It’s Not the Fault of Indiana Jones: Disney listened to BlackRock and they’ll never recover

Indiana Jones is a great movie, but Disney mismanaged it by listening to the wrong people

One of the reasons I do these articles on this blog is because people are hungry for real information. Not the kind that the media has grown to give us, usually laced as propaganda to fulfill some NWO vision of centralized control using the China model of communism to determine reality. And there is something really menacing looming behind the various box office results that I say all the time are the ways that people vote for value in our culture. The Sound of Freedom movie is a category by itself, and as far as I’m concerned, there’s room for all these great movies that are suddenly coming out. But the way that the communist left has gained control of the marketplace is by placing the number 1 weekly horse race to movies, all in an effort to make or break their box office results. It’s a baked-in trick by the World Economic Forum types and their media apparatus to pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas with the illusion of industry reporting. And I say that as a guy who has read The Hollywood Reporter for three decades. I used to get the magazine version of that publication as an industry guide of great value. So I am quite aware of the switch to this new way of manipulating numbers to tell the kind of story that the financial controllers of communist activism want to tell. And a target early on was the new Indiana Jones movie, The Dial of Destiny. The WEF types wanted to see Disney kill off one of the great American heroes from the 1980s. Early screenings showed that the public didn’t like that. So Disney had to scramble to give the public the ending they wanted, which went against the desires of the BlackRocks of the world. And as a result, Bob Iger and the gang at Disney found themselves between a rock and a hard place with snakes and spikes in between to kill them with a thousand cuts.

See the problem. Even with inflation, this cost structure is ridiculous and not sustainable.

When I look at the box office numbers for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, I see a pretty good movie that performs well day to day, even on weekdays. It’s consistently good with the other movies that were done in the 1980s, back in a time when those movies stayed at the movie theater for most of a year. But these days, with movies barely staying in a movie theater for more than 60 days, a film has to have a lot of pop on the front, most of this due to failures of liberalism. The movies are controlled by labor unions who want inflated budgets with unlimited money spent. And if a studio complies, they are rewarded with good press that will take them close to a good box office score. Disney got caught trying to appease everyone, including BlackRock, and they made everyone mad with a movie that had its budget out of control. If George Lucas was producing this Indiana Jones film, he would have kept the budget under 100 million, or he wouldn’t have made the picture. Kathy Kennedy let the budget spike up to around 300 million before advertising. So the standard is the problem, and the controllers expect to rule the marketplace. And Disney has damaged their own brand, so anti-Disney people started campaigning against this Indiana Jones movie several years ago. Then there was the political agenda from BlackRock and Vanguard about replacing Indiana Jones with a woman and killing off the Western hero for global communism. Disney picked the fans for its own survival, and the industry pounced, writing many negative articles against Indiana Jones, hoping to sink the film and punish the studio for not complying with the globalism mandate.

Ultimately, this Indiana Jones film will be well respected and could have been financially successful if Disney had managed the budget. But it got out of control, and they thought they could spin it into a billion-dollar grosser. But without the support of the industry analysts, who are communist in most of their approaches to everything, the World Economic Forum activists worked overtime to ensure that it would never get there. They would have talked the movie up if Disney had killed off Indiana Jones. But they resorted to punishing the movie because it was a good hero story with a classic character living to see a happy ending. That was a good move for Disney in the long run because Indiana Jones will be around longer than the World Economic Forum. I’m not sure that Disney will make it. I’m telling people to go to the parks now while they are still there because I don’t think Disney will survive what they’ve done to themselves, which they are now the Bud Light of entertainment. When people think of Disney, they no longer think of Mickey Mouse but woke monsters who want to groom children. And once you lose that brand, it’s gone forever in this climate. They played the game wrong, and now it’s going to cost them. They fixed the Indiana Jones movie in time to save it. But they should have done the same to themselves several years ago instead of committing to the World Economic Forum’s woke agenda of gender desecration, which started to become evident with the killing of Han Solo and that terrible Buzz Lightyear movie.

It’s not an Indiana Jones problem; over the coming year, most people will watch the movie and like it, whether at the theater or at home on a streaming service. It’s a good family movie, but it’s too late for a course correction by Disney to save it at the box office. Because Disney is having problems everywhere. People are rejecting them as a company. That doesn’t mean that they’ll never have another billion-dollar film again. But they have lost permanent market share because of their woke commitment. And now their woke bosses at BlackRock are punishing them in the trades if they don’t stay committed to the continued desecration of American heroes. So the news isn’t good for Indiana Jones, but it’s not because the movie is bad. But there are undoubtedly many bad characters who are politically motivated on both sides, and Disney mismanaged the whole thing to their detriment. The lesson for everyone is not to pick against the audience, not to feed the everlasting hunger of the trade unions with inflated budgets, and to never align yourself with global activism against good stories and heroes who stand against evil. This is why I said it was a bad idea for Bob Iger to come back. I don’t know what he was thinking about taking a job that was bound to be a loser. There was no way to fix this Disney problem. And instead of being viewed as a pretty good CEO over his years, he’ll be remembered as the guy who let it all fall apart. But the truth is, this started a long time ago when the board started listening to global activists for communism and bending their films toward the China market. All that was a mistake that is showing itself at the box office. And it has nothing to do with Indiana Jones as a movie. If anything, people are supporting the movie more than they otherwise would. The problem is Disney, and I’m afraid that it’s a condition that will never correct itself.

Rich Hoffman

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What Happens When Your Little Sister Plays With Your ‘Star Wars’ Toys: The Fate of all woke corporations

There are likely fewer people in the world who wrote as much about Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars property in entertainment as I have, or the fate of a multibillion-dollar investment, the Star Wars hotel in Orlando, Florida. I was excited about it. I have been a Star Wars fan most of my life, which is reflected in my work. But it’s not just Bud Light that woke policies have crushed that the global push for a certain kind of CEO to now run these corporate boards ran by BlackRock have destroyed. Knowing Star Wars as an entertainment property and a work of modern mythology, I could see early on the impact and ultimate failure of Disney’s quest to appease BlackRock and the other elements of the Desecrators of Davos, the World Economic Forum’s view of the world. And it was evident in 2015 when the first of the next generation Star Wars movies came out in The Force Awakens that the future destruction of globalism was making itself most apparent. What we have now is a kind of stubborn tenacity of globalism to impose itself on reality. Whereas I have been saying for a very long time, many decades now, in writing, that the trend was going to destroy itself. That was never more clear in how Disney as a corporation handheld Star Wars as soon as it purchased George Lucas way back in 2012 and have now chased off their audiences, which, prior to, looked to be eternally loyal. I warned early on to all those who owned Disney stock to sell because the brands they, as a company, were building would fall apart, and that’s precisely what is happening. As Disney is falling apart, so is globalism everywhere in the world.

As scary as a post-President Trump world has been with all the horrible revelations that have been revealed, we are actually better off because market forces are proving that wonders of capitalism envisioned by the great Adam Smith book The Wealth of Nations to be as reliable as anyone could hope it to be. Out of all the presently trained economists with PhDs in the study of social behavior and the flow of money, it really all points back to that seminal work that was released to the world when America was founded that has turned out to be exclusively true. Disney had the money and power to hire anybody they wanted to be successful. Just ten years ago, they looked to be an unstoppable entertainment company, but like the world presently is in general, all members of the Bilderberg group, and the World Economic Forum, Disney is a dismal failure that literally can’t do anything correctly. They can’t produce new content that anybody wants, and what they do put out from their entertainment classics is so burdened with woke politics that it has turned away half the nation from enjoying their products. Disney bet on their brand and thought it was so great that no matter how much wokeness they proposed, they assumed, as they all did when they adopted this Chinese communist model of corporate rule of the world, that people would follow them as leaders of culture and that progressive politics would rule the day. Yet what they found out has been completely the opposite. Markets serve people; they don’t shape culture. They represent culture.

That was never more apparent than when Disney built the Galactic Star Cruiser Star Wars hotel in Orlando, Florida, connected to the Galaxy’s Edge Star Wars land at Hollywood Studios. I was very excited about Disney’s attempts and wanted them to work. I was a big fan of the Star Wars Land and went to it as soon as it opened with my wife, and we made a nice vacation out of it. I thought it was a stunning experience for a kid who grew up loving Star Wars, so I wanted the experiment to work. But I saw the trouble too and had been talking about it, at first, very politely. I did several radio shows with various guests around the country talking about the danger of woke Disney, which at that time, nobody understood what “woke” was. And sadly, everything I said as a warning sign for Disney turned out to be true. Disney didn’t understand Star Wars. It was being run by a woman, hand-picked by George Lucas, to continue what he had built. But she got swept up into this New World Order of the global citizen movement and turned Star Wars into what a little sister would do to your Star Wars toys when everyone was kids. Girls might take your Star Wars figures and put lipstick on them, and instead of them having epic battles, she would sit them at a table and have them drink tea. Kathy Kennedy essentially did that to Star Wars, designed for 8- to 12-year-old boys, and started producing all the content for girls. And she thought that the boys would stick around and that the market expansion would now be more inclusive of girls and empower women.

So when the Star Wars hotel opened as a kind of cruise ship last year, right after the Covid lockdowns, after ten years of development and over a billion dollars in investment, fans were stunned to learn that the $6000 per room 2 day all immersive experience was essentially the little sister version of Star Wars. Star Wars is about rebellion against tyranny. Not singing songs and drinking drinks in a bar with aliens walking around. But Disney didn’t listen to the fans; instead, it lectured them about what it would be like, and the results were devastating. Just over the hotel opened to great fanfare, it is now projected to close in September of 2023 because it just never took off. People rejected the idea, and it wasn’t so much the money; the lack of the Star Wars experience ultimately destroyed it, really, before it ever got off the ground. It proved something that will eventually happen to all corporations who have embraced woke policies, from Ford and General Motors to Bud Light, Miller Light, and Target. Corporations don’t and never will run the world. They will always serve society in general. Not the other way around. I warned everyone. Some people listened, and those that did are better off today than they were. Just as I have warned about the climate that still wants to vote for President Trump as opposed to the corporate approach of Ron DeSantis, they don’t know what they are doing. Professionals who make their living off these kinds of things have drunk the Kool-Aid and found out that there is a lot of bad stuff in there, and they’ve learned it too late.

In general, what happened to Disney and the Star Wars hotel and brand is a warning of what will happen to everyone in the future of corporate globalism. People don’t want woke and corporations who assume that their products are so beloved by the public that people will follow anything. Corporations who believe that have another thing coming. And that was never more obvious than in the closure of the Star Wars hotel so soon after it opened. The smartest people in the world with the most financial resources could not change the kind of reality that Adam Smith articulated in his economics studies. And those rules apply in every market sector. Entertainment just being one that is obvious. Which is a fine indicator of things to come.

Rich Hoffman

My Defense of the ‘Star Wars’ Hotel: If it brings joy to people, which is does, its worth doing

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 Iniquitous Intent at Disney: When it comes to ‘The Book of Boba Fett,’ it’s all about a “Return to the Primitive”

It may seem iniquitous, but when you know a subject very well, it’s easy to see the changes over time and trace those changes to particular injunctions that contributed to a demise. And that is precisely what I saw as I looked at an earnings report for Disney stock and noticed how many shares BlackRock owned recently, then saw episode 7 of the new Book of Boba Fett on the Disney+ streaming service. The imprint of Larry Fink and his fellow board members of the World Economic Forum was unmistakable. Additionally, I used to write screenplays, and I have a good understanding of the politics of movie-making. When I was a young guy, I had several projects that won screenwriting awards at film festivals and made the circulation around Wilshire Blvd selling them, so I’ve been told more than once by the people of finance, “he who owns the gold rules.” So, I sympathize with what Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, and even the original creator, George Lucas, went through to make this new show. They tried to do with The Book of Boba Fett, an original character from the old movies, bold and ambitious things. But at the end of the series, Star Wars fans were left feeling shortchanged. That’s the standard review of the show now that it’s completed, and a year of waiting left fans flat and looking for much more. It had some good stuff in it, but the overall message was filled with wokeness, and to my eyes, it points back to the owner of BlackRock owning too much stock in Disney and dictating creatively what ends up on the screen. I’ve seen it before in much smaller ways, and that is certainly the case with what is going on at Disney these days.

My review of The Book of Boba Fett is that its space meets Dances with Wolves. Clearly, the current makers of Star Wars projects, specifically Filoni and Favreau, used to enjoy playing with Star Wars figures, as I did. We are all kind of the same age, and when it comes to Star Wars, we just want to put what we wanted to see as kids on screen. Most people who watch these Disney+ shows and go to the modern movies feel that way; it’s more about childhood nostalgia than what is actually good about it. So it was strange to see the gunslinging bounty hunter from the classic film The Empire Strikes Back, running around in half the show dancing with Tusken Raiders around a campfire, acting like some hunter and gatherer. The purpose of the entire show became quite clear by episode 7, where Boba Fett and another bounty hunter called Cad Bane had a gunfight duel to the death, which was the ultimate climax and apparent purpose for putting the whole thing together. But this is where things get iniquitous, and the influence of BlackRock and other forces come into play. The show’s creators wanted to put on film what they thought about as kids, a gunfight with Boba Fett and some ultimate gunslinger. Woke Disney, essentially not run by Bob Chapek but by the owners of the most stock options, such as Vanguard and BlackRock, changed the story’s nature to reflect real-world tactical goals for global domination. That is clear by what Larry Fink puts in his ultra-liberal letters to CEOs showing the woke parameters for which the show must be done.

When people ask, “what’s wrong with Star Wars,” well, I would point to the loss of ownership of George Lucas, who over time have listened to people like Larry Fink more in his old age than he would have like a 20 to 30-year-old. Star Wars was about standing up to people like Larry Fink, not being told what to do by them. So now that extreme characters of progressive causes are calling the shots on the finance end and sticking their nose into the creative process of the much more woke Disney than it ever has been before, Star Wars comes out as if Darth Vader made the movies instead of Luke Skywalker. I could recite the production meetings as if I had been there when the pitch for The Book of Boba Fett was made to Disney executives who had an eye toward stock prices and the massive control BlackRock has on it. “You want to make a Disney+ show about a villain from the original movies to win over the fans from all the mistakes that Kathy Kennedy has so far made? Well, you’ll have to make the bad guy into a good guy and to do that, we must make him identifiable with indigenous people, which parallels the gunfighter against the Indian in American history.” So from there, the show’s writers had to figure out a way to get their big gunfight with Boba Fett and Cad Bane done in a way that made the show sympathetic to Disney’s woke needs to stabilize their stock price. Ultimately, they had to make Larry Fink happy, and to do that; Boba Fett had to Return to the Primitive.

Fans feel shortchanged because the whole thing was out of character for Boba Fett. When he finally had his gunfight with Cad Bane, the bad guy beat Boba Fett to the draw not just once but twice. That meant that Boba Fett had to rely on the new skills he learned from the Tusken Raiders to defeat Bane with a Gaffi Stick in the end. It was like a gun duel with an Indian (native American), and the Indian winning with a bow and arrow. Undoubtedly, a hidden message implied that primitive traditions are superior to technology and that, ultimately, the West will fall to tribal unity. Again, I know this subject very well; I just wrote a book called The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business because I run into people like Larry Fink all over the world. They have been trying to promote China, indigenous people of all kinds constantly over the technology of the West for years. Such an assumption is at the center of Lean Manufacturing. And of course, Disney couldn’t have given me a better example of why I felt the differences between the West and the East needed to be pointed out in business transactions. The message behind The Book of Boba Fett was that in the end, to be the good guy and to beat the bad guy, the classic Star Wars villain had to learn to embrace the primitive tribes of Tatooine, the scary Tuskin Raiders. But in the original movies from 1977, the Tuskin Raiders were thought of as villains. That basic flip of the script is why people are so upset with the Disney-owned Star Wars productions instead of what George Lucas produced on his own originally. Once you start worrying about stock prices, woke politics, and the letters to the CEOs from Larry Fink, what you end up with is a bunch of garbage nobody wants. But suppose Disney wants to keep their stock price up. In that case, they have to do what The World Economic Forum tells them to do, and that is to bring down the West and to sell those asset bubbles to China, where their new world order will emerge under a communist flag and a foot on western civilization that is meant to choke it off, forever.

Rich Hoffman

Meeting Timothy Zahn: How Comic-Cons predict the future of politics

Predicting the Future by Going to Comic Cons

It’s no different from predicting the weather or an upcoming earthquake. Some measurements are quite scientific that can be used to measure cultural ability and political sentiment. For me, those measurements don’t come from the nightly news cycles or the hours of daily talk radio and podcasts, but I learn a lot from places like comic book stores and Comic Cons, such as the one they recently had in Cincinnati during September of 2021. My daughter is a well-respected artist, and she was at that show and invited me to come on her opening day to help out, which I love to do. It exposes me to different kinds of people where my age group is not well represented. Most of the Cincinnati Comic-Con of 2021 were in the 20 to 30-year range. Last year the event was canceled due to Covid, so I wasn’t sure what we would see. Happily, the event was a great success, well attended, and there were lots of great costumes elaborately displayed, which I think is wonderful to see. Mythology at work, where ideas work in people’s minds driving to manifest some form of reality. From the mind of fantasy to the existence of at least a costume. When I see that, it tells me that the participants recognize something in these fantasy stories that are attractive to them and care enough about those things to make them into reality. As I think about the world and the problems that we have in it presently, many of the people in a comic con are at least doing the first step in solving those problems, recognizing that there is one. Now their recognition may not be rooted in a realistic solution, but the first step in situation solving of any kind is in seeking alternatives to the present reality. If the world is messed up and these people find comfort in fantasy, well, that says something to me, and I discovered that the Cincinnati Comic Con environment is full of great young minds looking for something positive in their lives.

I have written extensively about Star Wars in the past and how the future progressive problems for the political class currently at work in the world would fall apart. The latest trilogy of films that have upset Star Wars fans is a perfect barometer for how progressive woke policies are destined to be destroyed in the coming years, especially in the United States. The America First movement will only pick up steam. The Disney strategy of seeking market expansion in places like China and other places in the world was already showing signs of falling apart before Covid hitting in 2020, paving the way for the United Nations Great Reset. People, the kind of people who go to Comic Cons, see through a lot of the nonsense. They don’t care if Disney sells its products to China or some other communist country. But if they screw around with characters and make them political, well, then there will be trouble. When Disney and Kathy Kennedy at Lucasfilm decided to kill off Han Solo in the first movie of the new trilogy, they wanted to kill off toxic masculinity and put in his place a girl. That didn’t go over too well, to replace the gunslinger of space and replace him with a person who had no idea who her parents were and what her job was. The mistake of Disney to erase the Star Wars past and replace it with some woke, warless future wasn’t going over well with fans. And they rejected Star Wars sending the studios into a frenzy trying to repair the damage. Because ultimately, that’s what it always comes down to. That will undoubtedly be the case in the world regarding electric cars, windmills, health care, and taxes. Progressive intentions might sound good in an academic setting, but people ultimately decide what they want when it comes to reality.

A few booths down from where my daughter was, I could see the great Star Wars author Timothy Zahn signing books, all of which I’ve read. He had his latest book, which I hadn’t yet, book II of the Thrawn Ascendency series, so I went down there to speak with him and talk to him a bit. It was a rare opportunity, and I couldn’t pass it up. Now Timothy Zahn is a great guy and a great ambassador for the Star Wars brand with Lucasfilm and Disney, so I’m not going to reveal the contents of our discussion. He’s the creator of the expanded universe. He started the novel-writing after the movie Return of the Jedi, so I had to ask him how he felt about Disney coming in and screwing it all up by changing the entire story with their dumb movie The Force Awakens. But I’ve read his Thrawn books since then, and I know where he’s going with this recent series, and after talking to him at the Cincinnati Comic-Con, I am just glad that he’s out there. He’s a great dude, and he and some others now at Lucasfilm with Kathy Kennedy, now pushed into the background, are going to fix up Star Wars and win back their fans. Listening to him talk only confirmed what I had said about everything 5 or 6 years ago. And here it was, all happening, just as I said it would. Zahn held his nose like a lot of people do when they work for big corporations. I know many people who work at Disney; some are very dear friends who have done the same. But what I know and have known, which these people suspected also, is that they’d wait out the storm until the corporations learned their lesson and had to adjust to the market conditions.

Globally, the political hacks think they are in charge and utilize various methods of communism and socialism to regulate all existence. But when I go to events like these comic cons, it just reminds me that the mind of humankind is still in charge. The kinds of things people decide to spend their money on and the type of stories they find attractive still indicate what the rest of the world will do. For instance, even with all their woke corporate policies and insults to Uncle Walt and his frontier America, Disney bent the companies back to facilitate communist China. But when Disney tried to release their new Marvel movie Shang-Chi to China, the communist country turned them down. Disney has gone way out of its way to appease China, even sticking Asian characters into Star Wars not because they needed to be but because Disney was sucking up to China. Well, China sees the wave of the world, and they know that they are in trouble for their part in manufacturing the Covid crises and election fraud, and they are lashing out. And Disney is the one getting slapped. Was it worth nearly ruining Star Wars to get a communist government to play nice? Well, Disney learned too late. Their actual audience is in America, and they need to cater to that audience. As I was talking to Timothy Zahn, I saw many Star Wars characters coming up to him looking for an autograph. I even saw Mara Jade. But you know what I didn’t see. Nobody was dressing up as Rose, the Asian girl from The Last Jedi. The movie that Star Wars fans hate. What is evident at these kinds of events is that the rest of the world will follow politically. And the direction will not be toward more totalitarianism. But to freedom, justice, and the American way.

Rich Hoffman

We Don’t Have the Right Politics for Space Travel: We’ll have to change that before settling Mars

To move into Space, we need Capitalism as the driver of our politics

I am by far not an Elon Musk fanboy. I like a lot about Elon Musk and the great work he does with Tesla and SpaceX. But I’m not crazy at all about his talk about universal incomes and climate change. I view a lot of what he says as a guy throwing up ideas, much the way he runs his companies, and if someone can shoot holes in his thoughts, he welcomes that chance. He sees it as making things better. I could talk and argue with Elon Musk all day and year, and I would have fun doing it. And I think he would too. But I found an extraordinary moment from him recently on Part III of the exclusive Everyday Astronaut interview where Elon walked them around the Starbase facility ahead of a Superheavy launch attempt. I’ll put those interviews up here for you to watch, but I found them remarkable. Space X is how most companies should be run. It reminded me of the eventual aim of my recent book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, which is to learn not to be afraid of those who intend to impose fear on you. To learn not to fall in love with rigid rules and to reunite yourself to risk because that’s how the human race advances. During Part III, Elon paused and referred to just that very concept. But he knows he can’t say such things. He has all kinds of people who follow him, liberals, conservatives, people who have no idea what they are. He currently has to work with the Biden administration if he wants to send ships into space. He must also work with other countries, like China, because we are all tangled together in unhealthy ways. So, I get why he couldn’t say what he wanted to say. But I am under no such restriction.

I don’t typically think of the “degrowth movement” as an accurate word. Still, the way Mark Levin talked about it in his recent book, American Marxism, seems more appropriate when talking about the sciences than just saying “socialism” or “communism.” Many young people think of these things not as a recent threat but as an ancient menace that expired well before their time. But they understand growth, and for this topic, it’s certainly the correct way to term what the political left has been doing. Elon Musk has played around with left-leaning ideas, such as the universal income, electric infrastructure ran by solar, and even smoking pot on a podcast to show how cool and hip he was. Those are all things that have made me ignore what Elon Musk has been doing. That is until he does something magnificent like developing the Falcon rockets for reusable landings and building the Starships in Texas. Slowly over time, I’ve watched Elon as he has tried to do “growth” things in a world run increasingly by “degrowth” personalities; he has been getting frustrated. For instance, he moved to Texas, leaving California behind after the ridiculous Covid policies shut down the state economically. And recently, when environmentalists threw protests toward his desire to build a Starship factory at the Starport facility because of water concerns, he sounded more like a Trump supporter than a centralist libertarian.

Musk is trying to do all pro-growth in a world being drug into a no-growth period by the participants of the Vico Cycle, which I explain in detail in my Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. These cycles are not new to the human race, they have occurred many times in the past, and we end up constantly re-inventing ourselves. And that is what Elon Musk sees he is up against, and he let it out a bit during that Part III interview. That was the primary reason I wrote my book, to help people not repeat the past, but to punch through into this new space age not with restriction and fear, which the communists of the world want, but with unrestricted adventure fueled by the power of capitalism. When it comes down to the various philosophies, we cannot all have different ideas about the direction of the human race. We either want to grow or retreat into the huts of history and return to yelling at lightning bolts and attributing gods to their origins to make sense out of a storm. Or, we want to fly about those mysteries into the worlds beyond and fulfill our quests for adventure, both large and small, on a vast playing field of unlimited possibilities. The two views of the world will not live together forever. The inflection point is upon us.

And that’s when Elon Musk realized that everything done at SpaceX would disappear in an instant without him. It is he alone that is doing all these outstanding achievements. Sure, he has lots of brilliant employees who do the heavy lifting, but he provides the vision, and without vision, nothing happens. If human beings are going to be a space-oriented society, then a new type of government will have to be embraced. The one we have now, which fought hard to keep Donald Trump from being president and wanted to get rid of him when he was, will not allow the efforts of Elon Musk either to carry humans into space. We have to solve one problem at the philosophical level if we are ever to put 1 million people onto Mars like Elon Musk wants to do. We have to have a growing economy with an increasing workforce to accommodate it all. To have hundreds of thousands of people on the moon, Mars, and wherever else in the next couple of decades, Elon can do the math that was in his words during the interview. The illogical politics of our current moment, driven by communism and Marxism, are just wrong for the adventure of space.

Going even further, we have never solved these problems even in our science fiction, except perhaps in Star Wars. People need to be free, adventurous, experimental, and free to fail for space to work. A micromanaging government will always be in the way of what Elon Musk wants to do. He can only smoke joints so much, enough to keep the parasites off his heels. He can only spout off so much greenie weenie appeasement to keep the environmental protestors from standing in the way of a new Starship manufacturing plant in the middle of the desert. And that is the point of my book, not to crawl back into the Old West and sleep in hot unairconditioned cabins using the restroom outside. And getting water with a bucket every time you wanted a drink. Modern conveniences are good to have. But what we may not want to leave behind is the courage and adventure of discovery and wealth building. I would say that those are far more essential things than climate preservation or the appeasement of soft-natured Marxists looking for a big daddy government to care for them the way their parents failed. Once we solve those problems, we can then move to space. Elon Musk has figured out how millions of people are excited about it and follow his every move. They don’t know that the politics they wish to ignore are just the very thing that will keep their feet on the ground and their starships from flying. We must solve the politics before we can solve the space.

Rich Hoffman

The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Solo: A Star Wars Story Box office discussion–what it means to everyone–and nobody cares about China

In Hong Kong, this is not going the way you think at one of the #SOLOMovieStandee in here… barriers set to prevent pics taking with the falcon crew 😂 @RealRonHoward #SoloAStarWarsStory . Pics coutresy of @duncantang pic.twitter.com/FkHqJo95GO

— Raymond Lam (@s4r4cen0) May 27, 2018

Box office numbers are often a good thermometer into what the world is thinking, and I pay attention to them closely, and sadly the new Star Wars movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is falling well short of the kind of numbers its going to need to make. I found it interesting to see how many news outlets were already writing stories on Friday about how dismal the box office numbers were for the new Star Wars movie, like The Hollywood Reporter for instance. Their story was that Solo was bombing big time in China. Well, since when was China the market decider for films, they are communists, more aligned with the villains in these stories? Solo: A Star Wars Story is all about freedom and I’m sure the “state” wasn’t all that happy with the film, and that whether or not people saw the film or even advertised it so that their billion people had access to it is probably a big factor. Asians especially in China are not big on the Star Wars films, but that’s OK, they haven’t been a big part of the box office numbers all this time—who really needs them now? Solo isn’t any different, yet The Hollywood Reporter was almost as happy as a kid on Christmas Day to learn that China was not supporting the new Star Wars picture. There’s a lot going on with this one which justifies a good long discussion. (CLICK HERE FOR MY REVIEW OF THE FILM)

First of all, I don’t think the poor box office numbers so far reflect that Solo: A Star Wars Story is a bad movie. If you took the box office numbers of Infinity War and Deadpool 2 and released Solo: A Star Wars Story on a light release month, such as April I think this Star Wars movie would be on track easily to achieve a billion dollars at the box office, but with some competition out there, it would appear there is only so much money on the table to divide up between all the movies, and that’s not a bad thing for theater owners. I often say that Hollywood has let down all the personal investments that theater owners have to shoulder with less than stout productions that drive their concessions. That certainly isn’t the problem currently, there are a lot of movies released right now, and coming up as the summer unfolds which should help theater owners sell lots of popcorn. Hollywood owes them for always being available to display the Hollywood product to the public. That same public has a lot to do on Memorial Day weekend, that’s when the pools open in the states and people typically have things to do outside. In America Memorial Day weekend was pretty nice except for some flash flooding in the eastern part of the country. Everywhere else it was sunny and hot—and people spent time outside. May 25th may have been a traditional release date for Star Wars, but it’s no longer a great weekend for opening a movie because it’s the gateway to summer and people are often doing a lot of things that involve going outside.

Additionally, there are problems for Star Wars to overcome, the entertainment media is trying to do with Lucasfilm and Disney what the general media is trying to do with President Trump, and that is torpedo anything that they do that’s good, because everyone else is struggling to compete. Disney is going to make a lot of money this summer between the Marvel films and Pixar’s Incredibles 2—many in the entertainment business are very happy to see a Star Wars movie get bad press, because it’s a shot at Disney as a media company they are competing with. It’s like how the rest of the NFL teams around the country enjoy it when the New England Patriots lose a game, or Tom Brady throws an occasional interception. The trade media rushes out to talk about how Tom Brady is too old and is losing it. But the very next week Brady will throw for 400 yards and have a quarterback rating over 100 and the Patriots will win by 24 points over whoever they are playing. Disney and its tent pole of Star Wars is a big presence in the marketplace and the second handers love to see trouble happening in the Star Wars universe.

But then there is the very legitimate problem that I have talked about before and that is the mistake that Kathleen Kennedy and her story group at Lucasfilm has made in throwing out the extended universe of Star Wars and pushing very progressive themes in these new Star Wars movies cramming PC culture down the throats of the fans who clearly don’t want those elements in these movies. To me the Lucasfilm efforts with Solo: A Star Wars Story went a long way to fixing those problems with the fan base where some still want to enjoy new instalments, while others want to boycott the films in hopes that Disney will fire Kathleen Kennedy for messing with the elements that made Star Wars great to begin with. Nobody cared that Princess Leia was a bit of a feminist in the original A New Hope. George Lucas tried to make people happy by putting a black guy in the stories with the character of Lando. But in general, the heroes were white people, especially men and Kennedy has been very active to change that. But while doing so she literally destroyed two of the most popular female characters that fans loved, Jaina Solo, Han’s very strong daughter, and the wife of Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade. Fans who read the books went on a lot of journeys with those characters over two decades and suddenly fans were told that those people didn’t exist in Star Wars anymore, and that has caused a lot of consternation. When The Last Jedi failed to reveal who the parents of Rey were—many people were hoping that she was actually Jaina which would at least explain why she is flying around in Han Solo’s precious Millennium Falcon—a lot of fans stepped away from Star Wars at that point and now this second film in only a year has hit theaters and people are ambivalent about it. The Last Jedi was a very progressive movie that really split the fanbase, from not revealing the parentage of Rey, to the killing of Luke and the obvious progressive messages of feminism and sacrifice where everyone was blowing themselves up instead of taking the fight to the enemy, it’s that which made it so the fans stepped away from Solo: A Star Wars Story.

I have been enjoying the new Star Wars stuff the best I could. I have not been a fan of what Lucasfilm has done. I was a big fan of the Star Wars EU and I think Lucasfilm could have easily have just picked up these stories where the books left off and would have done something really special. However, I think the value of the movies and all the merchandise that is coming from the franchise does far more good than bad. I think Lucasfilm and Disney made a major mistake with Star Wars and that they are trying to remedy that now. For me Solo: A Star Wars Story was a huge step in that direction—of making things right with the fans. But its obvious that the fans are going to make Disney and ultimately Lucasfilm earn back that respect which is where things are today. There was a boycott of this latest Han Solo movie and it had an impact on the final ticket sales. As the word is getting out, because Solo: A Star Wars Story is pretty good—I think its one of the best and is certainly on par with the original films somewhere in quality of story telling between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But the film is more fun like A New Hope was. I like the prequel films but can admit that Solo: A Star Wars Story is better than those films and it is certainly better than The Force Awakens. But these new young actors are making a name for themselves, the young Alden Ehrenreich is earning his respect from the fans little by little. Many fans have been sitting on the fence with Solo: A Star Wars Story because they weren’t sure how to feel about a new actor taking over for the legendary Harrison Ford. If this latest Star Wars film does anything it shows fans that its possible to have a younger actor playing an old favorite, and because of that I think Solo: A Star Wars Story will have good legs into the future of the franchise, and people will come back to the films and forgive Lucasfilm and Disney for their mistakes with the first three films made since the acquisition in 2012.

Alden Ehrenreich is a smart young actor with a good head on his shoulders, and he likes playing Han Solo in Star Wars. He’s good for the franchise and understands that taking less money for the opportunity to do more films like this makes good business sense because it could place him in Hollywood as the next big demand actor—like Harrison Ford was. With all that under consideration I think Disney certainly put the cards down on the table with this one holding nothing back promotionally. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they spent $500 million on the movie and are worried at this point of making that money back, which I think they will. But they spent the money expecting a billion in return and that could cool them on launching the other projects that are in the pipeline. Hopefully they let Lucasfilm go forward with the budgets on those new films, the Kenobi film, the Boba Fett film, the Rian series, and of course at least two more movies about the young Han Solo—as well as a whole bunch of other films not yet released. It’s not too late to make these films into the kind of successes that were experienced with Marvel—but getting the fan base back on board is the key.

To win back the audience, and this is just my advice, do with it whatever you want Lucasfilm, you have to get Mara Jade and Jaina Solo into Episode Nine as its being directed now with J.J. Abrams. Everyone gets what they want if that happens, Kennedy gets her strong female leads, Luke has a reason for being so distressed in The Last Jedi, and Rey gets a name and a reason for having the Falcon with Chewie as her co-pilot. A new trilogy featuring Jaina could even take things further 30 years after Episode Nine—the possibilities are endless. It took Marvel ten films to build up the kind of anticipation that was seen in Infinity War, Star Wars could do something very similar, but they’ll have to earn back the fans, and Solo: A Star Wars Story was a big first step. Hopefully Disney doesn’t get cold feet after they study these box office results and consider whether fans will support two Star Wars movies in the same year. They will, and they will support three or four a year if Disney will make them and be very profitable with $200 million budgets. But it will take more movies like Solo: A Star Wars Story to earn back that fan trust, not more movies like The Last Jedi or even The Force Awakens. The nostalgia wore off and now reality is there for Star Wars films, going forward, people want to see new ground that pays respect to what they know from the original EU—and fans don’t want to be preached to with gay characters, or black characters, or women. They just want to see a story set in a galaxy far, far away that will endure for centuries—and not fall out of favor with whatever new political movements come in the next few decades. Star Wars fans want their traditions, and they want the long view—and its their money that Disney wants, so it’s up to the giant entertainment company to give it to them.

I think I’ve listened to the new Han Solo theme from the John Powell soundtrack back to back for a solid four days now and I love it, it’s so full of optimism. It reminds me of how it was when Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night series started back in 2008, with a movie that many people didn’t think was needed because at that point Batman had been done so many times. The Nolan trilogy built up a nice audience and earned a reputation by the fans that they trusted and supported. Those films each went on to make over a billion dollars each. Iron Man the first Avenger film also came out that year with a fantastic performance by Robert Downey Jr. The film only grossed around $500 million globally much like I think this new Han Solo movie will make, but it became the glue that built up those next nine Marvel films. Disney purchased Marvel shortly after that film’s release and the rest is now history, and has been very successful. It has allowed Disney to make obscure films like The Black Panther, which I thought was pretty good—which would have never been made unless there was a need for the ever-expanding universe. Star Wars could do better, but the fan base will have to be built and listening to that soundtrack of Solo: A Star Wars Story that new Han Solo theme could serve as a nice light in the darkness for all the Disney executives timid about the next stage of the adventure. The best thing to do would be to support the effort and not panic, there is a lot of good that came out of Solo, and it hints at how things truly could be now that it looks like Lucasfilm is starting to figure out how to make these Star Wars movies without the guidance of George Lucas. The John Williams contribution is absolutely brilliant and I hope that everyone involved can use it to launch something really special, because the opportunity is certainly there.

Rich Hoffman
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An Authentic Han Solo Costume: The miracle of Amazon.com amid changing industries–and people

Everyone knows I’m a huge Star Wars fan—which I view differently from the geeky other types of entertainment exhibitions of public support. When I see the name Star Wars and participate in its products in whatever form, it evokes in me an optimism that is very specific to it that I am very fond of. That’s why my favorite character within Star Wars is Han Solo, because he is the most optimistic character perhaps ever created for film. Nothing is impossible for Han Solo—he’ll try anything under any circumstances because his personality is such that he figures his confidence and sheer will can get him through anything. He is the Donald Trump of science fiction and I’ve felt that way about that character for more than forty years now. On more than a few occasions I’ve dressed up as Han Solo for Halloween events, or other science fiction endeavors, conventions, watch parties, literary events at book stores—just various festive gatherings that celebrate costuming and character reverence—but I’ve never had any kind of official Han Solo clothing. I would just piece together whatever I could find that sort of looked like the popular smuggler from the Star Wars series and go from there. But my five-year old grandson is about to have a big birthday party marking that invisible line of being a toddler to a genuine little boy fully aware of the world around him with the memories that now matter—and my daughters are fashioning it to Star Wars. As I’ve reported before also, these parties my kids do for their kids are not just little events—they go all out in creating a very mythic experience that is almost a theme park occurrence and due to their passion for Star Wars they are going all out. That meant that of course I had to dress up as Han Solo—but this time I wanted to do it for real—as real as possible because of the effort my kids were putting into this party and the eventual impact it would have on the youth in my family attending this thing. So I turned to Amazon.com to see what was out there and was stunned by a world I discovered.

My mom made me a little vest like Han Solo’s when I was in the fifth grade and I sort of kept it all these years even though it was way too small for me. But even a few years ago if you wanted something that looked like a Star Wars character and bought a costume from a place like Party City it always came out looking far from authentic. If you wanted something that looked like the clothing in the movie you had to make it. Back when my kids were little we went to a Star Wars Celebration in Indianapolis and my wife made Jedi robes for my girls and their friends so they could dress up at that convention which occurred right before the movie Revenge of the SIth. The internet at that time had some support—you could get directions from people who built their own costumes but there weren’t suppliers carrying things like that on the shelf. Even though Star Wars was popular there just wasn’t any money in it for costumers to make costumes of all those characters in the movies for a public of all shapes and sizes. The scope of that work was unrealistic. For Han Solo specifically his outfit looks pretty simple yet is really quite complex. For instance, his vest from A New Hope has a series of very complicated pockets positioned just right—and there is nothing like that off the rack at Wal-Mart or Kholes. Han Solo’s pants don’t have pockets and have a very specific pin stripe down the side of them which disappears into knee-high boots that are meant to put the swash in the buckle for the very dashing character. The shirt under the vest isn’t just a white button-up but has a very unique collar and v-nick style that has to fit just right through the shoulders to give the correct effect. Then there is the gun belt which is a thing all its own. So I went looking for these things and I started with the Star Wars Costume exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center—which has been running all summer and will end around the beginning of October before moving on to the next city. It’s a good exhibit, most of which I’ve seen before at the Smithsonian, but for my quest it served its purpose. I was able to get right up to the Han Solo costume and look at things up close so that I could duplicate it authentically. If I couldn’t find the items online, my wife was willing to build them from scratch so we went and took lots of pictures.

To my shook as I started looking now, in 2017 for these very specific Han Solo costume pieces for this epic party my kids were having I discovered that I was able to buy everything at Amazon.com relatively inexpensively. For instance the great Han Solo vest that I figured was the most important part of the costume was just under forty dollars from an outfit in China. I skeptically ordered it expecting it to arrive in a very flawed condition. I expected something that looked like a typical Party City costume that smelled like plastic and rubber. But what came to my front door was an exact replica of the Han Solo vest from A New Hope made out of material that was like that of tactical gear for a SWAT team. It was a very good garment that was legitimate and it fit well the moment I put it on. I was stunned by the quality of it. I then proceeded to order the official shirt, the pants, the boots and the gun belt which as of this writing hasn’t yet arrived, but everything else has and again I was stunned by the authenticity of each item.

At different points in my life I had looked for these things and nobody carried them—as I said, everything had to be made by hand. What’s unique about now from then—and by then I mean like six months ago—is that due to all the COSPLAY that goes on at these Comic Con conventions and now that Disney World is building these amusement parks with Star Wars lands within them there is this big COSPLAY movement that has emerged—where people dress up as characters from their favorite movies to delve into the mythology of these various sci-fi events—and out of nowhere there are all these suppliers who are making these costumes to meet the growing demand. It’s a whole industry of itself that has virtually arrived out of nowhere. I am aware of some of it because I find Comic Cons interesting as well as Gen Cons and other conventions. I also noticed that the plans for the new Star Wars resort coming to Disney World is seeking to tap into this emerging market with a Fantasy Island style of Star Wars experience where they encourage people to show up dressed for the part. Obviously Disney knew all about this culture and were building their business plans around it. I only discovered it because of my grandson’s birthday party—but this was big business!

As I had ordered everything from my home computer and each item arrived one by one to my doorstep without having to go anywhere to search for it I became more and more impressed. Even more shocking was that everything fit nicely, I didn’t have to send anything back. Just by reading some of the reviews I was able to size myself accordingly with no trouble at all. I figured that the risk was low because if the stuff showed up and was junky I figured my five-year old grandson would forgive me. He’d appreciate the effort and wouldn’t get hung up on the details—even though he is a very smart little kid. He surprises me what he notices. He’s already playing the video game Battlefront very well which is about two years before I thought he would. He plays online against other people who are very good—and he’s effective. He knows all the different types of weapons that can be used, how to outfit each character and how to manage the Star Cards which give unique abilities to tactical engagements. So if something wasn’t right, he’d notice. But after getting the parts of my Han Solo costume together it was obvious that I had nothing to worry about. As far as this party was concerned, except for my hairline, the outfit looks just like it would if it was on the actual movie set. That’s pretty stunning for something that was so easily ordered on Amazon.com.

This is all just another example of how imagination is fueling an entirely new industry and due to the excessive and efficient reach of Amazon.com they were able to connect me to suppliers around the world where I could get a very specific items from a forty-year old movie to my doorstep within two weeks. And the quality wasn’t junky but meant to impress even under the scrutiny of the most ardent film geek. In some cases my outfit is better than the movie original on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Those costumes were meant for just a few months of filming, these for purchase were meant to last much longer and under the judgment of live audiences. Needless to say, which I have before, we are seeing something new and hopeful from these modern movie enthusiasts which starts with a mythology in the movie theater and extends into real life—what Disney is doing down at their theme parks is tapping into the public need to play out their fantasies and is an expansion of imagination that is very specific to our species as human beings. The need to personify a fantasy experience has deep psychological roots that go far beyond primal necessity. I think the end result is a very positive one that is headed toward an unknown climax. I know I love to see the imaginations of so many people at work to make something like all this possible—but it surprised even me at the extent of it all. And the entity most responsible for the success of this new industry was Amazon.com. They were the middle ground players that connected need with supply and allowed both to get what they wanted at the best price and quality. If they can do that with a simple costume from Star Wars, just think what they can do with real necessities. We are living in a whole new world.

Rich Hoffman

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Hollywood Down 8% in 2017: Trading politics for profit to destroy an industry

This is far more important than most people think—the movie box office for July of 2017 was down 8% from the same period a year ago. Additionally Disney has lost around 4 million subscribers to its Disney Channels over the past three years as kids turn to other forms of entertainment. More and more homes are cutting their cable service as it’s just too expensive for what people get, and theater owners are struggling to survive with Hollywood giving them very little to work with to justify the big investment that a movie ticket costs these days. That same home theater market is keeping people home more rather than go to the theater to see movies that could otherwise just be seen on Netflix. If you couple all that with the Donald Trump versus the media battle—which will hurt traditional media extensively, the entertainment industry is in big trouble—which I have been saying for a long time. All the stocks are down for the theater owners—which I feel sorry for. The distributors have let them down by pushing a product that was just too liberal for mainstream American audiences and now they’ve all been hung out to dry.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-hollywoods-franchise-crisis-worsens-july-fourth-1018493

http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/07/05/disney-channel-freeform-ratings-falling/

For about 20 years I bounced around with tentative meetings within Hollywood. For me it was more than a treasure hunt, I really wanted to make movies and to contribute to the library of wonderful movies that I had grown up with. The business end was something I didn’t have much patience for since most of the people running the industry were radically more liberal than I was. So I’d get a project floating around out there but it would go cold. The money guys were also liberal so the project proposals I suggested were either heavily scrutinized with extensive re-writes to soften them up, or they just weren’t getting off the ground. In a few cases I was offered positions in the industry, but my wife didn’t want to move to California—and without living in such a way that you could network in that town, it was pretty much impossible to get any project off the ground. I went to several film festivals, won a few screenwriting awards and ended up doing a few bull whip stunts for legitimate studios but the last time I flew back from Hollywood in 2008 I knew that the industry was in trouble from a business perspective. They weren’t going to make it which made me sad, because I liked traditional Hollywood—I always liked Howard Hughes, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Albert Hitchcock, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. These new filmmakers in Hollywood were too political and I was from a flyover state so things just weren’t going to work out. After that last trip I put my focus into other business opportunities and waited for the inevitable which is now upon us.

Movies cost too much to make, the labor unions which represent all the industry people has forced them all to think too collectively to stay in touch with the American people. Reading with great interest how the Han Solo movie fell apart at Lucasfilm it’s obvious that the new generation is just too soft and manipulated by their director’s guilds—into liberal politics which the movie going audiences can’t stand. Even though I warned of all this years ago, and have written extensively about it since, it still hurts to see an entire industry collapsing on itself. The Hollywood product is now on life support with only a few big Disney releases carrying most of the industry. Warner Bros. has done well with Wonder Woman, and Marvel had their usual hits with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. Small films like Baby Driver did respectable business, but big films like Pirates of the Caribbean 5 were down a quarter from the previous installment worldwide and that isn’t good news. Critics have been hard on these new movies as they have an extreme political slant to most reviews and once the Rotten Tomatoes scores hit online people are so turned off they just don’t go see these films and that cycle is worsening.

Hollywood is about more than just the movies themselves—it’s about an entire industry from print media like Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, to the television shows Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight. Critics for the big newspapers have national audiences in some cases and they have abused their relationships and let that stardom go to their heads giving themselves the power to sink or swim a picture—so essentially they have cut off their own noses to spite their faces. I remember a very specific day in Glendale, California where several day time television programs were set up on the same street to shoot exteriors and I was having lunch with some people who worked the trade publications who were full of themselves way too dangerously. I tried to make them aware of the fragile eco system that was on full display and they had the kind of attitude that the gravy train was going to go on forever. Well, within two years every one of those people was out of a job and their publications had folded. They should have listened, but of course they didn’t. Most of those big name trade publications won’t be around much longer because nobody really cares what they have to say. The media stars they talk about are today far more political than they used to be and they have aligned themselves against Trump who is set to be a very popular and successful president, and now there just aren’t enough fans of their material to carry them into the next decade.

There are going to be a lot of bankruptcies—and even the Disney Company will feel the squeeze. While I continue to be very impressed with what Disney is doing at their parks and with the Star Wars movies as one giant mythology spanning many platforms—computer games, etc—they still rely too much on theater owners to distribute their core products and those theater owners need more than just Disney to stay afloat. They need every weekend to have people wanting to go to the theaters to buy over-priced popcorn and soda to watch a movie they don’t want to wait for release on the home market where likely the televisions they have at home is far better than what is offered at the theater. I will have to add that when my wife and I went to see The Book of Henry that the Regal Cinemas we went to had adjusted their prices down for popcorn and pop to a very reasonable level. The theater owners out there are doing their jobs and adjusting to the marketplace, but Hollywood hasn’t. They keep making the same crap and trying to repackage it instead of turning loose people with great ideas to constantly keep material fresh. I know I wasn’t the only one trying to get new ideas to production companies—it was mainly a cultural problem. Studio execs were too interested in getting laid at the multiple parties around town by telling chicks that they were for this liberal cause or that—so they were making decisions at the executive level in producing products that American audiences did not want to see. Once they got their blow job they had already committed their studio to ten films for production the next year which nobody would want to see because of their overly liberalized political overtones. Sure the chick who was giving blow jobs at the party liked the Matt Damon movie about fracking—but nobody in America wanted to see it and the budget was blown.

So the industry is toast—it won’t recover in its present form. Of course there will be investment opportunities in new styles of media, but the Hollywood game is over. The industry just hasn’t come to terms with it yet. There are a few $1 billion dollar earners yet to be released in 2017 but it won’t be enough. By the end of the year the gains will be so far down that they won’t even be worth discussing. And life outside of Hollywood will go on. All I can say to those people who were so haughty 10 years ago is that I sincerely tried to tell you this would happen, but you didn’t listen. I wish you had. So now it’s time to pay—and it will be painful. But you people did it to yourselves. America will be great again and Hollywood has removed itself from being a part of it—and that’s a damn shame.

Rich Hoffman

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War Gaming Tactical Entertainment: Birthday joy at Nostalgic Ink

It’s not quite my birthday, but usually my family makes a big deal about it always leaving me something to look forward to. This year, because of my interest in the game Star Wars X-Wings Miniatures we all gathered at Nostalgic Ink in Mason to play a series of games. My daughters brought their husbands and a tray of Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and we had a blast. The highlight of the evening was when the owner of the popular comic book store came back to watch our game overhearing a South Park reference that we had been talking about and performed a perfect reenactment of it. It sounded just like this!

That is typical in these gaming environments, there is such a love of creativity and boundless imagination which I find refreshing. Comic book stores are great places to recharge after all the dread of reality has done its best to erode away logic. Some of the best people I have known over the years find solace in those kinds of places, so it was nice to celebrate my birthday there with my kids.

I can’t say enough about the X-Wing Miniatures game. As often as I reference it, it continues to impress me. Nostagic Ink had on hand an impressive array of Y-Wings, and X-Wings. The Y-Wings have been mostly sold out on Amazon because players buy them up for their durability during combat and Ion Turret ability. My son-in-laws’ had their Imperial Aces on the table for the first time which was a sight to behold. Those new Imperial ships have a curving barrel roll effect that is really valuable and is yet another wrinkle in an otherwise highly imaginative and innovative game that is ever-changing forcing constant adoption.

Way back when I was 13 to 14 I was involved in military war simulations which were tabletop games that I found very stimulating, intellectually. Back then, West End Games was producing some great stuff and eventually the realistic simulations of actual World War II battles, and Civil War engagements gave way to a game called Assault on Hoth, which was a Star Wars strategy game done in the spirit of those battle simulations. It contained a map with the traditional game hex-and-counter mechanic and played well. Imperial Walkers attacked the Rebel base on Hoth and Rebel Snowspeeders had to meet them to prevent the shield generator from being destroyed. During the early days of our marriage my wife and I played it three to four times a week and it set a pace for our relationship that would last for decades.

When I learned war gaming as a young man I quickly learned that much of what was being studied were battle tactics no different from what military generals had been taught at West Point for generations—only without all the politics of the position. By role-playing battle field formations set against values players had to make the same kind of decisions that military generals had to make in wars from the past. In this modern age of gaming—for the first time in the history of the world, war gaming wasn’t regulated to the military elite—but to hobbyists and history enthusiasts. Of course the emotion of the battlefield is not present, and the threat of death not a factor, but the same types of decision-making that George Washington had to make during Revolutionary War battles, or General Lee had to make during the Civil War were available to anybody curious enough to play a game. Most modern war games are very sophisticated and take into account the many factors which are required for such strategic thinking.

Nostalgic Ink has in the middle of their store an entire section of these military war simulations that are much better than the ones I played as a kid. They are fascinating and players routinely set up in the back of that store to play them. But for me, Fantasy Flight Games has changed the entire field of miniature war gaming with Star Wars X-Wing. It has all the battlefield tactics of many of those traditional war games, but it has the added element of flight. I find myself thinking about that game all the time these days.

This is a good thing because real life often requires the same kinds of hard decisions that X-Wing forces players to realize. American society has the Second Amendment to protect themselves from an overzealous government. But it also has freedom of thought, and this has given rise to a culture emerging in these comic book stores where tactical decisions are available to regular people outside of any orthodox political class. For instance, this year’s FFG world champion is Paul Heaver a software engineer from Northern Virginia who is married with two kids. He plays online CCGs and computer games, but X-Wing Miniatures is the first game of its type that he’s gotten really serious about. Before going to the World’s competition—where literally people from many countries all over the world came to battle it out in Minnesota during February of 2014, Heaver paid close attention to the battle reports on the game forums and saw that Tie Swarms were dominating tournaments so he calculated a strategy of using two low pilot value X-Wing fighters and two moderate pilot rating B-Wings to slowly whittle away at the low pilot rating Tie Swarm strategy. The effectiveness of this approach can be seen below in the video of his championship game. If you watch the video it has the visual quality of a golf game. People cheer when ships are destroyed the same way an expert golfer sinks a long birdie. The same skills that Heaver used to win the Worlds championship at FFG are the same skills it takes to manage large companies, run military maneuvers, and run countries. I would put Paul Heaver against Vladimir Putin any day and I’d put my bets on Paul. But in this emerging X-Wing popularity there is Paul Heaver types popping up everywhere and this is a very good thing. There are a lot of very smart people coming up in these gaming circles.

The tactic that Paul used to win his championship will be destroyed with all the new ships and rules coming out quickly, like the new rules involving the Imperial Aces ships. They can now barrel roll out of a firing arc and right into the side of a targeted ship taking away their shot, while performing theirs with deadly effectiveness. So what works today may not work tomorrow, which is why I love X-Wing. It is why I spent my early birthday with my kids at Nostalgic Ink eating chicken nuggets and playing tactical table top warfare. Back when I was introduced to these miniature war simulations I learned from a Green Beret who was so obsessed with military tactics that these war games were the only way he could experience battlefield excitement, that the only real difference is that you don’t hear the bullets whizzing by your ears and possess the obvious knowledge that every breath might be your last. Otherwise, this is what it is like. Fantasy Flight has done with X-Wing Miniatures something that is new—it has turned up the heat considerably and no longer is reliant on the Star Wars brand to sell the game. It’s great by itself as its own thing. Tactically it is complex, and is a wonderful way to pass the time for those obsessed with strategy. And that would be me. It is my ideal of a fun time and how I prefer to spend my leisure because all too often real life calls on those skills—and because usually what we do in our recreational time directly contributes to how we conduct ourselves professionally. And because of Star Wars: X-Wing, the future looks very bright to me.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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