The narrative fixing that’s been going on with the Disney Star Wars movies is beyond belief. As you probably know, Memorial day weekend marked the release of the 4th Disney Star Wars flick: Solo. For the last few months, there have been articles floating about how Disney was “preparing itself” for Solo to bomb. From the switching directors partway in, to needing an acting coach for the lead, Solo has been plagued with difficulties, but the biggest obstacle placed in front of the continuing exploits of the scruffy looking nerf herder is that it came on the heels of the worst Star Wars movie of all time: The Last Jedi.
Now, I realize that some people claim that they liked Last Jedi even though the film is objectively bad. But fine, let’s just assume that you actually liked the film and you’re not just a Russian shill bot that’s been hijacked and reprogrammed by Kathleen Kennedy to spray the walls of the Internet with false praise like a truck stop bathroom is often sprayed with diarrhea. Let’s just say you’re a real person, and you liked Last Jedi, and that’s that. This article isn’t an argument as to whether Last Jedi is bad, I covered that here.
Personally, I didn’t like Last Jedi, and I don’t mean just a little bit. I hated it. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. But what gets in my craw is the social campaign to gag force everyone to concede Jedi is something other than the smoldering piece of trash it is. I’ve seen all kinds of bizarre narrative manipulations, from the 90%+ positive reviews, to the conspiracy articles stating alt-right groups have hijacked copies of the film to edit a ‘chauvinistic’ cut, because the only people who hate Last Jedi are misogynists. That completely blatant ‘victim’ narrative is such a transparent piece of phony journalism that I don’t know why people aren’t out there burning their black diamond VHS copies of Snow White in protest . . . but I digress.
For me, Solo marks the first time that I didn’t go see a Star Wars film on opening night. That’s my choice, but even as I write that I’m preparing to delete the comments of incensed Disney-bots telling me that I’m “entitled” or an “impossible to please fan boy” or any other number of despicable things. I’ve even been seeing people try to defend the narrative that old school Star Wars fans “should” go to see Solo, or else they’ll send the message to Kathleen Kennedy that there’s no interest in the original trilogy characters and we’ll get no more such movies.
WTF?
What kind of nonsense is that? There is actually social media pressure to see a bad film in the hopes that we’ll get some more slightly less bad films in the future? How about this for a newsflash: just make a good movie!
It’s kind of remarkable how quickly Disney has sunk the franchise. As much as George Lucas is derided (unfairly in my opinion), all three of his prequels were massive events. People were camping for whole weekends out in front of theaters to catch a glimpse of his latest creation. I was as disappointed with the Prequels as anyone when they first came out, but you could sense as you were watching them that they were, at least, the creations of a visionary. Sure, they were a garbled mess in many respects, but they had ‘Star Wars’ moments, and all of them warranted a repeat viewing.
I’ve been hearing people discuss something called a “Star Wars Boycott,” although the first I heard of it was yesterday when I did a search for ‘Solo Bombs’ (incidentally, you have to search for that because if you do a search for ‘Solo Sucks’ you get a whole different type of result). Apparently the “Star Wars Boycott” idea is trending a little bit (as much as anything contrary to Disney is allowed to trend online), and it is exactly what people say it is. People just aren’t going to Star Wars anymore because they were irritated with the last film, namely, The Last Jedi.
It’s comical that Disney would be aware enough of the “Boycott Star Wars” impulse to seed the Internet with a bunch of damage control articles about the whole matter. It’s almost comical how all the articles you read out there will discuss The Last Jedi in terms of it being polarizing, and then almost immediately dismiss those who are critical of the film as psycho Alt-right folks or anti-feminists or whatnot. Look, Solo is bombing, and that’s got a male lead, so this is not a feminism issue, it’s a bad movie issue.
Whether or not you still want to debate the quality of Last Jedi, the fact is that Star Wars fans, folks who are famous for camping outside a cinema for days in order to catch a premier, are staying home in record numbers. That’s a simple fact. Now, Disney is still standing by Last Jedi and trying to come up with other reasons the film has failed. They’ll talk about franchise fatigue, they’ll talk about the director swap, they’ll conclude that “the past must die” because Last Jedi made so much money. But all of this is just conveniently overlooking again the fact that Last Jedi had the largest box office drop from day one to day two of any film in the series.
It’s a simple fact that The Last Jedi has hurt Star Wars, from a business perspective, from a narrative perspective, from a storytelling perspective, and from a fan loyalty perspective, that is the clear takeaway here. Disney is flexing its considerable muscle to protect the film by seeding the Internet with good reviews and snarky conspiracy articles, but at the end of the day, you can’t fake a classic film. The hubris on display is astounding, but the fact is this: Star Wars fans are, for the first time in history, electing to stay at home rather than support the films.
No amount of name calling is going to get them back (incidentally, this is the same way you lose a political election). It’s going to be interesting to see if Star Wars fans continue to stay at home for Episode IX, my guess is they will. I will. I’m not going to spend $40 bucks to take the family to a film and have it be trash again. It’s just not happening. Maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll spend $1.75 at Red Box, but we’ll see.
At this point, it’s totally irrelevant how good of a film Solo is. If it’s great, I’ll hear about it and I’ll eventually go, I’ll even write a fair review at that time. But at this point, all I’ve seen from Disney is second rate trash so far. Let’s face it, if George Lucas isn’t at the helm, then it’s just not a Star Wars flick. At this rate, maybe Disney will undervalue the franchise so much that Lucas will be able to buy it back in a few years and undo the damage. Well, he’ll probably do equivalent damage, but at least there will be a spark of genius in his work as opposed to the enduring, lifeless, darkness and void we get from Disney.
But the real tragedy is that while Disney spends billions yapping on about this zombie of an intellectual/creative achievement they insist on jamming down our collective gullets, superior works are being completely disregarded. The “next” Star Wars is probably sitting out there unseen on Youtube, or unread on Amazon somewhere. Why should a newspaper honestly evaluate the work of an independent creator, when they can print false rave reviews about a product owned by their own parent company? I find this trend in the evaluation of our cultural arts . . . disturbing.
