Tag: Rise of Skywalker

Rise of Skywalker hits the Billion Dollar Club: Star Wars in the age of Trump

The final verdict for me on the new Star Wars movie the Rise of Skywalker is that I’m happy it crossed over the billion-dollar mark for the weekend. Disney needed that number to justify everything they had put into the effort, and that means more for the future, which is a good thing. I could rip the movie apart technically, and continue to be upset that Lucasfilm under Disney’s guidance veered away from the source material that was there for them for the plunder. We will never get the Jaina Solo that the series deserved and who lived dear to many people’s hearts before The Force Awakens ever appeared. But with all the mistakes made, I felt Disney turned the corner with Solo: A Star Wars Story and reached out to the fans who didn’t reach back. So Disney redoubled their efforts to win back fans with this latest movie with obvious hat in hand. That was enough for me. The most important thing to come out of this latest film is that it is one of the most positive movies I’ve seen in a very long time, everything is above the line and positive, which ultimately is what Star Wars is always about. And why people love to see the movies. We all understand reality and the nature of it. What we want to see in movies is hope, and optimism, and that is what Rise of Skywalker is all about.

The critical reception of the film I have said, and continue to, is solidified in the politics of our times and can be seen in the election of Donald Trump. For all the reasons that some people hate Trump they hate Star Wars. Some people don’t like optimism, they want artistic interpretations for the problems of their lives, not a “can do” spirit to take on anything and to win with perseverance. I think demographically, many fans of Star Wars are also Trump supporters even though Vanity Fair wants to believe that these movies are all about the resistance to Trump. The comparisons to modern politics and the way people vote with their money at the box office is synonymous. Where the rubber hits the road people pay to see hope and to walk away from a movie theater feeling good. And that is what Disney gave audiences finally after messing with the formula with experimental film makers several times in previous attempts. If Disney had just listened to George Lucas at the start of this journey, they’d be a lot better off, but at least they were able to make a recovery with these latest two films, Solo and Rise of Skywalker. Thankfully for them and the rest of us, they weren’t pig headed about it.

Even more importantly, the new ride at Disney World, The Rise of the Resistance continues to show enthusiastic support from a hungry audience. After going to Disney World the week after the ride opened at Hollywood Studios to ride it, my concern was that the movie would come out and people wouldn’t like it making the billion dollar investment that Disney made in the new Star Wars land not worth the effort. I was concerned that it was too little too late and that the brand damage to the property was too far gone. But still, well past the holidays people are showing up in the mornings to ride the most technical ride in the world and its selling out within an hour of the park opening still, meaning that the enthusiasm for Star Wars is still very high.

The most important part of the movie, Rise of Skywalker I think is at the end when Rey goes to the old farm of Luke to bury the lightsabers there for future generations. When Rey rides down the little sand dune as she did in the first movie it showed that J.J. Abrams and other writers for this latest movie understand that Star Wars isn’t about change, its about surviving and living to have a better day tomorrow. With all the events of the films in this recent trilogy Rey had shown that she was still that hopeful girl from the first movie unchanged by the tragedies she had endured. Even though Rey should have been Jaina Solo, and The Force Awakens shouldn’t have ruined the main characters from the original by dumbing them down into stumbling fathers or failed Jedi masters, or women who put their careers before their families only to breed the next generation of galaxy killers, acts like the one with Rey at the end are what Star Wars has always been about, and its great to see it get back on course.

My interest in all this is of course cultural. I don’t get much from a movie like Star Wars that inspires new thoughts in my mind. The movies are meant for children. I want the movies to do well for kids to have something to grab on to for a future where expansion into space and taking values with them for goodness late into their lives is key to establishing a wonderful future. Star Wars is key to that future, so I am very interested in how Disney uses the brand to shape goodness, and optimism in our society. But after The Last Jedi, which I liked because it had some interesting things in it, I wasn’t sure Disney would ever figure out what to do with the George Lucas creation.

But after visiting Galaxy’s Edge in Disney World and seeing The Rise of Skywalker several times at the movie theater, I can say that I am happy with the results and the mythic imprint it has on our society. There are a lot of very positive messages that are spawning off these efforts that will shape the intent of this next century so its all very exciting. It would have been a very sad story to see the brand disintegrate due to all the progressive political experimentation that has been going on, all the #METOO gestures in an attempt to win over the girls away from the boys in the audience. Star Wars is still a movie for boys ages 8 to 13. Girls can come, but its made for boy problems and no matter how much Disney wanted to change that, it was never meant to be. So at least The Rise of Skywalker returned to those roots as best they could, and the box office rewarded them with another billion-dollar money maker which they needed desperately.

Corporate filmmaking is a very different thing from a young George Lucas going to the bank to get the money to make Empire Strikes Back with all his hopes and dreams on the line, which showed in the final cut of the film. We may never see ambitions like that again in Star Wars due to the need of the films to make so much money to cover the corporate expenses. But there was a lot at stake with Rise of Skywalker even though Disney certainly has plenty of money to work with on a budget and advertising. It was good to see that a big company like Disney can gamble in a big way and come up winners when so many people need the win. Disney continues to show they don’t always understand what a winner looks like, as most big companies don’t, but they are always on the lookout for them, and they win more than they lose. And this time, its good that they won, because Star Wars will have new life, which I think is great for our future in many ways that are still undefined mythologically.

Rich Hoffman

A Review of ‘The Rise of Skywalker’: Star Wars is back and has a lot in common with the Trump impeachment

Sometimes things happen that are very good and you have an experience that was much better than you thought it would be and that was certainly the case of the latest Rise of Skywalker Star Wars film. I know a lot of my readers are perplexed as to why I write so much about Star Wars, and to understand why, I would point to this movie. It has a lot in common with the Donald Trump impeachment by the press, a desired narrative designed to shape a social argument. While the president represents in people a desire to push back against oppressive institutions—which is a continuous theme of all Star Wars movies and shows, the media itself has become one of those oppressive institutions where there trained minds within it find Star Wars ideas threatening, not just childish, but dangerous. So I read with interest hundreds and hundreds of reviews this week about the Rise of Skywalker while many of the same publications framed similar opinions about the presidency of Donald Trump. The common statement was that this new Star Wars film wasn’t very good, it didn’t take the needed chances, and lets face it, it steered away from the progressive politics of the last film, which caused a lot of trouble in the fan community. The Rise of Skywalker was a damn, good movie and a real love letter from the filmmakers to the fan base and it left me feeling very good about it and extremely hopeful for the future.

What Star Wars means to our society I cannot understate enough, the magic it has on our culture is invaluable. I think its very powerful, and important. As a kid’s movie it has the potential to set high goals in the minds of viewers, especially young ones and this Rise of Skywalker film understood that responsibility. These are not movies about reality, or progressive politics, plot points that film school losers studied were important, the Star Wars movies, all of them are about creativity and thinking beyond the scope of your present circumstances. They are also about overcoming impossible odds when faced with dire circumstances. In that fashion, there were parts of Rise of Skywalker that reminded me a lot of the original Wizard of Oz, particularly when the heroes of the story were trying to rescue Chewbacca from a First Order star destroyer. The themes were light on their feet and fun. Reality wasn’t the goal but the flow of optimism was and that made parts of this movie pure magic.

The reason the reviewers choose not to like movies like this and why they don’t like President Trump is that they wish to live their lives in a victimized status, to have something to blame for why they are losers in life. President Trump is about overcoming loser status, and so are Star Wars films at their heart. They are all about using creative tools and technology to help the viewers of the films unlock optimism in their lives hopefully well beyond the time that the lights come back up and the movie is over. The Rise of Skywalker was an optimistic love letter to the audience. Obviously, Lucasfilm has listened to the complaints of the previous films. And I will have to give credit to Bob Iger at Disney, he listened too. There was a lot going on in The Rise of Skywalker that was optimistic, ambitious and a real throwback to the Saturday morning serials that caused George Lucas to make these films so long ago. The opening credits complete with what was likely one of John Williams’ final musical scores was wonderful and set the stage the way these kinds of stories have for hundreds of years, and have been the key to why they are so beloved by so many generations of audiences.

Rather than give away the movie, I’d rather cover the spirit of the film and encourage everyone to go see the movie and reward Disney with a big box office score. I’d like to see this one break some records, because it deserves to. I keep hearing from critics that The Rise of Skywalker didn’t take any chances, the way people have become accustomed to in other theatrical releases, like a Tarantino film, or some movie that advances the political ideologies of the left where women rights are the dominate objectives. Let me tell you about risk, try taking a very private story telling film that Star Wars started out as in 1977 and hold its creative looseness intact as it transitions over to corporate media while still telling stories of individual input and sustenance as the pressures otherwise push down on the attempt. I never said it would be easy for Disney to make these movies, only that they should respect the fans that have stayed with the franchise for over 40 years of storytelling. There was a couple sitting next to me who were older than I was, probably by over ten years and they were sitting there at the end of the credits with me with tears streaming down their faces and a smile from ear to ear. I asked them if they liked the film and of course they were beyond words with approval.

I met similar people in line at Disney World just a week before The Rise of Skywalker was released. They like me had spent thousands and thousands of dollars to take a vacation to Disney World and ride the new Rise of the Resistance at Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios. There were little kids in the line that took over four hours to get through, and there were people who were likely in their 20s in 1977 when the first movie came out and they were happy to participate in this mythology that had grown all these decades into these modern miracles of ride technology. What’s risky is in serving those types of fans while continuing to growth the business needs and take care of the corporate expectations, and Disney certainly put their best foot forward with this one. It may have taken them most of the last decade to get there, but from what I saw, they have finally found their footing. The results of The Rise of Skywalker were obviously good.

The most notable improvement was the return of romance to Star Wars, which had been avoided due to the political upheavals of our modern world. All the main characters ended up with love interests by the end of the film which was very satisfying intellectually, because lets face it, that’s how people think about things. It is unnatural to have passionate stories told in the refrigerator of modern politically correct politics. Yet Disney listened to the fans and gave Fin his third girlfriend of the series. I don’t want to make too much of it, only to note that the writers of the film obviously understood why the previous Star Wars films were missing the mark with fans, and this movie set out to correct that situation rather boldly. Hurray for good ol’ fashioned filmmaking and a turn for Hollywood to correct its course with this obvious attempt to appease the fans. Not the critics, but the people who actually buy a ticket, pay for their popcorns with a king’s ransom, and just want to think about something bigger than everyday life, instead of the restrictions of the unimaginative. Hurray for us all, Star Wars is back!

Rich Hoffman