Disney 2025: "That's no moon."

As I've discussed previously, Galaxy's Edge is my favourite part of Disneyland, but sadly, I have some mild concerns regarding Black Spire's longevity.  Outside of its immersive environment, Galaxy's Edge has only two ride options:  Smuggler's Run and Rise of the Resistance. Rise has certainly remained a popular ride since its Disneyland debut in January of 2020, with wait times frequently reaching 90 to 120 minutes.  However, during our 2025 visit, wait times for Smuggler's Run rarely rose above five minutes, and I've heard rumours that the local Disney community in Anaheim is a bit done with the ride.

However, I think that there's an opportunity for Smuggler's Run to undergo a revival that would be both economically practical by preserving as much of the current infrastructure as possible, but newly exciting for visitors at the same time.

I realize that Galaxy's Edge is set in a very specific time period between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, but what if Disney shifted Smuggler's Run back in time to the timeline of A New Hope, when we're first introduced to the Falcon?  Instead of doing a cargo raid for the Resistance, you take flight from Mos Eisley after a confrontation with Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett. You evade pursuit by an Imperial Star Destroyer, only to discover that the gigantic sphere in front of you is not a moon...

Briefly pulled aboard the Death Star by tractor beams, you manage to successfully break their hold, escape the hangar, and hyperspace to Yavin 4.  Once there, you leave the Falcon, receive a dramatic and emotional briefing from Princess Leia, then board a battered X-wing fighter and head back into space.  

There's an acrobatic dogfight with TIE fighters, you fly your ship into the Death Star's equatorial trench, follow Obi-Wan Kenobi's guidance to launch missiles that destroy the battlestation's reactor, and make a triumphant flight back to the rebel base - the end. 

The good news is that the existing infrastructure from Smuggler's Run remains intact: new animatronics of Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett replace Hondo Ohnaka at the beginning of the ride, and an updated simulation has to be created for the Falcon, but really, that's it for the existing front end.  Then, all you need is a conveniently located exit into the newly constructed Rebel base on Yavin 4, which contains a large hangar full of X-Wings, and a flight simulator motion-platform program, none of which would be a challenge for current state-of-the art - and voilà, Smuggler's Run is now The Battle of Yavin 4. They would need to figure out some kind of safe and simple gangway system for quick access and egress for the X-Wings, but that's a minor issue.

After formulating the above plan, it occurs to me that the climactic events of The Force Awakens aren't all that different from A New Hope, and it's a lot closer to the existing Galaxy's Edge timeline - it would be just as easy (or hard) to recreate the destruction of Starkiller Base instead of the battle of Yavin-4.  Well, who cares, say I.  If you ask me, the Death Star battle is iconic, and, no offense to Oscar Isaac, but I'd much rather be Luke Skywalker than Poe Dameron.

- Sid 

Disney 2025: "You insult my honour!"

"And believe me, I have very little honour to insult."

Hondo Ohnaka, Smuggler's Run

 - Sid 

"With strange aeons even death may die."

A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.

 H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

“He was written in the script as a big, whale-like creature. A massive behemoth – it was called The Behemoth. And in designing the movie – we were done shooting, but we obviously never shot the behemoth cause we were gonna do him later – I just basically was like… we were early enough in the design that was able to shift more to a mystical being. So that’s where we started going Lovecraftian. So I was like alright, [we’re] making Cthulhu here.”

Director William Eubank, Underwater

Whenever I travel, I generally load a few movies onto my iPad, just in case the inflight options leave something to be desired.  For this year's trip to Disneyland, one of my entertainment choices was Underwater, the 2020 science fiction horror film starring Kristen Stewart, and I ended up watching it on our flight to Anaheim today.

At the time of its original release, Underwater failed to perform at the box office, with an international gross of $41 million against a budget of about $65 million.  Personally, I rather liked the film, in spite of its poor reception - it might not break any new ground in terms of moviemaking, but I appreciated its abruptly disastrous opening scene, the underwater sequences are well shot and surprisingly claustrophobic, it has good art direction, and its little repertoire cast does strong work with a bare-bones plot. 

Kristen Stewart brings a lot to the table in terms of acting ability in her portrayal of mournfully defiant mechanical engineer Norah Price - at first I felt that she was slumming a little bit in doing a monster/horror genre film like this, but I can't deny that she doesn't hold back in her performance.

But, all other comments aside, I was completely unaware that Underwater was a Cthulhu Mythos film - the gigantic humanoid monster that dominates the climax of the film is never explicitly identified as H. P. Lovecraft's Great Cthulhu, but in context, it's obvious that it's based on the Great Old One who lies dreaming in R'lyeh. (Thereby making the smaller creatures the Deep Ones from the Mythos.)

However, it's really more of a cameo than a starring role. As far as I know, Lovecraft's short fiction is now in the public domain* - let's stop wasting our time doing horror versions of Winnie the Pooh, isn't it time that someone does the definitive Mythos film that we've all been waiting for?

- Sid

* I have the impression that there's some grey area here legally speaking - Lovecraft's work may be public domain, but there have been enough comics, games, and tributes referencing Cthulhu that there may be some challenges regarding explicit use of the name.

"Leave me alone, hands are hard!"

Today I asked the Adobe generative AI for a female longshore worker in coveralls, and to my intense amusement it obligingly created the following image:

Why was I amused? Well, there is always more than one solution to a problem.  Presumably at this point, many many MANY users have complained to the AI about hands coming out strangely or with too many fingers.  The AI's response?  "Damn it, I give up - I'm just going to put her hands in her pockets. I hope you're happy now!"  

- Sid

P.S. My wife's response was interestingly different:

"Oh that's awesome! But also scary! It's hiding the thing it knows we know to use to identify it."

No offense intended, Chris.

https://topatoco.com/collections/oglaf/products/og-craft

In case you missed it earlier, XL, please. 

- Sid 

(Actually, given that Chris is a fan of both, I honestly don't know which way the coin would fall on this one.)