The Mandalorian and… Who? Star Wars is Truly Dead

Well, it’s that time of year again.  May the Fourth be with you!  It probably isn’t, and it hasn’t been with me for a long time because Star Wars has been crap for more than two decades.  

However, Disney has decided to squeeze out another film with perhaps the worst title in the history of cinema: The Mandalorian and Grogu.  What the actual hell?  I can’t decide if this is the result the placeholder name being adopted by default, or a wickedly subversive take on titles like Freebie and the Bean or Scarecrow and Mrs. King, both of which sound much, much more interesting.  (By the way, feel free to offer other examples in the comments.)

Anyway, let’s dig into the perverse logic that compels Hollywood to set its remaining cash on fire.

More Projection Than A Multiplex

Over the years it’s been fun to dive into Hollywood’s crap output and note the many ways it sucks.  Yes, we can grab our They Live spirit shades and see that it consistently uses demonic themes, and of course everything is retarded and also gay, and there’s the problem that the nepotist diversity hires write what they know, and it isn’t much, but there’s another factor at work: projection.

Projection is the psychological term for someone attributing their own faults or transgressions to others.  “No, I’m not the malignant narcissist, you are!“

This is now so commonplace as to be unremarkable.  On any given day, some woke lunatic will lecture normal, healthy men who enjoy feminine beauty about how they’re a bunch of sex-obsessed incel gooners, and then someone goes through their timeline, which is packed with pervy pornography.

Everyone in woke creative circles, from Kathleen Kennedy to Jennifer Salke to Alex Kurzman on down, are the slaves to branding, not the audiences they have alienated.  They are the ones who will watch slop because it has the right name, because it’s what’s all their friends expect, and even though it sucks, they will ask for more slop.  As we have seen repeatedly, if they are told something is good by the Powers That Be, it is always very good.  Best ever!

They cannot grasp that brands like Star Wars and Star Trek became brands because they were good, and when they ceased being good, the brand lost its value.

Normal people understand this, perhaps because they know lots of people who work in the real world, or perhaps who own their own businesses, and they understand that their reputation is based on what customers feel right now, not how they felt 10-30 years ago.

This is why established brands like Bud Light, Target and The Cracker Barrell have tanked their value by assuming that their customers would accept whatever changes the management decided to implement, and their highly credentialed advisors found themselves out of work.  Instead of understanding their actual customers, they just imagined new ones.

A Lifeline to Nowhere

Some might think that the incredible successes of non-woke new production films that aren’t gay retarded retreads of dying brands would convince Hollywood to drop the DEI and start making money, but I think that their successes will simply be used to keep the woke wheels turning.  

Yes, their fealty to the Prince of Lies is also strong, but you don’t have to be evil in order to be stupid.  Obviously, they are both, and that’s why we have a Star Wars movie – the first in seven years – not even projected to make the top ten this year for its opening weekend.  Apparently, McCabe & Mrs. Miller isn’t firing up the faithful

Locked in the Ghetto

The other issue, which I’ve addressed before, is that Star Wars is now locked in a ghetto of its own making.  It is no longer a mass-market film for the widest possible audience.

Back in the day, that was one of the key differences between Star Wars and Star Trek.  The Trekkies were derided as nerds because to get the films, one had to first sit through three seasons of a TV show that had been off the air for more than a decade.  There was also a cartoon (that I never watched). This wasn’t hard, because it was more popular in syndication than it ever was as a live broadcast, but it still took some homework to “get it.”

All one had to do to understand Star Wars was walk into a theater and watch it.  Then there was a sequel, and a third film.  It was self-contained, had a complete story arc with character development and provided just enough detail to hint at cool backstories, and as the years passed, an “expanded universe” emerged, powered by author Timothy Zahn and West End Games.  It was cool stuff, but the vast majority of fans were content with the films.

I have zero interest in watching a Jake and the Fat Man movie.  I know nothing about the characters, the setting within the franchise and if the entire cast are killed at the end, (as in the grossly overrated Rogue One), I will be profoundly indifferent.  This is “Star Wars is dead to me” on steroids, jacked up on PCP, wired on bath salts and hitting the meth for good measure.  If I had any more apathy, I’d be unconscious.

The great hope is that this is the end of Star Wars for a while.  Apparently next year will see the theatrical re-release of the original version of Star Wars, and that is something I would be willing to pay for, and will be bringing the family and grandkids to see.  There were only ever three movies and its long past time for those to be fully restored and properly made available.

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