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Insights Into Entertainment: Episode 47 “Nothing But Star Wars”

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Returning from the holiday we give you a deep dive into our adventures at Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We look at the overall ambiance, the vendors, the rides and the completely immersive feeling of actually being on the planet Batuu. It’s one of the most unique experiences we’ve ever had in over twenty trips to Walt Disney World in Florida. We’ve got footage of the experience, interactions with cast, building a lightsaber at Savi’s workshop and much of the Rise of the Resistance ride.

In entertainment news we’ll recap what was an incredible season finale of the Mandalorian then give our impressions, though not our rant on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. A fitting end to the saga that could have been a little more polished for our liking. All in all another great podcast.

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Speaker 1: 00:00:01 Insightful, informative insights, a podcast network

Speaker 3: 00:00:28 Come to insights into entertainment, a podcast series, taking a deeper look into entertainment and media. Your hosts, Joseph and Michelle Waylon, a husband and wife team of pop culture fanatics are exploring all things from music and movies to television and fandom.

Speaker 4: 00:00:50 Welcome to insights into entertainment. This is episode 47 nothing but star Wars. I’m your host, Joseph Raelynn and my lovely and well appointed co-host Michelle Wayland. How are we doing today sweetheart? I’m wonderful and you love doing good. We we’re back from a well deserved couple of weeks off for the holiday. We’re back in the podcasting business again. I think we’re kind of kicking go a little off our regular format here to sort of recap some of the things that happened in our absence. We’re going to talk about our trip to Disney and our experience at Galaxy’s edge, which was incredible. Did a lot of stuff down there. Then we’re going to talk about the rise of the resistance ride, which was another highlight of the trip than in our entertainment news. We have to talk about the Mandalorian season finale. And we will also do a discussion slash rant on star Wars rise of Skywalker. So are we ready to get into it? All right, let’s start.

Speaker 4: 00:02:23 So one of the biggest highlights we had from our trip was Galaxy’s edge. So what were your overall impressions of galaxies at?

Speaker 6: 00:02:32 I was thoroughly impressed. I know we’ve been talking about Galaxy’s edge for, for months pretty much since we’ve started doing our podcast. We, we’ve known about it. You know, we, we really didn’t expect to be visiting it as soon as we, we were, you know, to opening, you know, you were pretty much convinced I’m waiting a couple of years before you go and here, you know, it opened during the summer. We happened to be there within the first couple of weeks of rise of the resistance even being open early December, early December. So we were there the end of December. So, you know, it really wasn’t open very long. And it was just amazing. It was just totally immersive. Totally. You know, the, the pictures that people show and the videos that you see, just, just don’t do it justice. You know, you turn one corner and there’s something there and then you turn another corner. Oh my God. Did you see this? Did you see that? You know, there’s just so much to take in you know, in comparison to Pandora, you know, animal kingdom like Pandora’s, okay, this is kind of interesting, but if you haven’t seen the movie in a gazillion years or really paid attention, you know, a lot of the stuff is just kinda like lost on you. Whereas with star Wars, you know, with Galaxy’s edge, just the, the details of everything.

Speaker 4: 00:04:10 So we, we did compile a short video of some of the footage that we took. Let’s let’s go ahead and play that. And maybe you can sorta give us some impressions on T over top of it.

Speaker 6: 00:04:25 So this is one of the little, you know, they have a little bizarre area. This was one of the little snack areas you walk by and you know, the droid is cooking food and then obviously you turn around and you see the freaking millennium Falcons is amazing. Another store. And then, you know, the storm troopers walking around are totally in character. You know, some of them, they won’t even let you, you know, stop and take a selfie with ’em, you know, you interact with you. They do interact. Like residents were a resident of Batou. This was our breakfast, you know, very Spacey looking, but normal food you know, a bunch of pod racers and, and such. And then this was one of the, the droid areas. So just a bunch of different, you know, droids and then you turn a corner and you’re like,

Speaker 4: 00:05:19 Oh, like, Hey, there’s a ship. Then there’s another ship ship and another ship shipping. Whoa, okay, that’s really cool. You know, and then you, you know, and then Kylo runs walking around and harassing. And there is a whole storyline. If you, if you stick around long enough and you talk to the right characters, there’s a storyline to actually get involved with that. Get you involved with the ride itself as a member of the resistance. Gotcha. yeah, so

Speaker 6: 00:05:49 You know, and then here’s the, the the food being cooked, obviously it’s not really being cooked, but you know, it of gives me the illusion of it, the effect of them using a pod race engine to actually cook the food. Right, right. Mind blown. Yeah. And even we, we noticed when we were leaving you know, they had like a little storage area off to the side and the storage area was actually they had like fake food in it, you know, so most people would walk by, you wouldn’t even notice, you know, it was meant to kind of be like, this is the food storage area when really it wasn’t, it didn’t hold anything, but it was just kind of interesting. Like even just walking past that, you know, was, was themed on top talking about the cast. What was, what was it about the cast that was impressed?

Speaker 6: 00:06:46 So the cast was, you know, first off, I knew that anybody that was a cast member in this area had been selected, had applied for it. You know, it wasn’t like they just kinda got stuck there. These are, these are people that wanted to be there, that wanted to be part of this. And if you do, why wouldn’t you want to be part of a security? Right, exactly. You know, they, they are residents of, of bet to you know, when they greet you, it’s rising sun. That’s not, you know, good morning. You know, when they, when you go to pay for something, it’s 12.25 credits. They don’t know what dollars are. If you ask them about anything else in the park, they don’t know because they’re on another planet. They’re, you know, even down to like the name tag, right? Their name tags, like the traditional, you know, Disney park name tag, you know, has Disney has their name, has, you know what you know, where their hometown is here.

Speaker 6: 00:07:48 It was a very star Wars looking name tag with their name. I’m guessing there might have been other things on their name tag, like I didn’t notice, you know, any differences with, with their types of, of name tags. Their costumes were, were totally themed to their, even their rain ponchos were, you know, looked like a rain poncho that you would look like the commando rain pond. Right, right. So that, that was just amazing. So it wasn’t like they were just putting on a typical yellow, you know, so they thought about it from, from head to toe. You know, you could even tell like the, the female cast members, you know, they didn’t just have their hair pulled back or whatever. They had different you know, braids and stuff that were very Ray looking or very, you know, princess Leia ish, you know, w with their hairstyles. There was one cast member that was obviously a, a character of, of some sore from probably the, and she had, you know, purple or blue hair you know, and she walked by me and she’s like, love your hair. And I’m like, love yours. You know, cause we both had colored hair you know, so very themed in it again from head to toe, like even their boots, you know, it’s like they were wearing regular sneakers, you know, everybody was wearing, you know, a full, you know, costume, you know, head to toe.

Speaker 4: 00:09:18 So, and as we showed in the video the decor is incredible. You had a number of Lifesize ships, you had the pod racer cooking area, right? You had on the, on the ground itself, you have Drood footprints that were made by R2D2 and there’s an area that you haven’t gone in footprints. So, you know, little love the charger there, just a little bit. The bathroom. Tell us about the .

Speaker 6: 00:09:47 Oh my God, the Bay. It’s so funny because you know, obviously until you watch the Mandalorian, you never actually saw anybody, you know, in star Wars go to a bathroom. So, you know, what do you expect it to look like? And you get to the restroom and you’re like, yeah, this is totally what it would look like. It’s very industrial, you know, all metal, you know, Browns and metals and, and the, the, the sink. It’s like a troth, you know, and these just metal plain pipe spickets coming out. And the Heron dryers that they have are all metal and you know,

Speaker 4: 00:10:28 Aged, weathered, worn down look that you expect from the star Wars universe, the pristine clean thing you would expect for. It was still a clean Badger, so it was clean, but had that. But that was like even even the the restaurant. So the restaurant had the sliding doors and the windows had this alien green gunk on them, painted on just for ambiance

Speaker 6: 00:10:56 Dirty in a clean way. You know, you get that, that feeling that you’re on this kind of, you know, not desert planet, but

Speaker 4: 00:11:07 You know, it’s a, it’s a rough neighborhood. You’re right. So the other thing that was neat was the realism. So you, you lacked, they had stores, but you lack traditional merchandise in these stores. Very

Speaker 6: 00:11:21 Interesting that, you know, because if you’ve ever been to Disney, you know that every area has some sort of gift shop or something. And there’s usually something Disney ish something with, you know, a Disney label or, or something you know, on it. And what was interesting was, you know, they had the one area that was kind of like the pet store and it was basically all these plush animals, you know, that you could kind of adopt, you know, and then they had the, the toy toy shop where

Speaker 7: 00:11:54 They had the toys that basically, you know, were handmade looking. So, you know, even though this isn’t baby Yoda, this is just a regular Yoda, but he has that, you know, so it’s just, it’s a stuffed toy. Looks like it’s hand stitch. Right. But the same shop sold your the wooden figures, the wooden toy, they had little wooden mannequin type toys that you ended up getting a Darth Vader. They had instruments, musical instruments that Madison ended up getting, but it’s stuff that’s not packaged in additional, you know, label, you know, here you see, you know, you can see the label. It’s just, you know, a very, it’s Yoda, you know, there’s nothing, you know, nothing else, nothing was, you don’t see branding or anything like that. Nothing was wrapped up, you know, or in a box or anything. It was all loose, you know, like you would expect that a, a Bazaar or a flea market type thing, it lended itself to the realism.

Speaker 7: 00:13:02 And then on top of that you would get the sound of ships in the distance. That kept freaking me out. You’d hear and I’m like looking, and I’m like, there’s literally nothing going, but it, it, it happened. Like you just, you just missed it just right. Right. Then you’d hear shifts landing at the space where you were in other areas of the, of the thing. Yeah. The styling and the architecture is spot on. It looks like a cross between tat tween and, you know, three or four other planets from star Wars. And then, you know, we talked about the costume troopers already. You had Kylo rang, you had Ray was making appearances there, right? The quick serve food, you know, even the names of the food, right? Yeah. It was like more rising sons breakfast or something. And like it was, I don’t even remember what like the egg was called, but basically it was like they had done it the egg in like a muffin tin and the, the sausage was called something else.

Speaker 7: 00:14:05 You know, they played off his Banta food. Right? Something like that. So it’s stuff from the universe. Right. And then the freaking millennium Falcon, I mean, you couldn’t, you couldn’t beat the millennium Falcon. That was just, you know, it was, it was really Epic just to kind of turn the corner and you’re like, it was, Oh my God, get up right on top. Wasn’t one of these things in the distance that you couldn’t get anywhere because the smugglers run ride, which unfortunately we did not go on right. Basically loops you around. So that’s, you know, if you, you know, if you go back and you see you know, the one video and the photo of it, you see all the people, those are people waiting to get on the ride. But yeah, just that you,

Speaker 6: 00:14:52 You know, there it is just too cool cause you could see it from high up. Right? Yeah. Cause when you come in you’re kind of on one level and then you know, you can kind of go down the stairs or go down a ramp to get to like a second level and then it’s like wow, it’s just there. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 00:15:13 So there’s a lot of interactivity with the Disney parks app. There’s a ability to scan and interact with objects,

Speaker 6: 00:15:20 Right. We played around with it a little bit where, because again, a lot of their signs are somewhat in English and somewhat not. So when you use the app it’ll actually translate it for you. Right. So it uses the language of star Wars rush. Right. And the app itself will take a snapshot of it interacting with your camera. I was having issues, I was using an iPhone. Right. And that aspect of the app wasn’t accessing my camera for some reason, but it’s supposed to access it and then translate to our best to English. Right. Because when I was waiting online to get the one refreshments, they had the sign and I took a picture of it and it did end up translating it for me. You know, the name of the restaurant that I was in and the soda, you know. And that was the other cool thing. You know, any picture that you saw, like the Coca Cola label or a Sprite label or Desante water, it was all written in the , you know, so that’s just kind of cool that, you know, Disney was able to partner with Coca-Cola to specially print bottles, you know, just for, you know, star Wars Galaxy’s edge. And

Speaker 4: 00:16:36 You know, as typical with anything Disney, there is a lot of merchandising there. But like we said with the, the shops in the marketplace, they’re not overly labeled, but there’s a number of other shops in there. One is dock on doors, Deneve antiquities, which I have to say I walked .

Speaker 6: 00:16:57 Yeah, absolutely. Well and that was the thing, cause I walked in there first not knowing what it was. And I walked in and I looked around and I went, Oh my God, you have to go in here, because I knew. So it’s

Speaker 4: 00:17:12 Divided up into light side, dark side, and then fringe elements. And you could go in there and buy costuming stuff and you can buy a collectible stuff. You, they had busts mini busts in there and you can get, I mean it was just the things that you could buy in there. They had the legends light so you could buy all of the existing lightsabers you have that they have a, you could buy accessories if you bought a lightsaber or you made your own lightsaber, which we’ll show you in a minute. You could buy accessories for that. You could buy they had princess Leia wigs,

Speaker 6: 00:17:50 Wigs they had and they were like jewelry. They had her jewelry, they had her dress like for adults, not for kids. They had another section, another area where it was kid stuff. But this was just like the adult stuff. And they had a, a Bluetooth comm link. Right. That works with your phone was just so much cool stuff that day. Yeah, no, some of the areas did require reservations. So when you talk a little bit about the reservation, so there were two, well the, the reservation areas, there were, there are only three areas that you needed the reservations for. One is Olga’s Cantina. So that’s the only, they don’t have a sit down restaurant yet. And the Cantina is actually just a bar cause at one point we had made reservations for it and then when I realized it was basically just a place to drink and they do serve nonalcoholic drinks as well.

Speaker 6: 00:18:45 I canceled the, the reservations cause we were actually really looking for something. Dinner was right. Unfortunately we never actually made it to Olga’s cafe Cantina. It was kind of down an alleyway and we just never, you know, for as many hours as we were there, we just never made it there. And that’s a Testament to how large the area is. Right. By the time we discovered where it was, we were like, just going back to pick up a couple of things. Right, right. Then obviously they have two areas where you can make things right. You have the droid Depot which that one we actually made, we weren’t even gonna make droids. We managed to get a reservation last minute for that. When they do actually take walk-ins as well. So they actually have two different lines. So if you have a reservation, you check in with one of the cast members and then you, you go online.

Speaker 6: 00:19:45 If you’re a walking, they have another line and basically you’re kind of like the fill-in area. So with that they, you know, they call you in and they basically just have you know, different spots at this table. So what you do is you go and you pick out which type of droid you want. There’s two kinds that you can make. You can make a BB unit or an unit and they have all the various pieces, you know, and, and it shows you if you’re making this one, this is what you need to pick out. If you’re making this one, this is what you need to pick out. And they have various colors. So you know, you could mix and match if you want. So what did you mean? I made our too and he’s purple cause he can be, you can’t get anywhere to sleep. And he went to sleep. We need to wake him up. Hold on them. We can wake up. Droid.

Speaker 2: 00:20:35 Is he awake now?

Speaker 6: 00:20:38 Oh sure is.

Speaker 6: 00:20:45 So now you are controlling with the yes. So there is a remote control that that comes with it too. And he can obviously move forward and backward and he can turn side to side. I can turn his head. Yeah, there wasn’t option where you could pay an additional fee to get personality, personality. So that button, when you press it, obviously since I didn’t pay for that, he doesn’t have a personality. That’s what he said. For the RQ units, there’s a boatload of other accessories. There’s other accessories where so like in the front here, like these were my options. I only had blacker or wider red. But they did sell extra purple accessories. So, even though he has a purple head, I could get purple things to put elsewhere. Plus they also had like a drink attachment. Right. So it could be like, right.

Speaker 6: 00:21:45 Exactly. So that, that was really, that was really cool. And again, we lucked out. We just kind were sitting around. You went on the app. Now for that you actually had to go through the website. You didn’t have to, you didn’t go through the app, I don’t think. Right. So that you had to go through the website. There was this line of people and it was probably a 45 minutes to an hour wait and as a, as a walking. Right. And we just, we got gotta you know, definitely also if you’re, you’re planning on going, you know, and you’re not sure, you know, check obviously that. So that was kind of a, a, the cute little addition that we, that we didn’t know that we were going to do. Right. But the last reservation the thing that you needed a reservation for is Savi workshop.

Speaker 6: 00:22:38 And that one we had actually tried months ago. It’s, it’s basically just like the dining reservation. You can make the reservation 180 days out. You do have to do it through the website, you can’t do it through, through the app. And when we had tried to make the reservations, they didn’t have anything available for the day that we were going to be down there. And it was like, all right, well I guess we’re not making light sabers, no problem. Whatever. and then I guess it was about a month, little bit about a month maybe before we got notification that our one waitlist for Hilton head came through. And of course baby Yoda was already out and about by then. And we said, Oh well thanks to the, you know, the gods of baby Yoda, we got that. If only we could make a reservation to make lightsabers. I went online and they had a boatload open. So I don’t know if it was just because of the holiday season and they made more available or, or what. But we managed to score reservations. And the way that it works

Speaker 7: 00:23:46 Here is that you get, you can have one person make it and one person as a guest. So of course it was like, all right, well if daddy makes one and Maddie goes and watches, then mommy has to sit outside and wait. Or if daddy and Maddie make one, then mommy gets to go and watch and then mommy feels left out because she doesn’t have a light saber to play with at home. So we all cut. Yes we did. So it was a very Merry Christmas and a happy Hanukkah to all of us. So here is a little video of us making our lightsabers

Speaker 2: 00:24:25 Hulu crystal. Very good by great jet off our stuff. Here’s apprentice and Skywalker and right. Why are you gone Jim? Or so Katana and Luke Skywalker. Hey crystal.

Speaker 7: 00:24:50 Yeah, too.

Speaker 2: 00:24:53 Good cost. That must be pounds. Read this, Chris Lowe. How such ventures, Vega and now Connie level. These are old stories of the past. We are here for you, our future. So it’s no time for you to select your caver crystal. The heart of your lightsaber. So is close shot. Close your eyes and picture your crystal and your mind. What color calls to you. Remember is he fully like crystal itself? He’s choosing it. Good and open your eyes so that kind

Speaker 7: 00:25:56 So you noticed the holders that these are in are reminiscent of the Khyber crystal holders from rogue one.

Speaker 2: 00:26:11 Excellent. Now bill, let’s carefully place those parcels.

Speaker 7: 00:26:17 Don’t mind our too. I had a lot of fun with baby Yoda on this trip.

Speaker 7: 00:26:32 So at this point our lightsabers are already built and this is where we’re going to activate them.

Speaker 2: 00:26:44 Activate

Speaker 4: 00:26:56 Hello?

Speaker 6: 00:27:00 Fight to the death. No,

Speaker 2: 00:27:03 Like the you could change the galaxy. Saber is choose your own path.

Speaker 6: 00:27:33 Damn, I was just going to do that. I forgot I did that.

Speaker 8: 00:27:40 You know, hope remarkable. Andrew should know free drop on the ground

Speaker 6: 00:27:50 Cause you just spent a lot of money on this.

Speaker 2: 00:27:56 Now what’s your put your fish just beginning. Hey, it’s time to make your Mark on the galaxy. Knows. Perhaps next time we’ll be talking to y’all still smell the spots.

Speaker 4: 00:28:16 So that was our experience making lightsabers and I have to say it was,

Speaker 6: 00:28:22 It was cool. It was briefer than I thought it would be. And maybe that’s why so many spots. Okay.

Speaker 4: 00:28:29 Right, right. Cause they cut, it was almost a spiritual experience. The way that they tell your story and the way they walk you through it and they really indoctrinates you into a lot of the mythos and, and I think they do a really good job with the whole process. It’s absolutely, I think the, the cast members that, that were with us.

Speaker 6: 00:28:52 Very helpful and yeah, and just, you know, gave you a sense that, you know, this was kind of an important thing that you were doing. You know, when you got there, you checked in, they gave you like this little menu basically that said, okay, here’s one of the four types, you know, so you get to pick which one of the four, they give you a lapel pin. You know, that designates which one of the four factions or types that you’re, you’re trying to do. And then when you get there, you know the other cast members are there to, to help you and they take out, you know, so then even though you picked a certain type, you still can modify it. Right. You know, so like, right. So there’s, you know, one, you know, two different types of

Speaker 7: 00:29:42 This, four different types of this, two different types of this. So which one did you pick? So this is my

Speaker 9: 00:30:00 Purple to go with my,

Speaker 4: 00:30:02 That is the hilt you made that helped you pick all the pieces for that.

Speaker 9: 00:30:06 There were two different types of, of bottom two different pipe types of center two different types of tops. And then obviously, you know, my Khyber crystal, I picked, you know, the, the purple ones.

Speaker 4: 00:30:23 Which one did you pick? You could pick peace and justice. Power and control. Elemental nature or protection and defense.

Speaker 7: 00:30:29 I think I was protection and defense.

Speaker 9: 00:30:33 Yeah. So I was trying to kind of go more like princess lay, his lightsaber. But they didn’t have anything, so I just kinda went with, Oh, this is kinda cool.

Speaker 7: 00:30:44 That is a cool looking paper. I like the design and it’s, it’s heavy. It’s heavy. You know, the blade itself isn’t that heavy, but the hilt is definitely,

Speaker 4: 00:30:54 And the, the blades themselves are removable. So if you push in and turn, you can pull the blade out.

Speaker 7: 00:31:04 It’s mad at me. I’m trying to push to turn. There we go. So this is very light. This is, you know, almost like nothing, but this is still, you know, a good, I don’t know, 15 pounds, 20 pounds, probably about three or four pounds. It’s far. They’re not that heavy. Yeah. Okay. Five pounds, five pounds.

Speaker 4: 00:31:28 But the interesting thing is is that you can open these up, you can pull the Khyber crystal out and you can replace the Cairo crystal. And depending on the color of the crystal you put in the Sabre determines what color your blade is. The blade itself has all the led colors in it, so you don’t have to change your blade to change the color and you just change the crestal and the crystals themselves have a signal that they send to the saber and the saber then talks to the blade and tells them they will color. So it’s, it’s pretty sophisticated. I really, really enjoyed it. So you just sunk down. So it is a one 99 99 to build the saver plus tax you do at the pay before you go in. It’s one light saber per builder per experience, so you can go in multiple times, but you need to have an appointment each time to go in.

Speaker 7: 00:32:30 And that was something that they weren’t taking walk-ins right when we were there.

Speaker 4: 00:32:37 The carrying case is included, which is nice. It’s a nice padded case to protect it. It’s got a shoulder strap to it. There’s a ton of other things. You can get a belt clip and different crystals and stuff like that. And like we said before, it is limited to one builder and one guest. But you know, I, I think the experience itself was, was just phenomenal,

Speaker 7: 00:33:02 Right? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 00:33:05 So after that, we did talk about the Drury workshop already, so we can skip that part. A couple of quick things on the jury workshop though, we did a, the droids were 99, 99 each. It comes with a carrying box. There’s personality chips that you can get for them. Again, this is limited to one builder among guests as well. And at least one person in the party must be 14 or older.

Speaker 7: 00:33:34 And you, there are again, extra accessories. They even had like a backpack that a lot of people were getting. And I think that it was like if you did that, it was $149 with that. And I think you got the personality included, you know what that too. So,

Speaker 4: 00:33:51 So that was all the stuff with the two black Spire, outposts and all the cool stuff except rise of the resistance, the ride. So tell us, just briefly tell us about that and then we have a video for that as well.

Speaker 7: 00:34:08 Wow. I just, words can’t describe it. It was the most amazing attraction I’ve ever been on, you know, in my life. You know, we’ve talked about before back years ago, Vegas had a star Trek experience ride and that was just kind of like amazing, cause you kind of started out in this one area and all of a sudden you’re on the ship and you’re like, how’d I get here? And they take you to a shuttle craft and you know, the shuttle craft basically takes you back to Vegas, you know? So that was always like the most phenomenal ride we had ever done. You know, Disney has some, you know, awesome attractions and things like that, but nothing that ever kinda matched that. Well, now this has gone well beyond, you know, you want to talk about immersive, you want to talk about, you know just amazing from start to finish.

Speaker 7: 00:35:13 There was no slow part, you know, really with it, just the cue lines and you know, and, and walking through things and the props that they had, you know, to, to look at. And, and you know, there it wasn’t, you know, you didn’t have to have anything to interact with. You know, just looking at everything was just incredible. And then, you know, the cast, you know, you kind of start out and it’s, you know, resistance fighters and it’s like, okay, come on, we gotta get you here, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then all of a sudden you end up, you know, on a star destroyer and now you have first order cast members and only time you’ll see Disney cast members that aren’t nice and they are mean, like I was expecting them to like hate you or something and they, they didn’t break character at all.

Speaker 7: 00:36:07 When people were laughing, it was like, stop laughing, get in line, be quiet. Did you know you were like, Whoa, you know, it definitely helped. So we do have a video. Okay. It’s not the entire ride, but it was a good chunk of it. The ride is about 18 minutes long, right from start to finish. There’s like three different parts, you know, to the, the ride through several scene transitions that are done almost seamlessly. Yeah. You, you literally feel like you’re in the movie. Absolutely. Absolutely. Before we started, just the special effects. Oh my God. So you see laser bolts flying through the air writing and striking walls and the walls themselves exploding, right? Sparking. Right. And honestly, thank God I took video because there were things I missed going through that. Now that I’ve watched, you know, the, the video clip, you know, it’s like, Oh my God, I totally missed that. Or, you know, I missed whatever was being said because I was just trying to take everything in. You know? I definitely think it’s one of those rides you have to go on a couple of times to catch. Well, yeah. So let’s take a look at the video here.

Speaker 2: 00:37:30 Is everyone a simple not bring down your shields. Future of resistance is at stake given to you. There are 14 of you total. We simply need, but one for a good location. Wait get to be a state now. We need to find them a way. Okay, take this quarter. Took the trouble. Listen, you can head down to the scape on base. Those joys are programs where attorneys, you’re about to be seated with seat belts, securely fastened to keep hands off. Speak to legs. It’s not the transport and supervise your children. Repeat. Where’s the Lieutenant?

Speaker 4: 00:50:11 So that was risers instance. Most of it at least just incredible. It was, they, they combined probably half a dozen ride technologies together. Incredible experience. Whole tracklist

Speaker 6: 00:50:28 System. You know, we were going backwards for a good portion of it. You know, there were people, you know, the, that we saw in front of us that they were going, you know, forward and you got all these cars moving around, you know, at the same time going down a corridor and stuff and you know, you’d go in the lift and you’re like, Oh my God. And you get raised up kind of quickly and you know, in the back of your mind you’re thinking, okay, what goes up must come down. Yeah. But you know, I’m not really thinking that. I’m just going, okay, well if we went up nicely, maybe we’ll go down nicely. And that was not the case. And probably if I knew that there was some sort of fall, I probably, I don’t know, I think I would’ve had a hard time justifying going on it. So I think that was good for,

Speaker 4: 00:51:18 Yeah, it was, it was fairly gentle. You know, it was jarring because you weren’t expecting it. It wasn’t that high. It wasn’t like tower terror where you’re doing, you know, 30 feet, you know, so many story only drop was about eight to 10 feet, but it had an awesome, awesome effect. So when we come back, we will talk about our entertainment news. We’ll talk about the Mandalorian season finale.

Speaker 4: 00:51:50 So a Mandalorian has run its eight course episode for season one and it opened up with our scout troopers. A little bit of a comedy routine at the beginning. Then they are, yeah, well I, you know, maybe only got a little abuse there

Speaker 6: 00:52:08 Did, and there were a lot of people that were pissed off and poor PPO was, was getting beat up, but you know what, they go troopers got it in the end. So yeah,

Speaker 4: 00:52:17 They did. They did. So we got some more Mandalorian Laura came out of it, which was nice to see his face. You got to see his face. You got to see IgG 11 actually really shine in the episode, which was nice. You know, he’s an over-protective nanny and certainly prove that you got to find out where Kara came from. She’s from, from all Duran, which explains why she’s a little pissed at the amps for a blotter playing it up. So I could totally understand that. Understand and relate. Yeah. We find out the Mandalorian actually has an aim. He’s not just Mandou, he’s didn’t Jarren. So hopefully he’ll actually go by that name moving forward. We also see another flashback and this time, probably the most extensive, some footage we’ve seen before in the flashback, but we see the consequences of the droid separatists raid on his home.

Speaker 6: 00:53:20 Right. And basically, you know, obviously we always knew he had some sort of hatred towards this kind of know you saw it, but then you saw how he got saved and how he ended up.

Speaker 4: 00:53:32 I became a Mandalorian and how he became, you know, all of that. So we also find out from the armorer that she was the sole survivor of the aftermath of his breakaway. Amanda’s breakaway. She recognizes the child was, is a Jedi. She makes some references there. And she also makes the Mandalorian and the child baby Yoda a clean of two, and the Mandalorian owns his signet, earns a signet now. So basically she, he’s his dad until he can find someone else to protect him, which I thought was kind of neat. What else did we learn? We learned we learned how explosive an IgE 11 drawer you can be and how many structure brush he can take out. We also learn the interesting reveal of the dark Sabre, right? We see, we seem off Gideon survive his, his crash, which I gotta say that fight itself where, you know, the man DOE gets his jet pack isn’t fully trained on it, but knows enough to take down to the tie fighter.

Speaker 4: 00:54:50 That was kind of cool. That was pretty cool. But we learned about the the dark CBRE, so that I’m guessing is probably gonna play a huge role in next season, season two. So all in all, I think the season finale, even now we’ve ran into a couple of you know, needed slow downs in the middle of the season there for some character development and introductions. I think the overall, the eight, eight episode season was fantastic. Absolutely. Any final thoughts on the Mandalorian? It was awesome. Okay. I won’t argue. The other thing we did get to see during the break was the rise of Skywalker. So what are your thoughts on rise of Skywalker deer?

Speaker 6: 00:55:40 Okay. So I went in with it into it, hoping it was going to be better than the last Jedi. And that was really all my, my expectations. You know, I had heard that they were basically going to try and, you know, wrap everything up and, and, you know, explain various things that they hadn’t. And, you know, I was just going in and enjoying it for what it was. I wasn’t, you know, I didn’t have, I didn’t have any information of what the storyline was or any of the spoiler stuff that, that you had. I just to kind of

Speaker 7: 00:56:25 Go with it. Wa, you know, for what it was I cried a lot. There were definitely moments that, that had me emotional. And it was the movie that the 10 year old may, who saw a return of the Jed, I wanted to say. Yeah. And that’s, and for me, I loved it. You know, it was, I, I, you know, okay. Loophole this and loophole veteran. You know, it was 10 year old Mae who went and saw a return of the Jedi. What my dad, this is the movie, you know, that 10 year old me wanted to want to see. And that was, you know,

Speaker 4: 00:57:09 Now I will say, you know, my expectations going into it were similar to yours. I had wanted it to be better than last, Jed, I, which honestly wasn’t hard to accomplish. Low is better than last year. I had one of the, to sum up the saga and, and that was really get for my expectations going in. And when I walked out, I was satisfied. Okay. And my reaction walking out was, wow, right now with the benefit of hindsight, I can go back and I can nitpick on all the various things. And gab, when I, when I wrote my notes up on this, I wrote up a rant and rant on the notes and yes, just in case you were, and I’m not going to rant on the podcast here. Okay. I will leave it in the show notes so you can go and see all the issues that I have with it.

Speaker 4: 00:58:14 It was better than last. Jed. I, it ended the saga. So would accomplish the two things that I was looking forward to do. Did it do it in a way that I would have done it? No. The, it did clear up a number of things that were irking me from last Jedi, which I appreciate that. But eh, you know, it’s over and done with. Now the saga itself is over. I would’ve liked to have seen it go a different way, but it didn’t I’m not going to harp on it anymore. I, I, I don’t want to be one of those toxic star Wars fans who thinks he knows everything and could have done a better job. I think we got too much of that out of last Jedi. It carried over to this and it doesn’t help the genre. It doesn’t help the community.

Speaker 4: 00:59:10 It doesn’t help anybody. So I’m not going to harp on that. I will say that it was, it met my expectations and leave it at that. I think there are things that could have been done differently. Things that could’ve been done better. I don’t necessarily like the villain that they came up with. I think that could have been done better. But you know, all, no, I think it was a better movie. The last Jedi. Okay. I’m going to leave it at that. Wow. Yeah. I, cause we’re running late here. We really didn’t have the half hour. I needed to go into my rant. Joe’s special edition episode 47.2. I literally have like four pages of hour of so my S I’ll go over my summer. Okay. Cause I just scrolled down those four pages to my summary. The movie’s a hot mess from the opening crawl.

Speaker 4: 01:00:08 It’s bouncing all over the place. There’s too much stuff crammed into it. It was a tribute to the fans who really were undeserving of such a tribute because the fans themselves turn this into a toxic waste dump after last Jedi. It was the best way to end a series of forgettable throwaway sequels. Cause you could literally take these last three movies, ignore them, pretend they never existed and the saga would be better off that way. I don’t think you added anything to the saga with these last three movies. And a big thank you to Disney for running my childhood with this series. But you know, other than that they’re making money hand over fist,

Speaker 6: 01:00:54 But yet you liked Galaxy’s edge. Galaxy’s edge was awesome. So I think for us, if we had gone to Galaxy’s edge first and then watch the movie, you would have been like,

Speaker 4: 01:01:08 Well, and, and you know, I blame Disney for this and it’s not all Disney’s fault because Disney’s proven that it’s capable of making good star Wars. You see that in the main room. You saw that in road one. If you get the same people that made those to make the rest of your star Wars movies, I think you’ll be spot on. The problem is the people that you have making them and the decision makers that you have are not doing this. The franchise Justin.

Speaker 6: 01:01:36 Right. Well, and I think there have been a number of things that have come out now where executives have said, you know, John Fabro is really kind of the next George Lucas. Like he really should be handling

Speaker 4: 01:01:54 Fabro and Saloni I think are fantastic team.

Speaker 6: 01:01:57 Yeah, I think that’s where you kind of need to, all right, if we need to go onto the next star Wars thing,

Speaker 4: 01:02:06 I agree. I would love to see him decorative art directing the next one. I’m okay with it not being a star Wars movie going forward. I would love to see them do something from the old Republic era. Right.

Speaker 7: 01:02:20 You know, the game that I play is an old Republic game. And I think there’s so much story that could be from the thing is that, you know, for you, because you read the books and the comics and, and you know, all the, the, you know, you have so much knowledge of various characters and things like that, or someone like me who only, you know, watched the movies and that’s my base. I, you know, well, and that’s another criticism. I lodge a Disney with these, this latest trilogy is they went out of their way to explain a lot of these things in the novels and comics and right

Speaker 4: 01:03:01 Visual dictionaries and all the supplemental stuff that 2% of the people are going to see. And then they put you, they put you in the middle of a story in the movies and you don’t know what’s going on. Who’s this? Who’s that? Why are you doing this? Where are we at here? You don’t know any of that stuff if you didn’t read all the other stuff. And as a result, it’s a very dish, join it, jarring sensation watching these movies and not knowing these things. And, and again, I blame the fans because one of the first things that Disney did when they bought Lucas film and they, they took over ownership was they decided to make all the old novels legacy and non cannon and all the fans got upset about that. So to make up for that, Disney decided to make the new novels cannon and those new novels fed into the movies.

Speaker 4: 01:03:58 Well, only a small portion of the people read those novels and understood any of the impact. Everybody read all the old stuff, right? The new stuff. So what happens is you sit down and you watch this movie and you’re introduced to the Knights of renting. You’ve no idea who they are. You see him, you see reference to them in the first movie, they’re glossed over in the second movie. And then the third movie, they get their butts kicked by Kylo Ren as if, you know, there are a bunch of street thugs, you know, in leather. So the like there’s a complete disconnect with the way that they will use these things. So anyway obviously it’s doing well. The box officer can’t be that bad, right? So it’s the end of the saga and that’s all I can say. But I think that’s all. We had a, we’re a little over an hour into it right now. So I think we give our contact the information. We come back next week and we go back to our regular format. Sounds good. So please reach us at via email, at comments and insights into things.com

Speaker 7: 01:05:02 At Twitter, at insights underscore things on YouTube. You can catch our videos@youtubedotcomslashinsightsintothingsonthewebatwwwdotinsightsintothingsdotcomandyoucancatchouraudiofeedatpodcastdotinsightsinentertainmentdotcomandthenonfacebookatfacebook.com backslash insight into things podcast. I think that’s it. That is it. The books may the force be with you and also with you.

Show Notes

  • Introduction
    • Insights Into Entertainment: Episode 47: “Nothing But Star Wars”
    • My co-host Michelle Whalen
  • Disney Detective
    • Review of Galaxy’s Edge
      • Overall impressions
        • Cast
          • Uniforms
          • Nametags
          • special greetings
        • Decor
          • Life sized ships
          • pod racer cooking
          • droid and gungan footprints
          • bathrooms and dianoga
        • Realism
          • Lack of traditional merchandise
          • ”Fly by” ships
          • Ship’s landing sounds
          • styling and architecture
          • The Millennium Falcon
          • Costumed troopers/Kylo Ren/Rey
          • Quick serve food names and presentation
        • Disney Parks App
          • Scan and interact with objects
          • Translate Aurebesh
          • Interact with places and things in the land
        • Reservations
          • Savi’s Workshop
          • Oga’s Cantina
          • Droid Depot
        • Merchandise
          • Savi’s Workshop
          • Droid Depot
          • Dok-Ondar’s Den of Antiquities
          • The Creature Stall
          • Toydarian Toymaker
          • Resistance Supply
          • First Order Cargo
          • Galaxy’s Edge Mercantile
      • Savi’s Workshop Handbuilt Lightsabers
        • Choose Your Path
          • Travel to Black Spire Outpost, where a group known as the “Gatherers” ushers you into a covert workshop packed with unusual parts, whimsical pieces and miscellaneous memorabilia collected from the far reaches of the galaxy.

            Under their guidance, you can construct your very own lightsaber and bring it to life through the power of kyber crystals. Builders beware—you must protect the shop’s secrecy to avoid being discovered by the First Order!

            Once your lightsaber is complete (purchase required!), you’ll be ready to embark on incredible new adventures—from the far reaches of Wild Space to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge!

            Assemble Your Lightsaber
            Meet one of Savi’s Gatherers outside his workshop, where you’ll choose one of 4 available hilt themes and receive a cloisonné pin to identify your selection. Themes include:

            • Peace and Justice
              Salvaged scraps from fallen Jedi temples and crashed starships in these Republic-era designs honor the galaxy’s former guardians.

            • Power and Control
              Originally forged by dark side warriors, this style features rumored remnants from the Sith homeworld and abandoned temples.

            • Elemental Nature
              This theme embodies the Force—an energy created by all living things, like Brylark trees, Cartusion whale bones and Rancor teeth.

            • Protection and Defense
              Hilt materials bear mysterious motifs and inscriptions that reconnect users with the ancient wellspring of the Force.


The Gatherers will now help you select the heart of your lightsaber—the kyber crystal, which is available in red, blue, green or violet.

Next, begin assembling your hilt—parts will be provided based on your theme and cloisonné pin. Each box of parts includes:

  • 1 hilt
  • 4 sleeves (pick 2)
  • 2 emitters (pick 1)
  • 2 pommel caps (pick 1) 
  • 2 sets of activation plates and switches (pick 1 set)

Upon hilt completion, the unused parts will be

collected by the Gatherers and returned to Savi’s

inventory. These are not included with your

lightsaber package.

Finally, the Gatherers will masterfully connect your

hilt to a 31” lightsaber blade so you’re ready for

anything the galaxy puts in your path!

Important Details

  • $199.99 per lightsaber, plus tax
  • Payment will be due upon arrival at the location
  • One lightsaber per builder per experience
  • Carrying case included
  • Additional customization items can be purchased at Dok-Ondar’s Den of Antiquities
  • Age Recommendation: 5 years or older
  • The experience area is limited to the builder and one Guest—at least one person in the party must be age 14 or older
  • Guest of the builder may not build a lightsaber when accompanying the builder
  • Custom lightsabers are nonrefundable and are not eligible for Annual Passholder or other discounts

Know Before You Go
Reservations 

  • Savi’s Workshop – Handbuilt Lightsabers is incredibly popular and subject to availability. Reservations for Savi’s Workshop – Handbuilt Lightsabers are highly recommended and can be made up to 180 days in advance.
  • Separate Disney’s Hollywood Studios admission is required.
  • Reservations are nontransferable and may not be sold or bartered.

Checking In

  • Guests should check in no earlier than 15 minutes prior to their reservation time at the check-in location in front of Savi’s Workshop – Handbuilt Lightsabers. Each person in your party must be present upon check-in and admission to Savi’s Workshop – Handbuilt Lightsabers. Late arrivals may not be accommodated.
  • Please be prepared to present your reservation confirmation, photo ID and the credit card provided at the time of booking. 

Cancellations 

  • A valid, accepted credit card number is required at the time of booking. You must cancel at least one day prior to your reservation to avoid a per builder cancellation fee. If you fail to timely cancel and are a no-show, the credit card provided at the time of reservation will be charged $199.99 per builder.
  • Droid Workshop
    • Assemble a Custom Astromech Droid Unit

      Visit a workshop stocked with parts, chips, manuals and other tech items useful for constructing your very own droid, one of the galaxy’s most indispensable sidekicks.

      First, register your choice of the BB-series unit or R-series unit with the clerk, who’ll provide a basket and blueprint for parts. Next, proceed to the following stations and begin your droid-building experience.

    • Parts Station
      • Select from a colorful variety of components to customize your droid as they roll by on the shop’s conveyor belt:

        BB-Series
        • Dome
        • Dome Connection Plate
        • Body Sphere
        • Motivator

R-Series

  • Dome
  • Body
  • Center Leg
  • Set of Side-Legs

–       Build Station

Here you’ll follow simple “placemat”

instructions or graphic monitor

displays to assemble your droid in

the proper sequence. Once

complete, your droid will be paired

with a remote control and activated

as you watch it come to life!

  • Pricing
    • $99.99 per astromech droid unit, plus tax
    • Carry box and instructions included
    • Various personality-affiliation chips and other accessories are available for an additional charge
    • Age Recommendation: 3+
    • The experience area is limited to the builder and one Guest—at least one person in the party must be age 14 or older
    • Only the builder will be allowed to build a droid; the Guest of the builder may not build a droid
    • Custom astromech droid units are nonrefundable and are not eligible for Annual Passholder or other discount
  • Entertainment News
    • Mandalorian Season Finale
      • Joe’s Review/Breakdown
        • Scout Troopers
        • More Mandalorian Lore
        • Baby Yoda
        • IG-11 as an over protective nanny
        • This episode’s big reveals include Cara’s planet of origin, Alderaan, which would explain why the promise of killing Imperials made her so easy to recruit in the previous episodes. 
        • The Mandalorian has a name: Din Djarin. But it’s a name he left behind a long time ago.
        • “Redemption” offers the most extensive flashback yet to his time as a child during the Purge, showing the young Mandalorian being stashed away from certain death by his doomed parents then rescued by a Mandalorian. 
          • It also helps explain his obligation to the Child, a foundling rescued by a Mandalorian, just as he was — an obligation built into his creed, as explained by the Mandalorian’s later conversation with the Armorer.
        • Also learned in the conversation with the Armorer: 
          • (1) She’s the sole survivor of an Imperial attack that’s wiped out the rest of their band of Mandalorians (even, presumably, the really big one)
          • (2) she recognizes the Child as a Jedi, even though Jedi have faded into near-legend for the Mandalorians.
          • The Armorer still makes the Mandalorian and the Child a clan of two, complete with their own Signet. “By Creed,” she tells him, “until it is of its age or reunited with its own kind, you are as its father.” If that wasn’t officially the premise of this series, it is now.
          • The Mandalorian’s origin story also fleshes out his hatred of droids, a hate that’s fully tested this episode thanks to IG-11, first when the reprogrammed nurse droid saves him from Moff Gideon–inflicted injuries, and sees his face in the process. 
          • By episode’s end, that hatred has been challenged again. At the end of a journey down a lava river — with some help from a ferry droid that appears to be a hybrid between an astromech droid and a gondolier — IG-11 sacrifices himself to save the Child and his friends. 
          • But before he can revert to the manufacturer’s protocol that will allow him to self-destruct, he receives the Mandalorian’s assurance he’ll take care of the Child. 
          • After calling the Mandalorian out on his bluff and pointing out that, yeah, actually he is sad at the thought of IG-11’s death, he gives the Child a little stroke on the ear, walks through burning lava to the end of the tunnel, then blows himself up, and an impressive number of stormtroopers with him. 
          • The title may still read “The Mandalorian,” but this episode really belongs to IG-11. (It’s also directed by the actor giving him his voice, Taika Waititi.)
          • One wild battle with Moff Gideon later — one that allows the Mandalorian to test out his new jetpack — and our hero and his adopted child are off to parts unknown while Greef Karga and Cara seem to be on their way to reestablishing Karga’s bounty-hunting business. 
          • The Mandalorian has worked as an adventure-of-the-week episodic show, but these past two episodes have revealed those episodes as part of a grander design telling a cohesive story — one that’s neatly set up a second season while answering the question of whether a live-action Star Wars series could work. It can and did, in the process carving out live-action TV as a space that could feature the mythology (and production values) of Star Wars movies but tell stories that wouldn’t work in films. With luck, the Mandalorian and the Child are on their way to a happy ending — but one that hopefully won’t arrive too soon.
    • Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
      • Joe’s Rant
        • The Emperor is back, some how
          • This is just too much of a convenient plot tool
          • Nothing original about this and how he’s back is vague and poorly outlined making it even less believable
          • How did he survive?
          • Who helped me escape the fire plunge down the shaft, the utter destruction of the Death Star and it’s apparent plummet through the atmosphere of the forest moon and subsequence impact on the planet?
          • How does he manage to live on without anyone finding out?
          • How does he develop a useless group of followers as large as he did with no one noticing?
          • How did he build a super huge fleet of one shot glass jaw “Death Star Destroyers”
            • And how did he not only manage to overlook the fatal single point of failure flaw in the original death start but manage to incorporate into every one of his ships and make it so blatantly obvious in the form of a ridiculous large cannon on the bottom of the ship. At least the exhaust port was hard to hit at two meters wide for God’s sake!
          • Why would you even bother to build a ludicrously large fleet like that when you can just creat a force lightening storm and take out an even more ludicrously large fleet in orbit?
          • Why would presumably thousands of loyal followers sitting the stands in what appears to be your own private thunderdome arena simply sit there and watch as your impossible to explain grand daughter kills you?
          • Why would you not have learned from the old “lightsaber reflecting lightening to the face” trick that Mace Windu used on you and stop it from happening again?
          • How does one lightsaber manage to stop force lightening that acts as a planetary assault weapon and two reflect it like Wonder Woman?
          • The fact that Palpatine survived to be in this movie now cheapens the accomplishments that we’ve all grown to love about the original trilogy and did a disservice to the franchise as a whole all because of a lack of creativity
        • Rey is Palpatines granddaughter
          • How?
          • Why?
          • What’s the point?
          • What about her parents?
          • Why would Palpatine kill his son/daughter instead of turning them to the darkside, they would have been more pureblood than Rey
          • Why would Palpatine try to kill Rey if his ultimate plan was to have her kill him and take his powers?
          • This is all a big jumbled rushed together mess
        • Supreme leader Kylo Ren must find a secret sith GPS to find the Emperor
          • First off, there’s nothing Supreme about Kylo Ren. He’s the very embodiment of whiny Anakin in emo cloths and has been the whole series. Absolutely the worst villain in Star Wars and possibly movie history.
          • A sith GPS? Really?
          • The opening crawl tells us that Palapatine sends a message to the galaxy. Why not just send Kylo and Email with his address since he’s trying to recruit him anyway and has been pulling the strings all this time? Did they really need a Sith GPS (Wayfinder)?
        • Besides Rey, literally no one else in the movie mattered
          • Poe and Finn and a bunch of other people show up to support Rey. But clearly she doesn’t need it because ultimately she does everything on her own. Yay for girl power, bad for storyline and chacter development.
          • Not only does Rey steal the show, she steals the Skywalker name. While that was a touching bit of fan play at the end, it cheapens the entire saga.
            • I get why JJ Abrams did it. The “no one is special and everyone can have the force” garbage that Rian Jonson tried to pull basically ruined the entire final trilogy and JJ had to try and do something to save it.
          • Aside from the ability to sell more action figure’s, what’s the point of introducing more characters to the franchise that you have no intention of using?
          • They’ve under utilized the other characters they’ve already introduced like Maz and Rose and relegated them to the point of being throw away characters. Now they did the same with the new characters in this movie.
        • Why do they hate Mark Hammil
          • How, after two movies of either ignoring or trashing the character of Luke Skywalker can we continue to pay him so little respect.
          • Mark Hammil has been the most underutilized member of this cast for the entire final trilogy and it’s almost criminal
          • He once again plays a useless role as the majority of his shimmering blue appearance in the film is dedicated to ret-conning the hack job that Rian Jonson did in The Last Jedi
          • So after completely misusing the character in the last film, they’re now going to completely misuse him in this one to try and fix what was broken about him in the last one? What a disaster!
        • Let’s bring back Lando, what could possibly go wrong
          • Don’t get me wrong, I love Bill Dee Williams and I love the character of Lando. Having him back was great, if for no other reasons that the wobbly eyed awkwardly uncomfortable interviews Bill Dee gave leading up to the premier where he seemed confused whether he really was Lando or not.
          • But for Godsake give the character some decent lines and screen time? Again, another beloved member of the original cast that is grossly underutilized and just flat out misused.
          • By his own admission his flying days are behind him, yet what does he ultimately wind up doing? Flying!
          • And he even gets the “fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy” corny line to go with it
          • What I thought were butterflies in my stomach at that scene turned out to be an urge to avoid vomiting
        • Saying goodbye to old friends…not really
          • C-3PO has one of the most touching scenes as his memory is about to be wiped in order to read the sacred dagger from the temple of the crystal skull or whatever the hell that goofy Indian Jones like artifact was that they needed to find the second wayfinder. (Convenient how there were two of these, one on a battlestation that was destroyed presumably before the once thought dead emperor established his super secret but not really base on the edge of the galaxy, but we won’t dwell on that gaping plot hole)
          • In order to override his manufacturing programming and have the ability to read a forbidden language (since when are languages forbidden in the Star Wars Galaxy?) he must have his mind wiped and he’ll lose all his memories.
          • So he dramatically takes one last look at his friends, gets wiped, reads the text and reboots not knowing anyone and he’s gone
          • He’s sacrifice was a noble one and a good ending to a beloved character
          • Only it wasn’t. Because he gets a backup memory restored from R2 who’s “backups are notoriously unreliable” and all of a sudden the touching scene and the sacrifice are wiped out in one idiotic line of dialogue.
        • Oh no, they’ve killed Chewie…not really
          • In a dramatic scene Chewbacca gets captured by the First Order, loaded onto a transport for what is sure to be a torturous interrogation
          • Finn raises the alarm and just as the transport (the only transport that we ever see or have any reason to believe exists on the whole damn planet at this time) begins to rise into the sky Rey reaches out, calling on the Force to stop it’s progress
          • Just when you think she’s going to be able to pull off this impressive feat of force fortitude Kylo Ren interferes and the two begin a tug of war
          • As a result of frustration, or the struggle or just a lack of control of her powers Rey unintentionally unleashes a bolt of force lightening at the transport and destroys it, thereby killing Chewbacca and causing great grief to the audience.
          • Only not really, he’s actually no the other transport. You know, the one that no one ever sees and we have no reason to believe exists other than another sloppy and lazy plot hole.
        • Leia’s valiant sacrifice…not really
          • Having resurrected the beloved actress through repurposed and previously unused footage Leia manages to play a prominent role in the movie
          • These scenes were awkwardly cut and assembled with too many body double shots from behind to make them work. 
          • We even get to see her fighting and defeating a younger luke during her training to become a jedi in what has to be the single worst use of a CGI face cover we’ve ever been exposed to.  In that one scene she literally looked more like han solo than Alden Ehrenreich did in Solo A Star Wars story
          • But her big scene comes in the dramatic fight between Kylo Ren and Rey where she reaches out to him in the force, touching him through the mystical bonds of mother to child through the force in one all encompassing attempt to do what his father sacrificed himself and failed to do, turn him back to the light, right?
          • No, she distracts  him long enough to Rey to impale him with her lightsaber. Thanks mom.
          • An through this super human effort she also succumbs to the force and dies
          • Really? This was the best way we could have handled this?
          • She can freakishly survive the vacuum of space and magically fly back to her ship and survive but she can’t muster enough force power to simply distract her son without dying? This made the lame death of Luke in Last Jedi look epic.
        • Summary
          • This movie was a hot message from the opening crawl
          • It was a tribute to the fans who were undeserving of such a disservice to the characters we’ve known and loved for decades
          • And it was the best way to end a series of forgettable throwaway sequels to a saga that will now forever be stained by the corporate greed and incompetence of dozens of people
          • Thanks Disney for ruining my childhood
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