I think it’s a huge story, even if it only concerns a small part of the overall population. After all, the topic of the day is shareholder capitalism that is attempting to be destroyed by the Desacrators of Davos strategy of stakeholder capitalism. And few companies are a bigger target for them than Disney Entertainment in the United States. Progressives have jumped all over the Disney Company. And now the Star Wars property they purchased from George Lucas in 2012 reflects the attack accurately from the Desecrators of Davos, the progressive incursion into all our lives not through the front door of politics, but through the backdoor of finance and business. Star Wars is an excellent meter to measure this kind of thing. It started out from the mind of George Lucas as a warning to 8 to 12-year-old boys how not to grow up to become evil. And today, it is the very definition of state control and authority to the compliance of the nanny state; everything Star Wars wasn’t. Naturally, fans are very upset about it and are letting Disney know. And now, after working on it for a decade and spending over a billion dollars developing their live Star Wars experiences at Disney World and Disneyland, the much talked about Star Wars hotel called, The Galactic Starcruiser is open for business, and all eyes have been on it. Many Star Wars fans are hating it and have been speaking out against it. So I have been watching it closely, and I have thoughts on it that are very much relevant to all our corporate problems in America. The challenge of wrestling away from the Desecrators of Davos insurgents our American concepts of capitalism from the imposition of state-controlled stakeholder capitalism is the challenge. Ironically, this Star Wars hotel finds itself right in the middle as a form of art displayed for all the world to see.
Star Wars is all about fighting back against institutionalized systems. But under Disney, they are all about yielding to that institutionalization. That was the critical error Bob Iger, and Kathy Kennedy made with Star Wars under the ownership of Disney. They should have followed the George Lucas plan. Instead, they ended up with a massive mess that will never be fixed. That is sad, but it’s why fans are so angry at Disney. However, I see some good in it all, and I think personally, Galaxy’s Edge in Disney World is one of the most fantastic things I’ve ever experienced. I will never forget my vacation there in 2019 with my wife. We had about two or three days of the best time I’ve ever had visiting the Star Wars park there at Hollywood Studios and other attractions. It was the first time she and I had been kid-free in about two decades, and we were able to enjoy all that just as a couple. So I am still grateful for that experience, and I can see why people would want to go to the Galactic Starcruiser, which is essentially a Star Wars cruise in space. It’s very ambitious; it costs around 4 to 6 thousand per person to do and is essentially a Fantasy Island experience. For three days and two nights, you enter the world of Star Wars all immersively and practically live a live Star Wars novel, which I think is pretty cool. Now I’m a gun at my hip kind of Star Wars fan. Not a sit around and play games kind of guy, and eat food and listen to music. If I don’t get to wear a DL-44 on my hip and go laser tagging, it’s not a lot of fun for me. It would cost me about $100K to take my clan. I checked it out, thought about it, and decided they’d like it, but not for that price. But, I know quite a few employees at Disney, many at the executive level, and I understand what they’ve done. They did their best. I also follow quite a few influencers on YouTube who work in the Orlando region, and they love the Starcruiser. They are much more social butterflies than I am, and I think it’s great in the world we are living in today that there is something like the Starcruiser for them. And in that context, I hope the Starcruiser is successful for Disney. Because I’d like to see, it remain an option.
While at the Cincinnati Comic-Con this past September, I had a chance to talk to Timothy Zahn about this modern Star Wars stuff, and he’s pretty much where I am. He’s the guy responsible for all the great novels that came from Star Wars, going all the way back to the 90s when he started the trend. My wife and I have read well over 200 Star Wars novels. We are not fans of the new stuff since Disney bought Lucasfilm and turned radically more progressive. But at that Comic-Con, as Zahn signed a few books for me because I do love his books, we talked about the joy of those comic cons. There are people there who have had bad childhoods, society has let them down, religion has let them down, and they find refuge in Star Wars. They like to dress up and escape the world’s disappointments with some form of art, and Star Wars gives them that refuge. And I remember how it was in Hollywood Studios in the early days before Disney bought Lucasfilm. There were Star Wars weekends in May that were actual celebrations. I can’t blame Disney for wanting to give those fans what they dreamed of, a Star Wars land all their own, and even a hotel experience that allowed people to cosplay for three full days eating, thinking, and living Star Wars in a much better way than they would a comic con. That’s one of the reasons I read so many Star Wars books. In my crazy, very stressful life, those books were great places to relax and think about big concepts. I love them or have loved them. The Star Wars hotel was a chance to throw away the disappointments of politics, life itself, and live a fantasy. And that I think is a very useful thing.
Even with all the politics, I might still do it with my family at some point. Seeing what Disney has done, they have tried hard to thread the needle and give everyone what they want, which usually means everyone is a little disappointed. But, knowing what we do about the world, I think we should all feel proud that we have a culture that can actually pull off something like this for this amount of money and commit resources to even attempting to do it. The Galactic Starcruiser is enormously ambitious, and if it survives, it could evolve over time in a positive direction. My grandchildren would get quite a kick out of it because the experience is essentially an escape room, a broadway play, and a novel all wrapped up into one experience. I can think of people who are very sick and dying of cancer, who are kids who would love for this to be the very last thing they did in life. They would die happy. They want to escape their problems, and art does that for human beings at its highest form. It’s not so much hiding from the pains of life as much as it gives the mind emotional distance from massive disappointments. And if this Starcruiser experience can do that for people, at any cost, then I think that’s a wonderful thing. And I hope that Disney can keep it going because there sure was a lot of love that went into it for all the right reasons.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 