Star Wars Has Been Killed by Corporate Greed and Political “Correctness”

The STAR WARS saga ended in 1983.

36 years ago.

The three prequel films were an attempt to milk more money out of the Star Wars corpse.

The last three films, one more upcoming, are attempts at reliving the nostalgia one more boring time. People are dressed as the same characters. But the storyline, the heart of the soul of STAR WARS, is long dead.

Star Wars is now like THE WIZARD OF OZ.

It is a movie from the distant past, a long time ago. 42 years ago.

Most of the main actors are dead, and the original (real spaceship models!) special effects people have long since retired. The midget who played R2-D2 is gone, Carrie Fisher is gone, the actor who played Chewbacca is gone, and Han Solo was killed in SW itself. From what I’m told, since I have not seen the Han Solo movie or THE LAST JEDI, Luke Skywalker was also killed off.

I even saw a clip of Mark Hamill saying that he hopes that he no longer is in any more STAR WARS movies!

I am with Mark Hamill.

STAR WARS is a sad tragedy of mismanagement. From the very beginning, George claimed to have had 12 stories. I doubt this is true. He had sketchy outlines at best.

Even the prequels were not as completely sterile as these last two movies.

The original STAR WARS had a coming-of-age story about battling evil, and a triumph. Then there was a defeat in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and another triumph in the third movie.

The Western serials of the 50s and 60s could sustain the interest in characters and story arcs. But to do that would take people with actual creativity and storytelling ability. Not a hack like Rian Johnson.

The unadulterated greed of Disney is galling.

The special effects are perfect, but the soul of STAR WARS is long gone.

Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill are fatally overexposed. Seeing them on screen now is like greeting a relative who comes over every weekend anyway.

Seeing them now is not something special or shocking or surprising or delightful.

Robots, and wacky costumes, and spaceships that we’ve seen for 42 years, thrill no one.

Backgrounds that are beautiful, but completely computer-generated, the same in every movie, excite no one.

It is the story, the conflicts, the plot, and the characters that made SW interesting.

Disney purchased a dead and exhausted concept. Merely showing us the same costumes and ships again is not gonna turn the crank. These are just the outer shell of what SW is (I abbreviate the name of the aforementioned deceased movie, since its vital essence is gone.)

I hope that the mostly young male fans kill THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, (with its inexperienced and invincible little girl main character!) quickly, by not buying tickets.

Even if Disney puts out movies with entirely new characters, it is hard to see how this is going to succeed.

Disney seems to think that they have purchased a STAR WARS toilet paper factory that generates a needed commodity that they can sell to the public indefinitely, generating billions and billions of dollars.

They don’t seem to comprehend that the audience wants story, character, originality, and new things with each movie. If they cannot deliver this, then the audience will not be in $12 seats.

It is amazing to me that after 42 years, no one has made a movie to rival Star Wars.

We have ALIEN and TERMINATOR, both of which franchises, after the first two great movies, have been horrible. But there has not been a truly creative story franchise, which would be a legitimate use of the franchise concept.

In one of the previews for TROS (dross), almost half of it was shots from the original STAR WARS. This is a desperate attempt to transfer to the new movie the passion we had 42 years ago.

Even Galaxy’s Edge, the Disney theme park, is generating very little interest and will probably close down.

Hollywood needs to develop original movies that have archetypes and morality. Movies that have some semblance of spirituality. Movies that will capture the hearts and minds of audiences.

People have to WANT to see these movies!

The desperate attempt of Hollywood is to make $1 billion internationally on every movie they make. The greed is insane!

Well-made, interesting movies cannot get into theaters. Only the most effects-laden spectacles now show at the theaters.

But how much of this garbage can people take? How many permutations of the same characters and situations? Characters like Rey have no real struggles, and win every time, with no training, over the fiercest bad guys in the galaxy. That’s called a Mary Sue. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue) How much of this before they completely lose their interest in going to the movies for $12 to $18 a ticket?

How long before the theater-going audience finally wants interesting STORIES Again?!

Producer Kathleen Kennedy, with her squad of females at LucasFilm, wearing white shirts that say, THE FORCE IS FEMALE, is ridiculous. The Force was never a personalized sexed concept. The longtime producer of Star Wars does not even understand this central concept. She tried to politicize the soul of Star Wars.

Kathleen Kennedy sits at conventions with Rian Johnson, a full grown man, and practically pats him on the head like she is his mom, at what a fine job he is doing portraying “strong female characters.” As if that were the goal of Star Wars.

It is an abandonment of the canon and spirit of STAR WARS.

They have co-opted for third-wave feminist political ideals. They are trying to program the youth of America, young men in particular, into submission.

From what I have seen in the YouTube comments sections, the young male Star Wars fans are way too smart for this.

They all have seen the original (the only real) STAR WARS movies, and no young man wants a woman as his hero role model.

If you are going to have a mixed audience of men and women, both men and women do not want to see the woman be the hero and the man be the weak tagalong. (In case you doubt this, look at the cover of every romance novel.)

On the long-running radio variety show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” all the women were strong and all the men were good looking. This was a joke, of course. Women are valued partly for their beauty, and men are valued partly for their strength. To reverse this was comedic! Apparently, it is no longer comedic in today’s world.

I hope the judgment on this final SW movie will be swift and final.

Then, Hollywood will be forced to make something new with cultural and moral value and humanity.

Star Wars needs to die.

Superhero movies need to die.

Then we can enter a new era of cinema.

A cinema where we see interesting stories.

Where we see something that has originality and some semblance to entertainment.

The current makers of SW are pushers of costumes and spaceships. They think that they can perpetuate these movies endlessly, like people repeatedly going on Disney rides.

That’s not storytelling. I predict this kind of movie-making will soon find itself in a crisís called, “no audience.” People will no longer go to theaters to see this crap.

They might watch it for free or for $1.75 through Redbox or on Netflix. But they are not going to pay premium movie theater money to see hollowed-out, never-die characters, in the same concepts and costumes, over and over.

It’s boring.

Disney thinks that they bought an endless cash cow and can recycle these characters forever without any respect for story or for the fans.

Hey Hollywood, how about you don’t get to survive anymore on banal and uncreative sequels and franchises?

How about every single movie from now on must be unique and special, or we don’t buy any more tickets?

Maybe you need to make fewer, but better, movies.

This is not unrealistic, as both creativity and story are both infinite.

If the movie makers had taken some of the novels of Star Wars, or comic book versions of various scenarios, they might have made 20 good movies by now. But the disastrous last two movies show that they don’t know what to do with what what they bought.

SW has officially died in every way.

We will always have the original three, really 2 1/2, real and immortal STAR WARS movies.

May the true Force be with you.

Curtis Smale

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD —Movie Review by Curtis Smale

(Spoiler alert. I tell some things that happen in the movie. There is really no big secret you could tell that would ruin this movie, anyway.)

I have some insights about ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD: Make-Believe Proclaims Reality & Fantasy Confronts Reality, Violently.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s ~character~ torches the movie Nazis (who ~represent~ real evil people) with a flame thrower (the real fire🔥which is the very real symbol of, I believe, real fiery Hell Judgment).

Later, Leonardo DiCaprio pretends to torch with a real fire flamethrower one of the Manson family girls: fantasy violence expressing wrath on real pure evil, represented by the actor in the swimming pool. The

To pound this theme in, Rick complains about the flame thrower being too hot. He says something like, “Can we do anything about the heat?” The prop master informs him that is a (real) flame thrower!

Also, Tarantino shows zero mercy on evil women. He has no illusions that women are innocent, good creatures. They get no special breaks. They are burned alive and their heads are smashed to pieces, horrifically. Critics have judged him as a misogynist for this kind of thing. More lack of reality on the part of critics. He simply is identifying reality: the Manson family was mostly WOMEN AND GIRLS. The FEMALES did the violent murdering. (Not so with the NAZIs. There, it was the men.)

The Hollywood Jewish movie financiers (even of this move) love the cinematic Nazi judgment and keeping its memory alive (as well they should). INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, with a Nazi killing hero, also got financed.

The Manson Family murders precipitated and symbolized the end of 1960s liberalism: God-less, “free love” sexual immorality and insanity, Jesus-rejecting, Judeo-Christian morality-rejecting, Satanic, drug-taking insanity finally came full circle and destroyed itself.

A similar thing happened not only in Ancient Rome, and in the 1920s America, but also at the end of the 1970s, with sexual diseases and AIDS: people were finally forced to wake up from fantasy to sexual moral reality and to disease facts. Archetypes of Reality: the free love, drugs, no-rules lie finally ate itself. (Similar to what is happening today with Leftism smashing up against itself and devouring itself.)

The friendship between the Western (Westerns are filled with judgment on evil) film star and his stunt double (more fantasy: the stunt man ~fakes~ the action scenes for Rick/Leonardo).

But the stunt man is the most real and realistic of all the characters. He has no problem identifying a fantasy character (Bruce Lee) and giving him some reality (throwing him into a car, even though the real Bruce Lee could kill him, the character he plays, Kato, in The Green Hornet, couldn’t.) This is why Pitt’s character keeps calling him Kato, his fantasy character’s name, not Bruce. He also has no problem disposing of the real evil people, (the Manson girls) who try to attack him. He even looks at them with his LSD laced cigarette (Reality distorting cigarette) and thinks they are joking, or movie characters. Before he kills them, violently.

Tarantino exposes both fantasy (as being powerless), and real evil as being something that can be overcome, with realizing the truth and doing what is necessary—both Rick and his stuntman completely triumph over evil, both fictional and real.

Kenneth Burke said that stories are “equipment”  for living. Good fiction can help us make sense of life.

This film’s quality keeps growing, in my estimation. It is really an indictment of the 60s, an expose of ridiculous fake movie violence, and a fierce fiery flamethrower Hell judgment against real evil, both real Nazi evil, and cult mass-murder evil (Both which ended up being societal correctives.)

Manson was allowed by God as a way to put an end to 1960s immoral hippie thinking.

God sent AIDS to wake people up to sexual immorality and homosexuality. People’s response, instead of repentance from sins, was AIDS drugs and Gay Pride Parades.)

“Once upon a time” — fiction, a fairy tale opening line, fantasy. The fake that reveals the real, true, or important.

“in Hollywood” —a real place where they make fantasy.

In the 1960s.

The leading man who plays strong, confident leading men has a breakdown in his trailer on location when the reality of his stuttering and inability to read his lines causes him great real emotional upset. (Played by the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who, along with Brad Pitt, admitted to playing that scene in real life in the interview above.) Fantasy (of the 1960s) (and also of movies) Versus the Reality of Hollywood, Nazis, and cult murders.

Also, Rick’s career as a leading man is coming to an end (just like the 60s came to an end and his partnership with his stuntman friend came to an end). What is he doing? He is facing ~reality~ about his career playing fictional characters coming to an end.)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is actually a very moral movie.

That other MOVIE Tarantino made was called “Pulp FICTION!

Once you understand what Tarantino is saying… you see that this is truly a great movie.

A work of art.

—Curtis Smale

What Real Cinema is: Humanity, Story, …and Cinematography

Movie theater movies are special, because they are emotional and communal experiences with strangers usually of your culture… in sacred and trustful physical darkness.

There is a unifying power in that—if the movie conveys something of value that resonates with the audience.

More than ever, today, with the division, conflict, and confusion in the American population, stories with meaningful underlying archetypes, moral clarity, and humanity, are desperately needed.

A few years ago, reading an article about the visual images in movies, the writer quoted a cinematographer who said, “the beautiful image is dead.”

When I read that, whatever he meant, I thought of cliched images of sunsets and mountains, etc.

While that sentiment might be true, when a movie combines a compelling premise with great acting and directing and music and cinematography, those beautiful images are recorded in your permanent memory vault.

Look at the images in this video.

Roger Deakins creates indelible memories for the viewer.

Cinematic art.

Great movies.

Curtis Smale