wars everything it is, just as Pirates of the Caribbean was all about being a rebel and outcast from the rest of society and finding treasure and living from one raid to another.

Ultimately that’s why President Trump is president and why he will continue to be president, because that’s what real people want and the institutions of our society cannot see it for all the same reasons that all the highly paid experts at Disney couldn’t see what Star Wars was all about even though it was right in front of their faces. Human beings don’t want to hold hands and join together to live in a sanctimonious society of shared rules and regulations. They want to explore the reaches of space under their own guidance and want the freedom to live their own lives on their own terms, and that’s fine for any society that is constantly inventing and exploring. Its bad if that society is stagnant, which we all have been since westward expansion and turning places like Hawaii and Alaska into states. That sentiment does not show up in the Fox News polls or the ABC Morning News with an ex-Clinton aid hosting. But it does show up online while playing Fortnite and Battlefront II.

For a long time, giant media companies like Disney wanted to believe that they shaped culture, and that people would follow their products to the ends of the earth. What they have learned, painfully is that their influence is minimal, while they can shape opinions in the short run, the essence of human beings is rooted in rebellion and they want to feel untethered to rules as much as is safely possible. Rather media produced as movies, books or television shows should reflect the society they are offered to, not to seek to change their opinions about things like gay rights or identity politics. To do so is to gamble with something that people love and that can easily backfire as people not only learned at Disney but also in the political establishment as people continue to support President Trump no matter what happens. Star Wars used to have supporters like that, but not anymore. And its up to the media companies to learn those trends and to ride them. Not to change the waves that drive them though.

Rich Hoffman

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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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Ambition and Hope on Full Display

There was a lot going on with the Disneyland opening of the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land expansion this past weekend. During the opening ceremony Thursday night many of the actors from the Star Wars movies were there with George Lucas and Bob Iger to stand in front of the Millennium Falcon and open the place officially to fans, and the event was something to behold, even if viewers were not really keen on science fiction or movies in general. I am a fan and I see great possibilities for this new Disney land expansion which puts as its own kind of Cinderella castle the Millennium Falcon that so many people were emotional about. Which brings me to the question that deserves an answer, why? Why does the opening of a place like this and the full-sized star ships that previously had only been little models that we could see in a museum provoke such an intense emotional response?

I include below a picture of my Craftsman tool box that I’ve had for a vey long time. It looks now pretty much the way when I first got it which was a big deal for me. As I’ve told the story a few different times about my twenties and how difficult they were. Life was trying to turn me into ground beef and I was pushing myself to be a fine steak so that collision was intense. Given some of the challenges I thought it was an amazing achievement to get that tool box and the tools in it and to work at Cincinnati Milacron back when it as a big place to work in Oakley, Ohio. And to work there I had to have tools to make my living with. Most of the guys who worked with me were very much older than I was and they all had fancy tool boxes too, it was sort of a rite of passage thing and they always decorated their tool boxes with pictures of girls, and cars they either wanted or had restored, something that made them happy.

So my version of decorating my own tool box is seen in that picture, they are things I wanted most at that time and I have kept it that way just to remind myself from time to time. And featured prominently there is of course the Millennium Falcon from the movies being built at Elstree Studios in London. I always thought it would be incredible to see that ship up close, and obviously many thousands of others, even millions felt as strongly about that as I did. But why? After all, and this has become the theme of the entire Star Wars series, it was a pirate ship in the stories, the home of a couple of smugglers. So why was the Millennium Falcon such a fan favorite? I can only say that for me, it was always a symbol of hope and when things were especially dark in my life, and extremely difficult, I would think about that ship and what it would be like to build one in real life that you could actually touch and maybe even fly.

Well, I wasn’t the only one, as could be seen in the videos contained in this article. For me the Millennium Falcon has always stood for overcoming obstacles. I don’t think that was intentional on the part of George Lucas when he created the concepts for all this stuff, but it has certainly evolved that way and obviously Disney has realized this after a few years of trial and errors after they purchased the property from Lucas way back in 2012. All this time I have been saying how important culturally opening up this Galaxy’s Edge park would be and now here it is. Putting the Millennium Falcon center stage as a full-sized prop to symbolize everything the place stands for is pretty incredible. For me it fulfills something I’ve been thinking about most of my life, its certainly nothing I ever expected to see. But there it is.

I have not been a fan of the more progressive elements that Disney has brought to their ownership of the Star Wars stories. For a while they were really blowing it, but they have listened to some extent and are correcting course I think in a positive direction. Disney after all is a very capitalist company even though they try to appease the radical left with sentiment to keep them off their backs as a very large corporation that has one objective, to make money. So no matter what their objectives or political beliefs are as a company, to tell the stories people want to see, they have had to stick with the formula that works. And that formula is present in the Millennium Falcon, a pirate ship that is at the center of a rebellion against tyranny and big government that was brought to life by a couple of smugglers who were outlaws. Han Solo, the character, was not fighting for others, he was not putting the world before himself, he was very much an Ayn Rand type of character and over time became the fan favorite that has defined everything that Star Wars is to people, a concept of hope and resilience. And that is why Disney put the Millennium Falcon front and center in their new theme park expansion.

There is a lot more going on at Galaxy’s Edge. I think the impact to visitors is going to be tremendous. Mythically speaking I see that something different happened with Star Wars that hasn’t yet happened anywhere on earth previously and for the first-time human beings have an emotional vehicle that is finally breaking the Vico Cycle. I am certain that was the intent of George Lucas because for a while he was one of the Board of Directors for the Joseph Campbell Foundation which I was very proud to be a member during those same tough twenties. I was a very young man hanging out with some very smart movers and shakers and I’ll never forget what I learned in those years. Myth helps people deal with the world around them and Star Wars was always intended to be a powerful mythology. But I never expected this kind of Star Wars land. Looking at the faces of the people visiting for the first time reflects my own sentiments. But its not the props themselves, its in seeing a mythology come alive that people can interact with and where that goes is very much up in the air. How many new scientist, artists and great thinkers are being born while visiting such a place? I personally think a lot. The people who built Galaxy’s Edge obviously loved Star Wars and were like me, wanted very much to touch and feel something that was only made good by the special effects in movies. But now many of those elements are a physical reality. What excites me is to contemplate what happens next. How many young people will visit this world and grow into a drive to take the next step, whatever that is. Honestly, I think commercial space travel just become much more of a reality than ever before because people can see and touch a concept that will therefor generate a reality that is much better than what we’ve had, and that is a beautiful thing. Who wouldn’t want to fly routinely to Mars and the moons of Jupiter if only they could travel in something like the Millennium Falcon? Sure, it may not travel and move just like the ship in the movie, we probably have about 10,000 years of evolution before something like that is possible, but it’s a start.

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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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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