THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 126 — The End of Star Wars?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec

Episode: Thoughtcrime Ep. 126 — The End of Star Wars?

Date: May 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the cultural decline and political polarization surrounding the Star Wars franchise, triggered by recent controversy involving Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), who allegedly posted an incendiary anti-Trump message on social media. The hosts—Jack, Russ, Blake, and Rich Barris—dissect the decay of Star Wars as a cornerstone of American pop culture, discuss Hollywood’s broader creative stagnation, and reflect on lost storytelling traditions, particularly for young audiences.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mark Hamill Controversy and Political Polarization

• The episode opens with a reaction to Mark Hamill’s now-deleted post allegedly wishing for the death of Donald Trump.
  • Russ: “Mark Hamill ... decided to go. And I'm just going to say it, he made a post wishing for the death of President Trump ... he posted that up on Blue Sky, where, by the way, that kind of thing is kind of normal.” [01:42]
• The hosts compare Hamill’s treatment with that of Gina Carano, noting perceived double standards in Disney’s response to politically controversial employees.
  • Blake: “Disney fired Gina Carano over a post that was nowhere near as incendiary as this. She was completely taken out of context with that one. It was horrific the way Gina Carano was treated.” [09:07]
• Rich critiques Hamill not just for his politics, but for his apparent bitterness and career trajectory.
  • Rich: “He never got past being Luke Skywalker in our world. Right. And now he's just an angry person.” [04:25]

2. The Decline of Star Wars: Cultural Staleness and Franchise Fatigue

• Hosts collectively agree that Star Wars has lost its relevance, both due to oversaturation and declining creative quality.

  • Jack: “May 4th be with you. And I think this year it really sunk in for a lot of people that Star wars just seems kind of lame, kind of fake, kind of sad, kind of done here.” [07:35]
  • Rich: “It's a cultural fixation in America ... but number two, conservatives need to have a little bit more self-respect that when there are people who literally want to kill you ... we need to stop supporting them with our hard earned dollars.” [12:43]

• The sequel trilogy (particularly "The Last Jedi" and "Rise of Skywalker") is blamed for much of the franchise’s collapse. There’s discussion of a rumored reboot using the “Mandalorian and Grogu” as a new starting point.

  • Russ: “It's been seven years since there was a new Star wars movie. This is the first time because that tanked so bad ... billions upon billions of dollars ... fell flat on its face.” [10:42]
  • Rich: “They're just throwing as many member berries as they can at you and like cute stuff and tchotchkes. I'm calling for a full on boycott.” [11:09]

• Presence of Star Wars in theme parks demonstrates its lingering cultural influence, but the core intellectual property appears to be losing momentum.

  • Jack: “Even if they don't reboot it ... they've scaled back all of the sequel characters ... you run into Princess Leia there. You don't run into Rey or Finn or whoever these new characters are.” [18:15]

3. Media Over-Saturation and Devaluation of Mythic Storytelling

• Rich theorizes Star Wars’ downfall is tied to Disney’s strategy of relentless content dumping, erasing the franchise’s specialness and mystique.

  • Jack: “They started making spin off movies and these TV shows ... something that there were only a handful of films for ... now suddenly there's over ... 12 movies and ... dozens of TV show episodes.” [23:15]
  • Rich: “There's a saturation of the market that happened with Star wars that didn't even exist when we were kids ... The quality of them has not been the same.” [24:11-25:08]

• The hosts lament the replacement of Western cultural myths, like King Arthur, with Star Wars as quasi-modern folklore, arguing it’s a shallow substitute.

  • Jack: “We have ancient myths in Western civilization ... all of these are fading away. And instead, we literally have people who know the Star wars canon.” [15:44]

4. Political Correctness, Identity & Masculinity in Storytelling

• There's a recurring theme that Disney’s new direction seeks to “destroy masculinity” by shifting “boy brands” into “girl brands,” replacing classic heroes' journeys with tokenism or forced representation.
  • Rich: “They've taken two boy brands that are very much lifting boys up ... they're turning it into girl brands ... because they ... want to destroy masculinity.” [42:32]
• Hosts claim current creators lack a connection to the original Western narrative traditions (white/European culture), resulting in soulless remakes that fail to resonate.
  • Blake: “Maybe Disney is having a hard time finding the, the spirit of these stories because culturally it's completely foreign to who works at Disney now.” [39:27]

5. Nostalgia and the Pitfalls of Franchise Lore

• Russ displays his massive collection of 50+ Star Wars books, highlighting how personal and widespread the franchise’s influence was.
  • Russ: "Everything in here is a Star wars book? Literally every single book in this thing is." [21:06]
• Jack argues much of Star Wars’ expanded universe is low-quality “slop,” suggesting such obsessive fandom comes at the expense of learning real history or skills.
  • Jack: “Any form of, let's just call it male autism is better than memorizing Star wars information.” [33:56]

6. Broader Cultural and Media Stagnation

• The panel draws parallels between Star Wars’ creative demise and trends across the arts: constant recycling, gender/race-swapped remakes, and lack of originality.

  • Blake: “That's true of all the humanities now ... there's definitely a decline in original ... everything—original thinking, original art.” [34:52]

• The episode closes with an appeal to create new, authentically rooted stories rather than asking legacy media to serve conservative or traditionalist audiences.

  • Jack: “We can't beg Hollywood and we can't beg a bunch of libs to please make good movie slop for us. We must make our own slop and unslopify it.” [73:38]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mark Hamill’s political meltdown:

  • “Now he's just an angry person. And ... a lot of these guys ... they're just unhappy people ... they're bitter at things ... when they're leftists, they lash out at right wing political figures in a way that's reckless.” — Rich [04:25]

• On Star Wars’ cultural saturation:

  • “Presumably ... there were only a handful of films for ... And now suddenly there's over ... 12 movies and there's dozens of TV show episodes.” — Jack [23:15]
  • “You can find threads online on Reddit ... parents might ask, how do I make sure my kids stay in church? ... It seems the cultural heritage of normie middle class white guys in America is basically Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and NFL football.” — Jack [19:04]

• On Disney’s changes:

  • “They ... want to destroy masculinity. They want to destroy manhood.” — Rich [42:32]
  • “They couldn't even redo Little Mermaid. ... They're just not understanding what made those stories great or special or appealing.” — Blake [41:25]

• On nostalgia and wasted energy:

  • “Every one of those books, Jack. Imagine if instead of reading that book, you read literally anything else. ... You could have read every single Flash man novel.” — Jack [44:01]

• On the creative crisis:

  • “Our attention spans have just warped ... thus we're not creating anything. We're just, we're pulling snippets from other things and mashing it together.” — Rich [36:40]
  • “The fall of Star wars is like the fall of a false prophet.” — Red Red, via chat comment, read aloud by Jack [34:36]

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Key Segments & Time Stamps

• Background, Crew, and Mark Hamill Controversy – [01:42–05:44]
• Hamill’s Career Outside Star Wars – [05:44–08:12]
• Is Star Wars Finished? Discussion on Franchise Fatigue – [08:12–18:31]
• Nostalgia, Fandom, and Personal Star Wars Book Collection – [20:25–22:53]
• The Saturation and Decline of Star Wars & Other Franchises – [23:15–32:09]
• Comparisons to Marvel, Indiana Jones; Dying Boy Brands – [31:04–53:58]
• On AI Remakes & The Problem with Modern Writing – [57:02–59:44]
• Animal Farm and the Loss of Dark Children's Storytelling – [60:19–70:16]
• The Culture Problem, Classic Themes, and “White Culture” in Storytelling – [39:27, 71:44, 72:17]
• Final Thoughts: Don’t Beg Legacy Media—Build Your Own – [73:37–74:44]

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Conclusion

The episode synthesizes the Star Wars debate into a broader critique of Western culture’s loss of narrative vigor and originality. The hosts bemoan the franchise’s demise, not just as fanboys, but as commentators on what they see as the decline of uniquely “white, Western” mythic storytelling in American life, replaced by watered-down, relentlessly commercialized, and politicized content. Their ultimate message: Don’t support brands that hate you; instead, create your own culture—rooted, unapologetic, and true to your heritage.

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For episode references, see:

• [04:25] — Rich on Hamill’s bitterness
• [09:07] — Disney treats Gina Carano vs. Mark Hamill
• [12:43] — Cultural boycott argument
• [19:04] — Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, NFL as modern myths
• [23:15] — Market saturation and franchise fatigue
• [33:56] — “Male autism” and wasted nerd energy
• [34:36] — Red Red’s “false prophet” comment
• [42:32] — Disney’s “destruction of masculinity”
• [73:38] — “Make our own slop and unslopify it”

End of summary.

Transcript

[Jack]

From the age of Big Brother.

[Blake]

If they want to get you, they'll get you.

[Russ]

DNSA specifically targets the communications of everyone.

[Blake]

They're collecting your communications.

[Russ]

Well, well, well. So for folks who couldn't see the opening scroll on there, as you may know, today we are going to be talking about Stupid Wars. Yes, that's right, Stupid Wars. Because Mark Hamill, the star of the formerly cool franchise known as Star wars, decided to go. And I'm just going to say it, he made a post wishing for the death of President Trump. That's what he did. All right? And we can beat around the bush. We could try to obscure it. It's deleted now, but he posted that up on Blue sky, where, by the way, that kind of thing is kind of normal on Blue Sky. But this is the star of the original Star wars movies. He was the star, or at least heavily featured in the Disney sequel movies, and he is obviously a major fixture not only in American culture and Hollywood and Disney, but also politics now, because he just did a video with Barack Obama calling for the death of President Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. It's Thought Crime Thursday. Blake Neff, if you can. Can you explain to us for the folks that are audio only on the podcast side, what that opening scroll was all about that everybody wasn't able to hear?

[Jack]

Oh, well, the opening scroll is, of course, the fact that we have an unusual crew here, Andrew. Even though Thought Crime is at the same time every single day, every single week, he's like, I can't make it, guys. I. I have. I have a scheduling conflict. I have a flight. Even though he could have booked a flight at any time, but units in

[Russ]

hyperspace cannot receive permissions.

[Jack]

Tyler, as we all know, he's frequently drafted to go fight in the Spice Wars. We don't give him as much of a hard time about it because the Spice wars are very demanding. He's got to go. I think he's in the. In the Florida front of the Spice wars right now, but I can't remember where. So he's missing, as usual. So we have our limited crew. We have Jack, we have Russ, we have myself, and then we also have Rich Barris, who is often on our show to talk about the polls. He sometimes tells us when the polls are good. Sometimes he tells us when the polls are bad. Rich, what do you think Luke Skywalker's poll numbers would be in the Star wars galaxy right now if he was posting images of. I don't know. Who would he be posting images of? A dead version of. No, no, he's not the, he'd be like a dead, dead Admiral Ackbar. Dead Mon Mothma. But a dude, something like that.

[Rich]

That Carrie Fisher.

[Blake]

Yeah, I think, look, look, you know, I was talking about this earlier today, and in our world, I, I don't think Mark Hamill is pretty much anything right now. Right. I mean, look at who he's playing to in his audience on Blue Sky. Those comments like Jack, I think Jack just said it. They are common over there, but in the greater public, Blake, you know, this guy is like, I, I, it's sad a little bit, right? I mean, he's sad. He's. I don't even think he ever got as big as he thought him, he himself would get. There's a whole story there. If you're a Star wars fan, you probably know, I mean, he did have a, an terrible accident that did stop or at least halt his career for the time being. So he never got past being Luke Skywalker in our world. Right. And now he's just an angry person. And I think I'm repeating this from Jack show because I think it bears repeating that a lot of these guys that we see come out and make these comments. They're just unhappy people, Blake. Right. There's something about them. They're just, whether it's unhappy with their career, unhappy with the lives they've led, and they're bitter at things. And often when they're not, often when they're leftists, they lash out at right wing political figures in a way that's reckless, that's dangerous, and it's, they're, they're trying to fill this void they have in themselves. I mean, I don't have to be a psychiatrist to see it. They all share this. It's, it's glaring to me, Russ.

[Jack]

I'm trying to, I'm looking at the list of Mark Hamill roles that weren't Star wars films. Exactly. Let me know the first time you've, you've actually heard of one of these films.

[Rich]

Okay.

[Jack]

Corvette Summer, the Big Red One, the Night the Lights Went out in Georgia Britannia, Hospital Slipstream, Fall of the Eagles, Midnight Ride. Not Rider, just Midnight Ride. The Guyver. Not MacGyver. The Guyver. Black Magic Woman, Sleepwalkers. We've gone in through 15 years of

[Russ]

films at this point.

[Jack]

Time Runner, Silk Degrees. That doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. The Raffle also doesn't have Wikipedia page. Village of the Damned, Laser Hawk Hamilton. Not the Musical. It's apparently an action film. Interesting Watchers Reborn Walking across Egypt. Thank you. Good night. We are now over 20 years in to Mark Hamill's non Star wars home career. Maybe you've heard of this one, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

[Rich]

Yes.

[Jack]

Okay, all right. 2001.

[Rich]

Isn't he also playing himself in that movie?

[Jack]

I don't know. He might have.

[Rich]

Yeah, he might have.

[Jack]

I haven't seen it, but I have heard of Jay and Silent Bomb. Then we're back to Reese. Reeseville Comic book. The movie.

[Rich]

Yeah. The only.

[Jack]

Holy cr. Okay, Kingsman, the Secret Service, 2014. 35 years of movies before we get to a Star wars film.

[Rich]

The only man doesn't play himself that I remember are his voice acting roles. That's it.

[Jack]

That's true. He had. He was more famous as a voice actor. Yeah, he played the Joker. A very good joker, I will say. Although in a few fewer episodes than I'd have thought. Guess how many episodes do you think he played the Joker in Batman, the animated series?

[Rich]

Probably 15.

[Jack]

Exactly.

[Russ]

Right.

[Jack]

Actually 15 only. And so, you know, it's actually not that much content overall. Yeah, but yeah, no, he's. He messed it up. He dragged it all into the abyss. Apparently there was a. A Joker appearance in Spider. No, that's Superman. Never mind. But yeah, this is. But this is a bigger question which was a debated heavily on X this week. This week it was May 4th. There's that AstroTurf fake holiday. May 4th be with you. And I think this year it really sunk in for a lot of people that Star wars just seems kind of lame, kind of fake, kind of sad, kind of done here.

[Blake]

Is.

[Jack]

Is Star wars done here, Jack? And not just because of Hamill. Is it just done here forever?

[Russ]

So. So before we, before we get into the. The meta analysis, I want to say we are, by the way, we are up in chat. So what's up to. Let's see if what's up to some folks in the chat. Duzu's petals already in with a. With a rumble rant here. She says I was Princess Leia for two years in a row. And how for Halloween, I love Star Wars. Of course the stupid godless left wing communist would ruin that too. I'm super feisty about this. Yeah, this is wild. What's up? Dylan Ivy. He's. He's here all the time. I see caboose in there. Unfortunately, we can't seem to get him out. That's. That's obviously an oversight. MK Brand 28 is here. Sergeant 1978 is here. So. So the gang is filling in the comments are coming in. But folks, here's something that's actually deadly serious. We're living in a time where political violence is running wild. It has been two weeks since a political assassination attempt took place at a White House correspondence dinner where two people associated with this show, this very podcast, were in attendance. Right. Andrew, Mikey were right there and obviously Erica was there, who is clearly associated as well. There's no question. And even though, even though we don't, we don't have women on the program. But that's, that's a scheduling issue and a, and a programming issue as well. And obviously Charlie, right. Has been the victim of political violence. And so in a time like this, for someone to post something like that is horribly irresponsible. It is disgusting. And the fact of the matter is, is that Disney fired Gina Carano over a post that was nowhere near as incendiary as this. She was completely taken out of context with that one. It was horrific the way Gina Carano was treated. She's having a major, major comeback right now, by the way. But here's something that isn't going to come back and that's Star Wars. And so I've been going out and this has been, it's been trending all day here on Thought Crime Thursday. It's also something that I want to keep going because in two weeks time, the newest Star wars movie is coming out. So Star wars hasn't had a new movie in Russ. How long has it been since, since Rise of Skywalker came out.

[Rich]

I want to say, like it came

[Jack]

out before COVID It's been almost, it's been over seven years,

[Rich]

2019.

[Russ]

So it's been seven years since there was a new Star wars movie. This is the first time because that tanked so bad and because Last Jedi tanked so bad, the billions upon billions of dollars that they had spent in the Star wars purchase, the acquisition from Lucas Arts and George Lucas into Disney fell flat on its face because have how bad that sequel trilogy is. In fact, there's even a rumor that they may be rebooting it. So what they're doing with this new one, it's called the Mandalorian and Grogu, which I guess is Baby Yoda's name. And it's all member berries. They're just throwing as many member berries as they can at you and like cute stuff and tchotchkes. I'm calling for a full on boycott. I'm saying it's fine. It's time for conservatives to rip off the band aid you need to drop the slave mentality of saying, oh, I like Star wars so much that I just need to spend on my money. I need to buy the merch, I need to do this. And you get in. Look, in two weeks time, this is such bad timing for Disney, for Mark Havel to have completely ripped the mask off and shown us his true face here. Because look, he's just telling you straight up, he doesn't care about you, he doesn't care about your business, he doesn't care about your family. And in fact he wants President Trump dead, he wants conservatives dead. All of this. And I, Jack, I'd be remiss. Did we, did we even see, did, did he even say anything about Charlie at all?

[Jack]

I don't think so. Not that I know. Actually, Jack, don't you think it's a little low hanging fruit to call for a boycott of a movie that probably not that many people were going to see anyway?

[Russ]

Yeah, well, there's a huge, I'd say there's a huge audience for Star Wars.

[Jack]

There was, that's, that's the point though.

[Russ]

No, no, no. What I'm saying is, Blake, what I'm saying though is that I still see to this day so many, even the White House. Right. I love the guys over there, but even they on Star Wars Day were posting memes of Trump as a. And like all this stuff and playing into it.

[Rich]

It's a cultural, it's a, it's a cultural fixation in America like that, that doesn't have anything to do with, that doesn't have anything to do with them promoting the movies.

[Russ]

It's just it, it's obviously a promotion.

[Rich]

It's, it's absolutely in the zeitgeist, you know.

[Russ]

Right. So what they need to understand though is like number one, we need to like boycott Star Wars Day. But number two, it just. Conservatives need to have a little bit more self respect that when there are people who literally want to kill you and people who, you and your family dead who want to ruin your family, that we need to stop supporting them with our hard earned dollars. That's what I'm saying.

[Rich]

Full on.

[Russ]

Boycott dumb Star wars, which I've been already been doing for 10 years.

[Rich]

I agree with.

[Jack]

Don't you pirate like every movie you watch?

[Russ]

No comment.

[Rich]

I agree with you on that one. One of the things that, especially with the Mark Hamill side.

[Russ]

So true. By the way, I saw Michael. I saw Michael at the drive in theater.

[Rich]

Oh, nice.

[Jack]

They still have trust.

[Rich]

Yeah, there's one here really Talk about

[Russ]

it on, like, all the time on the show. Okay.

[Jack]

Glendale might as well be, like, five hours away.

[Rich]

It is. It's great. I've gone there.

[Jack]

Okay. I'll keep this in mind.

[Rich]

One thing on the Mark Hamill side of things, though, too, is like, it would be a very different story if Disney was willing to recast Luke, because even specifically with the Mandalorian in one of the earlier seasons, they brought in a young Luke Skywalker and did the Re CG face to make Camel. No, it was Luke. Obi Wan wasn't. Isn't alive because it takes. So. No. So I'm specifically talking about in the Mandalorian, Luke comes to get Grogu because he figures out that he's force sensitive and he's gonna take him and create his Jedi School. And so they were already. They're already. They won't recast these characters, which is. If you're. If Star wars wants to just completely move away from Mark Hamill, they have a way to do that. Like, they could recast Mark Hamill or recast Luke.

[Russ]

Yeah.

[Rich]

And just move on. Yeah. And then it's so much easier to, you know, denounce Mark Hamill and actually be able to essentially do what they did to Gina Carano after. After the. After, you know, in 2020.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Russ]

I don't think you can get away with recasting Luke. I just. I don't see it.

[Rich]

You should.

[Blake]

And they're not going to anyway. They're not Sebastian.

[Rich]

Stan.

[Jack]

This gets at the heart of it, though, which is why I think. I think the meta conversation is the. Is the most interesting one when we talk about, like, is Star wars dead? Is Star wars alive? Why do. Why is it that we could open this with a Star wars opening crawl? Like, it really does have tremendous.

[Russ]

We haven't.

[Jack]

We have a tremendous pop culture presence yet in America. As this tremendous pop culture presence in American life, it's. It's insanely dominant. I don't think there's any other movie series we could have that would, like, be able to have a day that people just automatically think of it on. Like we have with this May the Fourth nonsense. And I think about another thing I saw the other day, which was. It was just in the comments on, I think, a YouTube video, but someone said, I am a teacher, and none of my kids in. In grade school. Actually, I think it was even middle school. None of the kids in my class are familiar with King Arthur or the King Arthur mythos. I think it was also in discussion of the Odyssey that we actually have ancient myths in in Western civilization. We have the Greek poems, Homer, we have King Arthur, Knights of the Roundtable, you have Robin Hood, you have legends like that. And all of these are fading away. And instead we literally have people who know the Star wars canon. And I often wonder, do we need Star wars to die just because it just seems very dumb to have a film franchise invented in 1977 as a profit making venture be our dominant pop culture lingo or if we kill Star wars, are we just going to end up where it's all the Mr. Beast extended cinematic Universe and Marvel slop or something?

[Russ]

Well, so Russ, talk to us a little bit about how I'm sure you saw fandom Pulse and a few people were talking about how specifically the Disney Star wars movies were seen as so unpopular that Disney may be like rebooting them or something.

[Rich]

Yeah, so that came out a couple of weeks now ago. The essentially the idea is that yes, they're going to essentially just re. Kind of reboot the universe before the original or the sequel trilogy and kind of move on from there and use essentially probably using Mandalorian and Grogu since it takes place a couple years after Episode six as kind of their jumping. Their jumping point. But yeah, yeah, I mean it would

[Russ]

be fun idea is like it's like a multiverse thing I guess like Avengers a little bit where like apparently they're

[Rich]

all different universe focus on the original cast. So that's the other weird part of this. So then we might just one of

[Russ]

those in the dead.

[Jack]

Even if they don't reboot it.

[Russ]

That's already talking about the other day actually. Yeah, Even if they don't.

[Jack]

Even if they don't reboot it. That's already happening. So they have Star wars stuff at their theme parks and they've scaled back all of the sequel characters. So you're going to run into. You run into Princess Leia there. You don't run into Rey or Finn or whoever these new characters are.

[Rich]

It's insane too when you think about it that the only characters that are even popular in the sequel series are the droids. Like. Yeah, like that's it. Like, like Disney's. That's the only thing Disney's got going for them is that everybody likes the droids, but it's because they don't talk.

[Jack]

Yeah. Or they can talk the same way. You can just bring back C3PO and he's not gonna age. He can be in any movie. And C3PO had the best scene in the flipping episode 7.

[Rich]

So much on Galaxy's Edge. Yeah, so much. And even just to Angelo's point in the chat, like, the Star wars hotel was too expensive. They closed. They had to close it.

[Jack]

Yeah, it cost like $4,000 to go to and it wasn't that good. So it really is. It is interesting how huge Star wars was. I mean, you and I are about, I guess, actually. Wait, you're way younger than me, but at least I remember growing up in the 90s. The 2000s has this huge pop culture overhang. Even all three of the prequels were bad. And yet the hype for all three of them was absolutely gargantuan. I, I remember my school announcements meant, was mentioning, like on the day a Star wars movie would come out, you know, they come in for their announcements and at the end the guy would go, and Marathon Force be with you. It just, it pervaded so much stuff. It was such a big deal when Disney bought it and everyone thought, oh, now we can get more. And they won't be bad because George Lucas is making it. It's just, people get so invested in this. You can find threads online on Reddit, of course, where people, they'll, they'll ask others, how can I make sure that my kids grow up to be Star wars fans? The same way parents might ask, how do I make sure my kids stay in church? Or how do I make sure my kids follow our, you know, our cultural heritage is that it seems the cultural heritage of normie middle class white guys in America is basically Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and NFL football. Are these the things that we actually have kids inherit now?

[Russ]

Yeah, I may have something that I can show kind of visually to, to illustrate this about how big. Like, and when I say, like, I'm, I'm boycotting Star wars and it's like a big deal for me. So my parents were, my parents were like decluttering, downsizing. They just moved and they, they dropped off some, some of my stuff and they brought my Star wars books in the old, like, I don't know, bin that it was in.

[Blake]

I knew it. I knew it.

[Jack]

Oh, no. So many of them.

[Russ]

Everything in here. Wait, everything in here is a Star wars book? Literally every single book in this thing is.

[Jack]

Did you read all those? Yeah.

[Blake]

Oh, no doubt.

[Jack]

For those who can't see that there's about, there's about 50 books in that box.

[Rich]

The last time I've seen a bin that big was the Legos in here.

[Jack]

Did you even, did you read the Crystal Star Jack did you read the Crystal Star in here?

[Russ]

I see Darksaber.

[Blake]

Dig for that.

[Jack]

Dark Saber. Dark Saber's bad.

[Russ]

Dark Saber right here. What are you talking about?

[Blake]

Saber?

[Russ]

We've got the AC Crispin. Han Solo trilogy. Gosh, I love that.

[Blake]

Oh, that's a good one. The Han Solo one's good.

[Russ]

Yeah, the Han Solo trilogy.

[Blake]

There's three. Yeah, you got them all. Three.

[Russ]

Crystal Star right here.

[Jack]

Oh, Crystal Star is so terrible. That's easy. That's one of the worst ones. For those who don't know, in the Crystal Star, Luke joins a. A cult of people worshiping, like, basically a blob of crap from another dimension.

[Russ]

Yeah, it's really. It's really bad. Vision of the future. Is this the one?

[Jack]

That's the Z1. That was like the last zone. I think that's where Luke and Mara get married.

[Russ]

No, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. Outbound. I think it's Outbound Flight. The Timothy's on shoot.

[Blake]

Jack and I were just talking about how he had all the books.

[Russ]

I know. It's like, right here.

[Blake]

I knew.

[Russ]

Literally, right here. One of my. I have a Timothy Zahn one that's signed somewhere. I don't know where it is.

[Blake]

Can I ask you something, Jack, as. As a fan and as somebody who, like, thinks about these.

[Russ]

So I'm like. I'm like, I'll own it, right? Like, I was a big, big, big Star wars fan.

[Blake]

Let me ask you something then, if you don't mind. Jack and I don't want to go out of order, but do you. Doesn't anyone else feel like has lost some of its relevance? It's not only just that. I mean, how Disney's managed it since they bought it, but also that it's lost its. Its relevance. So it was like, super popular, you know, when. When at first, I'm not even talking about the prequels or what we all remember, but before that, our parents generation is the chair.

[Jack]

I can't.

[Russ]

I can't actually see what they're saying.

[Jack]

It's clearly. It's clearly lost some. But, Rich, I think you might have some sense on this.

[Blake]

Nazis, you know, that's who they're portraying, and we just don't have that.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Blake]

But also part of our mindset.

[Jack]

Rich, I just had this thought. Since you're a pollster and you think a lot about how things are portrayed, how things look, how people react to things, A thought I've had is one reason Star wars is fading out is the fact that just Disney bought it and they released a. But they started making spin off movies and these TV shows. And there's a sense to me that even if those were good, even if all of them were 9, 10 out of 10 quality, that they just took something that was scarce, something that there were only a handful of films for. If you were a fan, you just presumably had seen them. And now suddenly there's over. There's 12 movies and there's dozens of TV show episodes. Suddenly, even if you're a fan, you presumably haven't seen everything. It's way too hard to see everything unless you're Super Die Hard. And there's like a saturation. Someone would look at that and go, that's too much stuff. I'm not getting into that. Is there anything to that?

[Russ]

The young adult Jedi Prince books?

[Blake]

Yeah, I, I think that I, I actually do. I, I agree with that. No, I'm not thinking that I have any, like, data to back this up. I'm just saying that there is a saturation of the market that happened with Star wars that didn't even exist when we were kids. And I remember, I mean, guys, you had the first three movies for years and that was it. And then when we got older and technology got better, they wanted to tell the story, you know, Anakin story, the prequels. Right. Which I know niece and nephew love. But I was still young, young enough myself to want to see them and of course was dying to go bring them. And I did. And then outside of that, I think he had Saturday morning cartoons and there was a cartoon and, and just blows it up and throws up. We're used to getting something from Star wars in drips that can last a generation. They just come and dump everything out there. And by the way, I think the quality of them has not been the same.

[Russ]

Right.

[Blake]

That we, we've seen from, from the other. Whatever you want to call them, you know, basically iterations of this entire story.

[Russ]

Yeah, I was actually talking to a lot more quality before I was talking to. No, it's definitely. And there were, There was Star wars lot before there was like, there were a couple animated series.

[Blake]

Yeah, I was trying to think rebels, something.

[Russ]

No, I'm talking about the 80s. The 80s ago, the clone wars. There were some Ewok movies. There were some. That's true, that's true. You know, there were some, some extra, you know, extras out there.

[Blake]

Had an animation or something too in the 80s.

[Russ]

Yeah, there's the Star wars holiday special. This isn't even all the Star wars books that I've read. By the way, this is just all the ones that I purchased because when I was younger, I would do the library a lot. So, like, people are like, where are the Thrawn books? And, like, I just always had those from the library, even though I've read those many, many, many times. So it's like. It's like, look, guys, you know, this is. This is what it comes down to, like, if you actually care about. And, And I haven't, by the way, I haven't opened one of these books or a Star anything with Star wars on it in 10 years, since I originally called for hashtag dumpstarwars in 2016 when the writers of Rogue One led a massive anti Trump Twitter campaign. I've actively campaigned against them since then. And. Excuse me, no, I've seen the films. I just haven't paid for the. The, you know, Last Jedi and what was the other one? The Rise of Skywalker.

[Jack]

And.

[Russ]

And yes, I did stream those. And it's just. It's. It's so ridiculous that conservatives will not get involved. And my. My kids have never seen it. They know what Star wars is. Their friends have, like, told them all the spoilers at this point. So it's like they don't even. They're not even. And, and by the way, they're not even interested. Like, my kids have zero interest in it at all. They just know. They just think it's funny that, like, they know if I bring it up, they're like, oh, daddy says we can't, you know, have Star wars in the house. So they just had to, like, bring it up to, like, troll me, basically. But they don't actually, you know, they're not actually into it. No, I'm not selling these books. I see zoo's pedals saying that I should sell these books to collectors. No, absolutely not. I'm. I'm. I'm just holding on to him for now. You know, it's like. It's just. It's. It's like my. It's my burden. And the sad thing is, Star wars wanted to come back and actually do the books as a movie series or say that that's like a separate universe. If they're doing the multiverse thing and retcon, like, all this stuff and fire Mark Hamill and apologize maybe.

[Jack]

No, that's where. That's where you go. Right? I haven't read most of those books. I read a few in high school, but because I have certain tendencies, autism, I. What I would do is I, in college, would waste time by Just sitting on Wookiepedia, which is the Wikipedia for Star Wars.

[Russ]

When I was reading these, we didn't have.

[Jack]

No, no, Jack. I would just sit on Wikipedia and I would read the different summaries of the book and, like, the different characters and how they all connected. And it was really funny. And so the thing is, people say, oh, it'd be great if they made those books into movies, but once you really look at them with a neutral, With a neutral eye and you're not in middle school anymore, you realize a lot of these are just seriously bad. Like everyone says. Everyone's saying, oh, Grand Admiral Thrawn. He'd be so cool if he was. If they made a Star wars movie about Admiral. And then you read the books and you go, his superpower that he has to defeat the. Defeat the good guys is he has super, super art analysis powers. Like, he went to Space Oberlin and got a, Got a master's degree in art history. And so he can look at their paintings and their pottery and go, oh, the way this pottery is designed, I can tell this civilization, they'll respond to a superficial act of overwhelming force that doesn't have any depth behind it. And so he'll surprise them really hard and then they'll just surrender instantly with his super art analysis powers.

[Russ]

I mean, I mean, look, I'm not going to hate on Grand Admiral Thorne. He's actually a great character. The point is, though, he actually works in the series. Like, that's why it's actually good, right? It's, it's. It talks about the fact that he understands everything about that culture to the point of, like, having. It's kind of like, you know, I, I, you know, thought it was kind of similar to like Thomas Jefferson having a copy of the Quran when he got into the Barbary Pirates wars. So I want, he wants to understand his adversary. And the point was that Thrawn was actually winning, like, for a long, long time.

[Rich]

I mean, this is, this is going to be sacrilege to Jack because I actually like Rogue One. But the reason.

[Russ]

I mean, if you like girl boss feminist movies.

[Rich]

I liked it for other reasons. No, I didn't. I, I'm curious.

[Blake]

Those reasons are.

[Rich]

Here's the thing. I looked at it as. And this is where I looked at the Mandalorian as well. One of the things that the Mandalorian did was show that Star wars could be a universe, right? And so you could, you could have other stories in the universe. And I think that's where I, for me, that's one of the reasons I didn't like the, the sequel series on top of just the how badly it was written was the fact that we kept going back to the Skywalker family. It was like the only Jedi's that could exist had to have the last name Skywalker. And I was like, why? Like it's a galaxy. Like why can we not do other things?

[Blake]

You know, when they had branches of other stories that they were telling showing that it wasn't limited to that. That's exactly. Yeah. They can contradicted themselves or greatly limited themselves. I agree with that. 100.

[Russ]

Like there's a whole civil war with the Corellian system at one point.

[Blake]

Right.

[Russ]

There's stuff with like, you know, the X Wing pilots obviously, which is what Rogue One is based on. So there's a whole series called Rogue Squadron at one point.

[Blake]

There are other species, Jack, that could be Jedi. It doesn't even have to be a human. There could be other species. They could have went in a lot different.

[Russ]

I would even say that, I would even say that it's not just Star Wars. Even though Star wars is just the largest one. It's, it's, it's so much of this has been done to every like cultural artifact that's been passed down in that people have just sort of like, yeah, you know, I mean this is doing

[Rich]

the same thing to Marvel. They're doing the same thing to Marvel right now.

[Russ]

Indiana Jones. So, so stop paying for it. That's it. It's really as simple as that. We just have to stop paying for it. Yeah.

[Rich]

In the same way that Blake was on Wookiepedia, I was on Marvelpedia looking up all the different stuff.

[Blake]

I didn't want to be a pulse. I wanted to be an archaeologist. Like Indiana Jones. That was insane.

[Rich]

That's the whole reason I got into journalism.

[Russ]

They actually would sell. They would sell, what do you call it, like encyclopedia style books, like reference guides for Star Wars. So here I remember this.

[Jack]

I would read those Barnes and Noble

[Russ]

and I would flip planets and moons.

[Rich]

Just sit in the middle of the section.

[Jack]

It's like they'd have the planets, they'd have the starships,

[Russ]

technology. I had that stuff memorized. I had that stuff down pat. Like I could tell you the companies, I could tell you who made everything, which, which I mean later when I joined the Navy, it was kind of like, it was kind of like a Navy intel was like ah yes, I, I remember these types of things,

[Jack]

man.

[Blake]

Because it was laid out in the same format right it was, it was the same idea.

[Russ]

Yeah.

[Blake]

The same way.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Blake]

Yep.

[Rich]

Yeah.

[Blake]

Yes.

[Russ]

Yeah. So I'd be studying like a Chinese, you know, defense firm and I'd be like, ah, yes, this is like the Kuat Drive yards or whatever.

[Jack]

Oh, yeah, I know. Do we have, do we have the Kathleen Kennedy clip about her making everything lame and gay? Because I think. I guess we don't. But anyway, the. I think I'm glad about it. Dying for the, for the reason I said, which is it did exert this huge pull over people. But when I do think about the fact that as. As you say, Jack, there's a lot of people out there who have memorized a lot of guys our age who have memorized every single fact about every Star wars ship ever, which is all just stuff. All stuff that was just churned out as mass slop in the 90s, early 2000s. And that usually means it's been at the expense of any. Basically anything else you could memorize would probably be better than Star Wars Arcana. You could know more about a useful, like a hobby that actually requires skill. So learn a lot about how to fly fish. Learn a lot about how to make stuff out of wood. Learn a lot or even just learn a lot about your country's history. Be one of those guys who curates infinite information about the American Revolution or the Civil War or, you know, the Chinese dynasties or something. Any form of, let's just call it male autism is better than memorizing Star wars information. Male autism, that's a great point. To that extent, I think it's probably a good thing if we can have Star wars put out to pasture, even if it just means get into other cultural artifacts. I think it is really sad that we've had cultural lineages that have lasted for hundreds of years that might be just getting broken because everyone spent 20 years being obsessed with Star wars until Disney ruined it.

[Rich]

I mean, that gets. That gets back to the idea that like when you go to the movies, it's either something from a franchise, something for something, something that's a sequel, something that's a prequel. There's everything wants to be a new Star Wars. Yeah, there's no keys anymore.

[Jack]

I really like this comment from Red Red, who says the fall of Star wars is like the fall of a false prophet. Amen. Which makes sense because the Jedi literally dress like they're prophets, but they are false prophets.

[Blake]

Isn't that true of all the humanities now, though we said the same thing that was just said about movies is also true of Music, or has been for years. We're always getting, you know, it's like, not for now. I'm not picking on one genre. I'm just saying, you know, for a good five years it felt like every new rap song was really just an old R B song or an old rock song retooled, put with a different drum beat. Then there was great remakes that were here and there and some people, they had their own collection of music, their own collection of art, and then maybe in their fourth album or something they would remake a classic and it was actually kind of good. You know, for instance, I was Guns N' Roses did that three albums later and remade a song that people loved and still played to this day incessantly on the radio. But they had their own collection of music. And I feels like the humanities are just exhausted now and everyone's just kind of recycling. I'm not saying here, I'm not picking on, you know, the all artists. But there is definitely a decline in original. Everything original thinking, original art. And it's. I was actually just talking about this my wife the other day because our kids were asking about various things and we're trying to explain because now when they do these remakes in a movie, there'll be a gender swap or there'll be a, a race swap or something and we'll have to explain. Well, this is how did this in the new one, in the original one. Right. Marvel did it too, by the way. The Marvel series, they did this as well.

[Rich]

You know, just.

[Blake]

If you're a Witcher fan, some people might be Star wars fans, others might be Witcher fans. Witcher fans, which of which I am one, had this big blow up over how that was done, so.

[Russ]

Series, by the way.

[Blake]

What was that? What was that?

[Russ]

Oh, it's great. It's a great Polish series, by the way.

[Rich]

Oh yeah, I've got the books. I gotta sit down and read them.

[Blake]

Their fans are amazing. But, but to your point, yes, I

[Rich]

think a lot of this comes from. And I think a lot of the, the streamer culture or. And streaming culture has kind of allowed for this because. And it's, it's streaming culture and it's TikTok culture. Our attention spans have just warped to, to almost non existent. And so thus we're not creating anything. We're not, we're just, we're pulling snippets from other things and mashing it together. And so we're, we're no longer creating actual real. Well, real things.

[Russ]

Can I, can I add something to that because Star wars itself was, if you want to talk about it, was obviously a mashed together piece of a lot of different other previous elements. Blake and I were talking on Twitter earlier about how the Star wars music was evocative of a previous film, King's Row, where the main Star wars theme is actually very similar to that and how the opening scroll comes from other stuff. Flash Gordon, Akira Kurosawa films. But here's the, here's the key difference and Russ, here's the difference that I think a lot of people are. Are overlooking is that those older pieces and even the original Star wars film itself, when it was just called Star wars before George Lucas started lying about having all these other movies made, was that because he didn't have any of it written out? Any. Any. It's such a hack at the start was Star wars was a good story on. It's a story.

[Blake]

That's right.

[Russ]

It told a story. It told a classic hero's journey. You know, it has. It's a classic tale, right? It's. It's a kid who's a peasant who becomes a knight. He fights the evil lord in the castle and the old wizard to save the princess, right? Like that's a very classic medieval style just at its core story which then has other. And you know, and the one wizard helps him along his way. It again, it all fits together within the archetype of stories that have been told for thousands of years. But the problem with so much stuff today is they've totally lost that because it's just slop on top of slop on top of slop.

[Blake]

Jack, can I ask you a question then? Because you just went through that, that storyline and immediately I had like three. I mean we, we view them as. They make nursery rhymes, they make bedtime stories, right? Speaking of Disney, they used to master in this, right, The Cinderella's, all this. Where. Where are the origins of these stories come from? I mean everything we just said, everything we just talked about right there, that these are European stories.

[Russ]

You're white culture rich. It's called white culture.

[Blake]

Can I just put you blatantly say what I want to say here, which is maybe Disney is having a hard time finding the, the spirit of these stories because culturally it's completely foreign to who works at Disney. Now, now we're getting in this hot

[Russ]

crime territory, ladies and gentlemen.

[Blake]

Thought crime territory.

[Russ]

Well, this is.

[Blake]

No, this is one.

[Russ]

I said this before about Game of Thrones, that Game of Thrones is white culture. And when the new one came out. The Dunkin Egg prequel series came out. People liked it so much because again, it was just a. A solid story which follows that archetype again and that there's no, you know, princess in that one. But again, it's a peasant who becomes a knight and he gets a squire who turns out to be a prince, and he goes on to fight for valor and honor. And people loved it. And it was really simple white culture

[Blake]

and guys, all of these stories, they have, you know, roots in, whether it's Polish or Germanic or, you know, all the way to England. King Arthur, obviously, that is what Disney used to do, and nobody did it better than Disney. And who originally ran that company? Jack, we were just talking about this guy, Patriot through and through, right? He allowed him. He allowed Mickey Mouse, the product of his company, to be used to push American anti communism propaganda all over the world. Now look at the company. Now look at what it stands for. Now look at who runs it. It's like if I was going to, you know, if the roles were reversed and let me just pick, pick like something that's foreign to me, right? And I was going to write a story about Muhammad or something, I wouldn't know where to start. And it's not. I'm not ashamed to say that while I can read a few books, it's not my culture, it's not the spirit of my own worldview and my own beliefs. So I'd have a very difficult time trying to capture it. I could try to write a story about a gin and get super creative. And it may seem very, very common to people in the east, but to me, it is a foreign way of thinking. So I would have a very difficult time capturing the essence of that story. How on earth are we supposed to expect people who don't even believe in that Western view? They don't believe in so many of, you know, it could be religions, it could be historic historical worldviews, and they just don't have it. They don't like it. In fact, they might even detest it. They're actively working every day to try to stamp that out of our current culture. So why would we ever expect them to redo Cinderella and get it right, or to redo Snow White, which they bombed, and get it right. I mean, they couldn't even redo Little Mermaid. I mean, this is like, it's. They're just not understanding what made those stories great or special or appealing. And to the beginning, what is the. What was their audience at the time and still is, largely today, right? I mean, whether we want to admit it or not, it's still very much a white, white European culture. And that's falling on deaf ears.

[Rich]

And that gets to the core of what Disney has been doing with Star wars with Marvel is they've taken two boy brands that are very much lifting boys up. Like perfect example, the original trilogy is very much just to Jack's point. It's, it's, it's a kid who, who rises up and becomes a hero and they're turning it into girl brands and they're, they're throwing in everything that they can because they don't. They want to destroy masculinity. They want to destroy manhood.

[Blake]

That's right.

[Rich]

And so that's what they're.

[Jack]

That's.

[Rich]

That's the plan.

[Jack]

We have a comment. Dan the Man, 1961 argues Disney, Star wars is not Star Wars. I have bad news for you, Dan. It is actually. This is, this is part of freeing yourself is freeing. Like the true freedom is not. I reject the new stuff the true freedom comes from. I reject the strange hold that this ephemeral pop cultural artifact had over me.

[Russ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Because in the end, Star wars is just a reasonably well made 70s movie that was so well made, it got some sequels that were also popular and some prequels that were popular or at least made very good memetic content if you were a millennial. And then they just got a ton of spin off content because that's how you do things. You make video games and books and all these things. Look, that's all it is.

[Russ]

Tell you something right now, I think a Star wars, like an ex girlfriend. Get him out of here.

[Jack]

Every, every one of those books, Jack. Imagine if instead of reading that book, you read literally anything else.

[Blake]

U.S. history and U.S. history, crisis and foreign policy.

[Jack]

You could have read every single Flash man novel, Jack, and it would have been awesome.

[Rich]

Them.

[Jack]

And then I could talk about Flash men with somebody.

[Russ]

I mean, I, I mean I did spend time learning like a foreign language and like no one cares now.

[Jack]

Now LLMs can just do that. Foreign language technology overtaketh.

[Russ]

But no, you're exactly right. You're exactly right that it's, it's something where it's like you, you need to have the. I, I don't think we should get rid of culture. Right. I don't think we should. We should say that good culture is something that we should see the ground on. But I do think that we should use our force for good the way that we can. The same way, by the way, that we led a massive boycott of the super bowl halftime show and bad Bunny, right? We. We were very successful. Very successful with that. And they did not like to talk about it because. And Rich, you. You remember, like, this reminds me of the bad bunny situation. That bad bunny was a guy who.

[Blake]

Certain.

[Russ]

Very popular with a certain demographic, but not with the broad culture.

[Blake]

And by the way, why. What. Gonna get in trouble here. But this is what the show's all about, isn't it? Why was the halftime show super popular compared to bad Bunnies? I mean, we. There were even polls on this. You could see the downloads after, you know, I mean, after the. The. The super bowl, what were you guys showcasing versus what? They. They're trying to ram something else. What Jack said is true. They're trying to ram an. And is appealing to a sliver of the population down the throat of the entire population. All right? Who probably, you know, 70% of would not agree with half the things that come out of his mouth. And then TPUSA was just showcasing Americana. The artist that headlined it is somebody who has been widely popular. And again, not to get into this, but I think that the masculinity impact of this is. It can't be understated either. We can even use this with Star Wars. The prequels were successful. They didn't strip out the masculinity of star wars and the prequels, did they? No. In the greatest scene out of all three of those, Anakin and Obi Wan is one of the most masculine scenes ever.

[Jack]

Right?

[Blake]

I got the high ground. But getting to it. Right. But getting to it. But am I wrong?

[Jack]

Right.

[Blake]

Wait. We have.

[Jack]

We have good scenes.

[Blake]

Okay, let's make the masculinity time show showcase. Like, what was. People wanted to feel good at that time. They didn't want somebody cramming something down their throat. They just wanted to celebrate Americanism, have a good time for a half hour, and enjoy themselves

[Russ]

much more successful.

[Jack]

We have a good masculine scene from the prequels. Let's play. Let's play.

[Blake]

Okay, let's go.

[Jack]

I don't think the system works.

[Rich]

No.

[Blake]

God, how would you have it work?

[Jack]

We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree

[Russ]

what's in the best interest of all

[Jack]

the people, and then do it.

[Blake]

That's exactly. That's exactly what we do. The. The trouble is that people don't always agree.

[Jack]

Well, then they should be made to. By whom?

[Blake]

Who's gonna make them?

[Jack]

I don't know.

[Russ]

Someone.

[Blake]

You? Of course not me, but someone.

[Russ]

Someone Wise.

[Blake]

Sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.

[Jack]

Well, if.

[Blake]

Caesar's got across the Rubicon, he's got across the Rubicon.

[Jack]

What's great about it, what's so masculine about it, is that in a lot of Star wars prequels, really understand women because Anakin says he supports a fascist dictatorship, murders a bunch of women and children as part of a massive war crime atrocity, goes on psychotic megalomaniacal rants, does a bunch of insane things like that, and is also, like, a weird, pouty guy a lot of the time, but because he's hot, she just falls in love with him and marries him instantly after knowing him for maybe a week.

[Blake]

Week.

[Jack]

And so this is a highly accurate portrayal of male female relationships.

[Russ]

Keep in mind. Keep in mind, like, she was also, like, his former babysitter.

[Rich]

Yeah.

[Russ]

Weird, like, creepy grooming.

[Rich]

Like, like the first movie, he was, like, 10 years younger than her.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Russ]

For no reason whatsoever.

[Rich]

So funny.

[Russ]

No reason.

[Blake]

That's a 90s woman. Hey, well, listen, there was some weird stuff in the first three as well. I mean, Luke almost fell in love with his sister. All right. I mean, let's get. That was.

[Russ]

That's because they didn't have it written out to begin with. That's because it was originally supposed to be.

[Blake]

That's true. But they did it.

[Russ]

It was really supposed to be a love triangle. And then Lee Beckett, who was one of the actual main writers of the series because George Lucas is, you know, a hack and a liar. Had she died, I think, like, in the process, you know, in between Empire and. And Jedi and. And so they were. Lucas was like, sister and just kind of like, threw it out. Threw it out there. And like, clearly. Clearly knew that there would be like, this huge issue with the kiss scene, but just, like, didn't care.

[Blake]

Didn't care.

[Russ]

And.

[Blake]

And by the way, we can't skip with. With the Han Solo thing, like, even his character, because this got away from us when we were talking about this. Even.

[Russ]

Immaculate.

[Blake]

It was really, really American. Right here you have this guy. He's not, you know, he's a borderline bad guy. He's a thief. He's a.

[Russ]

A.

[Blake]

He's a smuggler. And he gets a second chance. And he does.

[Russ]

Right.

[Blake]

Like, Like, Wyatt Earp was a criminal, guys. And before he was the most famous lawman ever. Wyatt Eart was a criminal, you know, but he turned his life and bridge.

[Russ]

To your point. To your point. So this is part before the prequels, there was something known as the special editions and the Biggest controversy of that. And this was even in the late 90s, the biggest controversy there was that George Lucas didn't understand why it made Han Solo's character so cool to shoot Greedo first. And this was like this huge thing in the 90s where George Lucas had edited it. Edited that famous scene in the cantina where Han Solo realizes this guy's about to shoot him and he just shoots him first.

[Blake]

Shoots him first.

[Russ]

And changed it to make the. The bounty hunter shoot first. And then Han like dodges and then fires in self defense, which just totally changes the character. But again, because George Lucas is a liar and a hack, he didn't understand why that made such of a big difference.

[Blake]

Oh, I thought you were gonna play that scene. Yeah, I, you know, look, I. Maybe you guys are Star wars fans. You can tell me, but I don't know if it's true or not, but I thought we were gonna get a Han Solo movie after Disney purchased it, but we did. We did.

[Jack]

And it was so bad.

[Rich]

So bad.

[Jack]

It's actually really funny because that's the

[Russ]

only one that I. That's the only Disney Star wars movie that I will defend.

[Rich]

So bad.

[Jack]

Yeah, but.

[Blake]

But is it the nerds?

[Russ]

The nerds don't like it because it's just like a comedy.

[Blake]

Yeah, but it was supposed to be.

[Jack]

It was supposed to be a comedy. And then they whisked out.

[Rich]

They were supposed to have the directors of.

[Jack]

That's Lord and Miller.

[Russ]

Lego movie.

[Rich]

Yeah.

[Jack]

21 jump.

[Blake]

Like they want. And they wanted for. To do something else, but he, he was like, no, I'm going to do King of the Crystals.

[Russ]

You're saying to have him in it as you were saying. Yeah, it was.

[Blake]

There was supposed to be like he was going to do it and it was going to be something totally different.

[Russ]

Yeah, no, I, I think I know what you're talking about, but yeah, they never, they never did.

[Blake]

He did.

[Russ]

Well, maybe the crystal, you know, maybe that's something that's potentially. They could be discussing if they do this. Like Russ was talking about the alternate universe, you know, timeline.

[Rich]

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna, we'll probably get a recast. Who knows?

[Russ]

But I'm saying with. With Han Solo, you could. If there stands a reason. I'm just saying that if you do a different universe and he's still alive, both in the universe and in real life, you could have Harrison Ford back as Han Solo.

[Rich]

Yes. Oh, yes. I just feel like that's a terrible idea.

[Jack]

It's.

[Blake]

It's a lot.

[Rich]

It's a lot. Especially because you already have. You already have. Like, Leia is already, like, both Carrie Fisher and Leia. Like, Like, Carrie Fisher's dead. So unless you are gonna. Unless you're gonna just CG her entire character or AI like we talked about the other, like, a couple weeks ago. Like, you've got to recast her character. And so that also gives you an opportunity to recast all of the characters. Go back to maybe right after episode six and start telling those stories rather than having old versions of these characters, because we have to. Because Mark Hamill's old and decrepit, and so is Harrison Ford.

[Blake]

So I think Harrison Ford's a deal breaker for me at this point anyway, because of what he did with the last Indiana Jones, which is, to me, unforgivable.

[Russ]

Again.

[Rich]

But that's Disney's fault, though. So to be fair.

[Blake]

But don't you stand.

[Rich]

The last Indiana Jones is Disney's fault. I have always been the proponent. They should have recast Indiana Jones. Pretended it was just like James Bond, where you just read the character.

[Jack]

Just keep making it. They could have had 20 Indiana Jones movies.

[Russ]

Yes.

[Jack]

With a young guy.

[Rich]

Keep it. Keep doing period pieces. They just. They replace him with whatever actor is hot. That, like, in the Zeitgeist. So at the time when they were. They were talking about it, they'd been talking about Chris Pratt would have been a perfect 100.

[Blake]

That would have been good.

[Rich]

It would have been fantastic.

[Russ]

Chris Pratt in the Jurassic World series literally just is Indiana.

[Rich]

That's his. That's. That's him doing the audition right there.

[Jack]

Yeah. We can get this.

[Blake]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And so we just got old man Indiana Jones.

[Blake]

We got that. And then I heard. And I don't know if this is really the way that we're gonna go, but Shia LaBeouf was going to like, branch off and basically take over and do something.

[Rich]

I love. Sh. I would have loved. I would have.

[Blake]

He's unstable, though.

[Rich]

If they would have. He's not stable. But I would have loved if they had done that, because I like Shia Lab.

[Blake]

I do. I thought when he did it, when he played the role he played in. In Crystal Skulls, I could see it, and I'm like, this could work. This.

[Jack]

I'll even.

[Russ]

I'll even. Like, just to be fair. Right. You know, I don't Show Indiana Jones 4 and 5 to my kids, but I actually thought that the. The nothing. That execution. But I thought the plot, like, just the way it was laid out and sort of the mystery and the artifact in Dial Destiny was actually kind of cool. It's.

[Rich]

Yeah, it wasn't a bad. It wasn't a bad plot point. You just had a character. You just had an actor who couldn't move because he's, again, 100 years old. So then you're trying to have him play a character that's supposed to be kicking ass and taking names, and he's just not doing that while you feel.

[Blake]

And I like how they find an entire.

[Russ]

The way that they brought in opera. They used the Nazis in the 60s and they brought, they brought in like, Operation Paperclip.

[Rich]

Yeah, exactly.

[Russ]

And how that, you know, showed in Mads. Was it Mads Mickinson? Right. Was the, was the main guy.

[Rich]

Yes.

[Russ]

Which is phenomenal. There's no question there.

[Rich]

Perfect.

[Russ]

And, and like, he was going to go back. So he was going to go back in time to, you know, a certain point in World War II to, like, win the war for the Nazis. I was like, like, that's actually not bad. That's. That. I'm sorry, that's not a bad plot. That's just not a bad plot.

[Blake]

Yeah. Which would undo half of what, the original Indiana Jones movies.

[Russ]

Exactly. No, but that, that, that raises the stakes a little bit, not only for, like, our world, but also for the actual series itself. So it makes sense that, like, Indiana Jones would, you know, would have, like, a personal stake in it. I don't know.

[Blake]

I'm trying to think. I'm an 80s baby. I was. I'm an 81 baby. I'm trying to think how many Raiders of the Lost Ark slash Indiana Jones themed birthday parties I must have had. I'm telling you, he was it.

[Rich]

The Last Crusade is also just so good.

[Jack]

That's.

[Blake]

That's my favorite.

[Russ]

It's an Easter movie, by the way. It is. It is 100 an Easter movie.

[Blake]

I was, I saw it and I was still kind of young when it came out. I mean, I wasn't a little kid, but I was getting older. But I went and I saw that movie. I can't believe I just remembered this. It popped in my head, but I just remembered this. I got home, saw the movie and this theater, which I'm not sure my dad wanted to. Wanted to have my mother take me to. But she did. And then I come back and I'm like, sleep. This movie had such a huge impression. I loved it. I wasn't scared of it at all, but had such a huge impression. I was sleepwalking and doing the three trials in my sleep and went to the top of the steps. And my mother and aunt almost had a heart attack because of course I'm ready to do A Leap of Faith off the top of the stairs.

[Russ]

And if you guys don't know what it's talking about, what I'm talking about.

[Blake]

Incredible.

[Russ]

The chat actually has this. This like sort of side combo that's going on. That's interesting that I think we should. We should bring up and everybody. Dylan Zuzu, everybody's talking about it is. Okay, so remember a couple weeks ago we were talking about AI Val Kilmer. So they made the AI Val Kilmer, you know, obviously passed away, but they put him in. So what if they got rid of the. Oh, and Dylan is asking what's my favorite shy film? Obviously Holes. Like it's not even a question. And what if I. Sorry.

[Jack]

He made a Padre Pio movie.

[Russ]

I mean, I haven't seen it, but Holes is just amazing. And so what if they had. All right, so what if they had AI versions of the young characters, but the actual actors have nothing to do with it.

[Blake]

It.

[Russ]

So it's all AI but like, just like the Val Kilmer one. It was good, remember? It was like really good, really realistic. Looks exactly like them. Would we be okay with it in that sense?

[Rich]

I mean, I think that's different. Yeah. I think it gets to a deeper thing where I think currently we can't write good movies right now because everybody wants to put their own. Their biases into their scripts and into their stories. So yeah, we're not gonna be able to have actual deep filmography from in these universes because. Because we're just gonna have some blue

[Jack]

haired left writing sense. People can sense the decline in their civilization. They know the old stuff was better and they desperately try to grasp at it by making retreads of it.

[Russ]

Yeah, people are. People in the chat are asking, they are those classics.

[Blake]

And that's like, that's what's so sad. And so because you. You find yourself trying to appreciate the original, you know, form of art, the original idea, the original story. And it. You can't do that with these rewrites because whether they know it or they don't know it, they are like perverting it with these new age ideas that. Or they're new age, they're old ideas, but they think they're new. They think they're progressive and they just destroy it.

[Rich]

That gets to the core of. Of it is that we. We grab on to old actors and old movies and are. And this is a weird phenomenon that we have is where Our instant response to, oh, all of this. All of this Star wars is crap. Let's go back. And the first thought in our brain is, oh, we got to bring back the old actors. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Russ]

It has nothing to do with the actors. Yeah.

[Rich]

Everything to do with the writing. It has everything to do with how the story is told.

[Russ]

Old shot. It wouldn't fix it. Like, it's still not going to fix. No, it's not.

[Rich]

No.

[Jack]

I mean, but it's not.

[Blake]

Even if Mark wasn't old, he'd still be the same Mark. He was just. Yeah, he was. It was hit. Who he is was hidden better in a better story.

[Rich]

I think Mark Hamill is a terrible actor other than being a voice actor. So that's.

[Russ]

Yeah, Andrew was saying that earlier on. He's not a good events. By the way. Andrew has haunted. I heard. So. I heard that's why he's not on today. So he's got that. He was on that cruise.

[Rich]

Amen. Angelo agrees with me. Thank God.

[Russ]

Terrible.

[Jack]

We should. No, it's. Man, you know what? We're almost out of time. I need to. I. I know none of you guys followed the instructions to do it. We were all supposed to watch Animal Farm so we could talk about it,

[Russ]

but no one did.

[Jack]

Oh, my gosh, man. If we're talking about things they can't make good movies out of. Excuse me.

[Russ]

So wait, wait, you actually watched it?

[Jack]

I mean, suffered through it. Endured it.

[Blake]

Suffered, suffered. So that's. That's. See, this is.

[Russ]

So what was it?

[Jack]

I feel bad. I feel bad. I want to say, like, I will note it was distributed by Angel Studios. Angel Studios has made good films that we like. I thought King of Kings was great. I think they've done good stuff. They'll do good stuff in the future. They did not write this movie. They distributed it. It was directed by Gollum, Andy Circus. And it's. It's really jarring how much they could mess it up because it's a pretty simple story. Like, okay, if you're adapting a 1,000 page book or this big long series, it's hard to think, how do we cut this down to 90 minutes? Animal Farm, you can read in an hour, maybe two hours.

[Russ]

It's true. It's not a very short, very basic book.

[Jack]

It's extremely obvious what they intend with it. You could basically do a 100 literal, word by word, scene by scene adaptation of Animal Farm. It would be good. It would be easy, and people would watch it and Instead they just totally mess it up. So first of all, they take all the hard edge out of it because they want it to be a friendly kids movie. So almost nobody dies in the new Animal Farm.

[Rich]

So Boxer does not even.

[Jack]

They don't do that. Like they don't, they don't have in the book. It's actually really gruesome because they have the. The dogs are ripping animals throats out and after they confess, you know, because of the show trial in this one and like they even stuff that where someone doesn't die. So like Snowball is chased out of the farm and you know, it's kind of implied he probably would have been killed. But they don't show it. They keep him as the enemy forever in this one. They just sort of like, they just kind of bulli side him out of. They like make him leave. He just moves away. He's like, oh, I'm not welcome in Animal Farm. I'm gonna leave. They don't sort of force him out. And then the other big thing which people noted is it's now, it's now about capitalism. The, the threat to the farm is that it's going to get foreclosed on by the bank. There's an evil bank. There's an evil bank in the, in the socialism movie.

[Blake]

This is basically blast blasphemy but. And point out that in the old white European culture Disney movies, people died. You had to be taught as a child in these stories, these fables, people died. That's life. There's. There's tragic consequences for, for bad actions and sometimes people do very bad things. And Animal Farm, it just sounds like you're going to take. You just described a different story. I mean you base. That's really the truth. So again I really think that's what it comes down to. We're just. There are different. We're trying to take stories from certain cultures that recognize certain truths and twist them into a different kind of form that maybe is what they feel is more acceptable to this time or a new worldview. And it, it's not. That makes it a different story. That makes it some. This is. That's tragic for me. I was looking forward to watching this. I guess it's probably not even worth watching if they do this.

[Russ]

Did we say, by the way, Blake, do you know speaking of the distribution of the new movie was Angel. Do you, do you know offhand who it was who like funded and distributed the 1950s Animal Farm? The cartoon.

[Blake]

The cartoon was better than 1950s Animal

[Jack]

Farm distributor is it gonna be Walt Disney.

[Russ]

I don't know exactly which company it was, but famously a lot of the funding for that actually came from the CIA.

[Rich]

Oh, I'm not surprised.

[Jack]

That's great. CIA used to be great.

[Russ]

It was seen as this like Cold War, you know, propaganda piece against the Soviets.

[Rich]

Oh, you're totally right.

[Russ]

Actual CIA was behind it.

[Blake]

He's totally right. It was produced by, produced by John Hallis and Joy Batchelor and funded in large part by the Central Intelligence Agency.

[Rich]

The CIA actually did one thing.

[Jack]

Oh, I forgot another funny thing about the new Animal Farm. And so in the original story they just straight up, they just have like a communist revolution against a farm. And it's a normal farm. And so, you know, the old pig old major gives the speech where he lays out animal communism and they just, they just overthrow the it in this one. The actual peril is at the start that basically the evil mega corporation is going to buy the farm and then just kind of kill all the animals. They're going to go to a laughter house slaughterhouse where they take us out and then that's what makes them revolt, is they're all going to die. But then they just overthrow it. And then, then the more the evil mortgage comes in, it has a very. It kind of makes me think of the way angry commie redditors think it's unjust for them to ever pay rent because the mortgage on the farm, that is oppressive. I think it was literally a thousand dollars. And so it's like you could just picture there's like red or like, oh,

[Russ]

they're making me pay a thousand dollars for my apartment.

[Jack]

Nobody's ever been more oppressed than me. It's just. Oh, and there's also bad. They tried to just. They just try to make it like a. You know, it's not funny. There's like fart jokes in it and stuff. No, they should just make a dark Animal Farm movie. In fact, I think the 50s one is basically dark Animal Farm. It doesn't, it doesn't go well for old Boxer in that one.

[Rich]

No, no, it's not.

[Jack]

Oh no, yeah, it's just release that one. Actually, they should just take that movie and reread.

[Rich]

I mean, we're showing B roll right now.

[Russ]

Pretty good.

[Blake]

I was hoping that all they were gonna do was make a higher tech version of this because this, this is actually good. I mean there was no. There's no reason to do what Blake is expl. That's terrible. And you know the scene where they, where Snowball gets it. Who is it? Is it Trotsky? But, like, see, the thing. The thing is, they're like, we don't do this anymore. They were. They were trying to emulate a real event to teach a real lesson and make. Draw a parallel. And we're just. We. We have this. I don't want to say it's a. It's.

[Russ]

The problem is, like, the humans were like the white army, kind of.

[Rich]

Yes.

[Blake]

They're drawing parallels to a real thing. And you're not.

[Jack]

Not.

[Blake]

You don't want to lose that jack. So why would you sugarcoat it or tone it down or make it softer? Yeah, I just. I. I just don't agree with that version of it at all.

[Jack]

Of course, it's too late for us to fully explore this topic, but what was the last 100% pure kids movie? Like, this is not. Not PG13, but truly aimed at children film that. That went really hard in terms of. Has death, doesn't shy away from dark concepts because kids actually can handle it. Like the way the old Animal Farm did.

[Blake]

Oh, well, you know, it was like, well, go ahead. Does somebody else have any ideas? Because actually.

[Rich]

No.

[Jack]

Good answer. I'm trying to think of one.

[Rich]

I don't know.

[Blake]

Well, like, I'm gonna show my image here. I'm gonna show my age here, but. Oh, go ahead.

[Jack]

Watership Down.

[Rich]

Oh, yeah, Watership Down.

[Russ]

When did that come out?

[Jack]

That was 1978. 1978, that one.

[Blake]

Yeah. See, I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna go back to the 70s and maybe some in the 80s, maybe. But, you know, Rankin and Bass, who I thought maybe produced the original Animal Farm, and they didn't. They used to do a lot of others, including holiday specials. One of them, like Nester, the Long Ear Christmas Donkey, his mother dies. It's a horribly tragic scene. You have to just deal with it and go through it, you know, and there's a whole lot of honest things about the Roman Empire and about the human nature. Recent. I don't know.

[Jack]

My girl Fox in The Hound was 81. And that. That's not super. That's not super grim and graphic. Actually, if you want to be horrified, read the plot summary of the. Of the book, the Fox and the Hound. Well, it was really messed up, Finding Nemo.

[Russ]

Well, does it. Does it have to be on screen?

[Rich]

Because he does lose his mind.

[Jack]

I was thinking. I'm thinking on screen because there's a lot of. There's a lot of children's lit that's better. It took longer for children's lit to

[Russ]

get really bad because I was gonna say the, the Bridge to Terabithia.

[Jack]

Oh, I mean the movie adaptation.

[Russ]

There's a movie, There's a movie. Yeah. 2007. I think it's. How you say her name, Sayori. Ronan is the, is the main. I think and I think she dies. Spoiler alert.

[Jack]

Yeah, she does. No, the novel is old. The novel is from 77. But the, the book, the movie is. The movie is a straight adaptation book that there's a lot of.

[Russ]

That's Anna, Sophia, Rob.

[Rich]

Yeah, there.

[Jack]

Okay. The, the book. So the book is from 77. The, the movie does 100% straight adapt it with, with the death kept to the same and it's, it's hilarious. You can find a lot of Gen Z kids deeply traumatized by watching Bridge Terabithia. I actually did read the book when I was a kid up. I don't feel it has a sad opening, but I think the rest of it is a very light hearted thing. I'm kind of thinking what stands out to me, the reason I like the Fox.

[Blake]

His brother dies. Baymax. His brother dies.

[Jack]

Yeah, there's. There's Big Hero 6. It's not just that there can be a death. What stands out to me about for example the Fox and the Hound is that I don't even know if anyone specifically does die in the Fox and the Hound, but it's that the whole thing is pervaded. It is like a kind of terrifying movie at times. Like the bear is actually really scary in that movie.

[Russ]

Yeah, the tone, it has a, like it's true.

[Jack]

They don't, they don't reconcile. They don't, they don't. They realize they're just innately going to be apart. And it's doesn't, it's not a super depressing ending, but it's much more muted that you're gonna grow up and grow apart from people.

[Rich]

Yeah, I think that's a good one.

[Russ]

There is a bigger I think topic there to just, you know, we don't have time tonight to get into it, but how in those especially Walt Disney era films and just in a lot of kids living and kids content from that time period, there was a lot more like the happily ever after wasn't always fired. You know, happily ever after and everyone lives and everything's fine. You know, that wasn't always guaranteed. And in fact some of these stories worked out in such a way where it was like, no, we're going to teach you that bad things happen. And you're going to deal with it and you're going to be okay. Old Yeller, right. He has to shoot the dog. So, I mean, you know, there's. There's other lessons to be learned.

[Blake]

But I think, Blake, the point that

[Russ]

you're getting at isn't necessarily where the red fern grows. It's. It's not just about the fact that whenever the, you know, the cutoff was, it's the fact that that's gone now. It's totally gone.

[Rich]

Yeah, it's because. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that, like, we've just lost the ability to. To tell deep stories without, you know, pandering to one side or the other. Like. Yeah, you can. You can portray themes that, you know, 40, 50. Think of any of the Walt Disney films, like, they all hold up today. Like the old Disney animated films all hold up today. Why is that? Because.

[Russ]

Because they were all based on white culture. Well, that. Ancient stories that.

[Rich]

But it was also because the. The themes of those. Of those animated stories hold true to today. They hold, and they'll hold true once we're all dead and gone. Like, they. They continue to hold true. And the problem is we no longer write stories to that. That hold on to those anchors of culture, of society, of. Of theme. Right.

[Blake]

So aren't we. Isn't that because we're projecting what we want to be instead of what that. That old, you know, that ancient culture that conveyed what is, you know, like absolute truths? This is, though. These are the realities of life. Maybe we want to make them better, maybe we fight to make them better, and God knows we hope for them to be better, but we don't ignore that. This is how it is. Yeah. Go ahead, Jack.

[Russ]

I was gonna say, Reby Doe in the chat had a great. A great example of what Blake's talking about. Pinocchio.

[Rich]

Yeah.

[Russ]

Really dark scenes in it.

[Blake]

Yeah. Oh, my. Oh, my God. Even their Christmas special was dark. I mean, and it ends, you know, to some degree better. But, yeah, it didn't end with total tragedy. But you don't always get what you want. Pinocchio is a great example of that. Jiminy Cricket bounces on him and he's like, look, you're just gonna. Going to learn, and you're going to have one catastrophe after another. And I'm. And you're going to learn the hard way, kid. And that's what he does. That's a great one. Who said that? Good for you.

[Jack]

That's a great example we're hitting our hard out time, but this is a very fun topic we have. We did get one last donation from Zuzu's petals. Thank you very much, Zuzu, for being such a supporter. She says we need another Frank Capra and a conservative to go to film school and make great movies. That is, in the end, the only substitute.

[Russ]

We can't, can't.

[Jack]

We can't beg Hollywood and we can't beg a bunch of libs to please make good movie slop for us. We must make our own slop and unslopify it. Isn't that right?

[Blake]

Well said. Well said.

[Rich]

Well said.

[Russ]

No, and that's, that's. And just to bring it up again,

[Blake]

that's why we did.

[Russ]

That's why we did the halftime show that we did. That's why we dialed it in to the type of Americana rock country music that at people in middle America who are totally underrepresented and certainly underrepresented when it comes to Super Bowls that they want to listen to and something that wasn't pandering to them and condescending to them and something that celebrated that part of America, too, rather than. And you notice if you go watch. We didn't attack anybody. We very deliberately did not mention Bad Bunny. Believe me, I wanted to. And. And I was like, you know what? And nobody told me not to. I said, but I just made the decision. I said, you know what? I'm not even going to mention his name. I want to keep it positive. And that's what one. Positive. Good alternative culture. But it's got to be good, right?

[Blake]

It's.

[Russ]

If we didn't you notice, there wasn't anything political about it. It wasn't political. It wasn't like, here's a conservative message, like, no, no. I mean, at the end, obviously, yeah, we, we, you know, we talked about Turning Point, but there was no overarching, like, go vote for Donald Trump or something like that. No, no, it was good American culture, and that's how people responded to it. That's why it got the numbers. Did number two, largest YouTube live stream in history up till, you know, up till now. And the sky's the limit. I think the market is absolutely there for that. Yeah.

[Jack]

All right, well, we've hit against our time limit. Thanks for guiding along, everyone. We hit a lot of fun, a lot of fun stuff, but we have to head out. It's late in the evening even here in Phoenix, and so all of you go home, keep committing thought crimes.

[Russ]

Thought crime is death.