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S01E32: Hoovering with Hope! Part Two
35 Plays3 months ago
The end-of-year break is over, and we're back with Dan Zehr from Coffee with Kenobi! This time, we are talking about our hope IN the Star Wars franchise. Does the future look bright, or are dark times ahead?
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Transcript
Introduction with Dan Zier
00:00:00
Speaker
We're back with Dan Zier to talk about our hope in the future of Star Wars. Grab your droids and brooms. It's the Star Wars Cleaning Crew.
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome back to the Star Wars Cleaning Crew. I mentioned last time we were bouncing around a little bit
Theme of Hope in Star Wars
00:00:16
Speaker
here. So we are going to return to my conversation with Dan Zier from the Coffee with Kenobi podcast. And if you remember last time we talked about the theme of hope in the Star Wars saga.
00:00:30
Speaker
Now we're gonna talk about our own hope in the Star Wars saga. In other words, what is our hope for the future of this franchise? What do we think is gonna happen? How are we feeling about it? And what would we like to see out of the management of Star Wars moving forward? So it's fun talk. Let's dive in and here is me and Dan. Let's talk about hope in the future of the franchise.
Disappointment with Disney's Management
00:00:57
Speaker
i because I've kind of been losing it a little bit as a, um I have always been an ardent defender of Disney's handling of ah Star Wars and have had a lot of faith in Kathleen Kennedy and her ability to, you know, to to to direct things. I get discouraged as I hear about things get announced and then things get canceled or things just kind of fall into oblivion. So I'm wondering what your take is on the the kind of current state of the franchise.
00:01:37
Speaker
Where are you at with all of this? What what what do you think about? Right. Well, and ah you may you may not be surprised to know that I've been asked this a couple of times. ah I guess I'm sort of it's sort of conflicting because. I would I want.
Disney's Acquisition and Content Creation
00:01:59
Speaker
ah So when did when did Disney purchase? So was that 2000? Was it 13, 12, 12 or 13? Yeah, I think 13. I think. I think is. Yeah. If only there was a way to access in. I know. Right. If only we had a little computer on our, you know, that we're holding. So. on Yeah. So what while we're sort of marinating on that, let's let's think about what Disney has done with Star Wars. Yeah. We got ah three seasons of Star Wars Rebels 2012.
00:02:26
Speaker
2012. OK, perfect. We got I should be able to remember that because that's the year I got married. OK, now that I've said that out loud and i you're going to lock it in, I'm never going to forget. Exactly. So we got three seasons of Star Wars Rebels. Yeah, got through oh we've got ah another season of the Clone Wars. Yeah, we've got Star Wars Resistance. We've got the Mandalorian three seasons. We've got a Soka one season. We've got Andor. We've got five.
00:02:55
Speaker
Counting five Star Wars films. Right. Was that eleven twelve ah plus the acolyte plus the acolyte yeah plus skeleton crew. Plus a couple of seasons of Star Wars Visions, a lot of Lego specials. So in, you know, what, 10, 11, 12 years, that is a heck of a lot of Star Wars content, quite a bit of content. Yeah. ah When George was running the show,
00:03:22
Speaker
um The majority we got after 2005 was parodies. Yeah. Robot chicken family guy or five Star Wars movies in like five or six Star Wars TV shows. And oh, it plus the bad batch. So yeah, plus three, four ah animated series and like eight seasons of Star Wars animation. So I'm not going to push the button on Disney is not doing Star Wars justice. We've gotten more stars content than we ever have in our entire lives. So that that's those are just facts. Those are just facts. What do I think about
00:03:56
Speaker
These movie announcements and stuff. I in scratch, it makes me scratch my head. Yeah, I want to believe, you know, we the problem is that Hollywood has kind of reached sort of ah this weird place ah where it's all about the IP and original ideas are not as they're not crunching those dollar signs, right?
00:04:18
Speaker
So people want to make money. I guess. I don't know. I'm babbling. But here's the thing.
Profit over Art in Hollywood
00:04:25
Speaker
It's more to me about making money that it is about making art. he And I feel like Star Wars will print money. ah So I don't know what the trepidation is, what the hesitation is. I can't even begin to understand what it takes to create a product.
00:04:42
Speaker
Uh, to get, you know, to get a green lid, to write the script, to hire the people, to build the sets, to get the digital artists together, all of that stuff that's going to happen. I don't know any of that. Uh, but I feel like I would personally prefer that if there's an announcement that it, that I get to see it in the theater in ah and a year and a half, two years. Yeah. If you look at the Marvel cinematic universe, look at the le blade film.
00:05:09
Speaker
um There's a bunch of other things that it never got off the ground. So this does happen in Hollywood. But but Disney and Lucas get this massive light on them. And rightfully so, because you're talking about two of the biggest ah entertainment powers in the history of entertainment. Yeah. So ah it's it's a little is it frustrating for me? Yes, because I want to see good stuff. But if it's not making it to the silver screen,
00:05:36
Speaker
then maybe it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Maybe it's not good enough. Maybe it's that is a hopeful attitude. Right. Yes. Yes. We're protecting you from stuff that would you wouldn't have liked. Right. Yeah. I love that. And I don't know if you know this, but stars fans are pretty vocal and they don't like something. Really? No. This is a passing observer, Bob. Just the passing. Right. You know. Yeah.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know what?
Dream of Surprise Film Announcements
00:06:05
Speaker
i I was just thinking of this while you were talking. um This is a story, I don't think i've I've told anybody this except my sister when it happened. It was probably about 1986, okay? And I remember having a very vivid dream that I was sitting in a movie theater and we were watching the trailers before a movie.
00:06:29
Speaker
And we saw a star field and then we saw a star destroyer just really slowly come across the screen. And then text on screen said the fall of the Republic.
00:06:43
Speaker
coming May 1987, which would have been for the 10th anniversary, right? Yeah. And so it was like, oh my gosh, they made episode one. They made episode one and they didn't tell anybody that they were doing it and they just are like,
00:06:59
Speaker
Hey, it's coming, it's coming right away. Come into your galaxy this summer, right? Like the original Star Wars. And I, I want that kind of thing again. I think that would be brilliant. Like how awesome would it be if we just wake up one day and it's, Hey, surprise. Uh, not only are, have we made this amazing thing, but it is coming your way in the next couple of days.
00:07:22
Speaker
Wouldn't that be the best? It would be so great. It is never going to happen. Everybody worse. Everything is so click bait. And I got to know. And why isn't this story made just for me? And it's just. Yeah, I kind of miss. I kind of miss the miss the not knowing part.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah.
Excitement in the Prequel Era
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah. You know, i I remember remember those heady days when they were making the prequels and the Internet was kind of a new thing. And you had ah you had that's the hyperspace fan club on Star Wars dot com. You had to pay extra. Yes. But then you You got those but what about weekly updates from. um Oh, what was her name? ah Oh, yeah. ah umm Um, a mom mar franklin but but um, Or Lynn Hale. Or Bonnie. Or Bonnie. No, I think. No, it wasn't Bonnie Burton. No, it wasn't Bonnie Burton. Lynn Hale was the ah the head of PR. She was. Yeah. Yeah. I think it I think it was her. I think it was her who did those. See, now we're going to have something else we have to look up. So I'll just I'll just add this. It is her. It is Lynn Hale. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah. And just to get those little glimpses on your, um you know, you're you're about one inch by two inch quick time. Yes. Yes. It felt like we were living in the future. Uh huh. And you could like you could like you got the disk and you could get a link to the trailer. and It took like three hours of download, like a minute. And boy, was it the best.
00:08:51
Speaker
I know. Right. So I don't know. I do have hope. I love that idea that they are calling the content to make sure that what we get is really great.
Hopes for Curated Content
00:09:04
Speaker
So that's great. Just don't tell us about it until it's ready to go. I agree. And and I think that because it didn't come from the mouse. Yeah. i To me, that means it just sort of got out or maybe I don't know.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that was part of the plan, but I agree. I'd rather not know. I'm not going to whenever I hear an announcement until I'm sitting in the theater and it's in its playing. That's when I'll believe it.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yes. And tell them it's just a fan fantasy. Yeah. Hope. So thanks to Dan Zier from Coffee with Kenobi for joining us. It's always great to talk to Dan, very knowledgeable guy, very well connected with the franchise. I think we're going to see great things from Dan in the official fandom coming up. So we look forward to that. But it's always great to talk to him.
00:09:55
Speaker
And I really appreciate him kind of talking me off the ledge there. I was getting pretty discouraged and he had some really good points. And, um you know, the the thing that's interesting is we recorded this. It's been several weeks since we recorded this. And when we did, we were about three weeks out from the premiere of Skeleton
Positive Reception of 'Skeleton Crew'
00:10:16
Speaker
Crew.
00:10:17
Speaker
So since then, of course, we've seen Skeleton Crew come out on the day that this episode of the podcast is coming out. We are awaiting the fourth episode. We've seen the first three episodes of Skeleton Crew.
00:10:32
Speaker
And Skeleton Crew seems to have kind of captured the heart of Star Wars fans. I'm going to look right now at the Rotten Tomatoes a score for Star Wars Skeleton Crew, and it's hard to search and type at the same time or to talk and search, just demonstrating that I can't do that. Now I'm going to have to edit this out.
00:10:58
Speaker
ah So right now, Skeleton Crew has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so that is the amalgamation of the critic scores, and an 80% for the fan rating, which is really high because you always wind up with the militant fans who are trying to ah trying to bring down a franchise by voting it low if for some reason they don't like it, and then you have the diehards like me who will love it no matter what it is. but No, seriously, I am really enjoying Skeleton Crew, and we will have an episode coming up here probably closer to the end of the series. I want to talk about it with my sister, who I talked about on this last, in my story about that my dream about that trailer ah just a couple of minutes ago. ah We'll do a more thorough, in-depth look at Skeleton Crew, but really, really enjoying it. So that seems to have kind of ignited a spark of hope.
00:11:56
Speaker
We know that Andor is right on the horizon and the first few episodes I think we are probably going to see in Japan at Star Wars Celebration because it will officially premiere thereafter. so and And they just announced that Mads Mikkelsen and Diego Luna will be in Tokyo. So looking forward to seeing them.
Star Wars Fireworks Experience
00:12:18
Speaker
Let me tell you another story that kind of brought back a little bit of hope is just last night, my wife and I went up to Disneyland and since Star Wars Galaxy's Edge opened, I realized the very first night that I was there because we were able to see them, it's a great place to watch the Disneyland fireworks show from. Just where the fireworks are shot off is well positioned that you can kind of sit in the plaza right in front of the Millennium Falcon and you can see the fireworks erupting over the spires and over Oga's Cantina and it's always been a great sight. Well just recently a few months ago Disney finally kind of cashed in on this and what they've started doing is playing a Star Wars soundtrack that you can only hear when you're in Galaxy's Edge
00:13:07
Speaker
that kind of, it's Star Wars music and so it kind of brings this fireworks show into the Galaxy's Edge experience and they even have a droid called Bard and it's kind of up on the balcony right where the fireworks are going to to launch and when the show starts He does a little bit of a rundown of, you know, he was the droid of a storyteller of Batuu and it's a big festival. It's called the Fire of the Rising Moons. And so it's kind of made the fireworks at Galaxy's Edge just a little bit more Star Wars-y and a little bit more special. So last night, my wife Sherry and I went to the
00:13:50
Speaker
ah They called it the fire of the rising moon's dinner gathering. So Disneyland does this a lot. They have ah kind of dinner shows that go with the parades or with the phantasmic show or with the fireworks shows where you can get a really nice restaurant, yeah dinner at a really nice restaurant and you kind of get ah a place to sit and relax and then you get a special viewing area for the show.
00:14:17
Speaker
So that's what they did in Star Wars Land. They've got at Docking Bay 7 after the restaurant has closed. You get to go there. If you've purchased your ticket for this, you get to have kind of an exclusive dinner. And I will tell you the dinner was kind, it's a preset menu and it kind of reminded me of the type of food that we would typically get on the Star Cruiser. So it was very cool.
00:14:41
Speaker
And so we got to enjoy the Star Wars dinner. And then we got to have the fireworks show. We had a special place to sit and watch it. well Actually, we were standing, but it was on the balcony, kind of overlooking the Millennium Falcon. It was great. I had tears in my eyes through the whole thing.
00:14:59
Speaker
And it just made me very happy to be a Star Wars fan and really happy to be there at that
Balancing Frustrations and Contributions
00:15:04
Speaker
moment. So Dan has a really good point that yes, there's been some drops and some miscues and some frustrations with how Disney has managed the franchise and which is kind of the current state of Hollywood and how things have to be not exactly the way we would want it.
00:15:20
Speaker
But on the whole, Disney has done a lot of really great things and more good things than bad. They could be doing better, but they're doing a great job of it. So I have hope in the Star Wars franchise. I hope you do too. That's it for today. We'll see you next time on the Star Wars cleaning crew. Until then, may the force be with you. Keep telling your friends and keep your kitchens clean. We'll see you real soon. Bye bye.
00:16:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah!