The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1784 - This Is How Disney Destroyed Star Wars

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00:00:30.000 Nearly a decade and a half after Disney purchased the rights to the franchise, it's now without any doubt time to write the obituary of Star Wars.

00:00:38.960 And yes, plenty of critics have declared that Star Wars already died at one point or another, and many of them were probably right, but now there's no denying it.

00:00:47.880 And whether you're a big Star Wars fan or not, which admittedly I'm not, it matters because the culture matters.

00:00:54.200 When multi-billion dollar conglomerates ransack and murder parts of the culture, it's worth talking about.

00:01:02.320 And we know that the murderous plot is now complete.

00:01:06.060 Time of death can officially be recorded on the coroner's report.

00:01:10.260 And we know that because the new Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is out in theaters this weekend.

00:01:18.180 And absolutely no one cares.

00:01:21.600 No one is even pretending to care.

00:01:23.020 The executives at Disney and Lucasfilm managed to completely annihilate perhaps the most

00:01:27.940 beloved entertainment franchise in American history, which would have been totally unthinkable

00:01:34.620 back in the 1990s. And anyone who grew up in the 90s, you well remember this. When people were

00:01:42.880 lining up at midnight to get into the premiere of The Phantom Menace, now looking at this,

00:01:48.820 it's like lost footage from another civilization. Watch.

00:02:12.620 It's one of the biggest premieres of all time. The level of sustained interest in this

00:02:17.980 franchise over time was unlike anything else in the history of filmmaking. It was at the time,

00:02:26.020 by far and away, the most wildly popular and iconic movie series ever. It was basically the

00:02:30.500 Michael Jackson of film franchises. And like Michael Jackson, it is now dead under nefarious

00:02:37.000 circumstances. Now you can see some photos from the 1983 premiere of the Return of the Jedi on

00:02:44.440 the screen right there. 16 years later, The Phantom Menace drew similar crowds. In fact,

00:02:49.800 even before its release, episode one was packing theaters. A lot of people don't remember this,

00:02:54.260 but in 1999, almost nobody had high-speed internet. So if you wanted to see a movie trailer,

00:03:00.060 you had two options. You could wait approximately 17.5 thousand hours to download it.

00:03:06.160 And if somebody calls you in the meantime on your phone line, then you'd have to start all over

00:03:10.440 again, or you could buy a ticket to a movie.

00:03:12.760 In the case of The Phantom Menace, in November of 1998, the teaser trailer was apparently

00:03:18.040 attached to Meet Joe Black, The Siege, and The Waterboy.

00:03:22.080 And according to Variety, around 500 people in Los Angeles bought tickets to The Siege

00:03:25.960 at a theater, and a third of them walked out when The Phantom Menace trailer was over,

00:03:30.260 because that's the only reason they went to the movie.

00:03:31.980 It became so common that theaters began promising audiences that they would re-air the trailer

00:03:36.440 after the movie so they could get a second look.

00:03:40.440 although no such bribe should have been needed to convince people to sit through the water boy,

00:03:44.420 perhaps the dumbest comedy ever made, which makes it a cinematic masterpiece in a certain kind of 0.76

00:03:49.040 way. In any case, again, nothing like this had ever happened before. People were so pumped for 0.60

00:03:54.180 Star Wars that they bought tickets to other movies just to see a commercial for Star Wars.

00:04:00.520 Now compare that enthusiasm for the original trilogy and the prequels to this audience reaction

00:04:07.300 to the finale of Rise of Skywalker.

00:04:09.680 This is going to be one of the better audience reaction videos we've seen,

00:04:13.740 if only because the comedic timing couldn't be any better.

00:04:17.880 Watch.

00:04:19.000 Who are you?

00:04:21.640 I'm right.

00:04:24.520 Not you.

00:04:26.820 Not you.

00:04:31.700 Oh, God.

00:04:33.180 No.

00:04:34.420 No!

00:04:35.420 Don't do it!

00:04:36.260 Please go. Please no.

00:04:41.260 Where is Ben? 0.92

00:04:43.260 Where the f*** is Ben? 0.84

00:04:50.260 Bryce Garland. 0.98

00:04:52.260 No!

00:05:02.260 Somebody's already...

00:05:04.260 Please don't say it. Oh God, no. They all anticipate what Ray is going to say, like a detainee at a CIA black site who knows the waterboarding is coming.

00:05:33.760 the sheer stupidity and predictability of the line 0.99

00:05:36.080 is overwhelming everybody in the theater. 1.00

00:05:38.780 They're hoping it won't happen, even though it's inevitable.

00:05:41.420 And then after the moment finally comes, the revolt begins,

00:05:44.080 and someone yells, I effing hate Star Wars.

00:05:46.820 And right on cue, the orchestra kicks in,

00:05:49.000 and you're informed that the film was directed by the one and only J.J. Abrams.

00:05:52.760 But even J.J. Abrams, as talented as he supposedly is,

00:05:57.560 couldn't direct an audience reaction video as good as this one.

00:06:01.120 And it's a funny thing, because at the time,

00:06:03.300 Everybody assumed that this was kind of rock bottom for Star Wars.

00:06:06.520 After all, it's hard to get any worse than fans walking out of the theater and taunting your film in viral social media videos.

00:06:14.400 But somehow, under the stewardship of Disney executives, Star Wars has been subjected to countless additional, even more extraordinary humiliations since the 2019 release of Rise of Skywalker.

00:06:24.140 And now those humiliations, which we're going to talk about in detail, have finally brought the Star Wars franchise to the point that it's not even hated anymore.

00:06:33.400 It's not despised. It's simply ignored.

00:06:36.840 Here's a picture somebody uploaded of an early release midnight screening of The Mandalorian the other day.

00:06:45.960 There it is there.

00:06:48.640 Compare this to the footage we saw from The Phantom Menace.

00:06:51.980 There's one guy in the entire theater, which probably is not a great sign.

00:06:56.060 Certainly quite a contrast to what we saw with every other Star Wars film, particularly the good ones.

00:07:00.720 And there's plenty of other posts like this.

00:07:03.560 Here's another.

00:07:05.400 He writes, quote,

00:07:07.160 Wife and I at the premiere of Mando and Grogu, a lot of different premiere, a lot different premiere than other Star Wars openings.

00:07:15.280 And once again, no one is there.

00:07:17.140 Even if you don't care at all about Star Wars, these images are still depressing.

00:07:20.440 Because, again, they represent the death of an iconic part of American culture.

00:07:25.960 And they keep coming.

00:07:27.720 You can go online to book tickets at your local theater, as seen here,

00:07:32.300 and you'll probably find that most of the seats are empty.

00:07:35.840 Meanwhile, the guys at Film Thread also went to an early screening of this movie.

00:07:40.260 As you listen to their extremely unimpressed reaction,

00:07:42.840 notice that the lobby is mostly empty in the background.

00:07:46.600 Watch.

00:07:47.760 All right, Alan, we got out of The Mandalorian and Grogu.

00:07:51.740 What are your social media out of the theater reactions?

00:07:55.720 Mine is I don't hate it.

00:07:58.480 It was okay.

00:08:01.160 And it was very long, and it's for kids.

00:08:04.780 I agree.

00:08:06.060 I think this is definitely for kids.

00:08:08.880 It's like three or four episodes of the show

00:08:11.360 stitched together into a movie.

00:08:14.320 and I thought it was small and underwhelming.

00:08:19.920 As underwhelmed as they were,

00:08:21.600 the review was actually positive.

00:08:24.840 It was on the positive end of the spectrum for this film

00:08:28.400 compared to other reviews.

00:08:29.660 Slate had a more definitive reaction, quote,

00:08:31.880 my expectations were fairly low,

00:08:33.360 but I am genuinely stunned how bad

00:08:35.340 The Mandalorian and Grogu is.

00:08:37.720 That's enough Star Wars for now, thanks.

00:08:40.640 IGN writes, this is a Star Wars movie

00:08:42.300 missing the thrills, surprises, challenges, addition of really anything of note to the

00:08:45.940 franchise, not to mention a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change.

00:08:49.940 The Mandalorian Grogu is the most boring Star Wars movie yet. Variety raves, quote,

00:08:55.800 an efficient adventure that only pretends to be a real Star Wars movie. It's basically the most

00:09:01.600 positive thing anyone could say about it. Inefficient. It's efficient. If that's the

00:09:06.320 best thing anyone could say about your movie is that it's efficient, then that's again a bad sign.

00:09:11.060 Now, first of all, before we go any further, I have to ask, who exactly decided that The Mandalorian and Grogu is a good idea for a movie title?

00:09:20.880 It might honestly be, without hyperbole, the worst title ever.

00:09:26.940 I mean, from a pure aesthetic perspective, it's a nightmare.

00:09:31.400 It's obnoxious.

00:09:32.120 It's too long.

00:09:32.880 It's clunky.

00:09:34.560 Said out loud, it has all the melody and grace of like a box full of silverware tumbling down the stairs.

00:09:41.060 Most people, myself included, don't know who Grogu is, but he's a character in the movie and so is the Mandalorian.

00:09:48.160 So that's good enough for the title, apparently.

00:09:51.700 What else do you need?

00:09:53.740 Imagine if they named the original films like this.

00:09:56.020 You know, you'd have Star Wars, Luke and Leia.

00:09:58.280 And maybe you'd have Star Wars, Han and Chewie.

00:10:00.620 And then the grand finale, Star Wars, Darth Vader and Palpatine.

00:10:04.940 It's a mystery why they didn't do it that way.

00:10:06.580 And by the way, if you're going to have a character in your movie named Grogu, which you probably shouldn't,

00:10:11.060 the worst thing you could do is put that character's name in the title of your film. 0.83

00:10:14.500 Grogu sounds like, it sounds like, it sounds like your least favorite dish that your Polish

00:10:19.520 grandmother cooks. Now, Star Wars titles, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, even The Phantom 0.99

00:10:25.060 Menace, used to have a certain vibe. You know, they evoked a particular feeling. They sounded

00:10:30.440 operatic and epic and fun. And now they just named the two main characters and that's it.

00:10:36.280 Instead of bringing to mind an epic space opera, they bring to mind, you know, children's cartoons from the 90s.

00:10:43.740 The Mandalorian and Grogu sounds like it belongs in the same pantheon as Pinky and the Brain, Ren and Stimpy, Cow and Chicken, except worse than all of those.

00:10:55.920 Now, to be clear, as bad as that title is, there is a reason why they chose it.

00:11:00.020 and it's entirely related to priorities like merchandising and brand recognition and algorithms

00:11:07.240 and so on. That's the whole problem with Star Wars and most Hollywood films generally. They

00:11:13.020 are constructed in corporate boardrooms by non-creative people who are trying to figure

00:11:19.600 out how to monetize a brand. No good movie has ever been made that way or could be made that way.

00:11:28.540 Good movies must originate from the creative inspiration of a single artist,

00:11:32.620 but under Disney's leadership, that's not what happened with Star Wars.

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00:14:05.820 First, they threw out George Lucas's outlines for a new trilogy.

00:14:09.340 Then their plans for an original story hit a major snag.

00:14:13.020 Disney, as a public company, had promised its shareholders that they would quickly pump out Star Wars films

00:14:18.720 at a cadence of one per year in order to realize profits on their $4 billion investment.

00:14:24.060 But when the original screenwriter of The Force Awakens decided he needed more time,

00:14:27.860 Disney's leadership, Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy, got rid of him instead.

00:14:31.840 And they put J.J. Abrams in charge of the project with an extremely tight deadline.

00:14:36.200 He had to get the film out in just a couple of years by 2015.

00:14:38.660 So instead of coming up with an original story with a detailed plan for an entire trilogy,

00:14:42.720 he copied A New Hope.

00:14:44.200 His only real contributions were, you know, a black stormtrooper, a few relatively uninteresting mysteries with no answers at all.

00:14:50.900 He simply simply didn't have time to do anything else. 0.79

00:14:53.900 Or at least that's the official excuse.

00:14:55.660 I mean, the truth is, based on J.J. Abrams' history in the industry, he probably would have copied A New Hope anyway, even if he had an extra decade to produce this film.

00:15:03.640 We all remember Lost, which was the classic example of his storytelling, if you can call it that.

00:15:08.980 simply raise a bunch of questions

00:15:11.140 without knowing where they lead

00:15:12.460 because he doesn't care.

00:15:15.200 You know, his only goal is to get audiences

00:15:16.580 to watch the next episode or the next film,

00:15:18.760 which is the cheapest and laziest way to tell a story.

00:15:21.900 Anybody can tell a story where weird stuff happens, right?

00:15:27.320 Anyone can get people interested in a story

00:15:29.520 by just having weird stuff happening all the time

00:15:31.660 or mysteries.

00:15:32.640 Oh, what does that mean?

00:15:34.120 That's easy to, anyone can do that.

00:15:36.300 The challenge, the part where you have to be an artist

00:15:38.480 in a real storyteller, Teller is in landing the plane, bringing all the threads together in a

00:15:43.780 coherent and meaningful way, which J.J. Abrams doesn't know how to do and has no interest in

00:15:48.900 doing. What makes all this even more confusing is that in an interview with Collider after the

00:15:53.520 conclusion of the sequel trilogy, Abrams explained that when you're making movies, it's really

00:15:58.160 important to have a plan before you start. And he treats this like a massive revelation that he's

00:16:03.120 only figuring out now after making multiple blockbusters and television shows over a period

00:16:07.820 of several decades. And here's what he said, quote, I feel like what I've learned as a lesson

00:16:12.820 a few times now, and it's something that especially in this pandemic year, working with writers has

00:16:17.240 become clear. The lesson is that you have to plan things as best you can, and you always need to be

00:16:22.600 able to respond to the unexpected. Having a plan, I've learned in some cases, the hard way is the

00:16:28.580 most critical thing because otherwise you don't know what you're setting up. You don't know what

00:16:33.080 to emphasize because if you don't know the inevitable of the story, you're just as good

00:16:37.320 is your last sequence or effect or joke or whatever, but you want to be leading to something

00:16:41.440 inevitable. I mean, this has to be one of the worst quotes from any director. I mean, this is

00:16:49.180 the like storytelling, uh, insight that you're offering. It's a bit like hearing a director say,

00:16:56.420 you know, it's really important to have a camera. The lesson I've learned after all my experience

00:17:01.540 directing multimillion dollar projects, the lesson I learned is that really without a camera,

00:17:05.820 well, you can't shoot anything. I had to learn that lesson the hard way a few times.

00:17:13.060 Showed up on set without a camera. They said, well, where's your camera? How are you going

00:17:16.200 to film this? And I said, oh, oh man, you're right. Never going to forget my camera again.

00:17:24.080 Yes, JJ, it's very important to have a plan when you make movies. Put another way, it's crucial to

00:17:29.460 have some kind of overarching artistic vision so that you actually are telling a story because

00:17:35.140 Otherwise, you're just playing Mad Libs. And if the executives at Disney knew what they were doing,

00:17:39.780 they would have demanded that J.J. Abrams come up with some kind of plan before they hired him. But

00:17:43.740 that was never their goal. They simply wanted to produce the safest moneymaker they possibly could.

00:17:48.340 So they came up with a technically competent but completely empty series of movies. They

00:17:53.880 assembled the movies from pre-existing parts according to a formula like Ikea furniture.

00:17:59.100 And the end result had all the artistic inspiration and beauty of Ikea furniture.

00:18:05.140 A part of the explanation here, other than a time crunch, might be that Disney was simply

00:18:08.620 too afraid to do anything else. You probably remember, you might remember the red letter

00:18:13.640 media review of The Phantom Menace, where the guy uses the weird voice to deconstruct the film.

00:18:19.340 It was an effective takedown. It went viral before viral videos were really a thing. And we can

00:18:24.660 assume that everybody at Disney saw it and reactions like it. The video opens by saying

00:18:29.500 George Lucas is basically an idiot surrounded by yes men. Watch. 1.00

00:18:33.660 So where do I possibly start?

00:18:35.920 Me so hate you crunching.

00:18:37.340 Nothing in The Phantom Menace makes any sense at all.

00:18:40.460 It comes off like a script written by an eight-year-old.

00:18:43.600 It's like George Lucas finished the script in one draft.

00:18:47.280 Like, turned it in and they decided to go with it. 1.00

00:18:49.960 Without anyone saying that it made no sense at all or was a stupid, incoherent mess. 0.99

00:18:55.860 I guess at this point, who's going to question George or tell him what to do? 1.00

00:18:59.900 I take it.

00:19:00.880 You say action.

00:19:01.880 off the roll camera.

00:19:03.400 I'll say action.

00:19:05.040 Sometimes I forget.

00:19:07.680 If I forget to say action or cut,

00:19:09.280 just step in and say action or cut.

00:19:11.380 He controls every aspect of the movie.

00:19:14.000 He probably got rid of those people

00:19:15.440 that questioned him creatively a long time ago.

00:19:19.260 I also think that everyone just assumed

00:19:21.560 that a Star Wars prequel will be an instant hit,

00:19:24.300 regardless of what the plot was.

00:19:26.380 Really, how hard could it be to screw up?

00:19:29.200 From there, you know, basic point,

00:19:31.880 The base point of the review was that Lucas' film strayed too far from the formula that most successful movies use,

00:19:38.340 where there's a clear protagonist who experiences some kind of hardship, conquers adversity, and gets the girl in the end.

00:19:45.780 The video acknowledged that some directors can stray from the formula because they're talented, but George Lucas doesn't have that talent.

00:19:52.000 Watch.

00:19:53.040 Let's start a moviemaking 101, shall we?

00:19:56.760 You see, in most movies, the audience needs a character to connect with.

00:20:00.280 Typically this character is something called a protagonist.

00:20:04.120 When you're in a weird movie with like aliens and monsters and weirdos,

00:20:08.680 the audience really needs someone who's like a normal person like them to guide them through the story.

00:20:14.040 So in addition to being like an everyday kind of schlub,

00:20:17.240 usually the protagonist is someone that's down on their luck,

00:20:24.440 in a bad place in their lives,

00:20:27.880 ...or someone where everything just doesn't always go perfectly for them.

00:20:34.740 Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forward...

00:20:39.280 ...or you choose to find yourself another job.

00:20:41.980 Well, maybe it's time to get a real job.

00:20:44.180 No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.

00:20:48.080 Eventually they'll be confronted with some kind of obstacle or struggle that they gotta deal with.

00:20:53.080 War! We're going to war!

00:20:54.880 Eventually our...brrrr...brrrr...

00:20:57.720 will find themselves in the lowest point where it seems like all is lost.

00:21:03.740 But eventually they'll pull through and conquer whatever force opposes them. 0.62

00:21:07.580 So unless they're the Coen brothers,

00:21:09.780 David Lynch,

00:21:10.880 Paul Thomas Anderson,

00:21:12.480 Stanley Kubrick,

00:21:13.980 Alfred Hitchcock,

00:21:15.380 Lars von Trier,

00:21:16.580 David Cronenberg,

00:21:17.980 Gus Van Sant,

00:21:19.380 Quentin Tarantino,

00:21:20.880 John Waters,

00:21:22.080 Wes Anderson,

00:21:23.180 Sam Peckinpah,

00:21:24.580 Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, or Jim Jarmusch, you really shouldn't stray away

00:21:31.160 too far from this kind of formula. Now, this came out just a couple of years before Disney

00:21:35.840 purchased the rights to Star Wars. It quickly racked up millions of views, became, you know,

00:21:40.460 kind of defying the consensus opinion about The Phantom Menace. Pretty much everyone agreed with

00:21:45.180 it. And I'm not going to defend the prequels here. I think most of the criticisms in the review make

00:21:50.580 sense. I've made many of the same criticisms myself. But Disney and J.J. Abrams drew the

00:21:55.340 wrong conclusions from the video. They decided that based on the popularity of that video and

00:22:01.840 other reactions like it, Star Wars fans simply want a very predictable stock adventure story

00:22:06.080 that follows a familiar arc. And on top of that, Disney most likely concluded that everybody hates

00:22:12.180 George Lucas and that it's a bad idea to entrust a single figure with total creative control over

00:22:16.920 the franchise, so they allowed J.J. Abrams to make the first film and handed the second film to

00:22:20.540 Rian Johnson without any coordination or planning whatsoever. And the result was a trilogy that

00:22:25.220 made the prequels, which mostly did suck, in my opinion, look like classics in comparison.

00:22:32.100 Because you see, even when the prequels didn't work, and they often didn't work,

00:22:37.460 they didn't work because the artist, George Lucas, made bizarre creative choices. But at least it's

00:22:44.920 still art. At least they were creative choices, which is a lot better than a film that's too

00:22:50.800 afraid to make any choices and has no creativity at all. You know, when a film with a bad creative

00:22:58.120 vision, when the creative vision is bad, it's at least bad in kind of an interesting and distinctive

00:23:04.180 way. But this Disney slop now is bad in the most generic and bland way possible because there's no

00:23:11.160 creative vision behind it now if you get a chance pull up some behind the scenes videos of how lucas

00:23:16.600 made the prequels um here's a few of them watch i feel there's more to this my master the two jedi

00:23:23.160 maybe using the queen for their own purpose the main things here we have the uh walking hologram

00:23:28.920 generator which will be added in computer graphics but it's in front of everybody's walking um we

00:23:34.600 have a map painting of uh feed city to put back there and the light fixtures on the wall in the

00:23:40.120 hallway are not what George wants so we're gonna replace them with something

00:23:44.260 else when the camera pans over to look out this archway we want to have filled

00:23:50.020 that archway full of tanks and and battle droids so it's relatively

00:23:56.000 straightforward shot even the pass by shots go for a lot of sound to loudest

00:24:01.620 sound you ever heard to no sound within the side well see what you can do with

00:24:05.320 it and see what happens. Okay, ready, set, your ears ready, kind of starts quietly.

00:24:35.320 It's almost like the Sebulba sound should be making go up and down, but it should always be there.

00:25:03.640 Now it's there when you see it, it's not there when you don't.

00:25:06.080 You want to build that tension of the fact that it's right on his tail there.

00:25:11.840 And if you don't hear it, you don't really get the sense that it's right there all the time.

00:25:14.960 And it's going to eat him up.

00:25:16.500 And if anything, that giant sound should be getting bigger and bigger during the whole thing

00:25:20.800 as he's struggling to stay ahead of him.

00:25:23.860 It's a nice rhythm.

00:25:24.580 Because that's the thing that you're afraid of, is the fact that that guy's just going to push him.

00:25:28.120 The engine's going to come right over and right into his head.

00:25:30.580 whatever you think of the finished product they're hammering out new scenes and new locations they

00:25:45.080 were working out the details of the pod racing scene and all the sound effects that would play

00:25:49.500 throughout they wanted to get the lighting of the palace just right they weren't preoccupied with

00:25:53.960 recreating the original trilogy they wanted to make something new and that's what they did was

00:25:58.760 the dialogue kind of stilted? Yes. Were many of the characters weak? Yes. Was a lot of the acting

00:26:06.420 not great? Yes. Was the opening crawl about a trade war pretty boring? Yes. But no one can

00:26:13.280 accuse the prequels of trying to rip off the original trilogy. The choreography was different,

00:26:17.160 the set pieces were different. And if you happen to be a fan of trade wars and political debates,

00:26:21.580 which is possible, and now tariffs are all the rage again, then there's something here for you

00:26:27.040 to watch that wasn't in the original films by contrast take a look at the making of documentary

00:26:31.980 for the force awakens the entire time they're fixated on what happened before on nostalgia

00:26:37.080 can't go five seconds without talking about the older films and how badly they want to emulate

00:26:41.680 them they come across like people who are desperate to figure out what made star wars appealing so

00:26:46.640 they can copy as much of the original films as possible they never talk about any of their bold

00:26:51.240 new ideas because they don't have any, watch.

00:26:54.840 What we would do is we would have sort of weekly check-in meetings with J.J. where we'd

00:27:00.400 have a conference call, you know, a video conference call, and we would go through the

00:27:04.560 art.

00:27:05.560 J.J. is very adamant that we kind of go back to the core aesthetics that made the original

00:27:10.240 trilogy so great, and a lot of that was driven by Ralph and his sensibility.

00:27:14.640 And for us, it's kind of going back home in many ways, both for the visual look and the

00:27:19.520 style of the movie.

00:27:20.860 There was a feeling when I was a kid, when I saw Star Wars for the first time, that it

00:27:25.220 was all practical and real.

00:27:27.680 There were things like being outside the sand crawler and seeing those treads, those massive

00:27:32.240 treads right there.

00:27:33.380 It was a physical, tangible, real thing.

00:27:35.300 You knew it when you saw the movie.

00:27:38.200 So we wanted to go back and embrace the look of those original films, which was all part

00:27:44.280 of the feeling of how they were able to transport you into that universe.

00:27:48.220 things that are relevant, things you're identifying with. Certainly for all young

00:27:53.040 kids when the movie came out they either wanted to be Luke Skywalker or they saw

00:27:58.660 themselves as Han Solo and I think that was a part of our challenge was how are

00:28:04.580 we going to bring new characters into this series that had that same kind of

00:28:10.120 power. What was made clear to me very early on was that it was going to be

00:28:13.940 shot on film, which is something that I love. I love working with film. When you're making Star

00:28:20.200 Wars, there's really no choice but to shoot it on film. You have to, because the originals were

00:28:24.460 shot on film, and it's very much part of how we remember them looking and feeling. There's

00:28:30.600 something that you need to capture on celluloid, no question. The villain in training is interesting

00:28:35.500 for me because in talking about villains in Star Wars, you don't and can't get better than Darth

00:28:40.860 Vader. It's sort of the thing. They had created an image that was unmistakable. You don't need

00:28:45.660 any explanation. The guy walks through the smoke, you get the whole thing, and he's the most

00:28:50.140 threatening villain of all time. The idea that this is a character who's influenced by that

00:28:56.140 darkness started to allow a masked villain, which feels essential in a Star Wars universe, to take

00:29:03.200 form and not feel like we were being naive and acting like there wasn't a Darth Vader. Maybe

00:29:08.920 putting on the mask makes him feel more powerful. It makes perfect sense that this

00:29:15.040 guy has had a huge impact on everybody and yes this figure looms large for our

00:29:23.140 villain too. There's so many nods to Vader and how they first meet him and I

00:29:30.220 think JJ was after something more youthful and unpredictable and someone

00:29:34.760 who isn't polished and even in his lightsaber it's not quite finished. The

00:29:38.620 scene that made me feel like oh my gosh this is crazy is when all of the casts are around that

00:29:45.540 table planning. I just want to say one more thing when everyone's done. The moment that meant the

00:29:50.040 most to me personally was Ackbar was on set. And you know security's been so tight we're not allowed

00:29:57.620 to take pictures or anything but I had to take a picture of Ackbar on set and show it to my

00:30:01.340 brothers because we loved Ackbar you know it's a trap. How is it possible to power a weapon of that

00:30:06.200 tries. They're fangirling about Admiral Akbar being on set. They're making sure all the visuals

00:30:12.520 look like the original trilogy. One callback after another without any new ideas. From a business

00:30:17.380 perspective, it makes sense, at least in the short term. The film made $2 billion, and as a result,

00:30:23.280 Disney decided that there must be insatiable demand for Star Wars products, even if they're

00:30:28.880 unoriginal and uninteresting. Having no respect for the audience at all, which is another problem

00:30:35.100 with all these companies. They have no respect for the audience, think the audience is stupid. 1.00

00:30:40.420 And so they think that, well, you'll just guzzle down whatever slop they give you. 1.00

00:30:46.020 And it doesn't matter. A lot of the criticism directed towards higher education is deserved.

00:30:51.220 Many universities charge absurd amounts of money to teach students things that won't help them get

00:30:55.320 a job and probably shouldn't have been majors in the first place. Meanwhile, half the country is

00:30:58.980 buried in student debt. So when a university actually tries to do things differently, it

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00:32:02.440 than the standard garden hose. Most people have had the exact same experience. You pull it 10 feet

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00:33:00.560 and data rates may apply. That's why Bob Iger thought that it made sense for Disney to flood

00:33:07.220 the zone to release one film every year along with a slew of television shows. It began mass

00:33:12.600 producing this stuff. And to that end, Disney created something called The Volume, which is

00:33:17.020 basically a cylindrical soundstage that's surrounded by LED screens that display video game style CGI

00:33:23.140 backgrounds. It was supposed to be much better than a traditional green screen, and it would

00:33:27.540 fool audiences into thinking that Disney was shooting on location or building complicated

00:33:32.180 sets, which they weren't. Watch. While filming this scene from Disney's The Mandalorian,

00:33:38.000 the actors could see their surroundings, but the surroundings weren't actually there.

00:33:42.460 All of this is just LED screens, displaying backgrounds pre-made in a video game engine.

00:33:49.580 Compare that with this fight scene from Avengers Endgame, where actors jumped around in a sea of

00:33:54.620 green imagining how VFX artists would make this planet look once filming had ended.

00:33:59.820 The Mandalorian is one of the first major productions to choose LED walls over green

00:34:04.300 screens, and the benefits for the actors are just the tip of the iceberg.

00:34:08.460 led walls make the lighting better filming smoother and in certain cases cost a lot less than using

00:34:13.580 green screens now you may be thinking this isn't so new i've seen something like this before and

00:34:18.940 you're right kind of the predecessor to what we see on the mandalorian is a driving scene like

00:34:23.820 this one from dr no you've got the actor in the car and behind them a screen with footage of the

00:34:28.540 road they've traveled but the technology was limited say you want to move the camera angle

00:34:32.940 during the scene. That projected footage can't move with the camera. But by using Unreal Engine,

00:34:38.300 tech borrowed from the video game field, that problem is solved. Artists can create a

00:34:43.020 photorealistic 3D background that moves strictly with the camera's field of view, known as the

00:34:47.900 frustum. So if the camera swings around and changes angles, the background shifts in precisely the

00:34:53.180 same way. This allows motion tracked cameras to execute traditional cinematography techniques

00:34:58.700 within the virtual set achieving cinematic movements like the parallax effect where an

00:35:03.660 object in the foreground moves at a different speed than the background amplifies the illusion

00:35:07.660 of filming at an actual location he says lighting is one of the key benefits of working with virtual

00:35:12.700 sets the light coming from the leds provide realistic colors and reflections on the actors

00:35:17.500 and props something you simply can't achieve with green screen like most tech demos it sounds

00:35:23.420 convincing enough it seems to solve all the problems of traditional green screens uh the

00:35:28.140 executives at Disney concluded that it would help them mass-produce shows like Kenobi and The

00:35:32.720 Mandalorian, and nobody would notice that they were cheaping out. But actually, people did notice.

00:35:39.520 This is a video from the YouTuber Zax giving a few examples of how using the volume for some

00:35:45.000 very awkward staging decisions that made no sense in the context of the story. And full disclosure,

00:35:50.480 once you watch this video, there's a good chance you won't be able to stomach any of these Disney

00:35:54.500 star wars shows anymore if somehow you were able to do that to begin with here it is the volume is

00:36:00.500 basically a sound stage that's run by ilm under their brand stagecraft it's a super cool technology

00:36:07.140 but it can be super limiting but with the volume and stagecraft there's no choice it can look like

00:36:13.460 your characters are anywhere but they're really on a small stage and you can change the backdrop

00:36:19.540 but it's always a circle remember that but if you need more than one actor to move through that space

00:36:28.100 it gets silly fast and so what you get is scenes like this from kenobi the one that launched a

00:36:34.100 thousand memes the chase starts in a circle and that's because the actors can't gain or

00:36:40.660 lose any distance between each other because there's no distance to gain so they look like

00:36:46.500 parents who are trying to lose a race to their kid to boost their self-esteem so now he's gotta

00:36:52.340 escape but there's a freaking laser fence those are hard to get around they are except for this

00:36:57.620 one which is very easy to walk around oh well good yeah so they panic for a second trying to

00:37:02.180 get through but then obi-wan realizes he can shoot the control panel and get through why didn't he

00:37:06.660 just walk around well this is much more exciting sir i don't know man just walk around the hill

00:37:16.500 but it gets even dumber with all the stormtroopers taken out obi-wan runs up to the checkpoint which

00:37:23.120 is made of powerful lasers and he can't quite figure out how to shut them off so he decides

00:37:27.540 to shoot the controls and hope that it will deactivate the lasers now i want you to take a

00:37:32.040 very close look at this image right here and tell me what do you think obi-wan should have done now

00:37:38.000 it might make sense for obi-wan to want to disable these lasers if he had intended on using the

00:37:42.960 vehicle but he doesn't to be fair bringing the truck through wasn't the volume's fault

00:37:49.520 no there was a scripted reason for that not a good reason but a scripted reason and what

00:37:55.140 possible reason could they have i'm gonna have to circle back to that so i'm gonna guess that

00:38:00.620 the reason that he didn't go around the laser fence was because there is no around the laser

00:38:06.400 fence and they also couldn't go over it because there is no over it it's a curved led screen and

00:38:14.160 i'm going to posit that these are the edges of that screen and once you can recognize it you

00:38:19.520 start seeing it everywhere like maybe if it's not in the volume you have them be surrounded by a

00:38:23.440 dozen stormtroopers and he has no chance or they have leia or something because the volume they're

00:38:28.960 coming from one direction and there's only three of them with this filming technique you can't have

00:38:32.880 actors enter or exit that circle while on camera so they kind of got a teleport outside the volume

00:38:38.900 circle perspective change obi-wan and leia are saved and now all the performers are inside that

00:38:45.500 circle and so they can interact there's another example where vader is in front of a wall of

00:38:51.220 flames but he could clearly just walk around it if he wanted to but with the volume the actors

00:38:55.860 can't walk around anything now with the exception of and or pretty much all of disney star wars

00:39:00.140 shows have relied on this crutch and it's obviously making the shows worse now for comparison here's

00:39:06.080 how lucas was filming his big climactic showdowns 27 years ago and this is what filmmaking looked

00:39:11.500 like in the pre-disney era watch let's get that and action

00:39:30.140 Now, with the wonders of modern technology embraced by Disney, none of this is possible

00:39:53.540 anymore. Characters can't fall from heights or chase each other around because they're

00:39:57.160 confined to a tiny stage surrounded by led screens on all sides and by the way this is a long topic

00:40:02.160 of cgi it needs to be said that the prequels actually had some extremely well done sequences

00:40:06.280 uh the opening of revenge of the sith is one of them so so was the lightsaber duel at the end of

00:40:11.700 phantom menace and the pod racing somehow a movie from three decades ago in several respects

00:40:16.780 looks better than what disney is producing now but the star wars content isn't only terrible

00:40:24.360 because of bad CGI and staging.

00:40:25.960 It's also terrible

00:40:26.480 because the characters are atrocious.

00:40:28.860 This is one of those things

00:40:29.800 that very clearly Disney miscalculated

00:40:31.720 and they have no idea

00:40:32.960 what they did wrong.

00:40:34.340 And you can tell

00:40:35.140 because Disney built

00:40:35.880 this massive billion dollar theme park

00:40:37.940 called Galaxy's Edge

00:40:39.920 in California and Florida.

00:40:41.580 And it was intended to highlight

00:40:43.020 all the new characters

00:40:44.220 in the sequel trilogy,

00:40:46.420 you know, Kylo Ren and Rey,

00:40:48.160 the girl and so on.

00:40:49.720 And for the same reason,

00:40:51.300 Disney built a Star Wars hotel

00:40:52.620 that was set in the timeline

00:40:53.880 of the new trilogy, in which forced guests to be locked away in a windowless building

00:40:58.060 that was supposed to resemble a spaceship. And the whole pitch was that you get to hang out with

00:41:04.040 Rey and all these great new characters. But the fans didn't respond to any of this, because all

00:41:09.220 of these new characters are garbage, and the hotel was a frankly insane idea. Because who doesn't 0.96

00:41:15.340 want to stay at a hotel with no windows? And so they shut down the hotel, and now they're bringing

00:41:21.820 back characters from the original trilogy for their theme park. And this is how they're introducing

00:41:26.480 them. Watch.

00:41:51.820 they don't look anything like the you know actual characters but i guess these are the

00:42:16.020 best actors disney could find they were desperate to give their customers an alternative to kylo

00:42:21.120 Ren, and so they had to scramble. Now, think about what a humiliating about-face this is.

00:42:25.880 They were convinced, to the point that they spent a billion dollars on the idea, that people were

00:42:29.360 clamoring to walk around the Disney Star Wars universe they created, and now they're realizing

00:42:34.020 that actually nobody wants to do that. It's quite likely that no one at Disney has any idea what

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00:43:38.400 This is from an exit interview that Kathleen Kennedy did with Deadline a few months ago

00:43:42.220 after announcing her departure from Lucasfilm.

00:43:45.660 She was asked about the low points in her tenure,

00:43:49.200 and this is what she said, quote,

00:43:51.260 The lows are that you've got a very, very small percentage

00:43:54.100 of the fan base that has enormous expectations,

00:43:56.280 and basically they want to continue to see

00:43:57.720 pretty much the same thing.

00:43:59.200 And if you're not going to do that,

00:44:00.420 then you know going in that you're going to disappoint them.

00:44:03.320 I'm not sure there's anything you could do about that

00:44:05.140 because you can't please everybody.

00:44:06.400 All you can do is try to tell good stories

00:44:07.840 and try to stick to the essence of what George created.

00:44:10.020 he embedded incredible values into star wars and what it has to say the whole idea of hope and fun

00:44:14.860 and entertainment and what he's done over all these years that's what i tried to preserve and

00:44:18.900 i wouldn't do that any differently and i wouldn't change anything that we've done over the years

00:44:23.740 no of course you wouldn't kathleen yes according to kathleen kennedy a very very small percentage

00:44:29.500 of angry fans who she's previously suggested are misogynists are upset because they want to

00:44:34.200 continue to see pretty much the same thing. Apparently, the backlash is coming from a tiny

00:44:39.960 sliver of the Star Wars fan base, which perfectly explains why the entire franchise is bombing right

00:44:45.220 now, which makes a lot of sense. 1% of fans hate change, and therefore, nobody cares about

00:44:52.000 a Star Wars movie for the first time ever. Never mind the fact that Kathleen Kennedy's idea of new

00:44:58.000 and interesting content is a cheap-looking LED wall, along with shows built around the trials 0.97

00:45:02.780 and tribulations of black lesbian witches. 0.96

00:45:06.920 Actually, that's selling the acolytes short. 0.99

00:45:09.300 They also managed to shoehorn gender-neutral pronouns into the show as well,

00:45:14.380 as you've probably seen.

00:45:15.600 But if you haven't, here it is again.

00:45:17.680 Who is that? 1.00

00:45:20.260 A spazzo. 1.00

00:45:21.920 Is he or they with us? 1.00

00:45:25.640 Now, this kind of dialogue was inserted into these shows

00:45:28.000 as a deliberate effort by Kathleen Kennedy to make a political point.

00:45:31.660 And here's what she told the New York Times.

00:45:33.580 Quote, my belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people.

00:45:38.720 That's an easy decision for me.

00:45:40.440 Operating within these giant franchises now with social media and the level of expectation, it's terrifying.

00:45:46.120 I think Leslie, the showrunner of the Acolyte, has struggled a little bit with it.

00:45:50.040 I think a lot of the women who step into Star Wars struggle with this a bit more because of the fan base being so male-dominated.

00:45:55.560 They sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal. 0.99

00:45:58.040 Now, it's actually difficult to string together so many idiotic comments in a row, even if you're 1.00

00:46:03.220 trying to. No, storytelling does not need to be representative of all people. It's impossible for 0.99

00:46:11.320 storytelling to be representative of all people, for one thing. There are more than 8 billion people

00:46:15.840 on the planet. And as a practical matter, no film or television show can represent whatever that

00:46:20.460 means, all of them. But even if it were somehow possible to say, cast all 8 billion people in

00:46:26.080 your show and represent every single one of them, that would not improve the storytelling at all.

00:46:30.540 It's irrelevant to this. In fact, it's not just irrelevant to storytelling.

00:46:34.340 Representation is not just irrelevant to storytelling. It's anti-storytelling.

00:46:39.120 Okay, a story should not represent the wishes and desires and fantasies, much less political

00:46:46.060 ideologies, of every single person who hears the story. It should instead represent the singular

00:46:52.900 and distinct vision of the storyteller.

00:46:56.980 That's what a story is.

00:46:58.440 That's what art is.

00:46:59.720 When people go to a movie,

00:47:01.840 a good storyteller is saying,

00:47:03.180 hey, I've got a great story to tell you.

00:47:06.020 And everybody gathers around

00:47:07.260 because they want to hear that person's story.

00:47:09.540 I want to hear your story.

00:47:11.820 And if I'm sitting around the campfire

00:47:13.920 to hear your great story,

00:47:15.120 I don't want other people around the campfire

00:47:17.440 to chime in and add to it.

00:47:21.300 No, I don't want to hear their stories.

00:47:22.900 I want to hear your story. That's what we're all sitting here for.

00:47:27.640 Does the Godfather represent all people? Does Moby Dick represent all people? Does Michelangelo's

00:47:34.720 David, does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, do any of these iconic works of art through their various

00:47:39.780 different mediums represent everyone on the planet? Were they crowdsourced? Were they made

00:47:45.640 democratically after taking into account the priorities and preferences of the voting majority?

00:47:51.840 No, clearly not.

00:47:53.620 If Francis Ford Coppola or Melville or Michelangelo had taken that approach,

00:47:58.560 their masterpieces never would have been made.

00:48:00.920 And if they had been made, they wouldn't be masterpieces.

00:48:03.700 They would be watered down, lowest common denominator sludge,

00:48:07.440 stripped of everything challenging and distinct about them

00:48:09.780 in an attempt to appeal to the largest number of people.

00:48:12.520 That's not how artists create.

00:48:16.220 They create based on their distinctive vision.

00:48:19.060 And if their vision is brilliant and beautiful and their skills can match it, then their creation will be representative of no one's desires but their own and yet will connect with and inspire and fascinate billions of humans for centuries.

00:48:37.540 Now, George Lucas obviously created something like that with his original series.

00:48:42.400 He obviously created something that connected with billions of people for, if not centuries, decades.

00:48:52.140 Disney used to create art like that decades ago.

00:48:56.740 But they, along with most of the rest of mainstream Hollywood today, no longer create art that inspires and fascinates billions across generations because they no longer create art at all.

00:49:06.580 Art is not something, again, that can be constructed strategically in a boardroom as part of a strategy to monetize your IP.

00:49:18.180 No art has ever been made that way or could ever be made that way.

00:49:21.660 It cannot work that way.

00:49:23.480 That's not what art is.

00:49:25.180 So if you're making films that fail to connect and fail to rise to the level of art at all, then what do you do?

00:49:32.260 well disney decided that the best strategy was to yell at the audience for not liking their

00:49:38.300 product enough and this has been the pitch for years now you know uh if you hate the terrible

00:49:45.480 product then you hate women which is which is something that everybody associated with the

00:49:49.600 acolyte of course kept saying very explicitly watch i want to ask you both because this is 0.71

00:49:54.780 i would say arguably the gayest star wars i think by a considerable margin and uh are you excited

00:50:01.760 about that? Are you bracing yourself? 0.69

00:50:05.840 It's pretty gay, let's be honest. 1.00

00:50:09.040 Leslie, are you 0.63

00:50:09.880 how do you feel? Am I gay? Yes.

00:50:11.580 No, I know you are gay, but I'm asking are you excited 0.97

00:50:13.780 about putting this, you know, this is going to be 0.92

00:50:15.820 a talking point. Is it going to be

00:50:17.960 a talking point? I'm sure some. Because nerds

00:50:19.940 are gay. Yeah. Well, some nerds are 1.00

00:50:21.900 very not gay and are very threatened 0.90

00:50:23.680 by gay stuff. Well, that's true, but in my world 1.00

00:50:26.020 nerds are gay. Okay. 0.99

00:50:28.980 Was this the fun

00:50:29.920 No, I don't think so.

00:50:32.160 And yet people have told me that it's the gayest Star Wars.

00:50:34.540 And I frankly, you're fended into it. 0.96

00:50:38.620 No, I think that Star Wars is so gay already. 1.00

00:50:43.200 OK. 0.99

00:50:44.000 I mean, have you seen the fence? 1.00

00:50:46.340 We'd be like, look how gay this is, 0.71

00:50:48.120 and then send each other a reference photo. 0.91

00:50:49.660 And are you telling me with a straight face

00:50:51.540 that C-3PO is straight?

00:50:53.160 They're a couple. 1.00

00:50:54.440 That's what I think.

00:50:55.680 But this is more outward. 0.79

00:50:57.420 I think it's canon that R2-D2 is a lesbian. 0.82

00:51:00.680 Oh, interesting. 0.89

00:51:02.860 Ask Filoni.

00:51:03.900 Okay.

00:51:04.920 Ask Filoni.

00:51:07.400 Now, if you think that all these people should never work in Hollywood again, 1.00

00:51:10.440 then according to Kathleen Kennedy, you simply hate women. 1.00

00:51:13.160 You also hate anything that's new. 0.99

00:51:16.320 You want to be told the same stories over and over again. 1.00

00:51:20.020 I mean, that's how completely retarded these people are. 1.00

00:51:23.560 That, obviously, they're also completely missing the point. 1.00

00:51:25.740 The problem is not that the audience wants to see the same thing over and over again.

00:51:31.520 It's actually the opposite of that.

00:51:33.780 Like, what you're doing is the same thing over and over again.

00:51:37.440 Okay, just using the same formula and plugging in different characters and then throwing in some gender pronoun nonsense, throwing in a lesbian or a black person, that's not something new.

00:51:49.240 That's not a whole bold new vision.

00:51:51.620 but this was their strategy to take the formula to take a formula that they didn't create 0.99

00:51:57.440 and then make it new by like oh we're going to have more black people and lesbians in it than 1.00

00:52:02.740 before and what you need to realize is that these dumb narcissistic destructive women are in charge 1.00

00:52:12.020 of pretty much every corporation in the country right now i mean star wars is the least of our 1.00

00:52:16.340 problems in that respect. Actually, Kathleen, the problem with the Disney content is that it's

00:52:21.740 terrible. I mean, let's go back to that Red Letter Media video for a second. It's true that

00:52:25.460 the original films were formulaic, but they also executed the formula well.

00:52:30.520 You know, Luke goes through the hero's journey, suffers, loses his hand before triumphing in the

00:52:37.880 end. That's classic storytelling. Now, Rey, on the other hand, was created in a lab by Kathleen

00:52:47.220 Kennedy and the feminists at Disney. Her arc makes no sense. She learns the force one minute

00:52:52.660 and she's defeating Kylo Ren in one-on-one combat the next. For his part, Finn kind of does nothing

00:52:58.760 after the first movie. Poe was written as a Han Solo clone. They completely change Luke's

00:53:04.240 personality. Han Solo doesn't evolve either. Basically, at every turn, you could tell that

00:53:08.300 Disney was winging the new films. It's not that they had a new vision. The problem again is they

00:53:13.060 had no vision whatsoever. Their only goal was just pumping out as much content as possible

00:53:18.800 as a monetization strategy. Here's a post from a Disney official X account dated December 2020.

00:53:27.640 Quote, over the next few years, roughly 10 Marvel series, 10 Star Wars series,

00:53:32.880 15 Disney live-action Disney animation and Pixar series, plus 15 all-new Disney live-action Disney

00:53:39.980 animation and Pixar features will be released directly on Disney+. Now, almost six years later,

00:53:47.400 out of 10 Star Wars series, we're finally getting a movie. They apparently canceled a bunch of other

00:53:52.480 projects for one reason or another, and this grand new movie, after all this time, is a repackaged

00:53:57.320 season four of the show, The Mandalorian. That's what The Mandalorian and Grogu is. The budget of

00:54:04.600 this alleged major motion picture is less than $170 million, which is a fraction of the budget

00:54:08.560 of every other modern Star Wars film. Disney's throwing this on the screen because they're out

00:54:12.800 of ideas. They figure they might as well try to sell some toys before the franchise is put on a

00:54:17.420 definite hiatus. So that's exactly what they're going to do. Now, George Lucas was attacked,

00:54:22.900 rightly so for including Ewoks in Return of the Jedi and Jar Jar Binks in Phantom Menace as a 0.89

00:54:28.540 cynical ploy to sell merchandise, which is a significant reason for his enormous wealth.

00:54:33.740 But Luke has never made an entire movie from start to finish solely to sell toys without any

00:54:38.080 meaningful plot, characterization, or reason to care about anything that happens. It took a series

00:54:43.400 of catastrophic decisions by Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson, and company

00:54:49.320 to get us to this point, but we're definitely here.

00:54:52.020 One of the most recognizable stories

00:54:54.000 in modern American history has been destroyed.

00:54:56.980 Disney has created in its place a political project

00:54:59.680 that reflects the absolute worst impulses 0.91

00:55:01.980 of progressivism and feminism, 1.00

00:55:04.440 and they've demanded that we indoctrinate 0.77

00:55:06.600 our children with it.

00:55:08.960 There's one silver lining in this entire saga.

00:55:11.020 It's that, contrary to what Kathleen Kennedy expected,

00:55:13.420 millions of Americans are refusing to go along with it.

00:55:16.620 They're making it very clear that this is not

00:55:19.220 about hating women or hating new ideas. They just hate the bastardized, pointless, insulting, 0.99

00:55:26.620 trashy, low IQ mess that this franchise has to become, has become. Which is to say that Star Wars 0.99

00:55:35.140 is dead and Disney killed it. That'll do it for the show today and this week. Talk to you

00:55:42.160 next week. Have a great weekend. Godspeed.

00:55:49.220 Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon,

00:55:53.220 widely considered one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.

00:55:56.220 A man who had a vision for a colorblind society, 0.63

00:56:00.220 a post-racial America. 0.76

00:56:02.220 He had a dream. 0.76

00:56:03.220 It's just not the dream you thought it was.

00:56:05.220 Were his true aims a colorblind society

00:56:08.220 or something far more radical?

00:56:10.220 Who bankrolled him?

00:56:12.220 What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963

00:56:16.220 Was civil disobedience actually peaceful?

00:56:21.220 We wanted to show you a clip of the I Have a Dream speech,

00:56:24.220 but according to our lawyers, we can't.

00:56:26.220 In fact, King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets.

00:56:29.220 They want to silence critics like us.

00:56:32.220 What they're doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King Jr.

00:56:35.220 not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.

00:56:39.220 Is America today stronger, more unified, and racially equal than before King's rise?

00:56:45.220 These questions demand answers, and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the Civil Rights Movement and its consequences.

00:56:52.020 King's Movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government.

00:56:56.260 I speak as a citizen of the world. Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases, though the cause of evil prosper.

00:57:05.540 The first part of our two-part special on the Civil Rights Movement, a new constitution, available now on Daily Wire+.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 21, 2026

Ep. 1784 - This Is How Disney Destroyed Star Wars

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