Disney can’t figure out why its $3K a night ‘Star Wars’ hotel flopped

[ChrisIII]

Rey seems to be popular. She kind of has the same basic look over the main three films with the main change being the hair in the second half of TLJ. Also probably fairly easy to buy or mock up a BB8 accessory.

Stormtroopers as well, although the Andor/Rogue one variants (Mostly the Death and Shoretroopers) seem to do a bit more as far as Disney SW goes.

[Zauriel]

As one who regularly goes to Momocon and Dragoncon in Atlanta, that's absolutely not true. Now of course the OT will have more fans than the ST. It's not really a fair comparison for a number of reasons, however.

I also think it's crazy to act like Walt wasn't all about corporate greed himself.

Yes, corporate greed motivated him to construct and open a multi-million dollar theme park. He was more interested in making money than making children happy and amused.

[thwhtGuardian]

Rey seems to be popular. She kind of has the same basic look over the main three films with the main change being the hair in the second half of TLJ. Also probably fairly easy to buy or mock up a BB8 accessory.

Stormtroopers as well, although the Andor/Rogue one variants (Mostly the Death and Shoretroopers) seem to do a bit more as far as Disney SW goes.

Yeah, it's a bunk claim. I think behind Elsa and Anna from Frozen, Rey was the third most popular licensed girls Halloween costume and has been pretty much since Force Awakens came out.

[80sbaby]

Yes, corporate greed motivated him to construct and open a multi-million dollar theme park. He was more interested in making money than making children happy and amused.

So then your previous comment about him "rolling over on his grave" doesn't really make sense.

[Zauriel]

So then your previous comment about him "rolling over on his grave" doesn't really make sense.

Oh, I was being sarcastic.

[Anthony W]

Yeah, it's a bunk claim. I think behind Elsa and Anna from Frozen, Rey was the third most popular licensed girls Halloween costume and has been pretty much since Force Awakens came out.

But is that Star Wars' target audience? While we are discussing Star Wars they really should convert Galaxy's Edge into Tatooine.

[Jokerz79]

But is that Star Wars' target audience? While we are discussing Star Wars they really should convert Galaxy's Edge into Tatooine.

In 1977 my mum spent an hour one Monday morning putting my sister's hair into Princess Leia's Buns for school. She proceeded to tell my sister to wear a hair cap when washing that week because they were going to Grandma's on Sunday, and she could show off her Princess Leia Buns to our cousins. Why wear the hair cap? Because she was never going through that hassle again and on Sunday night, she was getting her hair washed.

So yeah, girls were always part of the target audience.

[Anthony W]

In 1977 my mum spent an hour one Monday morning putting my sister's hair into Princess Leia's Buns for school. She proceeded to tell my sister to wear a hair cap when washing that week because they were going to Grandma's on Sunday, and she could show off her Princess Leia Buns to our cousins. Why wear the hair cap? Because she was never going through that hassle again and on Sunday night, she was getting her hair washed.

So yeah, girls were always part of the target audience.

Very touching story. The majority of the audience is male. Which is why Disney bought Star Wars and Marvel in the first place.

[Jokerz79]

Very touching story. The majority of the audience is male. Which is why Disney bought Star Wars and Marvel in the first place.

80's kid and heterosexual (Because people tend to try to Stereotype).

Another touching story Christmas 84 I wake up to a Goofy Tent and battlefield of G.I. Joes set up. I had a Hiss Tank, Rattler, Sharc, Sky Hawk, Dragon Fly, Sky Hawk, Slugger, Chameleon, Water Moccasin, A Falcon Glider, An APC, a Ram, a Vamp, and every action figure she could find which included Scarlett and Cover Girl. When Lady Jaye and Flint became available the next year, I got them. My favorite Lion in Voltron was Blue. I was a fan of Arcee on the Transformers I watched She-Ra along as He-Man and I even watched Jem. I saw the releases in the 80's of Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella I also saw the original Little Mermaid in theater.

Why is assumed a boy won't like something with a female lead or play with a female action figure?

Just because I was Mumm-Ra for Halloween 1987 and not Cheetara doesn't mean I disliked Cheetara.

I don't think you're giving boys enough credit.

[Anthony W]

80's kid and heterosexual (Because people tend to try to Stereotype).

Another touching story Christmas 84 I wake up to a Goofy Tent and battlefield of G.I. Joes set up. I had a Hiss Tank, Rattler, Sharc, Sky Hawk, Dragon Fly, Sky Hawk, Slugger, Chameleon, Water Moccasin, A Falcon Glider, An APC, a Ram, a Vamp, and every action figure she could find which included Scarlett and Cover Girl. When Lady Jaye and Flint became available the next year, I got them. My favorite Lion in Voltron was Blue. I was a fan of Arcee on the Transformers I watched She-Ra along as He-Man and I even watched Jem. I saw the releases in the 80's of Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella I also saw the original Little Mermaid in theater.

Why is assumed a boy won't like something with a female lead or play with a female action figure?

Just because I was Mumm-Ra for Halloween 1987 and not Cheetara doesn't mean I disliked Cheetara.

I don't think you're giving boys enough credit.

This wishful thinking is and refusing to acknowledge who powers the franchise is amusing. What's equally amusing is this particular brand of wishful thinking only seems to extend in one direction.

Funny how this brand of wishful thinking doesn't exist when it comes to other brand's like...say...Princes lines or anything woman focused. Hollywood always remembers what powers those franchises.

[Jokerz79]

This wishful thinking is and refusing to acknowledge who powers the franchise is amusing. What's equally amusing is this particular brand of wishful thinking only seems to extend in one direction.

Funny how this brand of wishful thinking doesn't exist when it comes to other brand's like...say...Princes lines or anything woman focused. Hollywood always remembers what powers those franchises.

This is called moving the goal post. You're not disproving boys could like female characters you're now asking why it is a one-way street. Answer simple there is no stigma to being a tomboy. Girl hits a home run dad is beaming with pride son wants to learn ballet and it's a crisis even though Lynn Swann learned Ballet. Adding female characters to boy-oriented franchises will not automatically turn most boys off while giving the girls who like the franchises characters for them to look up too. While sadly if a boy show interest in Barbie, My Little Pony, even the Care Bears past a certain age he is labeled a "Sissy" and needs to man up.

Rey isn't going to stop any boy from playing with Star Wars toys or games all it means is on Halloween if he wants to be Luke or Obi-Wan now his sister has a choice for being a Jedi too.

[godisawesome]

Plus, Rey has Finn to accompany her for dudes who want to dress as a cool guy, and Kylo for dudes who want to show they have bad taste or recognize he’s a good villain and a poor hero.

…I *do* argue that Rey’s maximum and initial popularity got damaged by Kylo being promoted above Finn to be her parasitic, abusive and trashy fan-fiction love interest, but that’s partially because I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that TFA made $2 Billion and outperformed already strong expectations because she and Finn were great co-leads and Kylo a great villain for the moment… and that since TLJ was in development before TFA was released, LFL sold themselves on a bunch of deeply problematic miscalculations that people would want Kylo to be the “real” lead instead, and ran off half their initial customer base, particularly in the younger, less white, and less male demographics.

I’d still argue that if that new Rey movie *does* get Boyega back on board, and addresses the issues of the ST for both him and Rey, they could have another huge hit on their hands, and probably incorporate some subtext about how, for all the ballyhooing that ST critics were sexist or racist, TLJ ran off half the audience by being racist and sexist.

[Anthony W]

This is called moving the goal post. You're not disproving boys could like female characters you're now asking why it is a one-way street.

In order for me to move goal post you would have had to have made it on to the field. I never set out to disprove that boys could like girl characters only that Star Wars is first and foremost a franchise whose target audience is male. Instead of just admitting that I was subjected to Hallmark moments

Answer simple there is no stigma to being a tomboy. Girl hits a home run dad is beaming with pride son wants to learn ballet and it's a crisis even though Lynn Swann learned Ballet. Adding female characters to boy-oriented franchises will not automatically turn most boys off while giving the girls who like the franchises characters for them to look up too. While sadly if a boy show interest in Barbie, My Little Pony, even the Care Bears past a certain age he is labeled a "Sissy" and needs to man up.

Well you're certainly having a conversation with someone but that someone isn't me. Maybe you should save that conversation for them?

Rey isn't going to stop any boy from playing with Star Wars toys or games

((Looks at peg after peg after peg of unsold Rey, Rose and Holdo toys.)) Remember when we talked about wishful thinking?

all it means is on Halloween if he wants to be Luke or Obi-Wan now his sister has a choice for being a Jedi too.

Yep, and all it took was a trio of movies so bad it got the franchise banished to television with multiple directors being mentioned then dropped. Hey whatever happened to that Feige Star Wars project? Surely Rian Johnson will be announcing his project now. Whatever happened to Patty Jenkins? So on and so forth. Hey, you really think those new movies are going to happen?

[godisawesome]

In order for me to move goal post you would have had to have made it on to the field. I never set out to disprove that boys could like girl characters only that Star Wars is first and foremost a franchise whose target audience is male. Instead of just admitting that I was subjected to Hallmark moments

Well you're certainly having a conversation with someone but that someone isn't me. Maybe you should save that conversation for them?

((Looks at peg after peg after peg of unsold Rey, Rose and Holdo toys.)) Remember when we talked about wishful thinking?

Yep, and all it took was a trio of movies so bad it got the franchise banished to television with multiple directors being mentioned then dropped. Hey whatever happened to that Feige Star Wars project? Surely Rian Johnson will be announcing his project now. Whatever happened to Patty Jenkins? So on and so forth. Hey, you really think those new movies are going to happen?

Actually, demand for Rey toys was much greater than LFL expected when TFA came out, as it was with Finn as well. TFA also set a new record for domestic box office in the US in spite of that, and clearly had the vast bulk of the fanbase enjoying it, with even the criticism being much more passive and irritated rather than repulsed.

Dudes loved TFA. Then dudes loved Rogue One, which also had a female lead. And maybe more importantly for both films, it was shown that, at worst, the fanbase and male demographic was equally enthusiastic about good, epic Star Wars properties regardless of whether the leads were female and non-white, and at best, that reaching out to female and non-white audiences led to significant financial rewards.

The Disney+ shows also followed suit and proved that point.

In point of actual fact… it’s really only the properties in the Disney’s era that reoriented themselves back around white dudes that have underperformed, even if they were still profitable or decent. The Last Jedi isn’t Rey’s movie anymore than it’s Finn’s; it’s a film about Luke and Kylo that uses Rey as a plot tool and observer for that story, and gave Finn intentionally insulting busy-work… and a third of the audience dropped away. And thanks to LFL’s love-affair with TLJ, Rey still had Kylo parasitically taking over much of the story going into The Rise of Skywalker, which ran off more people so that half the audience form TFA was gone…and that half was made up disproportionately of women and non-white audience members.

Solo was just too much money for too modest a story, though, yes, they expected it to make money by centering it on the character everyone believed dudes loved most from the OT… and then everyone walked away talking about how awesome Donald Glover was as Lando instead.

Whenever a choice was made that appealed more to the “traditional Star Wars demographic,” it didn’t pay dividends in the Disney era - even when the traditional white dude demographic stayed more “loyal” than other demographics.

Now, if someone wanted to counter by arguing that TLJ specifically was also preaching some anti-white dude agenda, I could understand their mistake, but it would still be a mistake; just because the film IS centered on white dudes as the main protagonists that matter more than everyone else, it doesn’t mean that it did a good job with them. It may be arguing “You’re white dude protagonists suck compared to my white dude protagonists!” but it’s certainly not any kind of “girl power” movie.

…And tying this back to its very thin relevance to this hotel, it wasn’t that people never found Rey interesting that making her the heroic character of the “Star Cruiser Experience” didn’t help it; it was, if anything, that LFL neutered both her as a character and the entire ST by rejecting the central Rey Vs Kylo conflict in favor of trying to sell Rey + Kylo as the central heroes when Kylo is a repellant protagonist. The Star Cruiser doesn’t do much with Rey and Kylo, it’s true, but what it does is still try to juggle the conflict between them that LFL despises with the male privilege that it wants Kylo to get from Rey.

[Jokerz79]

Actually, demand for Rey toys was much greater than LFL expected when TFA came out, as it was with Finn as well. TFA also set a new record for domestic box office in the US in spite of that, and clearly had the vast bulk of the fanbase enjoying it, with even the criticism being much more passive and irritated rather than repulsed.

Dudes loved TFA. Then dudes loved Rogue One, which also had a female lead. And maybe more importantly for both films, it was shown that, at worst, the fanbase and male demographic was equally enthusiastic about good, epic Star Wars properties regardless of whether the leads were female and non-white, and at best, that reaching out to female and non-white audiences led to significant financial rewards.

The Disney+ shows also followed suit and proved that point.

In point of actual fact… it’s really only the properties in the Disney’s era that reoriented themselves back around white dudes that have underperformed, even if they were still profitable or decent. The Last Jedi isn’t Rey’s movie anymore than it’s Finn’s; it’s a film about Luke and Kylo that uses Rey as a plot tool and observer for that story, and gave Finn intentionally insulting busy-work… and a third of the audience dropped away. And thanks to LFL’s love-affair with TLJ, Rey still had Kylo parasitically taking over much of the story going into The Rise of Skywalker, which ran off more people so that half the audience form TFA was gone…and that half was made up disproportionately of women and non-white audience members.

Solo was just too much money for too modest a story, though, yes, they expected it to make money by centering it on the character everyone believed dudes loved most from the OT… and then everyone walked away talking about how awesome Donald Glover was as Lando instead.

Whenever a choice was made that appealed more to the “traditional Star Wars demographic,” it didn’t pay dividends in the Disney era - even when the traditional white dude demographic stayed more “loyal” than other demographics.

Now, if someone wanted to counter by arguing that TLJ specifically was also preaching some anti-white dude agenda, I could understand their mistake, but it would still be a mistake; just because the film IS centered on white dudes as the main protagonists that matter more than everyone else, it doesn’t mean that it did a good job with them. It may be arguing “You’re white dude protagonists suck compared to my white dude protagonists!” but it’s certainly not any kind of “girl power” movie.

…And tying this back to its very thin relevance to this hotel, it wasn’t that people never found Rey interesting that making her the heroic character of the “Star Cruiser Experience” didn’t help it; it was, if anything, that LFL neutered both her as a character and the entire ST by rejecting the central Rey Vs Kylo conflict in favor of trying to sell Rey + Kylo as the central heroes when Kylo is a repellant protagonist. The Star Cruiser doesn’t do much with Rey and Kylo, it’s true, but what it does is still try to juggle the conflict between them that LFL despises with the male privilege that it wants Kylo to get from Rey.

There also an irony to the idea that "Female" characters are diminishing the brand when TFA made 2 billion, TLJ 1 billion, TROS 1 billion, Rogue One 1 billion, and Solo (The Male Led Film) didn't even make 400 million.