Bent Corner

The smell of wine and cheap perfume.

Star Wars

Disney extends Kathleen Kennedy contract for another three years

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting Disney extended the contract of Kathleen Kennedy as president of Lucasfilm for another three years.  This move undoubtedly has members of the toxic Star Wars fandom community quite livid. These are the fans who enjoy watching a metal Rose Tico figure get decapitated with a pair of bolt cutters. I’m surprised I can’t hear their collective cries of anguish and their gnashing of teeth from where I sit in my house in Maryland.

They can’t all live in sound-proof basements.

Kathleen Kennedy is a proven winner

People who peddle hate in the Star Wars fan community like to bemoan what a terrible job Kathleen Kennedy has done as president of Lucasfilm. I don’t agree. The facts just don’t align with that claim. Under Kennedy’s watch, the Star Wars franchise grossed nearly $4.5 billion.

Considering how much money Kennedy has brought in for Disney and its shareholders, they would have been stupid not to extend Kennedy’s contract. This is Hollywood where most movies supposedly lose money.

What about Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Granted, Solo: A Star Wars Story was the first movie in the Star Wars franchise to lose money, but you cannot expect to hit a home run every time you go up to bat. Make enough Star Wars moves and chances are, one of them will be a box office dud.

I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story and it wasn’t as bad as some people said it was. My biggest problem with the movie was the actor who played a young Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich.

Alden Ehrenreich

It’s not like Alden Ehrenreich was terrible or anything. I just wasn’t feeling him as Han Solo. That’s not an insult towards Ehrenreich. I just think the only actor who can play a young Han Solo is a young Harrison Ford.

A better choice would have been to leave the character alone and make a Star Wars movie about a post-teen Boba Fett or better yet, a young Admiral Ackbar.

There were a lot of things I liked about Solo: A Star Wars Story. If you’re a Star Wars fan and you haven’t seen Solo: A Star Wars Story, you should watch it. It may have lost money, but that shouldn’t stop you from watching it. Solo: A Star Wars Story is not the worst Star Wars movie of the franchise. That distinction goes to the prequel movies. If you watched those three movies, you’ve already watched the worst movies in the Star Wars franchise.

In my opinion, the best single movie in the Star Wars franchise was Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That happened under Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership. She deserved the contract extension just for that.

MundaneMatt apologizes to ‘Star Wars’ fans

MundaneMatt (government name Matt Jarbo) published a video in which he apologized for criticizing fans of Star Wars. If memory serves, he called out fans who’ve been critical of the Disney Star Wars movies even after the cast for Episode IV was released. If his reasoning doesn’t make sense, join the club. He’s removed the video from YouTube, so I can’t rewatch it. Not that I normally rewatch MundaneMatt videos. I subscribe to his channel, but I rarely watch his videos, let alone rewatch them.

Here’s the apology:

I guess it’s just a coincidence the apology video is over ten minutes long, 10:01 to be exact. YouTubers make more money from advertising on videos that are at least ten minutes in length.

From We The Unicorns:

What The Heck Is This 10 Minute Trick Then?

The system is pretty simple: if your video is over ten minutes long – even by one second – or are exactly ten minutes long, you will make more money from the ads on your videos than you would if the video was shorter.

I’m very skeptical of a ten-minute apology

Even if YouTube didn’t pay its content creators more money for videos longer than ten minutes, I’d be skeptical of Jarbo’s “apology.” It should not take a normal human ten minutes to apologize. If Jarbo was sincere, a 30-second video could have more than done the trick. Every second past the 30-second mark, an apology, any apology, seems less and less sincere.

MundaneMatt apologizes to 'Star Wars' fans - Bent Corner
MundaneMatt/Matt Jarbo

It could be argued that Matt Jarbo simply doesn’t human very well. I would agree, but the whole thing seems like a work. He first makes a video that infuriates Star Wars fans. He then pulls the video and apologizes for the original video. His apology video then comes in one second past the ten-minute mark.

I’m not buying any of it.

My message to those boycotting ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’

I guess some people are “boycotting” the latest Star Wars flick, Solo: A Star Wars Story. The reasons are many. Some of them I even agree with. The actor playing the title role Alden Ehrenreich doesn’t look or sound a thing like Harrison Ford. Lando Calrissian played by Donald Glover is now something called a pansexual. It’s like a bisexual, but with even more options.

Woody Harrelson

Woody Harrelson is in it. I think he’s one of the finest actors of his generation. I’d like to see him in the Star Wars universe.

I love Star Wars. That said, I’m not planning on seeing Solo: A Star Wars Story. I don’t think this movie is for me. This movie must have been made for other people, people who are not me. That’s fine. I have no problem with that. Not everything has to be for me or about me. If Han Solo was cast with an actor who bore even a slight resemblance to Harrison Ford and if they didn’t make Lando Calrissian an alt-lifestyle freakazoid, I’d go see this movie. Again, Woody Harrelson is in it.

I just have a problem with the idea of people declaring boycotts. It seems overly dramatic and childish. It’s also kind of embarrassing. Then again, what would Star Wars fandom be if half the fans didn’t embarrass you?

A Star Wars wedding.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan since the first one came out in 1977. That’s not to say I loved everything in it. I’ve had a healthy love-hate relationship with the Star Wars universe. There are some things in Star Wars I truly loved. There have been other things I hated. I think the only movie I’ve seen that I could not nitpick was Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a masterpiece.  From start to finish, it’s probably the best Star Wars movie ever made.

If you’re like me and you don’t want to see Solo: A Star Wars Story, just don’t go. Don’t act like a petulant child and declare a boycott.

Boycotts are stupid.

Toys R Us 1957 – 2018

Toys R Us is going out of business. They owe more money to creditors than what they have and have declared bankruptcy. I keep reading that Toys R Us will be liquidating their current inventory with massive sales. The science fiction blog io9 said that sale was to begin yesterday. That didn’t happen.

I went to the Hagerstown Toys R Us yesterday and although the shelves were looking quite bare, there wasn’t a massive sale going on.

I’ve got my eyes on an Iron Man statue that normally costs $39.99. I have a Spider-Man statue from the same line that I was able to get for only $6.99 earlier at Toys R Us.

One of the byproducts of paying only $6.99 for a statue that normally costs $39.99 is that you don’t want to pay for retail for one ever again. You get spoiled.

The Hagerstown Toys R Us has one of the Iron Man statues in stock, but it’s $39.99 with a buy one, buy another at 40 percent off. Since they only have one, it makes that gimmick sale even worse than normal.

I have a lot of good memories associated with Toys R Us. Not as a child, but as an adult who has collected a lot of stupid stuff over the years.

It began with Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures. I was in the Air Force stationed in upstate New York and my boss was collecting them. He asked me to be on the lookout for a Deanna Troi for him. Since she was a girl, toy companies made less of them since it was a toy line for boys.

Deanna Troi, the lady that started it all.

It got to be fun looking for her. I finally got her for him at a KB Toys in a “black” mall in Los Angeles when I was home on leave. My ex-wife and I were the only white people in the entire mall. I didn’t even notice until my ex-wife pointed it out. If memory serves, she cared about things like that.

I gave my boss the Deanna Troi figure when I got back and he was able to then finish his collection. I missed looking for her, so I started collecting them myself.

From collecting Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures, I moved over to collecting Star Wars: The Power of the Force figures when they were released in 1995.

I then got into collecting sports-related Kenner Starting Lineup figures. I was into collecting those in a very serious way. I made many a trip to Toys R Us, KB Toys, Kmart, Walmart, and anywhere else I thought would stock them. Once they hit the pegs, they usually went pretty quickly.

I even started and maintained a Majordomo message email list for fellow collectors of Kenner Starting Lineup figures. It resulted in my very first online death threat. A member of the list got mad about something and decided to show his frustration by threatening me with death.

I still collect Hot Wheels cars off and on. I take a look at die-cast cars when we go to Walmart or Target. Sometimes I’ll pick up a car I like, but my interest in the toy cars is nothing too serious. They’re usually less than a dollar each, so it’s easy to pick one up if I see something I like.

I think I’ll miss Toys R Us, not for anything it can provide today, but for what it was able to provide before.

Why don’t our Chinese economic overlords like our ‘Star Wars’ movies?

I just read that the newest Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, is no longer available in China. It’s been pulled out of theaters. The reason? The Chinese just don’t like Star Wars.

This fact makes me sad on many fronts. For one thing, China owns most of our national debt, so that means they’re our economic bosses. They’re like one of those assholes on Shark Tank who buys 75% of some poor entrepreneur’s company for $15,0000 without the entrepreneur even realizing they no longer control their own company. The Shark Tank asshole does.

We don't our Chinese overlords like our 'Star Wars' movies? - Bent Corner

China is Mark Cuban and we are the married couple on hard times who accidentally invented a self-changing diaper.

China could just tell us to stop making Star Wars movies and we would have to do what they say. They could tell us to instead start making Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movies and there’s nothing we could do about it.

It makes me sad that China doesn’t like Star Wars. As much as I love Chinese food, I want them to love our popular movie franchises.

We don't our Chinese overlords like our 'Star Wars' movies? - Bent Corner
Hot and Sour Soup

It’s not fair that I would kill a hobo for a good bowl of hot and sour soup, but the Chinese people don’t care for Chewbacca.

I just wish there was something I could do. I wish I could try to convince the Chinese people who Star Wars is pretty awesome.