How Is This Going To Help Us Sell More Star Wars?

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]How does this help us sell hamburgers?

[00:00:06]This is actually a very good question.

[00:00:08]How does this help us sell hamburgers?

[00:00:12]As I'm sure you are acquainted with the meme which is now represented in its most literal format on Steven Colbear's The Late Show. Now, well, previously The Lit Show anyways, as he's getting yeetated off the air for poor ratings. I can't possibly see how that could be the case. And Pedro Pascal, who is supposedly anyways doing marketing for his new movie, The Mandalorian and Grou.

[00:00:45]I don't know how this sells movies either, but it might as well be hamburgers or Disney films of this flick. I don't really think it makes any difference. I genuinely don't.

[00:00:57]This interview who popped up uh recently has Pedro Pascal on the Late Show to supposedly anyways do some marketing for The Mandalorian and Grou which has received very very very little in the way of marketing. Pedro Pascal himself does not appear to have actually been briefed on the fact that this is his purpose on the late show as whatever Steven Cobear asks him much so Mandalorian and Grou we've got a trailer here. What do you want to tell us about it? He kind of just goes like, well, you know, it's um it's Star Wars.

[00:01:33]It's definitely Star Wars. Oh, and it's in theaters at some point in the nebula's future.

[00:01:41]I'm not entirely sure when, but believe you me, it will arrive at some point, presumably. Maybe, possibly. Who even knows? Pedro Pascal sure as hell doesn't. And neither the Steven Colbear either. They do show off a little trailer, which is adorable, uh, I suppose. But other than that, the only information about the movie presented in this 10-minute interview is that Pedro Pascal does get wet in it, which I suppose is valuable information in and of itself. But this is there's been a recent trend in Hollywood around this. So, we already know that obviously a lot of the purpose behind selling hamburgers might not be actually selling hamburgers. Duh. But I don't even think this was a case of that. This came across more of a I don't even know kind of a moment where perhaps the ploy here is okay, we've got to get some buzz out there for this movie because nobody even seems to know that we're making it.

[00:02:45]There's barely any news about it and the only articles released are the usual.

[00:02:49]Listen, we'll try to do Star Wars this time. I I promise. This time there will be both Stars and Wars in your Star Wars as we all bend over and prepare to be disappointed yet again. But this has been happening with frequency lately to the point where I don't even think this is an an coincidence anymore because you could then argue that now since everybody's talking about the kiss on Steven Cob late tonight show this might somehow translate into PR for the Mandalorian Grou but we've seen this before. Okay, so when the new Superman was doing the rounds, the marketing again was weirdly lowkey, especially compared to the enormous marketing budget. Although social media had a a lot of bot accounts talking about it that then instantly went quiet there after.

[00:03:46]But James Gun's idea of marketing was to say something that sounded nice and promising and everybody was like, "Oh, hey, that's that's kind of okay, right?"

[00:03:55]Okay, so a Superman movie about Superman being the good guy. Oh, cutting edge and edgy right there. And then he'd immediately follow that up by saying something idiotic and [ __ ] that would piss everybody off. So like he was trying to give you hope with one hand and snatch it away with the other to create buzz around the movie. The problem is this doesn't really work anymore. See, the movie going audience doesn't go to a thing dependent upon whether or not they think it'll be good so much as they do decide to go or not go depending on the buzz surrounding it.

[00:04:35]And this has been a long-standing issue created largely by gaming journalists and movie journalists of course where they refuse to actually review movies anymore. Instead, they give you their perspective on the movie. Not whether or not it's a good movie or whether or not you would enjoy it, but whether or not they in all of their auridness did enjoy it, which is frankly godamn irrelevant.

[00:05:02]And it's why whenever I do any of these off-the- cuff movie review thingies, I try to lay out what kind of a person might enjoy this and how the story is structured in general so that you might figure out if you would like to view it as being an old-fashioned idiot myself.

[00:05:19]That was apparently the point of a review, at least as far as I could remember. Anyways, and then there's the Odyssey, which started strong with the release of a picture that, okay, you know, leather van braces and leather helmets and all of that, but you can kind of see how this could become an Odysseyesque movie. All right, it's kind of low tech, kind of grimy as per usual, but at least they haven't gone crazy over the top with the costumes or anything idiotic. Oh, wait.

[00:05:54]And then that quickly fell apart. At this point, you have to think to yourself, this has got to be this has to be deliberate. Okay, this must be a form of new Hollywood marketing attempting to gain eyeballs on a property by doing outrageous things. either by saying completely crazy [ __ ] about a movie, half of which turned out to not even be true in the end, hoping to get both rage and hope at the same time, or setting up PR stunts like this, hoping that it will get people's eyes on your product, even though the guy who is assigned to put eyes on it then goes on to go in theaters soon.

[00:06:41]Thanks, Pedro. Um, riveting, riveting absolutely there. Or even just the odyssey with the constant slow trickle of things like this is going to be a feminist reimagining of Adysius's story. Oh, thank you. I mean, I I wouldn't have expected that in this day and age in the slightest. No, absolutely not, of course. But this is clearly some sort of strategy now, and I don't think it's working. I think it's been demonstrated to not work with Superman with previous entries like this. Listen, we return now to the old adage of all PR is good PR, a statement that hasn't been true for 30 years at this point. And yet having lost all other idea of how to market their properties now as I generally think Hollywood is in a bit of a bind at the moment where they're looking at the movie trailers and going well they're not really working anymore and if somebody doesn't like it they'll review bomb it on the internet and that'll become a whole thing where people look at the ant the the down vote counter the up co up vote counter and then they'll ratio us and then we'll be upset and we'll look like idiots on the internet. So that doesn't really work simultaneously. We don't even know how to appeal to the audience anymore.

[00:08:02]Twisted though it may be, I genuinely do believe to some extent that was what James Gun was trying to do with his mad cap schizophrenic attempt at marketing there. Or the bot fan accounts going, "Oh, it's finally Superman again." Or again, the constant repetitions of this time will actually give you Star Wars. I know. Isn't it crazy? and they never do.

[00:08:29]So, they don't know how to appeal to you. They don't know what part of this could possibly appeal to anyone. They can't explain how you might want to go watch a Star Wars movie anymore because they know they're not making a Star Wars movie. And they know that you know that they know. So instead, we've kind of fallen back to rage bait marketing where we're attempting to get butts in seats by simply just washing the airwaves with anything and everything likely to cause some sort of scandal or uproar.

[00:09:05]I just don't think it works anymore.

[00:09:08]See, the problem yet again is that if you have to do this kind of nonsensical [ __ ] to sell a Star Wars movie, it's too late, brother. The The ship has already circled the drain. It is sinking. It has already been flushed.

[00:09:32]You shouldn't need to sell Star Wars.

[00:09:35]You shouldn't need to sell Superman.

[00:09:38]None of this should require pitching.

[00:09:41]The only thing you should really need to do is go out on the go and they're like, "Okay, we're making a Star Wars movie.

[00:09:47]It's going to have Mandalorian in it.

[00:09:49]It's going to have space battles. It's going to have Jera the Hut, the Hut Cartels. It's going to have action. Oh, and by the way, that fluffy puffy little plushy thing, you know, with the force powers and the green one, the Baby Yoda, that one will be in there, too, for your girlfriend to have something to watch whilst you enjoy the actual movie.

[00:10:07]That's all you need to do. Same with Superman. You shouldn't need to make a marketing campaign out of going, "So, our Superman, get this. Hold on there.

[00:10:16]Hold on to your hats real close. He isn't evil.

[00:10:32]I I appreciate the reassurance.

[00:10:37]I I you shouldn't need to do this. And the problem is as well here even if you do get eyes on you for stuff like this and you know it has been successful in getting eyes on Pedro Pascal and Steven Colbear at least the issue now is that you've already built up a negative perception of your property a negative perception of the thing you are selling.

[00:11:06]Nobody views Star Wars as an intrinsic good anymore. This the title doesn't sell and certainly Mandalorian Grou doesn't either. The Mandalorian was a TV show that started good for about like two episodes and then completely fell off the bus thereafter and only got worse episode by episode, season by season. And Grogo himself, it's a baby.

[00:11:32]Listen, I know he's like your only semisuccessful original character, which is [ __ ] sad in and of itself, but a plushie doesn't God help me. I don't know. How do I put this? A plushie in and of itself is not going to fill theaters. Or at least I will be deeply surprised if it does. And I'll have to eat my words.

[00:11:56]You You need something more than that.

[00:11:59]You need a story to tell. And since you don't have a positive important story and point with impetus behind it to overtake and turn around the narrative, which is now overwhelmingly negative, all that's going to happen when you draw extra attention to your project is that you draw extra attention to the negativity. There is no positive buzz around Star Wars. If you don't have people already excited, you're you're not drawing upon it. How do I put it?

[00:12:33]If you have a property that people want to see, that they enjoy, they're looking forward to, you have positive buzz, right? And in that case, if you just simply draw attention to it in any way whatsoever, you simply point in its general direction, then people will look upon it and go, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, now, wow, nice. That's got a lot of nice stuff around it. It smells good. It's fluffy. It's golden. It's glowing. I might be interested in that. However, if you as this is reach up into the sky and go behold and it's just a giant turgid pile of [ __ ] surrounded by a thick actually visible.

[00:13:19]You can see the stench coming off it, which does happen by the way, particularly vile stench is actually gosh darn visible in the air. People are going to look at that and go, "Wow, I wh why why did you I I might have gone to see it by sheer accident, but now that I know that is what it is, why would I do so?"

[00:13:43]And that is what has happened here. This doesn't in any way change the buzz around Mandalorian and Grou. It merely draws extra attention to it. And even even then, I don't even know if that is the case, seeing as yet again the only marketing material for the movie in the Colbear show was, "Hey, it's got Ripley in it."

[00:14:08]Okay, I mean, that's something. Oh, and by the way, here's a trailer with absolutely zero context. Listen, I tried asking the actor what he felt about it or if he had anything to add, but he just kind of shrugged. And if the actor doesn't even care about the movie, having been paid millions of dollars to do so, why on good God green earth should you care about the movie?

[00:14:41]Listen, at this point in time, you might actually be better off to just go full hog. All right, just scrap the entire marketing campaign in total. Simply just release a date, a couple of movie poster, a trailer here and there, hog tie the people working on it, particularly if his name is Christopher Nolan, and put him under a rock. Do not allow him to speak on any subject or comment in public. And certainly do not allow him to argue with the audience that oh, you know, we couldn't have orchestral scores because that wasn't really invented at the time. By the way, here's Snoop Doggy Dog introducing us to the Iliads via rap music.

[00:15:30]And just pay the Twitter bots instead.

[00:15:35]Ironically, I actually think that might create more of a positive buzz. At least it might have the odd chance of making people believe that others are actually excited for it. Sure, all of the accounts talking about it have never talked about anything like it ever before, and they all suspiciously got precisely 2,333 followers and were created yesterday and are located in Beijing. But there might still be some feel of positivity around it.

[00:16:11]I'm I'm trying to tell Hollywood how to sell hamburgers right now and I'm realizing my mistake because Hollywood doesn't want to sell hamburgers. That's that is the fundamental issue here. When when these are the actions of your $100 million per movie actor and his entire stage managed performance and the only thing he has to say about the movie he's been sent to promote is it's in theaters I think soon.

[00:16:46]Maybe maybe they are selling what they want to sell and maybe this just isn't actually it. Maybe this isn't the product anymore. I don't know what the product is. I genuinely struggle to identify it, but clearly it isn't the movie.

[00:17:09]Oh well, I do suppose it saves us all many, many trips to the cinema. So, that's a good deed if nothing else. Until next time, I've been Arch. Thank you very much for watching and I do hope to see you all again soon. Have a good day.