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Charlie Kirk
My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student
Russ
organization in the country, fighting for the
Jack
future of our republic.
Charlie Kirk
My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
Russ
If the most important thing for you
Charlie Kirk
is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody.
Jack
You gotta stop sending your kids to college.
Charlie Kirk
You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord. Use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.
Jack
Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a
Charlie Kirk
company that specializes in gold IRAs and
Jack
physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble gold investments@noblegoldinvestments.com that is noblegoldinvestments.com.
Charlie Kirk
Well, well, well. So for folks who couldn't see the opening screen roll 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. He made a post wishing for the death of President Trump. That's what he did. All right? And we can. We can beat around the bush. We could try to, you know, 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. Can you explain to us what for. For the. 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 have, I have a scheduling conflict. I have a flight. Even though he could have booked a flight at any time, but units in
Charlie Kirk
hyperspace cannot receive missions.
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 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, who would he be posting images of? A dead version of? No, no, he's not the other. He'd be like a dead, dead Admiral Akbar, Dead Man Mothma, But a dude. Something like that.
Russ
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 act, 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 don't have to be a side psychiatrist to see it. They all share this. It's.
Jack
It's glaring to me, Russ. 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. 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
Charlie Kirk
films at this point.
Jack
Time Runner, Silk Degrees. That doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. The Raffle also doesn't have a Wikipedia page. Village of the Damned. Laser. Hawk Hamilton. Not the Musical. It's apparently an action film. Watchers Reborn Walking Across Egypt. Thank you. Good night. We are now over 20 years in to Mark Hamill's non Star wars film career. Maybe you've heard of this one, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Tyler
Yes.
Jack
Okay. All right. 2001.
Tyler
Isn't he also playing himself in that movie?
Jack
I don't know. He might have.
Russ
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.
Tyler
Yeah.
Angelo
The only.
Jack
Holy cr. Okay, Kingsman, the Secret Service, 2014. 35 years of movies before we get to a Star wars film. The only man doesn't play himself that
Tyler
I remember are his voice acting roles. That's it.
Jack
That's true. He had. He was more famous as a voice actor. He played the Joker. A very good Joker, I will say. Although in a. Fewer. Fewer episodes than I'd have thought. Guess how many episodes do you think he played the Joker in Batman, the animated series?
Tyler
Probably 15.
Jack
Exactly. Right. Actually 15 only. And so, you know, it's actually not much content overall. But yeah, no, he's. He messed it up. Yeah. Dragged it all into the abyss. Apparently there was 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 the fourth. There's that AstroTurf fake holiday. May the fourth 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. Is Star wars done here, Jack? And not just because of Hamill. Is it just done here forever?
Charlie Kirk
So, so before we, before we get into the meta analysis, 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. Du'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.
Angelo
Y.
Charlie Kirk
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, is filling in. The, 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 correspondents 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.
Tyler
I want to say, like it came
Jack
out before COVID it's been almost. It's been over seven years.
Tyler
2019.
Charlie Kirk
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 tank so bad, the billions upon billions of dollars that they had spent in the Star wars purchase, the acquisition from LucasArts and George Lucas into Disney fell flat on its face because of 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 on it. I need to buy the merch. I need to do this. You need to get in. Look, in two weeks time, this is such bad timing for Disney, for Mark Havill 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 Jack, I'd be. Jack, I'd be remiss. Did we, did we even see, did, did he even say anything about Charlie at all?
Jack
Not that I know.
Charlie Kirk
I actually don't know.
Jack
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 gonna see anyway?
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, well, there's a huge, I'd say there's a huge audience for Star Wars. There's huge.
Jack
That's the point though.
Charlie Kirk
I'm saying. No, no, what I'm saying is, Blake. What I'm saying though is that I still see to this day, Sony, even the White House, Right. A lot of the guys over there, but even they on Star Wars Day were hosting memes of Trump as a Jedi and like all this stuff and playing into it.
Tyler
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. It's just. It.
Charlie Kirk
It's obviously a promotion.
Tyler
It's. It's absolutely in the zeitgeist, you know.
Charlie Kirk
Right. So what they need to understand though is like, no, 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 literally want 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.
Tyler
Full on.
Charlie Kirk
Boycott dumb Star wars, which I've already been doing for 10 years.
Tyler
I. I agree with Jack.
Jack
Don't you pirate like every movie you watch?
Charlie Kirk
No comment.
Tyler
I agree with you on that one. One of the things that. Especially with the Mark Hamill side.
Russ
True.
Charlie Kirk
By the way, I saw Michael. I saw Michael at the drive in theater.
Tyler
Oh, nice. They still have drives, dude. Yeah, there's one here.
Charlie Kirk
Really Literally talk about it on like all the time on this show.
Jack
Okay. Glendale might as well be like five hours away.
Tyler
It's great. I've gone there.
Jack
It's okay. I'll keep this in mind.
Tyler
One thing on the Mark Hamill side of things though too, is like it. 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
Russ
the
Tyler
recg face to make.
Charlie Kirk
I thought that was Obi Wan Camel.
Tyler
No, it was Luke. Obi Wan wasn't. Isn't alive. Because it takes.
Charlie Kirk
No. The Obi Wan miniseries.
Tyler
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.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
Tyler
And just move on.
Angelo
Yeah.
Tyler
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.
Charlie Kirk
I don't think you can get away with recasting Luke. I just. I don't see it.
Tyler
You should.
Russ
And they're not Going to anyway. They're not going to stand.
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.
Charlie Kirk
We haven't.
Jack
We have a tremendous pop culture presence yet in America. As a 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 a YouTube video, but someone said I am a teacher and none of my kids 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 western civilization. We have the Greek poems, Homer, we have King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, you have Robin Hood, you have legends like that. 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 gonna end up where it's all the Mr. Beast extended cinematic Universe and Marvel slop or something.
Charlie Kirk
Well. So. So Russ.
Tyler
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
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.
Tyler
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.
Charlie Kirk
But yeah, yeah, I mean is like it's like a multiverse thing, I guess like Avengers a little bit. We're like they go there all different
Tyler
universe focus on the original cast. So that's the other weird part of this. So then we might.
Charlie Kirk
One of those dead.
Jack
Even if they don't reboot it. That's already.
Charlie Kirk
Just 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, the sequel characters. So you're gonna run into, you run into Princess Leia there. You don't run into Rey or Finn or whoever these new characters are.
Tyler
It's insane too, when you think about it, that the only characters that are even popular in the SE 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 end.
Tyler
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 and 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 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 of Star wars movie would come out. You know, they come in for their announcements and at the end the guy would go and Murder 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. 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?
Angelo
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Charlie Kirk
I may have something that I can show kind of visually to illustrate this about how big, like, and when I say like I'm, I'm, 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. You got the book and they, they dropped off some of my stuff and they brought my Star wars books in the old like, I don't know, bin that it was.
Russ
I knew it. I knew it.
Jack
Oh no. That's so many of them.
Charlie Kirk
Everything in here. Wait, everything in here is a Star book? Literally every single book in this thing.
Jack
Did you read all those?
Angelo
Yeah.
Russ
Oh, no doubt.
Jack
For those who can't. For those who can't see that there's about, there's about 50 books in that box.
Tyler
The last time I've seen a Bin that big was the Legos.
Jack
Did you even. Did you read the Crystal Star? Jack, did you read the Crystal Star? I think the Crystal joins the.
Charlie Kirk
In here. I see Darks.
Russ
Dig for that.
Jack
Dark Saber. Dark Saber's bad right here.
Charlie Kirk
What are you talking about?
Russ
There it is.
Charlie Kirk
We've got the AC Crispin Han Solo trilogy. Gosh, I love that.
Russ
Oh, that's a good one. The Han Solo one's good.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, the Han Solo trilogy.
Russ
There's three. Yeah, you got them all. Three.
Charlie Kirk
Here's Crystal Star right here.
Jack
Oh, the 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.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, it's really. It's really bad. Vision of the future. Is this the one?
Jack
That's the Z one. That was like the last zone. I think that's where Luke and Mara get married.
Charlie Kirk
No, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. Outbound. I think it's Outbound Flight that Timothy's on.
Tyler
Shoot.
Russ
Jack and I were just talking about how he had all the books. So when he was digging, I knew
Charlie Kirk
he was gonna, like, right here.
Russ
I knew one of my.
Charlie Kirk
I have a Timothy Zahn one that's signed somewhere. I don't know where it is.
Russ
Can I ask you something, Jack, as. As a fan and as somebody who, like, thinks about this, so I'm like.
Charlie Kirk
I'm like, I'll own it, right? Like, I was a big, big, big Star wars fan.
Russ
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 Star wars has lost some of its relevance? It's not only just that. I mean, how Disney's managed it since they bought it, but. 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 child.
Jack
I can't.
Charlie Kirk
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.
Russ
It's like the Nazis, you know, that's who they're portraying, and we just don't have that. Yeah, 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?
Charlie Kirk
They. The young adult Jedi Prince books?
Russ
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's story, the prequels. Right. Which I know my 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 you had Saturday morning cartoons and there was a cartoon and it. And just blows it up and throws. So 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.
Charlie Kirk
Right.
Russ
That we, we've seen from, from the other. Whatever you want to call them, you know, basically iterations of this entire story.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. There's actually talking a lot more quality before I was talking to. No, itself. And there, there was Star wars lot before there was like there were a couple animated series.
Russ
Yeah, what's that? I'm trying to think rebels, something.
Charlie Kirk
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about the 80s.
Russ
The 80s. Oh, that's true.
Charlie Kirk
There was, there were, there were some Ewok movies. There were some that's true. You know, there were some. Some extra, you know, extras out.
Russ
Had an animation or something too in the 80s.
Charlie Kirk
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 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. 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 and, 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 Z Petal saying that I should sell these books to collectors. No, absolutely not. 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 it's.
Jack
The sad thing is, if Star wars
Charlie Kirk
wanted to come back and actually do the books as a movie series or say that that's like a. 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. So 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.
Charlie Kirk
When I was reading these, we didn't
Jack
have no, but, 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 seriously bad. Everyone's saying, oh, Grand Admiral Thrawn, he'd be so cool if he was, if they made a Star wars movie about Admiral Thrawn. 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, got a master's degree in art history. And so he can look at their paintings that are pottery and go, oh, the way this pottery is designed, I can tell this civilization, they'll, they'll respond to a superficial act of overwhelming force that doesn't have any depth behind it. And so he'll, he'll surprise them really hard and then they'll just surrender instantly with his, his super art analysis power
Charlie Kirk
is like, I mean, I mean, look, I'm not going to hate on Grand Admiral Thorn. He's actually a great character. The point is, though, it 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.
Tyler
I mean, this is, this is going to be sacrilege to Jack because I actually like Rogue One.
Charlie Kirk
But the, I mean, if you like girl boss feminist movies, I liked it for other reason.
Tyler
I didn't, I, I, I'm curious what those reasons are. 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 for me that's one of the reasons I didn't like the sequel series on top of just 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? It's a galaxy. Why can we not do other things?
Russ
You know, when they had branches of other stories that they were telling showing that it wasn't limited to that. That's like, yeah, they can contradicted themselves or greatly limited themselves. I agree with that. 100.
Charlie Kirk
There's a whole like, there's a whole civil war with the Corellian system at one point. Right. 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.
Russ
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 of.
Charlie Kirk
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
Tyler
doing the same thing to Marvel. They're doing the same thing to Marvel.
Russ
Right.
Charlie Kirk
I was just going to say 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.
Russ
Yeah. Same way that Jones, the same way
Tyler
that Blake was on Wookiepedia, I was on Marvelpedia looking up all the different stuff.
Russ
I didn't want to be a pulse. I wanted to be an archaeologist. Like Indiana Jones.
Tyler
That was my first journalism.
Charlie Kirk
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 those.
Jack
I would read those Barnes and Noble
Charlie Kirk
and I would flip flop planets and moons.
Tyler
Just sit in the middle of the section.
Jack
It's like they'd have the planets, they'd have the starships,
Charlie Kirk
technology and I like, 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 in Navy intel was like, ah, yes, I, I remember these types of things, man,
Russ
because it was laid out in the same format. Right?
Charlie Kirk
It was, it was the same idea.
Russ
Yeah, same way. Yeah.
Tyler
Yep. Yeah. Yes.
Charlie Kirk
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.
Russ
Oh yeah, I know about that.
Jack
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.
Russ
That's a great point.
Jack
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.
Tyler
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.
Jack
Anymore. 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.
Russ
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 and. 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. And Guns and 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. You know, 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.
Charlie Kirk
Polish series, by the way.
Tyler
What was that?
Russ
What was that?
Charlie Kirk
Oh, it's great. It's a great Polish series, by the way.
Tyler
Oh, yeah, I've got the books. I gotta sit down and read them.
Russ
Their fans are amazing.
Tyler
But. But to your games.
Russ
My f. Yes, most.
Tyler
I 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 tik. Tok 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.
Charlie Kirk
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, you know, evocative of a previous film, King's Row, where you know, the main Star wars theme is actually like very, very, 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? It's such a hack. At the start was Star wars was a good story on its own.
Russ
It's a story. That's right.
Charlie Kirk
It told a story told a classic hero's journey. You know, it has, it's a classic tale, right? 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.
Angelo
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Russ
Jack, can I ask you a question then? Because you just went through that, that storyline and immediately I had like three different. 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 and everything we just talked about right there, that these are European stories.
Charlie Kirk
You're white culture rich. It's called white culture.
Russ
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.
Charlie Kirk
And now we're getting into thought crime territory.
Russ
Ladies, can we get into the real thought crime territory?
Tyler
Well, this is.
Charlie Kirk
No, this is when I said this before about Game of Thrones, that Game of Thrones is white culture. And when the new one came out, the Dunk and Egg prequel series came out, people liked it so much because again, it was just 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 it's 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.
Russ
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 to product of this 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, 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 reduce 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. 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.
Tyler
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. So that's what they're. That's. That's the plan.
Jack
We have a comment, Dan. 1971 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. Yeah, 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.
Charlie Kirk
I'm 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.
Russ
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. And then I could talk about Flash men with somebody.
Charlie Kirk
I mean, I. I mean, I did spend time learning, like a foreign language
Jack
and like, no one cares now. Now LLMs can just do that. Foreign language technology overtaketh fair.
Charlie Kirk
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 was popular with a certain. Very popular with a certain demographic, but not with the broad culture.
Russ
And by the way, why? What. I'm 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 artist who represents 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 the. The mascul 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 in the prequels, did they? No. When the greatest scene out of all three of those, Anakin and Obi Wan, is one of the most masculine scenes ever. Right. I got the high ground. But getting to it. Right, but getting to it. Am I wrong? Right.
Jack
We have. We have good scenes.
Russ
Okay, let's read the masculinity 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 American, have a good time for a half hour, and enjoy themselves much more successful.
Jack
We have a good masculine scene from the prequels. Let's play. Let's play.
Russ
Oh, okay. Let's go.
Charlie Kirk
I don't think the system works.
Tyler
No.
Russ
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.
Russ
That's exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree.
Jack
Well, then they should be made to. By whom?
Russ
Who's gonna make them?
Charlie Kirk
I don't know. Someone.
Russ
You?
Charlie Kirk
Of course not me.
Russ
But someone.
Charlie Kirk
Someone wise.
Russ
Sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.
Jack
Well, if it works.
Russ
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. And so this is a highly accurate portrayal of male female relationships.
Charlie Kirk
Keep in mind. Keep in mind, like, she was also, like, his former babysitter.
Tyler
Yeah, yeah.
Charlie Kirk
Weird, like, creepy grooming. Like.
Tyler
Like the first movie, he was, like, 10 years younger than her.
Jack
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
For no reason whatsoever.
Tyler
So funny.
Charlie Kirk
No reason.
Russ
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.
Charlie Kirk
But that's because it was to begin with. That's because it was originally supposed to be.
Tyler
But they did it.
Charlie Kirk
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.
Russ
Didn't care.
Charlie Kirk
And.
Russ
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.
Charlie Kirk
Even his masculine.
Russ
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. He's a smuggler. And he gets a second chance. And he does, right?
Jack
Like.
Russ
Like Wyatt Earp was a criminal, guys. And before he was the most famous lawman ever. Wyatt Earp was a criminal, you know, but he turned his life and bridge.
Charlie Kirk
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 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 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.
Russ
Oh, I thought you were gonna play that scene. Yeah, I. You know, look, I. Maybe guys, as 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 didn't.
Tyler
We did.
Russ
We did.
Jack
And it was so bad.
Tyler
So bad.
Jack
It's actually really funny.
Charlie Kirk
That's the only one that I That's the only Disney Star wars movie that I will defend.
Tyler
So bad.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, but.
Russ
But is it the nerds?
Charlie Kirk
The nerds don't like it because it's just like a comedy.
Russ
Yeah, but it was supposed to be.
Jack
It was supposed to be a comedy. And then they whisked out.
Russ
Yeah.
Jack
Lord and Miller. Yeah.
Tyler
Yeah.
Jack
21 John.
Russ
Like, they want. And they wanted for. To do something else, but he won. He was like, no, I'm gonna do King.
Charlie Kirk
Oh, you're saying to have him in it, as you were saying.
Russ
Yeah, it was. It was supposed to be like he was gonna do it, and it was going to be something totally different.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, no, I think I know what you're talking about, but, yeah, they never. They never did.
Russ
He did. Well, maybe the crystal.
Charlie Kirk
You know, maybe that's something that's. That could potentially. They could be discussing if they do this. Like, Russ was talking about the alternate universe, you know, timeline.
Tyler
Yeah, yeah, we're gonna. We'll probably get a recast. Who knows?
Charlie Kirk
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.
Tyler
Yes. Yes. I just feel like that's a terrible idea.
Angelo
It's.
Russ
It's a lot. It's a lot.
Tyler
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.
Russ
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.
Tyler
Again, but that's Disney's fault, though, so.
Russ
Yeah, but don't you stand.
Tyler
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 reconnect.
Jack
Just keep making it. They could have had 20 Indiana Jones movies.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
Jack
With a young guy.
Tyler
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 had been talking about Chris Pratt would have been a perfect 100%.
Russ
Oh, that would have been good.
Tyler
It would have been fantastic.
Charlie Kirk
In Chris Pratt in the Jurassic World Series, literally just is Indiana.
Tyler
That's his. That's. That's him doing the audition right there.
Russ
Yeah, that.
Jack
Yeah, we get this.
Tyler
Yeah.
Jack
And so we got. Well, I mean, Indiana Jones.
Russ
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.
Tyler
I love Shout. I would have loved. I would have done Stable, though, if they would have. He's not stable, but I would have loved if they.
Russ
Yeah.
Tyler
Done that. Because I like Shiloh.
Russ
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
Actually.
Charlie Kirk
I'll even. 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. Not saying the 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.
Tyler
It's. 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, a hundred 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.
Russ
While you feel. And I like how they did the
Charlie Kirk
way that they brought in opera. They used the Nazis in the 60s and they brought. They brought in, like, Operation Paperclip.
Tyler
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
And how that, you know, showed in Mads. Was it Mads Mickinson? Right. Was the. Was the main guy.
Tyler
Yes.
Charlie Kirk
Which is phenomenal. There's a question there.
Tyler
Perfect.
Charlie Kirk
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, that's not bad. That's. That. I'm sorry, that's not a bad plot. That's just not a bad plot.
Tyler
Yeah.
Russ
Which would undo half of what, the original Indiana Jones movies.
Charlie Kirk
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.
Russ
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.
Tyler
The Last Crusade is also just so good.
Russ
That's, that's my favorite.
Charlie Kirk
It's an Easter movie, by the way. It is. It is 100 an Easter movie.
Russ
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 in the 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 I 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. And if you guys don't know what it's talking about, what I'm talking about, it's incredible.
Angelo
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Charlie Kirk
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 not if Padre Pio.
Jack
AI Sorry, he made a Padre Pio movie. Christ.
Charlie Kirk
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. 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?
Tyler
I, I mean, I think it's different. Yeah. I think it gets to a, 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 going to be able to have actual deep filmography from, in these universes because. Because we're just going to have some
Jack
blue 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.
Angelo
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
Oh, hey, people are people in the chat. Who's the guy with the beard?
Russ
Those classics. And that's like, that's what's so sad. And so you, 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 their new age. They're old ideas, but they think they're new, they think they're progressive and they just destroy it.
Tyler
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. It has nothing.
Charlie Kirk
I get what you're saying. Yeah.
Tyler
Everything to do with the writing. It has everything to do with how the story is told.
Charlie Kirk
It wouldn't fix it. Like, it's still not going to fix.
Tyler
No.
Russ
I mean, 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 hidden better in a better story.
Tyler
I think Mark Hamill is a terrible actor other than being a voice actor. So that's.
Jack
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
Andrew was saying that earlier on. He's not a good events. By the way, Andrew has hantavirus. I heard. So. I heard that's why he's not on today. So he's got that. He was on that cruise.
Tyler
Amen. Angelo agrees with me.
Russ
Thank God.
Charlie Kirk
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,
Charlie Kirk
but no one did.
Jack
Oh, my gosh, man. If we're talking about things they can't make good movies out of.
Charlie Kirk
Excuse me. So wait, wait, Blake, you actually watched it?
Jack
I mean, suffered through it. Endured it.
Russ
Suffered. Suffered. So. Oh, that's. That's.
Charlie Kirk
See, this is so. What. 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 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 Serkis, 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.
Angelo
It's true.
Jack
It's a very short book.
Charlie Kirk
It's a 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.
Tyler
So Boxer.
Jack
Not even though 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 trials 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 an Animal Farm, I'm gonna leave. They don't. They just sort of force him out. And then the other big thing which people noted is it's now, it's now about capitalism. Like the, the threat to the farm is that it's gonna get foreclosed on by the bank. There's an evil bank. There's an evil bank in the, in the socialism movie.
Russ
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, bad 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.
Charlie Kirk
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.
Jack
The cartoon was better than this 1950s animal farm distributor. Is it gonna be Walt Disney?
Russ
Is it?
Charlie Kirk
So I don't know exactly which company it was, but famously a lot of the funding for that actually came from the CIA.
Jack
Oh, that's great. The CIA used to be great.
Charlie Kirk
That and it was seen as this like cold war. Good, good, you know, propaganda piece against the Soviets.
Russ
Oh, you're totally right.
Charlie Kirk
The actual CIA was behind it.
Russ
He's totally right. It was produced by. Produced by John Hallis and Joy Bachelor and funded in large part by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Tyler
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 that 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, but they take us out. And then that, 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 $1,000. And so it's like, you could just picture this like Reddit, like they make
Charlie Kirk
me pay $1,000 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 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.
Tyler
No, it's not.
Russ
Oh no, yeah, it's.
Jack
This is really that one. Actually they should just take that movie and re.
Tyler
I mean, we're showing B roll right now.
Charlie Kirk
Pretty good.
Russ
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 explaining they did. 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 then make. Draw a parallel. And we're just. We. We have this. I don't want to say it's a. It's. The problem is the humans were like
Charlie Kirk
the white army, kind of.
Tyler
Yes.
Russ
They're drawing parallels to a real thing, and you're not. 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. Of course, it's too late for us
Jack
to fully explore this topic, but what was the last 100 pure kids movie? Like, this is not. Not, you know, PG 13, 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.
Russ
Oh, well, you know, there's like. Well, go ahead. Does somebody else have any ideas?
Jack
Because I actually don't have a good answer. I'm trying to think of one.
Russ
I don't know. Well, like, I'm gonna show my age here. I'm gonna show my age here.
Tyler
But, yeah.
Russ
Oh, go ahead.
Jack
Watership Down.
Tyler
Oh, yeah. Watership Down.
Charlie Kirk
When did that come out?
Jack
No, that was 1978. 1978.
Charlie Kirk
That was.
Russ
Yeah. 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.
Charlie Kirk
My girl it's tough in the house
Jack
My girl My girl My girl's 81.
Russ
My girl yeah.
Jack
And that. That's not super Hound. 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.
Charlie Kirk
Well, does it. Does it have to be on screen?
Tyler
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
Charlie Kirk
get really bad because I was going to say the. The Bridge to Terabithia which is.
Jack
Oh, I mean the movie adaptation.
Russ
There's a movie?
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, there's a movie. Yeah, 2007. I think it's. Have you seen her name say Orsi 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.
Charlie Kirk
No, I was wrong, by the way. I was wrong.
Jack
Or the movie is. The movie is a straight adaptation. There's a lot of.
Charlie Kirk
That's Anna, Sophia, Rob.
Jack
Yeah, okay. The, the book. So the book is from 77. 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. I don't feel it has the 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 like the fox, his brother dies.
Russ
Baymax, his brother dies. Yeah.
Jack
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 air is actually really scary in that movie. Yeah, it has a bleak dark ending. Like they don't, they don't reconcile, they don't.
Russ
They don't.
Jack
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 going to grow up and grow apart from people.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, I think that's a good one. 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 lit and kids content from that time period, there was a lot more like the happily ever after wasn't always fired. That's you know, happily ever after and everyone lives and everything's fine.
Angelo
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
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. But I think, Blake, the building, the wolves 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.
Tyler
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.
Charlie Kirk
Because they were all based on white culture.
Tyler
Well, that.
Charlie Kirk
Ancient stories that.
Tyler
Because the of those. 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.
Russ
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.
Charlie Kirk
I was gonna say Rebido in the chat had a great. A great example of what Blake's talking about. Pinocchio.
Tyler
Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
Really dark scenes in it.
Tyler
Yeah.
Russ
Oh, my God. 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 learn, and you're gonna have one catastrophe after another. And I'm. And you're gonna learn the hard way, kid. And that's what he does. That's a great one. Who said that? Good for you. That's a great example.
Jack
We're Hitting our heart out time. But this is a very fun topic. We. 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 substance constitute. We can't. 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?
Russ
Well said.
Tyler
Well said, well said.
Charlie Kirk
No, and that's, that's.
Russ
And just to bring it up again, that's why we did.
Charlie Kirk
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 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?
Russ
It's.
Charlie Kirk
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. 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
For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.
Date: May 9, 2026
Host: Charlie Kirk
Co-hosts/Panelists: Jack, Russ, Tyler, Angelo
Special Focus: The cultural decline and current controversy surrounding Star Wars, Mark Hamill’s inflammatory post, and broader commentary on pop culture and conservative responses.
This episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show" centers on a discussion of the cultural state and future of the Star Wars franchise, triggered by actor Mark Hamill's (Luke Skywalker) allegedly wishing death on Donald Trump via a deleted Bluesky social media post. The hosts use this incident as a lens to analyze the leftward movement of major pop culture brands (especially Star Wars and Disney), shifts in American culture, the crumbling of shared narratives, and what conservatives should do in response.
The panel debates whether Star Wars can be saved, the impact of identity politics in franchise media, and broader questions about the health of storytelling and masculinity in American culture. Lively chat and nostalgic reminiscence permeate the discussion, giving the episode an energetic but reflective tone.
Timestamps: [02:38]–[09:10]
"He wants President Trump dead. He wants conservatives dead." – Charlie Kirk ([12:39])
Timestamps: [09:10]–[16:14]
“It’s time for conservatives to rip off the slave mentality and stop supporting people who literally want you and your family dead.” ([13:49], Charlie)
"I need to buy the merch. ...No. Conservatives need to have a little bit more self-respect." – Charlie Kirk ([14:05])
Timestamps: [16:14]–[27:42]
"Are these the things that we actually have kids inherit now?" – Jack ([21:22])
Timestamps: [27:42]–[39:47]
"Maybe Disney is having a hard time finding the spirit of these stories because culturally it's completely foreign to who works at Disney now." – Russ ([43:22])
Timestamps: [39:47]–[47:47]
"The original trilogy is...a kid who rises up and becomes a hero, and they're turning it into girl brands...because they want to destroy masculinity." – Tyler ([46:23])
"Any form of, let's just call it male autism, is better than memorizing Star Wars information." – Jack ([36:13])
Timestamps: [47:47]–[65:28]
Timestamps: [65:28]–[77:16]
"Almost nobody dies in the new Animal Farm...they just try to make it like a...kids movie." – Jack ([66:24])
Timestamps: [77:16]–[79:42]