Hours after Disneyland resort announced their coronavirus-related closure, Disney announced they are closing Walt Disney World, the company&#8217;s Orlando, Florida, theme park resort, as well.
According to a statement from a Disney spokesperson, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and Disneyland Paris Resort will shutter on March 15, lasting until the end of the month.
&#8220;In an abundance of caution and in the best interest of our guests and employees, we are proceeding with the closure of our theme parks at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and Disneyland Paris Resort, beginning at the close of business on Sunday, March 15, through the end of the month,&#8221; the spokesperson said, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/media/disney-world-close-coronavirus/index.html">CNN</a>.
Earlier in the day, The Walt Disney Company released a statement announcing the closure of Disneyland for this Friday.
&#8220;As a result of the growing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Disneyland Resort, including Disneyland and Disney California Adventure is closing to guests on Friday, effective immediately,&#8221; the statement read.
Disney noted that there have not been any reported cases of coronavirus at Disneyland Resort. Still, the company felt the need to move forward with the closure &#8220;after carefully reviewing the guidelines of the Governor of California’s executive order&#8221; and serving &#8220;in the best interests of our guests and employees.&#8221;
&#8220;The hotels of Disneyland Resort will remain open until Monday march 16, to give guests the ability to make necessary travel arrangements; Downtown Disney will remain open,&#8221; Disney informed guests. &#8220;We will monitor the ongoing situation and follow the advice and guidelines of federal and state officials and health agencies. Disney will continue to pay cast members during this time.&#8221;
The company promised to work with folks who wish to change or cancel their visits: &#8220;Disneyland Resort will work with guests who wish to change or cancel their visits, and will provide refunds to those who have hotel bookings during this closure period,&#8221; the statement outlined. &#8220;We anticipate heavy call volume over the next several days and appreciate guests’ patience as we work hard to respond to all inquiries.&#8221;
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump addressed the nation with concern to the coronavirus, specifically notifying Americans about actions being taken by the government for containment, such as a travel ban from Europe to the United States.
In a <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/03/11/homeland-security-acting-secretary-chad-f-wolf-s-statement-presidential-proclamation">release</a> from the Department of Homeland Security posted Wednesday, it was specified that the ban would apply to &#8220;most foreign nationals who have been in certain European countries at any point during the 14 days prior to their scheduled arrival to the United States,&#8221; and expressly exclude &#8220;legal permanent residents&#8221;:
<blockquote>Today President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation, which suspends the entry of most foreign nationals who have been in certain European countries at any point during the 14 days prior to their scheduled arrival to the United States. These countries, known as the Schengen Area, include: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. This does not apply to legal permanent residents, (generally) immediate family members of U.S. citizens, and other individuals who are identified in the proclamation.</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-disneyland-shuts-down-because-of-coronavirus">Disneyland Shuts Down Because of Coronavirus</a>

The Cinderella Castle during an overcast day is seen in the

Disney World Closing Down Due To Coronavirus

Coronavirus

Disney

Disney World

Disneyland

Multiple Middle Eastern markets have banned the Disney/Pixar animated movie &#8220;Onward&#8221; for featuring an explicitly lesbian character.
&#8220;Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all banned the film due to the reference,&#8221; reports <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/03/disney-onward-banned-multiple-middle-east-markets-lesbian-lgbt-reference-1202876168/">Deadline</a>. &#8220;The film, released regionally this week, is nowhere to be seen on cinema schedules in those territories. Other Middle East markets such as Bahrain, Lebanon and Egypt are showing the film.&#8221;
Last month, after Disney successfully kept it under wraps, reports surfaced that &#8220;Onward&#8221; would be breaking new ground by being the first animated movie to feature an openly LGBTQ character voiced by Lena Waithe. The character is reportedly a lesbian police officer whose sexuality gets explicitly pointed out in the movie as opposed to just being implied, such as the alleged lesbian couple in “Finding Dory” or the “exclusively gay moment” in the “Beauty and the Beast” live-action remake.
Here’s how <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2020/02/pixar-onward-exclusively-gay-moment-mission-accomplished.html">Slate</a> described the moment:
<blockquote>
But we don’t need to speculate about Waithe’s Officer Spector. We know because she tells us. When she and her partner, voiced by Ali Wong, pull over a driver who claims he was distracted because his girlfriend’s sons have been acting up, she commiserates, “My girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out.”
That line isn’t the point of the scene. In fact, it goes by so fast you could barely notice it. But that’s why it works so well. The film doesn’t pause to let it sink in or isolate the moment with a cut for emphasis. It passes unremarked, because in this world, it’s accepted as a fact of life. Some babies have two daddies, and some babies have two mommies, even if those mommies happen to be centaurs or elves.
</blockquote>
Russia, a country known for censoring LGBT content in movies, switched out the word &#8220;girlfriend&#8221; for &#8220;partner.&#8221;
Though &#8220;Onward&#8221; has been banned in certain Middle Eastern markets, Disney has occasionally obliged censorship demands in those countries, such as when the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lesbian-kiss-in-rise-of-skywalker-cut-for-middle-east-release">lesbian kiss was edited out</a> of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; this past December.
The inclusion of Waithe’s character comes amid a wave of LGBT representation at Disney via the studio’s various intellectual properties and distribution platforms. In just a few months, Marvel’s “The Eternals” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marvels-the-eternals-will-feature-franchises-first-gay-onscreen-kiss">will be breaking new ground</a> by not only featuring the first openly gay superhero, but also the franchise’s first gay kiss.
“It’s a beautiful, very moving kiss,” said actor Haaz Sleiman. “Everyone cried on set. For me, it’s very important to show how loving and beautiful a queer family can be. Brian Tyree Henry is such a tremendous actor and brought so much beauty into this part, and at one point I saw a child in his eyes, and I think it’s important for the world to be reminded that we in the queer community were all children at one point. We forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious. We forget to connect on that human part.”
LGBTQ representation at Disney started in 2014 on the show “Good Luck Charlie,” <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/good-luck-charlie-lesbians_n_4675943">which featured</a> a lesbian mom couple.
“In the storyline, parents Amy and Bob Duncan (Leigh-Allyn Baker and Eric Allan Kramer) set up a playdate for preschooler Charlie (Mia Talerico) and one of her new friends,” TV Guide reported at the time. “When the kid arrives, the Duncans learn that Charlie’s pal has two moms. That’s fine, but the potential new friendship is put to the test as one mom chats with Amy, and the other is stuck listening to Bob’s dull stories.”

UK Premiere Of Disney And Pixar&#8217;s &#8220;Onward&#8221;

Disney’s ‘Onward’ Banned In Middle East Over Lesbian Character

Middle East

Onward movie

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As Meghan Markle and Prince Harry make their exit as senior members of the royal family, a recent <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8060475/Its-Meghan-Marvel-Duchess-Sussex-tells-agent-role-Hollywood-superhero.html">report from the Daily Mail</a> alleges that the Duchess of Sussex has asked her agent to seek for her a superhero blockbuster movie to star in.
&#8220;Meghan&#8217;s agent, Nick Collins, of Hollywood&#8217;s formidable Gersh Agency, has been busy fielding offers,&#8221; the outlet reported on Saturday.
The source told the Daily Mail that Markle told Nick Collins to seek out an ensemble role &#8220;in something like a superhero film.&#8221; Collins has reportedly told studios that Markle is available and open to the best offers. As to why she has asked for an ensemble role in a superhero movie, the source said that she understands audiences would never be able to accept her in a starring role, arguing that an ensemble piece in a large movie would be a smart way to ingratiate herself to them.
&#8220;Meghan is planning a series of meetings in Hollywood,&#8221; the source said. &#8220;She has already done the voiceover for Disney and now word is out that she&#8217;s looking for a superhero film, as a voiceover or even on screen. She knows she can&#8217;t carry a film as an actress. People won&#8217;t be able to get past the fact she&#8217;s Meghan Markle. But she&#8217;s determined to act again and she thinks a big, ensemble film is the way to go &#8230; something that pays big but which doesn&#8217;t put her front and centre.&#8221;
&#8220;Pretty much every A-list actress including Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Alba, Margot Robbie, Jennifer Lawrence and Halle Berry have starred in superhero movies,&#8221; the source continued. &#8220;There used to be a certain stigma attached to Marvel films but now they are the biggest market in the world. That&#8217;s what Meghan wants.&#8221;
The report that Meghan Markle is seeking to revive her acting career in the wake of her and Harry&#8217;s split with the royal family comes weeks <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-new-video-shows-prince-harry-meghan-markle-pitching-voiceover-work-to-disney-director-jon-favreau">after video surfaced</a> of Prince Harry asking former Disney CEO Bob Iger to enlist her voiceover talents in exchange for a donation to charity.
“You know she does voiceovers,” Harry told Iger at “The Lion King” premiere last July.
“Oh, really?” responded Iger.
“Did you know that?” Harry added. “You seem surprised. … She’s really interested.”
“Sure,” said Iger. “We’d love to try.”
Meghan Markle was hired by Disney to do some voiceover work in exchange for a charitable donation to Elephants Without Borders. Upon her and Harry&#8217;s historic announcement to carve out a more &#8220;progressive&#8221; role for themselves in the royal family as they pursue a life in North America, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflixs-ted-sarandos-interested-prince-harry-meghan-markle-deal-1271376">expressed interest</a> in collaborating with the duke and duchess of Sussex for a project.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle&#8217;s plans for a clean break were somewhat dampened recently when Queen Elizabeth forced the couple to drop their desired brand name and trademark “Sussex Royal.” Though the couple will still be allowed to keep their HRH titles, they will be barred from using the word royal.
“While The Duke and Duchess are focused on plans to establish a new non-profit organisation, given the specific UK Government rules surrounding use of the word Royal, it has been therefore agreed that their non-profit organisation, when it is announced this Spring, will not be named Sussex Royal Foundation,”<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/queen-win-harry-and-meghan-forced-to-drop-branding-name-trademark-applications-removed-markle-upset"> the couple said in a statement</a> via spokeswoman. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use ‘Sussex Royal’ in any territory post Spring 2020. Therefore, the trademark applications that were filed as protective measures, acting on advice from and following the same model for the Royal Foundation, have been removed.”

BRITAIN-ROYALS

REPORT: Meghan Markle Asked Agent To Seek Her A Superhero Blockbuster Movie Role

Hollywood

Meghan Markle

Prince Harry

Disney&#8217;s Pixar will be breaking revolutionary ground on March 6 with the release of &#8220;Onward&#8221; – the studio&#8217;s first animated movie to feature an openly LGBTQ character.
The character, voiced by Lena Waithe, will be a lesbian police officer whose sexuality will be explicitly pointed out in the movie as opposed to just being implied, such as the alleged lesbian couple in &#8220;Finding Dory&#8221; or the &#8220;exclusively gay moment&#8221; in the &#8220;Beauty and the Beast&#8221; live-action remake.
According to <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2020/02/pixar-onward-exclusively-gay-moment-mission-accomplished.html">Slate</a>, Pixar has largely kept the reveal of Waithe&#8217;s character under wraps by not making a huge media splash about it, opting instead to have it leaked slowly through varying reports. Here&#8217;s how the reveal unfolded:
<blockquote>
There’s a lesbian character in Onward, a police officer voiced by Lena Waithe, but the most revolutionary thing that Pixar has done in advance of the movie’s release is not tell anyone about it. A day before the review embargo on the movie lifted, the closest thing to a relevant search result was a Reddit post from a user with the subject &#8216;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/dg4wr9/im_surprised_more_people_arent_talking_about_this/">possible lesbian couple in Pixar’s Onward??&#8217; </a>featuring an ambiguous-at-best screenshot from the movie’s trailer&#8230;
</blockquote>
That being said, the inclusion of Waithe&#8217;s character will probably satisfy nobody who truly craves total representation in the LGBT community, being that Waithe&#8217;s moment of explicit lesbianism is a brief, throwaway line of little consequence:
<blockquote>
But we don’t need to speculate about Waithe’s Officer Spector. We know because she tells us. When she and her partner, voiced by Ali Wong, pull over a driver who claims he was distracted because his girlfriend’s sons have been acting up, she commiserates, “My girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out.”
That line isn’t the point of the scene. In fact, it goes by so fast you could barely notice it. But that’s why it works so well. The film doesn’t pause to let it sink in or isolate the moment with a cut for emphasis. It passes unremarked, because in this world, it’s accepted as a fact of life. Some babies have two daddies, and some babies have two mommies, even if those mommies happen to be centaurs or elves.
</blockquote>
The inclusion of Waithe&#8217;s character comes amid a wave of LGBT representation at Disney via the studio&#8217;s various intellectual properties and distribution platforms. In just a few months, Marvel&#8217;s &#8220;The Eternals&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marvels-the-eternals-will-feature-franchises-first-gay-onscreen-kiss">will be breaking new ground</a> by not only featuring the first openly gay superhero, but also the franchise&#8217;s first gay kiss.
“It’s a beautiful, very moving kiss,” said actor Haaz Sleiman. “Everyone cried on set. For me, it’s very important to show how loving and beautiful a queer family can be. Brian Tyree Henry is such a tremendous actor and brought so much beauty into this part, and at one point I saw a child in his eyes, and I think it’s important for the world to be reminded that we in the queer community were all children at one point. We forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious. We forget to connect on that human part.”

BET Presents The 51st NAACP Image Awards &#8211; Red Carpet

Disney’s Animated Movie ‘Onward’ To Feature First Explicitly LGBTQ Character

LGBTQ

On Wednesday, Walt Disney Company heiress and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney weighed in on the death of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, who was killed on Sunday along with his 13-year-old daughter and seven other people in a helicopter crash, tweeting, “I haven&#8217;t said anything about Kobe so far because I felt some time needed to pass&#8230; The man was a rapist. Deal with it.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I haven’t said anything about Kobe so far because I felt some time needed to pass before weighing in. But yes, it’s time for the sledgehammer to come out. The man was a rapist. Deal with it. <a href="https://t.co/9jfZHSqnnQ">https://t.co/9jfZHSqnnQ</a>
&mdash; Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) <a href="https://twitter.com/abigaildisney/status/1222515037971079168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Disney was responding to an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/remembering-kobe-bryant-is-complicated-but-felicia-sonmez-kept-both-eyes-on-the-truth/2020/01/28/de687214-41f0-11ea-aa6a-083d01b3ed18_story.html">op-ed</a> in The Washington Post on Tuesday by David Von Drehle titled, “Remembering Kobe Bryant required the hammer of truth” in which Von Drehle defended his colleague Felicia Sonmez, who was temporarily suspended after she tweeted a link to a report delineating the rape accusation against Bryant from 2003. Von Drehle wrote:
<blockquote>I’ve never met my Post colleague Felicia Sonmez, but I’ve read enough of her work to know that she’s crackerjack. After the crash, she swung a 20-pound sledgehammer at the Bryant story, tweeting a link to a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/kobe-bryants-disturbing-rape-case-the-dna-evidence-the-accusers-story-and-the-half-confession">detailed report </a>of the highly credible rape accusation lodged against the hard-court hero in 2003. When I say “highly credible,” I mean that Bryant himself admitted that he engaged in rough sex with his accuser, choked her so violently that she had bruises on her jawline and left her with multiple lacerations. In a statement, he acknowledged that he could understand why she thought he had raped her — even though the encounter seemed consensual to him.</blockquote>
Von Drehle continued:
<blockquote>The Twitter response to this truth-telling, so soon after the deaths, was predictably as disgusting as you would expect from the social media dystopia. What sparked controversy was the reaction of Sonmez’s senior editors. Like most media organizations, The Post walks a precarious path between loving and loathing Twitter. On one hand, the platform is an efficient means to promote good work. On the other hand, it’s the digital equivalent of an overflowing septic tank. In this case, the attempt to highlight an important fact in a major story landed the paper smack dab in the sewage. Sonmez was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/business/media/kobe-bryant-washington-post-felicia-sonmez.html">suspended with pay</a> — a decision widely <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/27/media/washington-post-felicia-sonmez-kobe-bryant/index.html">denounced</a> inside the newsroom and beyond. (The Post later reinstated Sonmez on Tuesday.)</blockquote>
Disney was both castigated and defended on Twitter after her tweet on Wednesday. She is not the only quasi-celebrity who has brought up the rape accusation against Bryant; actress Evan Rachel Wood tweeted and later deleted, “I am heartbroken for Kobe&#8217;s family. He was a sports hero. He was also a rapist. And all of these truths can exist simultaneously.” She later issued another tweet in which she began, “What has happened is tragic.”
<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7943219/Abigail-Disney-weighs-Kobe-Bryants-rape-case-past-rapist-Deal-it.html">The Daily Mail</a> noted, “Disney has spoken about being a survivor of sexual assault herself and in the past has expressed how furious she was about hearing MeToo allegations against Harvey Weinstein.”
During the hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, Disney <a href="https://twitter.com/abigaildisney/status/1045443376835899392">tweeted</a>,
<blockquote>In all seriousness, let me say this. I feel for Dr. Ford, I have experienced sexual assault. But nothing today has been as triggering for me as the rage and entitlement in this man. I had an angry, alcoholic father. He had an inside face and an outside face.He could make anyone believe he was a lovely, sweet, gentle man. If he&#8217;d been a Federal Judge, I am sure the ABA would have said nice things about him too. He did not rage every day, or about everything. But when he did rage it was terrifying.And generally what would send him into a rage was the same thing that sets off Judge Kavanaugh. Disrespect. Insubordination. Arrogance. Attitude. Entitlement. Disobedience …</blockquote>
&nbsp;

&#8220;Fire Drill Friday&#8221; Climate Change Protest

Disney Heiress Tweets About Kobe: ‘The Man Was A Rapist. Deal With It.’

Kobe Bryant

Prince Harry has not only pitched Meghan Markle&#8217;s voiceover work to Disney CEO Bob Iger, but also to top Disney director Jon Favreau ( of &#8220;The Mandalorian&#8221; fame).
Released on Saturday, new footage obtained by the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7903455/Moment-Prince-Harry-tells-Lion-King-director-Jon-Favreau-wife-available-work.html">Daily Mail </a>shows the duke and duchess of Sussex touting Meghan Markle&#8217;s acting chops while speaking with high-profile celebrities Jon Favreau, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z at a premiere for Disney&#8217;s &#8220;The Lion King.&#8221;
&#8220;If anyone needs any extra voiceover work,&#8221; Harry could be heard beginning to tell Favreau just as Meghan jokingly interrupts to say, &#8220;That&#8217;s really why we&#8217;re here — it&#8217;s the pitch!&#8221;
&#8220;Just not Scar,&#8221; Harry jovially says in reference to the villainous character in &#8220;The Lion King.&#8221;
<iframe title="&#039;She&#039;ll tackle any voiceover just not Scar&#039;: Moment Harry tells Lion King director Jon Favreau" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pUAp9-E3Im8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The recently released footage follows a report from last week which showed Prince Harry speaking to Disney CEO Bob Iger at the same event about Meghan Markle&#8217;s voiceover work.
“You know she does voiceovers,” Harry told Iger at &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; premiere in July.
“Oh, really?” responded Iger.
“Did you know that?” Harry added. “You seem surprised. … She’s really interested.”
“Sure,” said Iger. “We’d love to try.”
Conservative commentator Mark Steyn called it &#8220;the absolute lowest point of the monarchy in the last 100 years.&#8221;
&#8220;I think of all the pathetic things that the Duke of Windsor did after he abdicated when he entertained wealthy Americans and gave them a sort of pseudo glimpse into Royal life,&#8221; Steyn <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/6122347498001">told Fox News</a>. &#8220;That&#8217;s nothing like actually touting your wife as available for Lion King 7 or whatever it is.&#8221;
Meghan Markle was hired by Disney to do some voiceover work in exchange for a charitable donation to Elephants Without Borders. Just over the weekend, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflixs-ted-sarandos-interested-prince-harry-meghan-markle-deal-1271376">expressed interest</a> in collaborating with the duke and duchess of Sussex for a project.
Over the weekend, Queen Elizabeth II<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/prince-harry-meghan-markle-give-up-royal-titles-1270934"> unveiled the rather strict terms</a> that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be under as they split from the royal family to pursue a more &#8220;progressive role&#8221; in North America — an act that bars them from being referred to by &#8220;her majesty&#8221; and &#8220;royal highness.&#8221; They were also ordered to repay the money British taxpayers had spent on remodeling their Frogmore Cottage.
&#8220;The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are grateful to Her Majesty and the Royal Family for their ongoing support as they embark on the next chapter of their lives,&#8221; the statement from Buckingham Palace read. &#8220;As agreed in this new arrangement, they understand that they are required to step back from Royal duties, including official military appointments. They will no longer receive public funds for Royal duties.&#8221;
&#8220;With the queen’s blessing, the Sussexes will continue to maintain their private patronages and associations,&#8221; it continued. &#8220;While they can no longer formally represent the queen, the Sussexes have made clear that everything they do will continue to uphold the values of Her Majesty. The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family. The duke and duchess of Sussex have shared their wish to repay Sovereign Grant expenditure for the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage, which will remain their U.K. family home.&#8221;

Duke and Duchess of Sussex statement

WATCH: New Video Shows Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Pitching Voiceover Work To Disney Director Jon Favreau

Netflix

Disney is continuing to uphold its reputation as a company hellbent on going after anyone other than itself that may profit from its characters.
The company has a tendency to go after artists who use Disney character likenesses in their art. The latest example of this behavior involves the adorable viral character known as “Baby Yoda” from Disney’s “The Mandalorian.” First, some clarification, the character is not actually Yoda, as the series takes place long after Yoda was born, but it is a juvenile of the same species, which isn’t named in Star Wars lore.
Disney is now targeting Etsy, a website for artists to sell handmade or vintage items. Creators have been going crazy for Baby Yoda, producing everything from crocheted dolls to T-shirts to coffee mugs to <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/745943528/baby-yoda-air-freshener-custom-air?ga_order=most_relevant&amp;ga_search_type=all&amp;ga_view_type=gallery&amp;ga_search_query=baby+yoda&amp;ref=sr_gallery-1-11&amp;organic_search_click=1&amp;frs=1">car air fresheners</a> (it comes in multiple, non-Baby Yoda associated scents, like Pina Colada).
But Disney hates when someone else makes money off of their characters. The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/17/disney-appears-to-be-cracking-down-on-baby-yoda-knockoffs/">reported</a> that the megacompany is “cracking down” on Etsy for the Star Wars-inspired creations. The Verge <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/17/21069124/baby-yoda-dolls-etsy-disney-mandalorian-copyright-takedown-enforcement">reported</a> that Disney appears to be focusing on the most popular Baby Yoda-inspired products.
“Several Etsy sellers tell The Verge they have had their listings removed, cutting off popular products and disrupting existing sales,” the outlet reported. “One seller, Tanya, who runs the stuffed animal storefront YourStuffedMemories, had been <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1514734&amp;xs=1&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.etsy.com%2Flisting%2F750337366%2Fthe-baby-child-baby-alien-plush-star%3Fref%3Dshop_home_active_1%26crt%3D1&amp;referrer=theverge.com&amp;sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2020%2F1%2F17%2F21069124%2Fbaby-yoda-dolls-etsy-disney-mandalorian-copyright-takedown-enforcement%3FsubId1%3Dxid%3Afr1579366652276gdf&amp;xcust=xid:fr1579366652276gdf">selling homemade Baby Yoda plushies</a> for about a month when she received a message from Etsy. It had deactivated her sales listing after getting a complaint from Disney over her usage of the words ‘Star Wars,’ ‘mandalorian,’ and ‘Yoda’ to sell the plushies.”
More from The Verge:
<blockquote>Another seller, Kate, had a listing for a Baby Yoda-style dice bag at her HedgeCrafts store removed by Etsy for similar reasons, as did the 1OOAcreWoodshop storefront, which sells knit wool plushies of the character. Most of the stores that The Verge talked to had takedowns issued in the last week.
The original listings for these stores were extremely popular: one Yoda doll had “over 2,000 views and 300 favorites,” while another seller said that she used to see at least 100 to 200 views a day. Removing the listings also caused issues with existing orders for at least one seller, delaying shipments as they tried to reconcile orders in Etsy’s system between the old and new listings. (My own order for a Baby Yoda from YourStuffedMemories was among those delayed.)</blockquote>
The outlet added that the crackdown has occurred since Disney finally started selling its own Baby Yoda products, even though none of those products are actually currently available.
Disney, whose obviously known for their massive merchandise catalogue, was slow to provide Baby Yoda products after the episodes aired and the adorably little creature went viral, as if the company didn’t foresee the popularity.
“It’s a difficult situation for sellers. Baby Yoda (like the terms ‘Star Wars,’ ‘The Mandalorian,’ and ‘Yoda’) is owned by Disney, and the company has the legal right to enforce its intellectual property and prevent others from profiting off its work,” the Verge reported. “But fans have been eager for products Disney isn’t offering, and sellers’ handmade toys can deliver a burst of new customers to Etsy shops that typically sell much lower-profile goods, like stuffed unicorns and wall decorations.”

Baby Yoda

Disney Targeting Etsy Over Baby Yoda Merchandise

Prince Harry can be heard asking Disney CEO Bob Iger about voiceover work for his wife, actress and Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, a resurfaced video from July shows, according to <a href="https://people.com/royals/prince-harry-asking-disney-ceo-meghan-markle-voiceover-work/">PEOPLE</a> magazine.
“You know she does voiceovers,” Harry can be heard telling Mr. Iger at the &#8220;Lion King&#8221; premiere in July.
“Oh, really?” responds Iger, standing alongside his wife, who looks taken aback by the interaction.
“Did you know that?” Harry persists. “You seem surprised. &#8230; She’s really interested.”
“Sure,” the Disney CEO agrees. “We’d love to try.”
As noted by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/prince-william-responds-to-harry-and-meghans-royal-split-ive-put-my-arm-around-my-brother-i-cant-do-that-anymore">The Daily Wire</a>, Markle recently signed a deal with Disney to do voiceover work. The deal was inked before the couple dropped a bombshell announcement earlier this week regarding their plans to step away from their royal duties.
According to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/voiceover-deal-with-disney-hints-at-future-career-path-5sr0jmjvd">The Sunday Times</a> (U.K.), the voiceover from Duchess of Sussex will come in exchange for &#8220;a donation to Elephants Without Borders, an organisation that helps to track and protect the animals from poaching.&#8221;
“[I]t also touches on sensitive areas, allowing room for accusations that the couple are cheapening the royal brand and will compromise themselves for money,&#8221; the U.K. outlet noted. &#8220;According to one report, during tense talks before Christmas, senior members of the royal family accused the couple of already signing a deal with ‘firms including Disney.'&#8221;
Meghan recorded the voiceover &#8220;before the royal couple left for their six-week break to Canada to celebrate Christmas,&#8221; according to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7875243/Meghan-Markle-signs-voiceover-deal-Disney-return-donation-elephant-charity.html">The Daily Mail</a>.
Harry and Meghan announced their royal split on Wednesday, which was apparently a shock to the Queen.
“Harry and Meghan say they plan to step back as senior members of the British Royal family, and ‘carve out a progressive new role within this institution’ while working ‘to become financially independent,’” NBC News reported.
“After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution,” the couple said in a statement.
“We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen,” Harry and Meghan continued. “It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages.”
Over the weekend, Prince William, brother to Harry, reportedly &#8220;said he feels sorrow that he and Prince Harry are now ‘separate entities’ and expressed hope that they might pull together again in future,” The Sunday Times said.
“I’ve put my arm around my brother all our lives and I can’t do that any more; we’re separate entities,” Prince William told a friend.
“I’m sad about that. All we can do, and all I can do, is try and support them and hope that the time comes when we’re all singing from the same page. I want everyone to play on the team,” William added.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
this is the extended version of that clip (audio boosted) with Harry chatting up Disney CEO Bob Iger for a job for Meghan Markle as the Duchess chats up Beyonce and Jay-Z The event was in London on Sunday July 14, 2019. (that look 😲 on Susan Iger&#39;s face ) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Megxit?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Megxit</a> <a href="https://t.co/AzqjwsaoUm">pic.twitter.com/AzqjwsaoUm</a>
&mdash; not inklessPW ✩ (@inklessPW) <a href="https://twitter.com/inklessPW/status/1216388926132432896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Britain&#8217;s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (L) chats with Disney CEO Robert Iger as Britain&#8217;s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (2nd R) embraces US singer-songwriter Beyoncé (R) as they attend the European premiere of the film The Lion King in London on July 14, 2019.

Video Shows Prince Harry Asking Disney CEO About Getting Meghan Voiceover Work

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has signed a deal with Disney to do voiceover work, giving a hint as to the trajectory of her and Prince Harry’s lives now that they&#8217;ve pulled out of being senior members in the British royal family.
Markle will do &#8220;voiceover in return for a donation to Elephants Without Borders, an organisation that helps to track and protect the animals from poaching,&#8221; <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/voiceover-deal-with-disney-hints-at-future-career-path-5sr0jmjvd">The Times</a> reported.
The British tabloid, though, said the move could cause problems.
&#8220;[I]t also touches on sensitive areas, allowing room for accusations that the couple are cheapening the royal brand and will compromise themselves for money. According to one report, during tense talks before Christmas, senior members of the royal family accused the couple of already signing a deal with ‘firms including Disney,'&#8221; The Times wrote.
The Duchess of Sussex has already recorded the voiceover, doing so “before the royal couple left for their six-week break to Canada to celebrate Christmas,&#8221; The <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7875243/Meghan-Markle-signs-voiceover-deal-Disney-return-donation-elephant-charity.html">Daily Mail</a> reported. British tabloids say the deal included more work for the movie and television company.
The Mail, too, said the move will reverberate, and noted that the royal couple&#8217;s earning potential is sky high.
&#8220;If the couple decide to keep their royal titles while touting themselves for hire, their combined money-spinning potential could be greater than any A-lister in history. As superstars of the international circuit, they would be able to command six or even seven-figure fees just for turning up at an event,&#8221; said The Mail.
<blockquote>Experts said becoming a brand ambassador for a global giant such as or Apple could earn the couple tens of millions annually. A nine-figure sum each year – $100million – would add up to $1billion (£760million) over a decade.</blockquote>
The royal couple, who wed last year in a storybook ceremony, last week announced that they would withdraw from their roles as senior members of the royal family.
“After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution,&#8221; they said in a statement posted on Instagram.
&#8220;We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen,” they wrote. “It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages.”
&#8220;This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity. We look forward to sharing the full details of this exciting next step in due course, as we continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge, and all relevant parties. Until then, please accept our deepest thanks for your continued support,&#8221; they concluded.
Prince Charles is reportedly desperate to keep the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the fold, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-charles-determined-keep-harry-21256979">The Mirror</a> reported:
<blockquote>A senior palace source said: “There’s a genuine fear from Charles that this could be the beginning of the end for Harry and Meghan’s involvement with the family and that, in his words, would be ‘an utter tragedy.’”</blockquote>

The Duke &amp; Duchess Of Sussex Visit Sussex

HOLLYWOOD BOUND: Duchess Meghan Markle Signs Voiceover Deal With Disney

With the recent release of J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” people have been reflecting on the newest trilogy as a whole, with many agreeing that it has fallen far short of expectations. Upon viewing the trailer for “The Force Awakens” in 2015, people were enthusiastic for a return to form, hoping to wash the taste of the prequels out of their mouths.
Now that the new trilogy is complete, the one thing that both “Star Wars” boosters and detractors agree upon is the frustrating lack of planning on the part of producer Kathleen Kennedy. Where the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe had a truly satisfying payoff with “Infinity War” and “Endgame,” the “Star Wars” films seem to constantly be in a state of correction, with Rian Johnson subverting Abrams’ “Force Awakens” story points and Abrams attempting to undercut those subversions. Taking the trilogy as a whole, the project seems to be at war with itself, with many fans pointing to “The Last Jedi” as the primary instigator.
Hardcore fans were livid at Rian Johnson’s attempts to incorporate deeper themes into the “Star Wars” universe, feeling that his story developments were more indicative of contempt than a genuine desire to engage the audience. Any time a filmmaker tries to explore a genre or franchise, breaking down the story beats and character motivations, there is going to be pushback from the faithful (just check out horror fans’ response to Drew Goddard’s “<a dir="ltr" href="x-apple-data-detectors://6">The Cabin in the Woods</a>” for further proof).
Some critics praised Johnson for trying something new, while others felt that he didn’t truly understand the spirit of the series. Both groups have a right to their own perspective, but the subversion of expectations is, on its own, a neutral concept. Like any other creative decision, when assessing the final product, we must first take the filmmaker’s intention into account. Were Johnson’s decisions deliberate or scattershot? Was he being disrespectful or measured? These are the types of questions we ask and, in trying to ascertain Johnson’s goals, we find a director who sees untapped story and thematic potential in the “Star Wars” universe, and his desperate attempts to tap into that in a way that is unique and effective.
Many have looked first to Johnson’s conception of Luke Skywalker as proof that the director didn’t fully comprehend the material. They look at this older, grizzled, cynical Skywalker and are horrified at the notion that the hero of the original trilogy could ever turn out this way. It seems that they wanted something a little closer to Alec Guinness’ Obi Wan Kenobi from “A New Hope”: the picture of wisdom and benevolence. While this may have been satisfying in one way, I always liked the idea that several decades of being considered a legend and a hero could actually make one more aware of one’s shortcomings, not less. Luke may have been the savior of the galaxy, but then what? How does one follow that up?
In many ways, it makes sense that Luke would go on to live like a hermit. If he doesn’t have to interact with anybody, he can’t let them down. He no longer has to worry about living up to the galactic reputation of Luke Skywalker and can instead live in peace, becoming more and more aware of the destructive nature of hero-worship.
In fact, it is Luke’s understanding of his own image that allows him to so thoroughly fool Kylo Ren and the rest of the First Order. They are so focused on destroying the legendary Luke Skywalker that they fail to see the rest of the Resistance beating a strategic retreat. If Ren had accepted that Luke was just a man &#8212; a very powerful man, true, but still just one man &#8212; he could have taken a broader view of the battle and kept the other Resistance fighters from escaping. But, like everybody else, he was so wrapped up in Skywalker’s reputation that he was oblivious to anything else, or he just willfully ignored it. Some may not like the idea of using “Star Wars” to comment on the concept of blind mythologizing, but I’d say it’s the perfect arena in which to do so, as the hardcore fans have shown themselves so transfixed by it that many are openly disdainful of other film franchises.
I also responded very favorably to Johnson’s decision to discount Rey’s lineage, saying indisputably that she comes from nowhere. There is nothing inherently important about her. This is something that Abrams would walk back in the next film, revealing Rey’s bloodline to be very important and deeply powerful. While I do understand the frustration that most fans have about Rey’s innate Force abilities, the attempt to explain that away through lineage undercuts something that I found very exciting and, frankly, very American.
Economist Milton Friedman once said that America is a “family culture,” suggesting that the American Dream is as much about making life better for one’s family as for the person himself. I would agree with this, but there is still a strain of individualism in our DNA that encourages people to push themselves beyond their own limitations, regardless of their initial station in life. The idea that Rey can be resourceful and smart and strong despite her background is, to me, much more exciting and inspiring than a character who is all of those things because of her background. Yes, I understand that this could make Rey into a “Mary Sue,” but I’m personally willing to accept that if it reinforces the idea that, here in America, a person can determine his own significance, regardless of bloodline.
There are many other elements in “The Last Jedi” that worked for me, including the suggestion that one of the major sacrifices made during wartime is personal pride and glory, but the creative decisions that Johnson made with Luke and Rey are what really stand out in my mind. A person may not agree, and indeed may feel that Johnson was disrespectful to the beloved franchise, but it would be foolish to dismiss his choices outright. The film is certainly not perfect (the less said about the tension-dissolving Monte Carlo sequence, the better), but the director’s choices were not haphazard. They were risky, but considered, and they deserved better treatment than they received, both by the fans and the franchise.
As always, this is just one man’s opinion. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, not just on “The Last Jedi” or “The Rise of Skywalker,” but the general state of “Star Wars.” Did you like the new films or hate them? Or did you fall somewhere in between? What is your history with the “Star Wars” films? The best film criticism usually comes out of thoughtful discussion.

The Last Jedi.

SMITH: Rethinking ‘The Last Jedi’

J.J. Abrams

Rian Johnson

Star Wars

The Last Jedi

On Thursday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief reviews “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and talks about how the film provides a fantastic ending to a trilogy that otherwise shouldn’t have happened. Video, partial transcript, and spoilers below: 
If you&#8217;ve been familiar with the show at all, you know I&#8217;ve been incredibly critical of the new trilogy. I don&#8217;t like the new trilogy; I think it was unnecessary, I think they were fools, I think they tried to split the baby. So there were two things they could&#8217;ve done originally — I have to preface my take on “Rise of Skywalker” with the other two movies because it doesn&#8217;t work as a standalone film, nor is it really meant to.
This film, “Rise of Skywalker,” was designed specifically to retcon — meaning to go back in time and change the fact that “Force Awakens” and “Last Jedi” ever happened. It basically revises the entire story in a much more satisfying way.
So here was my original take on this new trilogy: There are two ways that Disney could have gone. Disney, number one, could have recast the entire original “Return of the Jedi” — they could have recast somebody as Luke, recast somebody as Leia, recast somebody as Han — which by the way, they did, they recast somebody as Han [when they] did Solo —they could have recast the entire cast and then they could&#8217;ve just picked up where “Return of the Jedi” left off with the Admiral Thrawn series. If you’ve read any of the Star Wars books — as I have — that&#8217;s actually a really good storyline. It could&#8217;ve just picked up where they left off and moved on into the future that way and would&#8217;ve gotten all of their new adventures.
Alternatively, they could have landed the Star Wars universe in like a different place, and they&#8217;re actually doing this on Disney Plus with the Mandalorian, which is kind of great — Mandalorian is really fun, Jon Favreau director. They could have gone back and they could have used some of these characters and put them somewhere else in the Star Wars universe. So Disney actually has done this with a couple of their other series, right? “Star Wars: Clone Wars,” they did this with, also “Star Wars: Rebels,” and some of the stuff is really pretty fantastic. They could&#8217;ve done any of those things.
Instead, what they chose to do was split the baby. “We’ll introduce new characters, but we&#8217;ll live off the nostalgia for the first films.” You can&#8217;t do that, and the reason you can&#8217;t do that is because if you&#8217;re nostalgic for the first films, you don&#8217;t want to see bad things happen to your favorite childhood characters. No one wants — spoiler alert — no one wants to see Han Solo die at the hands of his son like a loser divorced dad after leaving Leia alone for 20 years and flying around the galaxy smoking pot with Chewie in the Millennium Falcon. No one wants to see that, and that&#8217;s what happens in “Force Awakens.” No one wants to see Luke, who is this hero who goes from being a whiny teenager to being this mature Jedi who is able to control himself to save his father, nobody wants to see Luke become a misanthrope who milks aliens on a foreign planet while whining about his life and disparaging the Jedi tradition. No one wants to see that.
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So the new series basically took all of your favorite characters, your favorite old characters, and proceeded to ruin them, except for Leia, because Kathleen Kennedy has this feminist streak where the only characters were allowed to be competent or good are apparently the female characters. So that was the critique of this trilogy — it basically took all of my favorite characters from my childhood and they wrecked them so they could promote a bunch of characters who sucked.
Rey was a terrible character because you didn&#8217;t know — not only you didn&#8217;t know where she came from, but she was amazing at everything right off the bat. This was the biggest critique of the first part of this trilogy. The biggest critique was that Rey, who had not trained in the force for half a second, was suddenly unbelievably good at it, and Ben Solo —Kylo Ren, who is Leia’s kid with Han [and has] been training with the Force since childhood, can be overtaken in a lightsaber battle by somebody who picked up a lightsaber half a second ago. That&#8217;s not a thing. It&#8217;s stupid, and everybody who watched the series knew it was stupid.
Meanwhile, you had Poe, who was utterly incompetent, they tried to create kind of a new Han Solo character. The difference is that Han Solo in “Empire Strikes Back” — the entire story of “Empire Strikes Back” is Han Solo demonstrating that he is wildly competent at a lot of things. The entire Poe Dameron story is [that] the dude is wildly incompetent until he&#8217;s suddenly promoted to the head of the Rebel Alliance. Finn has no story arc at all. His entire story arc is that he was a stormtrooper, end of story arc, nothing happens to him for the next three movies.
So all of the new characters are completely boring, random, they should have killed Finn in “Last Jedi” when he makes that heroic run. They should&#8217;ve killed him off. They probably should&#8217;ve killed Poe in “Last Jedi,” they should have had him pull the Admiral Holdo maneuver. Instead, they bring in Laura Dern to wear weird hair and do a lightspeed trick that, by the way, if anybody could have figured that one out, they could&#8217;ve blown up the Death Star that way, like in “Star Wars: New Hope,” as well as “Return of the Jedi.” So all of this is preface to say I hated “Force Awakens,” and I hated “Last Jedi.”
“Rise of Skywalker” is an attempt to buy all of that back, and understanding that this trilogy never should have happened and understanding all the flaws of “Force Awakens” and “Last Jedi” — now you understand why I liked “Rise of Skywalker” — because they attempt to correct as many of these problems as they can while apologizing for the series, which is basically what this was. All of the stuff with Finn and Poe, no one cares about. All that stuff was dumb. No one cares about [it], it&#8217;s a waste of time. You have to do it, it&#8217;s like the worst of J.J. Abrams, it’s not a spoiler to say the film opens with the Millennium Falcon lightspeed jumping, which just turns it into like a silly prop. It&#8217;s ridiculous. It&#8217;s ridiculous.
The entire “Empire Strikes Back,” which is the best Star Wars film unquestionably — this is fact, this is known. “The Empire Strikes Back” is all about basically three, maybe four topics. One is the Millennium Falcon, it&#8217;s the entire thing in Empire Strikes Back is that the Millennium Falcon&#8217;s hyperdrive is broken. That is the central plot device. In this movie, in the new movie, in “Rise of Skywalker,” the Millennium Falcon is fully on fire and they fix it inside of 5 seconds flat. All of it. Also, “Empire Strikes Back” is about Luke growing and realizing that he is insufficient, so that&#8217;s the other topic, and also it&#8217;s about Han Solo being wildly competent. Poe and Finn, they&#8217;re wildly incompetent, the Millennium Falcon is made into a prop, like all that stuff is sort of the worst of J.J. Abrams.
The stuff that&#8217;s really good [in this movie is] actually quite good. The stuff that&#8217;s good is that they buy back Han Solo’s death, they give him sort of a new exit scene where he&#8217;s not being killed by a son where they cheat, he can&#8217;t be a Force ghost because he didn’t have the Force, but he basically is a Force ghost, he comes back. All these are spoilers. You&#8217;ve been warned one thousand times. You don&#8217;t want to hear about it, you haven&#8217;t seen the movie yet, don&#8217;t listen.
So Han Solo comes back and he talks with Kylo and he basically woos Kylo back to the light side of the Force. You find out that Leia, who uses the Force in new and bizarre ways in “Last Jedi” that are never explained — like she literally pulls herself back into a ship after being blasted out into space and you’re like where the hell did that come from Luke hasn&#8217;t even done that — you&#8217;re told in this movie that Leia was trained as a Jedi by Luke, which makes sense, right? In the book, she actually is, in the book she actually is trained as a Jedi by Luke, and [in the movie] she decided not to become a Jedi at the last minute because she foresaw, using the Force, that if she became a Jedi then her lightsaber would be used to kill Ben.
That all makes sense, so they retcon that. Then, the biggest retcon of all, the one that actually matters and that answers why Rey is cool. Answers the biggest question, why is Rey even a thing? And the answer is because she&#8217;s Palpatine granddaughter, which is fantastic. That&#8217;s a great reveal, that’s great because the most underrated Force ability person in the Star Wars series — because everyone&#8217;s focused on Anakin Skywalker, on Vader and Luke, on Leia, on Yoda, on Obi Wan — nobody&#8217;s focused on the fact that Palpatine is an unbelievable badass with the Force. Palpatine is so strong in the Force that he basically defeats Yoda, he is able to conceal his identity as the emperor for three movies, he’s able to turn Anakin to the dark side. Palpatine is an utter badass, and so they bring Palpatine back from the dead, which they sort of had to do — Palpatine is a great character — they bring in all the old musical cues, they bring in all of the old stuff, which is the stuff that I like.
So if you&#8217;re a nostalgia person, if you&#8217;re pissed at the series because you feel like it ruined your childhood, then this movie was an attempt to restore that, it was an attempt to make Han cool again — fairly successful. There&#8217;s an attempt to make Leia cool again — successful. There&#8217;s an attempt to make Luke cool, there&#8217;s a great scene where Luke does, even though he&#8217;s dead, Luke does this thing that Yoda does while he&#8217;s alive in Empire. Remember in Empire, there&#8217;s this call, there&#8217;s this scene where Yoda raises the X-Wing from the swamp because Luke fails to do so. Here, Luke is able to do that as a force ghost to hand over the X-Wing to Rey. That&#8217;s great.
The callback scene where they find the old Death Star from “Return of the Jedi,” and Rey has to confront herself, which is another callback to Empire, and then when they&#8217;re playing the old musical cues and all that stuff is great. What they do with Kylo Ren, bringing him back to the light side is pretty great.
J.J. Abrams does a great job in setting up a good reveal. So for several movies, you&#8217;ve been seeing basically Kylo and Rey Force-Skyping one another, they can talk over long distances in this movie, they can actually sword fight sort of telepathically, but it has real world ramifications. One is in one place, one is in the other place, and they&#8217;re having these lightsaber battles, but it actually has physical ramifications in the places where they&#8217;re having the lightsaber battles, and so that ends with a really fantastic reveal. All that stuff is great. Everything with Kylo, everything with Rey, everything with Palpatine is great, everything with Leia and Han is really good, like all that stuff is good. Finn and Poe continue to be disposable, all the other fringe characters end up being disposable.
There is this lesbian moment that&#8217;s been much talked about because at the very end of the movie they show a lesbian couple kissing, and it&#8217;s obviously Disney trying to shoehorn in the “Okay GLAAD, we know you&#8217;re there.” It&#8217;s very silly, and it&#8217;s sort of like that moment at the end of the “Avengers: Infinity War” where all the females land in one part of the battlefield and you’re like, “Okay, really? Was that like, c&#8217;mon.” That&#8217;s it, that&#8217;s sort of the same thing here. None of the couples are kissing except this one lesbian couple. All right, I get it, Disney, you&#8217;ve fulfilled your PC quota for the day. Whatever, man. But it&#8217;s pretty shoehorned in, it&#8217;s not a big deal, it&#8217;s just silly.
But overall, the critics are savaging this film. All it tells you about critics, all you need to know is they gave the “Last Jedi” like 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and they gave this one like 53%. They didn&#8217;t understand Star Wars, didn&#8217;t understand that this movie understands better how the Force works, this movie understands better how the weapons work, this movie understands better the dynamics between the light and the dark side; it understands Palpatine.
I&#8217;ve heard a lot of objections that this film basically makes the Skywalker-Vader interaction completely irrelevant. But that&#8217;s true the minute that Palpatine lives, and by the way, that&#8217;s true the minute that the Rebel Alliance fails. Once the Republic falls again to the First Order, then that whole thing became irrelevant. The new trilogy made that irrelevant, which is why they should&#8217;ve fast forwarded and taken it to some other part of the universe. But once you&#8217;re in the trilogy, this was the best way to end it.
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Star Wars Marathon Hosted By Nerdist

SHAPIRO: My Long-Awaited Review Of ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’

Rise of Skywalker.

KHACHATRIAN: Review Of Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

As we end another year, our popular culture still revolves around President Donald Trump, and our news and entertainment conglomerates continue to be outraged that conservative Christians stick with him, so much so they are summarily ignored. Support him as, say, Franklin Graham and a vast majority of evangelicals have done and &#8230; crickets. But what happens when evangelicals don&#8217;t?
Happy days are here again. The left has lunged to promote an editorial by Christianity Today magazine that insists Trump must be removed from office. What the left understands — and some on the right still ignore — is that the cultural is far more powerful than the political. Thus, whenever a force on the cultural left flaps its wings, it is saluted. In the rare occasion that the entity advances the cultural right, it&#8217;s slammed, or ignored.
But that&#8217;s not necessarily how America sees it, thanks to social media that has done an end run around the press and told the truth. The left still dominates in the cultural space, but it no longer enjoys a monopoly.
Let&#8217;s look at the cultural winners and losers of 2019:
Loser: Jussie Smollett, the &#8220;Empire&#8221; actor and Hollywood race hoaxer who cost the taxpayers of Chicago more than $130,000 for all the time it took police to look for a nonexistent hate crime. Nothing says viral like a black gay celebrity claiming he was beaten by red-hatted Trumpster thugs. For two weeks, the left went nuts. Celebrities, politicians and the &#8220;news&#8221; media convicted Trump World for what it had allegedly caused. And it never happened. And now all of America knows it.
Winners: the students of Covington Catholic High School. Speaking of viral sensations of &#8220;fake news&#8221; around Trump hats, these high school kids were smeared relentlessly for several days for allegedly making evil smirks at a Native American activist. But the Diocese of Covington launched an investigation and found &#8220;no evidence of offensive or racist statements.&#8221; Again it was social media that spread the word to tens of millions across the country about the wrong done to the students. They were vindicated in the court of public opinion.
Winner: &#8220;Unplanned,&#8221; the movie about Abby Johnson, who converted from Planned Parenthood clinic director to conservative Catholic activist. Major music labels refused to license songs for it. Cable-news channels refused to run ads for it. Newspaper film critics refused to review it. And yet the little film became the talk of social media. What Pure Flix delivered has done more to advance the pro-life cause than the National Right to Life Committee has accomplished in the past three decades.
Loser: the abortion industry. In September, the Planned Parenthood-affiliated Guttmacher Institute estimated that there were about 862,000 abortions in 2017, nearly 200,000 fewer than in 2011. The abortion rate — the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 — dropped to 13.5 in 2017, the lowest rate since Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in 1973.
Loser: Gillette. In January, NPR touted a Gillette ad that attacked its own consumers. &#8220;The first half of the ad portrays males as boorish, sexually harassing women, mansplaining and bullying,&#8221; NPR reported. It probably saw the ad as an anti-Trump message. The second half of the ad insisted men must change. The ad went viral. Then, Gillette dug in deeper. Shortly before Father&#8217;s Day, the company launched an ad about a dad teaching his &#8220;son&#8221; — a biological girl — how to shave. Sales tanked. But the company claimed it wasn&#8217;t the ads. It blamed &#8220;lower shaving frequency.&#8221;
Loser: The Walt Disney Studios. It dominated the top-grossing movies, but superhero flicks like &#8220;Avengers: Endgame&#8221; and &#8220;Captain Marvel&#8221; pandered aerobically to feminists. And for all that energy, leftist sites like Slate still bashed the movies for being &#8220;too patronizing, too late.&#8221; Why bother messing with superheroes?
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Captain Marvel.

BOZELL & GRAHAM: Cultural Winners And Losers Of 2019

Abortion

Covington Catholic High School

Gillette

Jussie Smollett

Marvel

Three Disney employees have filed three separate police reports after incidents with tourists that left one of them injured and all of them shaken enough to get authorities involved.
As first reported by <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-bz-disney-characters-reports-20191227-wok3tpnguzhhdglddw5qgue3hq-story.html">The Orlando Sentinel</a> this week, a string of unrelated &#8220;inappropriate touching&#8221; cases with cast members at Disney World in Florida occurred over a two-day period in early December, resulting in the filing of three police reports with the Orange County Sheriff&#8217;s Office.
The first and most bizarre of the three incidents, which occurred on December 3 at a restaurant in Animal Kingdom, involved an elderly woman and an 18-year-old female employee.
A woman in her 60s asked the young cast member, who was wearing a Donald Duck costume, if she could give the character a kiss. When the employee agreed, things went from strange to alarming in rapid fashion.
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The elderly woman allegedly began &#8220;touching and grabbing the character’s arms, chest, belly, and face,&#8221; the Sentinel reports. &#8220;The employee moved toward another Disney employee for help, but the woman followed her, holding on, and then &#8216;frantically&#8217; put her hands inside the character’s costume, touching her chest.&#8221;
At that point, the woman&#8217;s family noticed what was happening and began to yell at their relative to stop groping the cast member. An attendant eventually helped the Cast Member get away from the woman and led the employee to a break room.
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Though the employee filed a police report, she declined to press charges, explaining to authorities that she believed the woman may have had &#8220;dementia,&#8221; the paper reports.
On the same day at a different park, Magic Kingdom, another 60-something guest, this time a male, allegedly groped the chest of a cast member in a Minnie Mouse outfit three times after he and his wife posed with Minnie for a picture.
The employee, 36, identified the man from a photo three days later and Disney determined that the same man had engaged in another &#8220;inappropriate interaction&#8221; with another cast member at Magic Kingdom on December 5.
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&#8220;It should be noted that (the man) is a Disney Vacation Club member,&#8221; the sheriff’s report states. Disney has barred the man &#8220;from all of Walt Disney World property, to exclude the Saratoga Springs resort,&#8221; the report notes.
The next day, a 36-year-old female Cast Member who was playing Mickey Mouse at the Magic Kingdom ended up in the hospital after a different elderly woman, described as a &#8220;grandmother,&#8221; allegedly patted &#8220;Mickey&#8221; on the head &#8220;about five times&#8221; and hard enough to injure the employee&#8217;s neck.
According to the police report, the grandma patted the head of the costume, causing it to slide down and injure the cast member&#8217;s neck badly enough that she felt compelled to go to the hospital. The incident did not appear to be deliberate, the employee said.
The son-in-law of the woman, who said the family did not know the cast member was hospitalized until this week, expressed surprise that the grandmother&#8217;s actions resulted in injury.
&#8220;She barely touched him,&#8221; he said, explaining that she was simply trying to alleviate her 2-year-old grandson&#8217;s fear of the character by showing that he wasn&#8217;t real.
They were notified of the woman&#8217;s complaint a few hours after the incident when they tried to check into their hotel, said the son-in-law. When employees interviewed his wife, he said, &#8220;they definitely tried to insinuate it was on purpose.&#8221;
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Minnie and Mickey Mouse

Disney Employees File Police Reports After Being ‘Violated’ By Tourists

Nine films and 42 years later, the &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; Skywalker Saga finally concluded this past weekend with Disney&#8217;s &#8220;The Rise of Skywalker,&#8221; and despite a solid thumbs up from hardcore fanboys, the movie performed below its predecessors in the box office, putting it on track to be the worst-performing &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; of the Disney trilogy.
&#8220;Disney’s sequel launched with an estimated $198.0M overseas and $373.5M global opening weekend, but that was noticeably down from the prior two installments,&#8221; writes Jesse Rifkin at <a href="https://www.boxofficepro.com/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-overseas-global-weekend/">Box Office Pro</a>. &#8220;It represents the 17th-biggest global weekend of all time, which would be terrific news for just about any other movie. However, it was down from 2015’s &#8216;The Force Awakens&#8217; with $528.9M (4th-biggest) and 2017’s &#8216;The Last Jedi&#8217; with $450.8M (8th-biggest).&#8221;
No doubt, &#8220;Rise of Skywalker&#8221; will turn a profit and further line Mickey Mouse&#8217;s coffers, but should the movie max out somewhere between $600 to $700 million globally, that would further signify that the &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; franchise has lost its luster. However, the coming Christmas break should help bolster its performance as Americans hit the theaters throughout the week. As Scott Mendelson of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2019/12/22/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-weekend-box-office-disney-lucasfilm-jurassic-twilight-joker/">Forbes</a> writes:
<blockquote>Even if Rise of Skywalker collapses, Disney will still be king of the mountain, especially if The Mandalorian delivers a crowdpleasing season finale. Star Wars was always going to face huge challenges and an uncertain future after Rise of Skywalker. If Star Wars IX is disliked (or indifferently received) by the masses, that’s a problem for the next one. It also puts more pressure on the Avatar sequels, beginning in December of 2021, but that’s the kind of challenge James Cameron would relish. Or, it could just be another Disney biggie to open slightly under expectations only to leg it over its first month, think Toy Story 4 and Frozen II.</blockquote>
One country that &#8220;Rise of Skywalker&#8221; will be getting no help from is China, where the movie flopped in its opening weekend, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/star-wars-rise-skywalker-flops-spectacularly-china-1264737">earning just a dismal $12 million dollars</a> in a market that Hollywood desperately wants to conquer. Overall, experts predict the movie will have to work overtime just to cross the $20 million mark in that country.
Compare that with 2016’s “The Force Awakens,” which pulled $52.3 million on its opening weekend and a box office total of $126 million. From there, the franchise only declined in value, with “Rogue One” pulling in a box office total of $69.4 million and “The Last Jedi” petering out with just $42.6 million. No matter how one slices it, the “Star Wars” franchise has completely lost traction in the Chinese market.
Currently, the film holds a tepid rating of <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_rise_of_skywalker/">57% on Rotten Tomatoes</a> with <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527338/">an IMDB score of 7.0</a>. As noted by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/critics-rip-rise-of-skywalker-but-what-do-fans-think">The Daily Wire</a> on the film&#8217;s opening day, a rift has occurred between the critics and hardcore fans, who gave the movie an audience score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Regardless of whether or not &#8220;The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; has any merit, few can deny that the Disney trilogy has soured the movie franchise as everyone wonders what on earth the studio plans to do next.

&#8220;Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; European Premiere &#8211; VIP Arrivals

How Did ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Do At The Box Office? Here Are The Results.

A part of me is convinced that the current success of Disney’s The Mandalorian plays on the profound frustration we all felt when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boba_Fett">Boba Fett</a> died far too easily in Return of The Jedi. I mean here was arguably the greatest bounty hunter in the known universe tossed overboard in the heat of battle by a bit of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xKHWQckfI">gimmickry</a>, then summarily eaten by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlacc">sarlacc</a> with little to no resistance aside from some brief indigestion on the sand monster’s part.
Created and written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau">Jon Favreau</a>, The Mandalorian is an exceedingly simple show. It’s really just about a bounty hunter with a growing conscience that goes rogue to protect an innocent creature. The plot unfolds as a grand chase ensues similar to, say, John Wick after he righteously betrays his assassin’s guild.
Simplicity is a fundamental part of The Mandalorian’s charm, however, and why I immediately felt like I was transported back to my childhood watching some odd combination of Buck Rogers meets <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_Guy">The Fall Guy</a>. While there’s no underlying depth, there is also, thankfully, no cut-and-paste progressive messages either a la <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-captain-marvel-towering-artistic-achievement-matt-walsh">Captain Marvel</a> or <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/star-wars-last-jedi-review-harry-khachatrian">The Last Jedi</a> (well, so far, anyway).  Certainly, we could all do with a lot less <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cancel-cultures-failure-james-baldwins-famous-essay-exposes-the-lefts-flawed-logic">didactic drivel</a> these days.
Pedro Pascal, best known for his roles in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcos">Narcos</a> and Game of Thrones, effortlessly plays the title character in The Mandalorian. On some level, it’s almost too effortless. The deadpan delivery and nonchalance can grow a bit wooden and tiresome. It’s as though the stoic resolve of the Mandalorian inadvertently shifts toward some form of clinical depression at times.
Still, Pascal is a fine actor and I hope the character is afforded more complexity and development as the series continues. So far, he’s just a typical reluctant hero who, in the parlance of D&amp;D, is struggling to change his alignment from neutral to some version of <a href="https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Neutral_good">neutral good</a>. We don&#8217;t need Hamlet to emerge from behind all that <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mandalorian_armor">Beskar armor</a> but some depth and nuance would be nice.
Odd cameos abound in The Mandalorian as well. First, we get Carl Weathers. Then, strangely enough, the German director <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Herzog">Werner Herzog</a> makes an appearance as some Imperial broker. Former MMA fighter, Gina Carano, shows up in the fourth episode in what is, so far, the worst outing of the series. However, we should note that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_Dallas_Howard">Bryce Dallas Howard</a> directed that particular episode. Perhaps no further explanation is needed.
We also get a cherubic incarnation of a Yoda in need of the Mandalorian’s protection. I’d offer the actual name of his species but, so far, <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yoda%27s_species/Legends">it remains a mystery</a> (not to assume Yoda’s gender, tsk tsk). More importantly, it’s hopelessly cute in a fatiguing kind of way. If you thought <a href="https://gremlins.fandom.com/wiki/Gizmo">Gizmo</a> was adorable, wait till you see baby Yoda. I can only imagine <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickle_Me_Elmo">the retail stampede</a> a baby Yoda doll would have caused had the show debuted some 25 years ago.
Is The Mandalorian a must-see show? Probably not. You might enjoy it for its simplicity and archetypical tropes though. I would certainly take The Mandalorian over just about all the films in the Star Wars universe that have followed the original trilogy. For now, at least, the show simply scratches a certain nostalgic itch.

The Mandalorian

REVIEW: ‘The Mandalorian’

The eighth film of the Star Wars Skywalker saga, &#8220;The Last Jedi,&#8221; was celebrated by critics but widely panned by fans, earning an impressive 91% on the Tomatometer but a miserable 43% from the audience. Two years since the franchise killed off Luke, the highly anticipated final installment of the series has finally hit theaters &#8212; and early responses show something close to an inverse of the reception of the previous film.
With over 300 critics&#8217; reviews in, including over 50 from &#8220;top critics,&#8221; review aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes gives the J.J. Abrams-directed &#8220;The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; a disappointing <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_rise_of_skywalker/">58%</a> on the Tomatometer, which means the film is officially &#8220;rotten.&#8221;
The &#8220;critics consensus&#8221; offered by Rotten Tomatoes provides a concise summary of the overall response, which isn&#8217;t exactly a ringing endorsement: &#8220;Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker suffers from a frustrating lack of imagination, but concludes this beloved saga with fan-focused devotion.&#8221;
A few sample responses from some of the &#8220;top critics&#8221; featured on the site:
<ul>
<li>&#8220;The hermetic logic of the plot is as impeccable as it is ridiculous. It&#8217;s a drama crafted with robotic insularity for the consumption of viewers being rendered robotic at each moment of the soullessly uniform spectacle,&#8221; writes The New Yorker&#8217;s Richard Brody.</li>
<li>&#8220;Despite the vast deepness and immense possibilities of George Lucas&#8217;s long-ago galaxy located far, far away, Disney&#8217;s Star Wars is more an exercise in exhumation than storytelling,&#8221; says Globe and Mail&#8217;s Barry Herz, who gives the film a 2 out of 4 rating.</li>
<li>&#8220;When we meet up with brash pilot Poe, he&#8217;s lightspeed-skipping his way out of trouble, and Abrams is in much the same mode, whisking you from one thing to the next before you have much time to think or feel anything in response,&#8221; writes San Diego Reader&#8217;s Matthew Likona, who gives Abrams&#8217; presumably final Star Wars flick a terrible 1 out of 5.</li>
<li>Even the more positive responses from the top critics make clear that they left the theater dissatisfied. &#8220;If you disliked &#8216;The Last Jedi&#8217; (like I did), you&#8217;ll like &#8211; but probably not love &#8211; &#8216;The Rise of Skywalker.&#8217; If you liked &#8216;The Last Jedi,&#8217; this review might not be for you,&#8221; warns Salon&#8217;s Matthew Rozsa who gives the film a 3.5 out of 4.</li>
</ul>
Most of the other critical reviews echo similar complaints about the &#8220;robotic&#8221; and overly &#8220;rushed&#8221; final Skywalker film.
But what about fans?
Unlike with the Rian Johnson-directed &#8220;The Last Jedi,&#8221; fans appear to be mostly happy with Abrams&#8217; finale. With over 770 audience members weighing in, Rotten Tomatoes gives episode 9 an <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_rise_of_skywalker/reviews?type=user">85%</a> audience score. Some examples of responses from &#8220;verified&#8221; reviewers (those who proved that they saw the film):
<ul>
<li>&#8220;JJ Abrams solidified himself as a fantastic choice for Star Wars with Force Awakens. With The Rise of Skywalker he completely knocks it out of the park. Spectacular, jaw dropping, pulse pounding, and tear jerking; Rise of Skywalker is everything about Star Wars I love,&#8221; says &#8220;super reviewer&#8221; Nick, who gives it a 5 out of 5 stars.</li>
<li>&#8220;Episode 9 has so many great moments that are reminiscent to past Star Wars films we all know and love,&#8221; writes reviewer Chris, who also gives it five stars. &#8220;JJ Abrams provides answers to the questions that were left with us in The Last Jedi and ends the Skywalker Saga in the most fitting way possible. A must see for the avid Star Wars fan!&#8221;</li>
<li>&#8220;Don’t trust the reviews this was a great film,&#8221; writes James, who gives it five stars.</li>
<li>&#8220;The film really attempts and largely succeeds in fixing the issue from The Last Jedi,&#8221; says Zach, who also gives it a 5 out of 5.</li>
<li>&#8220;The movie leaves intact the lessons of The Last Jedi while still evolving them and rhyming with Return of the Jedi in its own unique ways,&#8221; says Danny, who gave it a 4.5.</li>
<li>&#8220;JJ did the best he could, given what The Last Jedi left him with. I left the movie with excitement and beyond satisfied,&#8221; says Brian, who gives it five stars.</li>
</ul>
Others weren&#8217;t so enthused, including Andrew, who gives &#8220;Rise of Skywalker&#8221; a 2 out of 5 and describes it as an &#8220;unbalanced, Frankenstein of a film that spit in the face of The Last Jedi.&#8221;
Verified reviewer Chrissy, who gives it a 3.5 out of 5, sums up a lot of the hundreds of ultimately more positive than negative responses: &#8220;There’s a lot of great things and a lot of silly things with this movie. Did not really connect with episode seven and eight and the writing was a little sloppy. The pacing felt rushed and this movie could have honestly been split up into two to better explain everything. You will leave the theater with lots of questions which is a little annoying considering this is the last episode in the franchise. Visually it is probably one of the most beautiful Star Wars movies ever made however. Definitely go see it if you are a Star Wars fan so you can finish up the story.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/toto-i-saw-the-new-star-wars-its-lesbian-kiss-scene-wont-satisfy-anyone">TOTO: I Saw The New ‘Star Wars.’ Its Lesbian Kiss Scene Won’t Satisfy Anyone.</a>

Daisy Ridley

Critics Rip ‘Rise Of Skywalker,’ But What Do Fans Think? Here’s What Viewers Are Saying.

It seems that the &#8220;woke&#8221; empire that is Disney only cares about LGBTQ representation so long as it doesn&#8217;t impact the bottom line. In the United States, the studio is happy to oblige the proddings of GLAAD by shoehorning into the &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; franchise a brief one-second lesbian kiss between two characters nobody cares about; in the Islamic-majority Middle East, however, Disney has allowed that scene to be left on the cutting room floor.
&#8220;The first ever same-sex kiss in Star Wars history happens in &#8216;Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,&#8217; but fans in the Middle East won&#8217;t be able to see it,&#8221; reports <a href="https://screenrant.com/star-wars-rise-skywalker-kiss-cut-middle-east/">ScreenRant</a>. &#8220;One aspect which was given away very early on in production was that the film was set to reveal the first true display of homosexual affection in the &#8216;Star Wars&#8217; universe, something which had gone unrepresented in films up until now. While the full version of &#8216;Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker&#8217; does indeed feature a kiss between two members of the same sex, it&#8217;s beginning to look as if not every country saw the same cut.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/star-wars-rise-skywalker-same-sex-kiss-cut-middle-east-1264039">The Hollywood Reporter</a> (THR), news of the cut came from several people who had seen the latest version of the film in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates &#8212; a country more liberal than most of the others in the Middle East, indicating that the cut most likely extends across the whole region where homosexuality is illegal.
&#8220;[This] isn&#8217;t the first time that local censors have made edits to movies to suit the strict sensitivities of the Middle East, where homosexuality is — officially — illegal in most countries and almost never portrayed onscreen (titles such as &#8216;Carol,&#8217; &#8216;Freeheld&#8217; and &#8216;Brokeback Mountain&#8217; faced an outright ban).&#8221;
&#8220;While violence largely passes Middle East censors, the majority of cuts are related to scenes containing profanity and references to sex, drugs and religion,&#8221; continued THR. &#8220;It is currently the &#8216;Year of Tolerance&#8217; in the United Arab Emirates.&#8221;
Oddly enough, the original cut of &#8220;The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; will be released unedited in China where the <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/same-sex-kiss-star-wars-rise-skywalker-goes-uncut-by-chinas-censors-1263675" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">censors have allowed it to play.</a> The big moment comes during a celebration sequence in the film between two minor characters and happens for only a brief second.
“In a celebration sequence in the film, two female members of the Resistance share an exuberant kiss during the joyful moment. They are minor characters and not heavily featured in the film,” reports THR.
Leading up to the film’s release, J.J. Abrams promised that the LGBTQ community would feel represented in “The Rise of Skywalker.”
“In the case of the LGBTQ community, it was important to me that people who go to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film,” Abrams <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/j-j-abrams-the-rise-of-skywalker-will-have-lgbtq-representation">told Variety</a>. “I will say I’m giving away nothing about what happens in the movie. But I did just say what I just said.”
Writing at The Daily Wire, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/toto-i-saw-the-new-star-wars-its-lesbian-kiss-scene-wont-satisfy-anyone">Christian Toto</a> of Hollywood In Toto argues that the kiss scene essentially exists to throw a cheap bone to the woke-minded and will ultimately satisfy nobody.
&#8220;Does anyone think the LGBTQ community will be satisfied with a second or less of inclusion?&#8221; wrote Toto. &#8220;Everyone else will read the Abrams’ quotes and figure &#8216;Skywalker&#8217; cared more about virtue-signaling than solid storytelling. (And, after seeing the actual film, they’ll have a point).&#8221;

&#8220;Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; European Premiere in London, UK

Lesbian Kiss In ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Cut For Middle East Release

LGBT

Warning: The following review contains some mild spoilers.
At this point in the Star Wars franchise, what started in 2015 as intense eagerness amongst the moviegoing public has slowly turned into a mild curiosity at best and a resentful obligation at worst.
So many people, whether they enjoyed The Last Jedi or not, view the final film in the latest trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, with exhausted trepidation; a weary desire to get some kind of closure. And it appears that director J.J. Abrams sensed this — not that it was particularly subtle — and has obliged by creating a film that is so focused on tying up loose ends that it often feels perfunctory.
Through rushed scenes, last minute developments, and astonishingly clumsy exposition, Abrams attempts to undo the perceived damage done to the mythology by the previous film while also giving every character as satisfying an arc as he can, all while trying to keep the events exciting and fresh.
This many spinning plates would be difficult for even the best directors; Abrams, a reliable journeyman but hardly an engaging auteur, does his best, but mostly loses control of the juggernaut that The Rise of Skywalker was always destined to be.
The story picks up with the sudden — and arbitrary — return of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), previously thought to be dead but now tempting Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) with promises of immense, galaxy-destroying power. All Ren needs to do in return is kill Rey (Daisy Ridley), who poses an unspoken threat to Palpatine.
Meanwhile, the Resistance attempts to gain ground in their fight against the First Order, with scrappy ex-storm trooper Finn (John Boyega) and cocky pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac) leading the charge.
All of this is shown with the harried pace of a waiter trying to take care of too many customers. We never get the chance to digest the information presented to us in one scene because we’ve quickly transitioned to another.
As the film finally settles into a more manageable rhythm, and we finally get room to breathe, we are able to more fully appreciate what the actors are doing. Delivering the dialogue — which rarely rises above mere functionality — with conviction and energy, the cast does what it can to guide the audience through the maze of exposition, indicating how we should react to every new development.
Unsurprisingly, Driver and Ridley fare the best here, largely due to a depth of emotion that each bring to their characters. Both Kylo Ren and Rey are intensely tormented, one by the evil he has done in the past and the other by the evil she might do in the future. As has been the case throughout the recent films, when these two characters share the screen, their chemistry holds our attention in a way that the rest of the film simply doesn’t.
It is the brief lightsaber duels between Kylo Ren and Rey that work best, because they are imbued with real meaning by the actors. The rest of the action, while well-conceived, doesn’t really bring anything new to the series.
When it comes right down to it, when you’ve seen one Star Wars space battle, you’ve really seen them all. And though Abrams’ talent for iconography serves him well here — most notably when demonstrating the sheer size and power of the First Order — the resulting action scenes devolve into pretty standard, CGI-driven predictability.
The Rise of Skywalker features plenty of fan service, some of it effective, some of it not. The reintroduction of Palpatine never has the weight that it really should, and his presence ultimately feels like an afterthought — a Hail Mary inclusion to give the events of the film a more dire sense of importance. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the always-dependable Ian McDiarmid, Palpatine seems less like the Machiavellian monster of the earlier films and much more like the generic cosmic villains we would find in some of the lesser Marvel movies.
Abrams also dusted off Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), the untrustworthy scoundrel first seen in The Empire Strikes Back, and presses him into action. Sadly, Lando is mostly underutilized in this film, his appearance amounting to little more than a cameo. Still, his on-screen time is more effective than that of the new characters introduced here, including a random freedom fighter named Jannah (Naomi Ackie) and a droid whose sole purpose likely has more to do with toy sales than anything involving the actual story.
But such is the difficulty of a movie like The Rise of Skywalker. It must balance the old and the new, hopefully pleasing the most loyal fans and the casual viewer. This is a tall order, so it only makes sense for Abrams to step lightly, which he most certainly does.
Gone is the thematic complexity of The Last Jedi or the fatalism of Rogue One. To follow in those films’ footsteps is to risk alienating important segments of the audience. So J.J. Abrams and Disney choose to play it safe, and the resulting film is pleasant enough, but “safe and pleasant” isn’t exactly memorable.
The original Star Wars films — especially the first two — swung for the fences. Even George Lucas’ ill-conceived prequels had a bold, singular vision, misguided though it was. The problems with this film, however, are those inherent with any expensive, committee-driven, focused-grouped product: it takes no risks. And, as the saying goes, “No risk, no reward.”
As such, with The Rise of Skywalker being so averse to challenging its audience and instead settling for by-the-numbers, predictable storytelling, the result is one of the least rewarding cinematic experiences I’ve had in some time.

Rise of Skywalker

REVIEW: ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Plays It Safe, Loses The Vision

The trend of Hollywood stars using promotional events to espouse their political views and thus risk alienating potential viewers continues – and with what is supposed to be the biggest film of the year, the highly anticipated final chapter of the Star Wars&#8217; Skywalker saga, first launched over 40 years ago by George Lucas.
In an interview with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/07/daisy-ridley-jj-abrams-star-wars-a-religion?utm_term=Autofeed&amp;CMP=twt_gu&amp;utm_medium=&amp;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1575713528">The Guardian</a> published over the weekend, British actress Daisy Ridley, who plays the lead role of Rey in the J.J. Abrams-produced installments of the series, took the opportunity of the promotional interview to disparage supporters of President Trump.
Asked if he is &#8220;conscious of what issues she can talk about publicly,&#8221; particularly because Disney owns Star Wars, and whether she has to &#8220;modify&#8221; her politics, Ridley decided to fire off two politically charged shots, including one at Trump supporters, who she suggested are not &#8220;sane.&#8221;
&#8220;No. I don’t feel I have to edit what I say – the things that make me angry are the things that make everyone angry,&#8221; Ridley told The Guardian&#8217;s Nasheen Iqbal. &#8220;Everyone is annoyed with BoJo [British Prime Minister Boris Johnson]. Everyone has an issue with Trump – every sane person anyway.&#8221;
Though the actress – who describes herself in the interview as &#8220;not passively aggressive &#8230; just directly aggressive&#8221; – insisted that she doesn&#8217;t feel compelled to self-&#8220;edit,&#8221; Iqbal notes that Ridley immediately indicated that she knew she&#8217;d gotten herself into hot water.
&#8220;She smiles brightly at me, almost apologetic, reluctant to expand,&#8221; writes Iqbal.
&#8220;It’s not that I don’t talk about this stuff, but other people are so much more articulate than me and say it better,&#8221; Ridley added.
Ridley&#8217;s interview included another moment she probably wishes she could get back. Asked if her &#8220;privileged&#8221; upbringing made it easier for her to land her life-changing role as Rey, Ridley pushed back, and in so doing, angered the &#8220;intersectional&#8221; left.
“The privilege I have – how?&#8221; she said. No, genuinely, how?&#8221;
&#8220;Ridley was educated at the independent Tring School for the Performing Arts, having obtained a scholarship,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/daisy-ridley-privilege-boarding-school-john-boyega-star-wars-a9237136.html">Independent</a> notes. &#8220;Her mother is a banker and her father is a photographer, while her family included the playwright Arnold Ridley and John Harry Dunn Ridley, OBE, who served as head of engineering at the BBC.&#8221;
&#8220;John grew up on a council estate in Peckham, and I think me and him are similar enough that … no,&#8221; Ridley said. &#8220;Also, I went to a boarding school for performing arts, which was different. I’m not saying what you’re saying is wrong. I’ve just never been asked that before, so I’m like, oh. I don’t think so.&#8221;
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/star-wars-actress-daisy-ridley-denies-being-privileged-gets-blasted-online">The Daily Wire</a> highlighted, Ridley&#8217;s rejection of the &#8220;privilege&#8221; argument resulted in blowback online from the Left:
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&#8220;One of the most appalling things abt this daisy ridley interview is that in her 4yrs of headlining one of the biggest franchises on earth, this is, so painfully evidently, the very first time anyone has truly invited her to critically confront &amp; examine her own privilege,&#8221; said <a href="https://twitter.com/scifibis/status/1203379971198091265?s=20">one Twitter user</a>. 
&#8220;People are already making threads about how cancel culture is bad nobody’s trying to cancel daisy ridley we’re just saying she’s dumb to vehemently deny her privilege and compare her struggles to john boyegas,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/celestiaImadona/status/1203341341087940608?s=20">said another user</a>.
&#8220;Instead of hoping Daisy Ridley is cancelled, let’s hope this is a valuable lesson to her and other white people that white privilege is real and we need to accept that, understand the injustice of it, and work to change it,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/mistermegative/status/1203434186432032768?s=20">lamented another</a>. 
</blockquote>
H/t <a href="https://twitchy.com/brads-313037/2019/12/11/ahead-of-the-release-of-the-new-star-wars-installment-actress-daisy-ridley-declares-trump-supporters-insane/">Twitchy</a>

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