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- [00:01]
Matt Walsh
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- [04:19]
Guest/Co-host
Who are you? I'm right. Not you. Not you.
- [04:32]
Matt Walsh
Oh God, no.
- [04:34]
Guest/Co-host
No. Where's big?
- [04:43]
Matt Walsh
Where the.
- [04:50]
Guest/Co-host
Brace go?
- [05:02]
Matt Walsh
Somebody's already bail.
- [05:12]
Guest/Co-host
And everybody's.
- [05:20]
Matt Walsh
People want their money back. Please don't say it. Oh God, no. They all anticipate what Ray is going to say, like a detainee at a CIA black site who knows the waterboarding is coming. The sheer stupidity and predictability of the line is overwhelming everybody in the theater. They're hoping it won't happen, even though it's inevitable. And then after. After the moment finally comes, the revolt begins and someone yells, I effing hate Star Wars. And right on cue, the orchestra kicks in and you're informed that the film was directed by the one and only J.J. abrams. But even J.J. abrams, as talented as he supposedly is, couldn't direct an audience reaction video as good as this one. And it's a funny thing, because at the time, everybody assumed that this was kind of rock bottom for Star Wars. After all, it's hard to get any worse than fans walking out of the theater and taunting your film in viral social media videos. But somehow, under the stewardship of Disney executives, Star wars has been subjected to countless additional, even more extraordinary humiliations since the 2019 release of Rise of Skywalker. And now those Humiliations, which we're going to talk about in detail, have finally brought the Star wars franchise to the point that it's not even hated anymore. It's not despised, it's simply ignored. Here's a picture somebody uploaded of a. Of a. An early release midnight screening of the Mandalorian the other day. There it is there. Compare this to the footage we saw from the Phantom Menace. There's one guy in the entire theater, which probably is not a great sign. Certainly quite a contrast to what we saw with every other Star wars film, particularly the good ones. And there's plenty of other posts like this. Here's a. Here's another. He writes, quote, wife and I at the premiere of Mando and Grogu. A lot of different premiere, a lot different premiere than other Star wars openings. And once again, no one is there. Even if you don't care at all about Star wars, these images are are still depressing because again, they represent the death of an iconic part of American culture. And they keep coming. You can go online to book tickets at your local theater as seen here, and you'll probably find that most of the seats are empty. Meanwhile, the guys at Film Thread also went to an early screening of this movie, and as you listen to their extremely unimpressed reaction, notice that the lobby is mostly empty in the background. Watch.
- [07:48]
Guest/Co-host
All right, Alan, we got out of the Mandalorian and Grogu. What are your social media out of the theater reaction?
- [07:56]
Matt Walsh
Mine is I don't hate
- [07:59]
Guest/Co-host
was okay
- [08:01]
Matt Walsh
and it was very long. And it's for kids.
- [08:05]
Guest/Co-host
I agree. I think this is definitely for kids. It's like three or four episodes of the show stitched together into a movie.
- [08:15]
Matt Walsh
And I thought it was small and underwhel. As underwhelmed as they were. The. The review was actually positive. It was on the positive end of the spectrum for this film. Compared to other reviews, Slate had a more definitive reaction. Quote, my expectations were fairly low, but I am genuinely stunned how bad the Mandalorian and Grogu is. That's enough Star wars for now, thanks. IGN writes, this is a Star wars movie missing the thrills, surprises, challenges, addition of really anything of note to the franchise, not to mention a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change. The Mandalorian Grogu is the most boring Star wars movie yet. Variety raves, quote, inefficient adventure that only pretends to be a real Star wars movie. It's basically the most positive thing anyone could say about it. Inefficient. It's efficient that's the best thing anyone can say about your movie, is that it's efficient. Then that's again, a bad sign. Now, first of all, before we go any further, I have to ask, who exactly decided that the Mandalorian and Grogu is a good idea for a movie title? It might honestly be, without hyperbole, the worst title ever. I mean, from a. From a pure aesthetic perspective, it's. It's a nightmare, it's obnoxious, it's too long, it's clunky said out loud. It has all the melody and grace of like a box full of silverware tumbling down the stairs. Most people, myself included, don't know who Grogu is, but he's a character in the movie and so is the Mandalorian. So that's good enough for the title, apparently. What? You know, what else do you need? Imagine if they named the original films like this. You know, you'd have Star Wars, Luke and Leia, and maybe you'd have Star Wars, Han and Chewie, and then the Grand Finale, Star Wars, Darth Vader and Palpatine. It's a mystery why they didn't do it that way. And by the way, if you're going to have a character in your movie named Grogu, which you probably shouldn't, the worst thing you could do is put that character's name in the title of your film. Grogu sounds like. It sounds like. It sounds like your least favorite dish that your Polish grandmother cooks. Now, Star wars titles, A New Hope, the Empire Strikes Back, even the Phantom Menace used to have a certain vibe. You know, they evoked a particular feeling. They sounded operatic and epic and fun. And now they just name the two main characters and that's it. Instead of bringing to mind an epic space opera, they bring to mind, you know, children's cartoons from the 90s, the Mandalorian and Grogu sounds like it sounds like it belongs in the same pantheon as Pinky and the Brain, Ren and Stimpy, Cow and Chicken, except worse than all of those. Now, to be clear, as bad as that title is, there is a reason why they chose it, and it's entirely related to priorities like merchandising and brand recognition and algorithms and so on. That's the whole problem with Star wars and most Hollywood films. Generally. They are constructed in corporate boardrooms by non creative people who are trying to figure out how to monetize a brand. No good movie has ever been made that way or could be made that way. You know, good movies must Originate from the creative inspiration of a single artist. But under Disney's leadership, it's not. What happened with Star wars. Are you paying $90 a month for your phone service or more? At a certain point you have to recognize that you are just getting ripped off. As simple as that. Especially when companies like PureTalk exist. PureTalk is my wireless company. And right now they're giving you unlimited high speed data for just $34.99 a month. Meanwhile, the big wireless companies keep charging more and more like they're providing some kind of luxury service. PureTalk used to charge $55 a month for unlimited high speed data, but they've been actively working to give their customers more service for less cost. So if you looked at PureTalk before and never made the switch, well, check again. And if you're thinking there has to be a catch because the price is too low, there isn't. Try for 30 days. No contract, no cancellation fee, nothing to lose. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes. And if you need help, you can actually talk to a real person on their US based customer service team, which sadly is also becoming Rare. Go to PureTalk.com Walsh to claim unlimited high speed data for just $34.99. Again, it's PureTalk.com Walsh to switch to my wireless company and America's wireless company, PureTalk. When you go online, it can feel like you're in control of everything you do. You click on what you want, you watch what you want, you have a sense of autonomy. But sinister things are happening in the background. And any sense of privacy or independence you feel is actually a facade. Unfortunately, anytime you go online, somebody is watching. When you log on, your Internet service provider is tracking what you do, what websites you visit, how long you stay there, what you click on. Even in private browsing mode, a lot of people think private browsing means private. Well, it doesn't. Your ISP can still see everything. That's why I use ExpressVPN. With ExpressVPN, 100% of my online activity gets rerouted through secure encrypted servers. And my ISP can't see what I'm doing online, which means I get to use the Internet with actual privacy and freedom. ExpressVPN also hides your IP address. That's the number that identifies you. Online data brokers use it to build profiles on you and sell your information to advertisers and corporations. And these companies leak information constantly. Just recently, a major data broker was hacked. And the names and Social Security numbers of 2.9 billion people were stolen. I certainly don't want to hand those companies more of my Data. Well, thankfully, ExpressVPN is simple. One click and it works. Phones, tablets, computers, TVs. You can even use it on up to 14 devices. At the same time. Right now, you can get ExpressVPN at its lowest price ever, just 349amonth. Plus you can get an extra four months of service when you go to my special link@expressvpn.com Walsh and get four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's exp r a s s v-.com Walsh first, they threw out George Lucas's outlines for a new trilogy. Then their plans for an original story hit a major snag. Disney, as a public company, had promised its shareholders that they would quickly pump out Star wars films at a cadence of 1 per year in order to realize profits on their $4 billion investment. But when the original screenwriter of the Force Awakens decided he needed more time, Disney's leadership, Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy, got rid of him instead, and they put J.J. abrams in charge of the project. With an extremely tight deadline, he had to get the film out in just a couple of years, by 2015. So instead of coming up with an original story with a detailed plan for an entire trilogy, he cop A New Hope. His only real contributions were, you know, a black stormtrooper, a few relatively uninteresting mysteries with no answers at all. He simply, simply didn't have time to do anything else. Or at least that's the official excuse. I mean, the truth is, based on J.J. abrams history in the industry, he probably would have copied A New Hope anyway, even if he had an extra decade to produce this film. We all remember Lost, which was the classic example of his storytelling, if you can call it that. Simply raise a bunch of questions without knowing where they lead. Because he doesn't care. You know, his only goal is to get audiences to watch the next episode or the next film, which is the cheapest and laziest way to tell a story. Anybody can tell a story where weird stuff happens, right? Anyone can get people interested in a story by just having weird stuff happening all the time or mysteries. Oh, what does that mean? That's easy to. Anyone can do that. The challenge, the part where you have to be an artist and a real story teller is in landing the plane, bringing all the threads together in a coherent and meaningful way, which J.J. abrams doesn't know how to do and has no interest in doing. What makes all this even more Confusing is that in an interview with Collider after the conclusion of the sequel trilogy, Abrams explained that when you're making movies, it's really important to have a plan before you start. And he treats this like a massive revelation that he's only figuring out now after making multiple blockbusters and television shows over a period of several decades. And here's what he said, quote, I feel like what I've learned as a lesson a few times now, and it's something that, especially in this pandemic year, working with writers has become clear. The lesson is that you have to plan things as best you can and you always need to be able to respond to the unexpected. Having a plan, I've learned in some cases the hard way, is the most critical thing, because otherwise you don't know what you're setting up. You don't know what to emphasize, because if you don't know the inevitable of the story, you're just as good as your last sequence or effect or joke or whatever. But you want to be leading to something inevitable. I mean, this has to be one of the worst quotes from any director. This is the, like, storytelling insight that you're offering. It's a bit like hearing a director say, you know, it's really important to have a camera. The lesson I've learned, after all my experience directing multi million dollar projects, the lesson I learned is that really without a camera, you, well, you can't shoot anything. I had to learn that lesson the hard way a few times. Showed up on set without a camera, they said, where's your camera? How are you going to film this? And I said, oh, oh man, you're right. Never going to forget my camera again. Yes, J.J. it's very important to have a plan when you make movies. Put another way, it's crucial to have some kind of overarching artistic vision so that you actually are telling a story, because otherwise you're just playing Mad Libs. And if the executives at Disney knew what they were doing, they would have demanded that J.J. abrams come up with some kind of plan before they hired him. But that was never their goal. They simply wanted to produce the safest money maker they possibly could. So they, so they, you know, came up with a technically competent but completely empty series of movies. They assembled the movies from pre existing parts according to a formula like IKEA furniture. And the end result had all the artistic inspiration and beauty of IKEA furniture. A part of the explanation here, other than a time crunch, might be that Disney was simply too afraid to do anything else you probably remember, you might remember the red letter media review of the Phantom Menace where the guy uses the weird voice to deconstruct the film. It was an effective takedown. It went viral before viral videos were really a thing. And we can assume that everybody at Disney saw it and reactions like it. The the video opens by saying George Lucas is basically an idiot surrounded by yes men. Watch.
- [18:34]
Red Letter Media Reviewer
So where do I possibly start, Mr. Hayden?
- [18:37]
Matt Walsh
Crunchy.
- [18:37]
Red Letter Media Reviewer
Nothing in the Phantom Menace makes any sense at all. It comes off like a script written by an 8 year old. It's like George Lucas finished the script in one draft, like turned it in and they decided to go with it without anyone saying that it made no sense at all or was a stupid, incoherent mess. I guess at this point, who's gonna question George or tell him what to do?
- [19:00]
Matt Walsh
I take it. Yeah, you say action. After you roll camera, I'll say action.
- [19:05]
Guest/Co-host
Sometimes I forget. People forget if I forget to say action or cut. Just step it and say action or cut.
- [19:11]
Red Letter Media Reviewer
He controls every aspect of the movie. He probably got rid of those people that questioned him creatively a long time ago. I also think that everyone just assumed that a Star wars prequel will be an instant hit regardless of what the plot was really. How hard could it be to screw up from there?
- [19:30]
Matt Walsh
You know, basic point, the base point of the review was, was that Lucasfilm strayed too far from the formula that most successful movies use, where there's a clear protagonist who experiences some kind of hardship, conquers adversity, and gets the girl in the end. The video acknowledged that some directors can stray from the formula because they're talented, but George Lucas doesn't have that talent. Watch.
- [19:53]
Red Letter Media Reviewer
Let's start a movie making 101, shall we? You see, in most movies, the audience needs a character to connect with. Typically, this character is something called a protagonist. When you're in a weird movie with like aliens and monsters and weirdos, the audience really needs someone who's like a normal person like them to guide them through the story. So in addition to being like an everyday kind of schlub, usually the protagonist is someone that's down on their luck in a bad place in their lives or someone where everything just doesn't always go perfectly for them.
- [20:35]
Matt Walsh
Either you choose choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Well, maybe it's time to get a real job.
- [20:44]
Guest/Co-host
No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.
- [20:48]
Red Letter Media Reviewer
Eventually, they'll be confronted with some kind of obstacle or struggle that they gotta deal with. Eventually our prudent will find themselves in the lowest point, where it seems like all all is lost, but eventually they'll pull through and conquer whatever force opposes them. So unless they're the Coen brothers, David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Lars Von Trier, David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sant, Quentin Tarantino, John Waters, Wes Anderson, Sam Peckinpah, Terry Gillian, Martin Scorsese, Daisy Werner Herzog or Jim Jarmusch. You really shouldn't stray away too far from this kind of formula.
- [21:33]
Matt Walsh
Now, this came out just a couple years before Disney purchased the rights to Star Wars. It quickly racked up millions of views, became, you know, kind of defying the consensus opinion about the Phantom Menace. Pretty much everyone agreed with it. And I'm not going to defend the prequels here. I think most of the criticisms in the review make sense. I've made many of the same criticisms myself. But Disney and J.J. abrams drew the wrong conclusions from the video. They decided that based on the popularity of that video and other reactions like it, Star wars fans simply want a very predictable stock adventure story that follows a familiar arc. And on top of that, Disney most likely concluded that everybody hates George Lucas and that it's a bad idea to entrust a single figure with total creative control over the franchise. So they allowed J.J. abrams to make the first film, then handed the second film to Rian Johnson without any coordination or planning whatsoever. The result was a trilogy that made the prequels, which mostly did suck in my opinion, look like classics in comparison. Because you see, even when the prequels didn't work, and they often didn't work, they didn't work because the artist George Lucas made bizarre creative choices. But at least it's still art. At least they were creative choices, which is a lot better than a film that's too afraid to make any choices and has no creativity at all. You know, when a film with a bad creative vision, when the creative vision is bad, it's at least bad in kind of an interesting and distinctive way. But this Disney slop now is bad in the most generic and bland way possible because there's no creative vision behind it. Now, if you get a chance, pull up some behind the scenes videos of how Lucas made the prequels. Here's a few of them. Watch. I feel there's more to this.
- [23:21]
Guest/Co-host
My Master the two Jedi may be
- [23:23]
Documentary Narrator
using the Queen for their own purposes.
- [23:25]
Matt Walsh
The main things here are we have the walking hologram generator, which will be added in computer graphics, but it's in front of everybody who's walking. We have a map painting of Theed City to put Mack there. And the light fixtures on the wall in the hallway are not what George wants. So we're going to replace them with something else.
- [23:45]
Guest/Co-host
When the camera pans over to look
- [23:47]
Matt Walsh
out this archway, we want to have filled that archway full of tanks and battle droids. So it's a relatively straightforward shot. Even the pass by shots go from
- [24:00]
Guest/Co-host
no sound to loudest sound you ever heard to no sound within the same shot. Well, see what you can do with it. Ready? I think it's all here. Set.
- [24:09]
Matt Walsh
Yours already kind of starts quietly. Right up behind Anakin.
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Guest/Co-host
It's almost like this Bulba sound should be making it go up and down. It should always be there now. It's there when you see it. It's not there when you don't. You want to build that tension of the fact that it's right on his tail there. And if you don't hear it, you don't really get the sense that it's
- [25:14]
Matt Walsh
right there all the time.
- [25:15]
Guest/Co-host
And it's gonna eat him up, you know. And if anything, that giant sound should
- [25:19]
Matt Walsh
be getting bigger and bigger during the
- [25:20]
Guest/Co-host
whole thing as he's struggling to stay ahead of him. It's a nice rhythm because that's thing that you're afraid of is the fact that that guy's just going to push him. Yeah. You know, the engine's going to come right over and right into his head.
- [25:32]
Matt Walsh
A long way over the last two years.
- [25:34]
Guest/Co-host
That little sequence, it's not a little sequence anymore.
- [25:41]
Matt Walsh
Whatever you think of the finished product, they're hammering out new scenes and new locations. They were working out the details of the pod racing scene and all the. The sound effects that would play throughout. They wanted to get the lighting of the palace just right. They weren't preoccupied with recreating the original trilogy. They wanted to make something new. And that's what they did. Was the dialogue kind of stilted? Yes. Were many of the characters weak? Yes. Was a lot of the acting not great? Yes. Was the opening crawl about a trade war pretty, you know, pretty boring? Yes. But no one can accuse the prequels of trying to rip off the original trilogy. The choreography was different, the set pieces were different. And if you happen to be a fan of trade wars and political debates, you know, which is possible, and now tariffs are all the rage again, then, you know, there's something here for you to watch that wasn't in the original films. By contrast, take a look at the making of documentary for the Force Awakens. The entire time, they're fixated on what happened before, on nostalgia. Can't go five seconds without talking about the older films and how badly they want to emulate them. They come across like people who are desperate to figure out what made Star wars appealing so they can copy as much of the original films as possible. They never talk about any of their bold new ideas because they don't have any watch.
- [26:54]
Guest/Co-host
What we would do is we would have sort of weekly check in meetings with JJ where we'd have a conference call, you know, video conference call, and we would go through the art. JJ is very adamant that we kind of go back to the core aesthetics that made the original trilogy so great. And a lot of that was driven by Ralph and his sensibility. And for us, it's. It's kind of going back home in many ways, both for the visual look and the style of the movie. There was a feeling when I was a kid, when I saw Star wars for the first time, that it was all practical and real. I mean, there were things like being outside the sandcrawler and seeing those treads, those massive treads right there. It was a physical, tangible, real thing. You knew it when you saw the movie. So we wanted to go back and embrace the look of those original films, which was all part of the feeling of how they were able to transport you into that universe. There are things that are relevant, things you're identifying with. Certainly for all young kids. When the movie came out, they either wanted to be Luke Skywalker or they saw themselves as Han Solo. And I think that was a part of our challenge, was how are we going to bring new characters into this series that had that same kind of power? What was made clear to me very early on was that it was going to be shot on film, which is something that I love. I love working with film. When you're making Star wars, there's really no choice but to shoot it on film. You have to, because the originals were shot on film, and it's very much part of how we remember them. Looking and feeling. There's something that you need to capture on celluloid. No question. The villain in training is interesting for me, because in talking about villains in Star wars, you don't and can't get better than Darth Vader. It's sort of the thing they had created an image that was unmistakable. You don't need any explanation. The guy walks through the smoke, you get the whole thing, and he's the most threatening villain of all time. The idea that this is a character who's influenced by that darkness started to allow a masked villain, which feels essential in a Star wars universe, to take form and not feel like we were being naive and acting like there wasn't a Darth Vader. Maybe putting on the mask makes him feel more powerful. It makes perfect sense that this guy has had a huge impact on everybody. And yes, this figure looms large for our villain too.
- [29:26]
Matt Walsh
There's so many nods to Vader, and I first meet him, and I think JJ was after something more youthful and unpredictable and someone who isn't polished. And even in his lightsaber, it's not quite finished.
- [29:38]
Guest/Co-host
The scene that made me feel like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy, is when all of the casts are around that table planning. I just want to say one more thing. When everyone's done, the moment that meant the most to me personally was Ackbar was on set. Steps here.
- [29:54]
Matt Walsh
Step.
- [29:56]
Guest/Co-host
And, you know, security's been so tight, we're not allowed to take pictures or anything, but I had to take a picture of Akbar on set and show it to my brothers because we loved Akbar. You know, it's a trap.
- [30:04]
Matt Walsh
How is it possible to power a weapon of that size? They're fangirling about Admiral Akbar being on set. They're making sure all the visuals look like the original trilogy, one callback after another, without any new ideas. From a business perspective, it makes sense, at least in the short term. The film made $2 billion, and as a result, Disney decided that there must be insatiable demand for Star wars products, even if they're unoriginal and uninteresting. You know, having no respect for the audience at all. Which is another problem with all these companies. They have no respect for the audience, think the audience is stupid. And so they think that, well, you'll just guzzle down whatever slop they give you, and it doesn't matter. A lot of the criticism directed towards higher education is deserved. Many universities charge absurd amounts of money to teach students things that won't help them get a job and probably shouldn't have been majors in the first place. Meanwhile, half the country is buried in student debt. So when a university actually tries to do things differently, it stands out. My show is proud to be sponsored by Grand Canyon University. GCU is a private, non profit Christian university based in Phoenix, Arizona. Unlike a lot of schools, GCU seems to understand that education is supposed to prepare people for real life. GCU is one of the largest universities in the country with more than 132,000 students attending either online or on campus. It's not some tiny commuter school pretending to be university. Their campus has been ranked in the top 20 best college campuses in the country by Niche.com, best dorms, best campus, best college food in Arizona. This is a university that's growing fast and thinking long term. 75% of their programs and facilities have been built in just the last 10 years. A university focused on leading instead of chasing everybody else. Grounded in Christian values, GCU is working to prepare students to lead with integrity, serve with purpose, and build lives that actually matter. Find your purpose at gcu, Private Christian, affordable nonprofit. Visit gcu. Edu to learn more. There are very few products more deceptively terrible than the standard garden hose. Most people have had the exact same experience. You pull it 10ft and suddenly it's a giant rubber knot. It's one of those products everybody quietly agrees to suffer through for no reason. There's another option with pocket hose. It's the Pocket Hose ballistic. And unlike most reinvented products, this one actually makes sense. The pocket hose ballistic is reinforced with a liquid crystal polymer used in bulletproof vests, making the anti burst sleeve practically bulletproof. The liquid crystal polymer fiber is also five times stronger than steel. At the same time, the hose itself is lightweight, easy to move around and easy to store. Turn the water on and it expands. Turn the water off and it shrinks right back down to pocket size. And now for a limited time, when you purchase a new pocket hose ballistic, you'll get a free 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle. Just text Walsh to 64,000. That's Walsh to 64,000. For your two free gifts with purchase. Text Walsh to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. That's why Bob Iger thought that it made sense for Disney to flood the zone to release one film every year along with a slew of television shows began mass producing this stuff. And to that end, Disney created something called the Volume, which is basically a cylindrical sound stage that's surrounded by LED screens that display video game style CGI backgrounds. It was supposed to be much better than a traditional green screen and it would fool audiences into thinking that Disney was shooting on location or building complicated sets which they weren't watch.
- [33:35]
Documentary Narrator
While filming this scene from Disney's the Mandalorian, the actors could see their surroundings, but the surroundings weren't actually there. All of this is just LED screens displaying backgrounds pre made in a video game engine. Compare that with this fight scene from Endgame where actors jumped around in a sea of green, imagining how VFX artists would make this planet look once filming had ended. The Mandalorian is one of the first major productions to choose LED walls over green screens. And the benefits for the actors are just the tip of the iceberg. LED walls make the lighting better, filming smoother, and in certain cases cost a lot less than using green screens. Now, you may be thinking, this isn't so new. I've seen something like this before and you're right, kind of. The predecessor to what we see on the Mandalorian is a driving scene like this one from Dr. No. You've got the actor in the car and behind them a screen with footage of the road they've travelled. But the technology was limited. Say you want to move the camera angle during the scene. That projected footage can't move with the camera. But by using Unreal Engine tech borrowed from the video game field, that problem is solved. Artists can create a photorealistic 3D background that moves strictly with the camera's field of view, known as the frustum. So if the camera swings around and changes angles, the background shifts in precisely the same way. This allows motion tracked cameras to execute traditional cinematography techniques within the virtual set. Achieving cinematic movements like the parallax effect, where an object in the foreground moves at a different speed than the background, amplifies the illusion of filming at an actual location, he says. Lighting is one of the key benefits of working with virtual sets. The light coming from the LEDs provide realistic colors and reflections on the actors and props, something you simply can't achieve with green screen.
- [35:21]
Matt Walsh
Like most tech demos, it sounds convincing enough, it seems to solve all the problems of traditional green screens. The executives at Disney concluded that it would help them mass produce shows like Kenobi and the Mandalorian and nobody would notice that they were cheaping out. But actually, people did notice. This is a video from the YouTuber Zachs giving a few examples of how using the volume for some very awkward staging decisions that made no sense in the context of the story. And full disclosure, once you watch this video, there's a good chance you won't be able to stomach any of these Disney Star wars shows anymore if somehow you were able to do that to begin with. Here it is.
- [36:00]
YouTuber Zach
The volume is basically a sound stage that's run by ILM under their brand Stagecraft. It's a super cool technology, but it can be super limiting. But with the volume in Stagecraft, there's no choice. It can look like your characters are anywhere, but they're really on a small stage. And you can change the backdrop, but it's always a circle. Remember that. But if you need more than one actor to move through that space, it gets silly fast. And so what you get is scenes like this from Kenobi, the one that launched a thousand memes. The chase starts in a circle, and that's because the actors can't gain or lose any distance between each other because there's no distance to gain. So they look like parents who are trying to lose a race to their kid to boost their self esteem.
- [36:51]
Matt Walsh
So now he's got to escape. But there's a freaking laser fence. Those are hard to get around. They are, except for this one, which is very easy to walk around. Oh, well, good. Yeah. So they panic for a second trying to get through. But then Obi Wan realizes he can shoot the control panel panel and get through. Why didn't you just walk around? Well, this is much more exciting, sir. I don't know, man. Just walk around the hill. But it gets even dumber with all the stormtroopers taken out. Obi Wan runs up to the checkpoint which is made of powerful lasers. And he can't quite figure out how to shut them off. So he decides to shoot the controls and hope that it will deactivate the lasers. Now, I want you to take a very close look at this image right here and tell me, what do you think Obi Wan should have done? Now, it might make sense for Obi Wan to want to disable these lasers if he had intended on using the vehicle, but he doesn't.
- [37:45]
YouTuber Zach
To be fair, bringing the truck through wasn't the volume's fault. No, there was a scripted reason for that. Not a good reason, but a scripted reason. And what possible reason could they have? I'm going to have to circle back to that. So I'm going to guess that the reason that he didn't go around the laser fence was because there is no around the laser fence. And they also couldn't go over it because there is no over it. It's a curved LED screen. And I'm going to posit that these are the edges of that screen. And once you can recognize it, you start seeing it everywhere. Like maybe if it's not in the volume, you have them be surrounded by a dozen stormtroopers and he has no chance. Or they have Leia or something because it's the volume. They're coming from one direction and there's only three of them with this Filming technique, you can't have actors enter or exit that circle while on camera. So they kind of got to teleport outside the volume circle. Perspective change. Obi Wan and Leia are saved, and now all the performers are inside that circle and so they can interact.
- [38:48]
Matt Walsh
There's another example where Vader is in front of a wall of flames, but he could clearly just walk around it if he wanted to. But with the volume, the actors can't walk around anything. With the exception of andor pretty much all of Disney, Star wars shows have relied on this crutch, and it's obviously making the shows worse. Now, for comparison, here's how Lucas was filming his big climactic showdowns 27 years ago. And this is what filmmaking looked like in the pre Disney era. Watch.
- [39:16]
Guest/Co-host
And action.
- [39:43]
Matt Walsh
Do you want to do Star Wars?
- [39:44]
Guest/Co-host
They said. I said, you're right.
- [39:50]
Matt Walsh
Now, with the wonders of modern technology embraced by Disney, none of this is possible anymore. Characters can't fall from heights or chase each other around because they're confined to a tiny stage surrounded by LED screens on all sides. And by the way, since I'm on the topic of cgi, it needs to be said that the prequels actually had some extremely well done sequences. The opening of Revenge of the Sith is one of them. So so was the lightsaber duel at the end of Phantom Menace and the pod racing. Somehow a movie from three decades ago in several respects looks better than what Disney is producing now. But the Star wars content isn't only terrible because of bad CGI and staging, it's also terrible because the characters are atrocious. This is one of those things that very clearly Disney miscalculated and they have no idea what they did wrong. And you could tell because Disney built this massive billion dollar theme park called Galaxy's Edge in California and Florida, and it was intended to highlight all the new characters in the sequel trilogy. You know, Kylo Ren and Rey the girl and so on. And for the the same reason, Disney built a Star wars hotel that was set in the timeline of the new trilogy and which forced guests to be locked away in a windowless building that was supposed to resemble a spaceship. The whole pitch was that you get to hang out with Rey and all these great new characters, but their fans didn't respond to any of this because all of these new characters are garbage. And the hotel was a frankly insane idea because who doesn't want to stay in a hotel with no windows? And so they, they shut down the hotel and now they're Bringing back characters from the original trilogy for their theme park. And this is how they're introducing them. Watch. It. They don't look anything like the, you know, actual characters, but I guess these are the best actors Disney could find. They were desperate to give their customers an alternative to Kylo Ren and so they, they had to scramble. Now think about what a humiliating about face this is. They were convinced to the point that they spent a billion dollars on the idea that people were clamoring to walk around the Disney Star wars universe they created. And now they're realizing that actually nobody wants to do that. It's quite likely that no one at Disney has any idea what went wrong. In fact, it's guaranteed they have no idea. This is from an exit interview that Kathleen Kennedy did with Deadline a few months ago after announcing her departure from Lucasfilm. She was asked about the low points in her tenure and this is what she said. Quote, the lows are that you've got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. And if you're not going to do that, then you know going in that you're going to disappoint them. I'm not sure there's anything you could do about that because you can't please everybody. All you could do is try to tell good stories and try to stick to the essence of what George created. He embedded incredible values into Star wars and what it has to say. The whole idea of hope and fun and entertainment and what he's done over all these years, that's what I tried to preserve. And I wouldn't do that any differently. And I wouldn't change anything that we've done over the years. Well, of course you wouldn't, Kathleen. Yes, according to Kathleen Kennedy, a very, very small percentage of angry fans who she's previously suggested are misogynists are upset because they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. Apparently the backlash is coming from a tiny sliver of the Star wars fan base, which perfectly explains why the entire franchise is bombing right now. Which, you know, makes a lot of sense. 1% of fans hate change and therefore nobody cares about a Star wars movie for the first time ever. Never mind the fact that Kathleen Kennedy's idea of new and interesting content is a cheap looking LED wall, along with shows built around the trials and tribulations of black lesbian witches. Actually, that's selling the acolyte short. They, they also managed to shoehorn gender neutral pronouns into the show as well, as you've probably seen. But if you haven't, here it is again. Who is that?
- [44:25]
Guest/Co-host
Is he or they?
- [44:29]
Matt Walsh
Now, this kind of dialogue was inserted into these shows as a deliberate effort by Kathleen Kennedy to make a political point. And here's what she told the New York Times, quote, my belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people. That's an easy decision for me, operating within these giant franchises now with social media and the level of expectation, it's terrifying. I think Leslie, the showrunner, the acolyte, has struggled a little bit with it. I think a lot of the women who step into Star wars struggle with this a bit more because of the fan base being so male dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal. Now, it's actually difficult to string together so many idiotic comments in a row, even if you're trying to. No, storytelling does not need to be representative of all people. It's impossible for storytelling to be representative of all people. For one thing, there are more than 8 billion people on the planet. And as a practical matter, no film or television show can represent, whatever that means, all of them. But even if it were somehow possible to, say, cast all 8 billion people in your show and represent every single one of them, that would not improve the storytelling at all. It's irrelevant to this. In fact, it's not just irrelevant to storytelling. Representation is not just irrelevant to storytelling. It's anti storytelling. Okay? A story should not represent the wishes and desires and fantasies, much less political ideologies, of every single person who hears the story. It should instead represent the singular and distinct vision of the storyteller. That's what a story is. That's what art is. When people go to a movie, a good storyteller is saying, hey, I've got a. I got a great story to tell you. And everybody gathers around because they want to hear that person's story. I want to hear your story. And if I. If I'm sitting around the campfire to hear your great story, I don't want other people around the campfire to chime in and add to it. No, I don't want to hear their stories. I want to hear your story. That's what we're all sitting here for. Does. Does the Godfather represent all people? Does Moby Dick represent all people? Does Michelangelo's David? Does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Do any of these iconic works of art, through their various different mediums, represent everyone on the planet? Were they crowdsourced? Were they made democratically? After taking into account the priorities and preferences of the voting majority? No, clearly not. If Francis Ford Coppola or Melville or Michelangelo had taken that approach, their masterpieces never would have been made. And if they had been made, they wouldn't be masterpieces. They would be watered down, lowest common denominator, sludge, stripped of everything challenging and distinct about them in an attempt to appeal to the largest number of people. That's not how artists create. They create based on their distinctive vision. And if their vision is brilliant and beautiful and their skills can match it, then their creation will be representative of no one's desires but their own, and yet will connect with and inspire and fascinate billions of humans for centuries. Now, George Lucas obviously created something like that with his original series. He obviously created something that connected with billions of people for, if not centuries, decades. Disney used to create art like that decades ago, but they, along with most of the rest of mainstream Hollywood today, no longer create art that inspires and fascinates billions across generations because they no longer create art at all. Art is not something, again, that can be constructed strategically in a boardroom as part of a, you know, strategy to. To monetize your ip. No art has ever been made that way or could ever be made that way. It cannot work that way. That's not what art is. So if you're making films that fail to connect and fail to rise to the level of art at all, then what do you do? Well, Disney decided that the best strategy was to yell at the audience for not liking their product enough. And this has been the pitch for years now. You know, if you hate the terrible product, then you hate women, which is something that everybody associated with the acolyte, of course, kept saying very explicitly. Watch.
- [48:57]
Guest/Co-host
I want to ask you both, because this is, I would say, arguably the gayest Star Wars, I think, by a considerable margin. And are you excited about that? Are you racing yourself? Nothing against Star Wars. Not that it's pretty gay, let's be honest. Leslie, are you. How do you feel? Am I gay? No, I know you are gay, but I'm asking, are you excited about putting this. You know, this is gonna be a talking point. Is it gonna be a talking point? I'm sure so. Because nerds are gay. Well, some nerds are very not gay and are very threatened by gay stuff. Well, that's true, but in my world, nerds are gay. Okay. Was this the fun element of. No, I don't think so. And yet people have told me that it's the gayest Star Wars And I
- [49:39]
Matt Walsh
frankly, you're offended into it.
- [49:45]
Guest/Co-host
I think that Star wars is so gay already, okay? I mean, have you seen the fits? We'd be like, look how gay this is.
- [49:52]
Matt Walsh
And then send each other a reference photo.
- [49:53]
Guest/Co-host
And are you telling me with a straight face that C3PO is straight? They're a couple. That's what I think. But this is more outward. I think it's canon that R2D2 is a lesbian. Oh, interesting, huh? Ask for money.
- [50:07]
Matt Walsh
Okay? Now, if you think that all these people should never work in Hollywood again, then according to Kathleen Kennedy, you simply hate women. You also hate anything that's new. You want to be told the same stories over and over again. I mean, that's how completely these people are. That obviously they're also completely missing the point that this they. The problem is not that the audience wants to see the same thing over and over again. It's actually the opposite of that. Like what you're doing is the same thing over and over again, okay? Just using the same formula and plugging in different characters and then throwing in some gender pronoun nonsense, throwing in a lesbian or a black person. That's not something new. That's not a. That's not a whole bold new vision. But this was their strategy to take the formula. To take a formula that they didn't create and then make it new by like, oh, we're going to have more black people and lesbians in it than before. And what you need to realize is that these dumb, narcissistic, destructive women are in charge of pretty much every corporation in the country right now. I mean, Star wars is the least of our problems in that respect. Actually, Kathleen, the problem with the Disney content is that it's terrible. I mean, let's go back to that red Letter media video for a second. It's true that the original films were formulaic, but they also executed the formula well. You know, Luke goes through the hero's journey, suffers, loses his hand before triumphing in the end. That's. That's classic storytelling. Now Ray, on the other hand, was created in a lab by Kathleen Kennedy and the feminists at Disney. Her arc makes no sense. She learns the Force one minute and she's defeating Kylo Ren in one on one combat the next. For his part, Finn kind of does nothing after the first movie, movie Poe was written as a Han Solo clone. They completely changed Luke's personality. Han Solo doesn't evolve either. Basically, at every turn, you could tell that Disney was winging the new films. It's not that they had a new vision. The problem again is they had no vision whatsoever. Their only goal was just pumping out as much content as possible as a monetization strategy. Here's a post from a Disney official x account dated December 2020 quote over the next few years, roughly 10 Marvel series, 10 Star wars series 15 Disney live action, Disney Animation and Pixar series plus 15 all new Disney live action, Disney animation and Pixar features will be released directly on Disney. Plus now, almost six years later, out of 10 Star wars series, we're finally getting a movie. They apparently canceled a bunch of other projects for one reason or another. And this grand new movie, after all this time, is a repackaged season four of the show the Mandalorian. That's what the Mandalorian and Grogu is. The the budget of this alleged major motion picture is less than $170 million, which is a fraction of the budget of every other modern Star wars film. Disney is throwing this on the screen because they're out of ideas. They they figure they might as well try to sell some toys before the franchise is put on an indefinite hiatus. So that's exactly what they're going to do. Now, George Lucas was attacked, rightly so, for including Ewoks and Return of the Jedi and Jar Jar Binks and Phantom Menace as a cynical ploy to sell merchandise, which is a significant reason for his enormous wealth. But Lucas never made an entire movie, from start to finish, solely to sell toys without any meaningful plot, characterization, or reason to care about anything that happens. It took a series of catastrophic decisions by Bob iger, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. abrams, Rian Johnson and company to get us to this point. But we're definitely here. One of the most recognizable stories in modern American history has been destroyed. Disney has created in its place a political project that reflects the absolute worst impulses of progressivism and feminism. And they've demanded that we indoctrinate our children with it. You know, there's one silver lining in this entire saga. It's that contrary to what Kathleen Kennedy expected, millions of Americans are refusing to go along with it. They're making it very clear that, you know, this is not about hating women or hating new ideas. They just hate the bastardized, pointless, insulting, trashy, low IQ mess that this franchise has to become. Has become. Which is to say that Star wars is dead and Disney killed it. That'll do it for the show today and this week. Talk to you next week. Have a great weekend. Godspeed. Martin Luther King Jr. Is an American icon widely considered one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. A man who had a vision for a conflict, colorblind society of post racial America. He had a dream. It's just not the dream you thought it was. Were his true aims a colorblind society or something far more radical? Who bankrolled him? What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 was civil disobedience actually peaceful? We wanted to show you a clip of the I have a dream screen, but according to our lawyers, we can't. In fact, King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets. They want to silence critics like us. What they're doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King Jr. Not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. Is America today stronger, more unified and racially equal than before King's rise? These questions demand answers, and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the civil rights movement and its consequences. King's movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government. I speak as a citizen of the world. Each day the war goes on. The hatred increases, though the cause of evil prospers. The first part of our two part special on the civil rights movement, a New Constitution, available now on Daily Wire. Plus still waiting in line again. That's time you will never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail
- [56:38]
Guest/Co-host
and packages in seconds.
- [56:39]
Matt Walsh
Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office for a limited time. Go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. Who answers America's call for more energy? Our people do. They've helped boost Chevron's U.S. energy production by nearly 60% in the past three years, helping fuel national energy security and drives down the open roads that make America. Learn more about what our people do@chevron.com America.