May the Fourth

Two things stuck this Star Wars Day.

The first one I’m still thinking about. Chris Preksta posted on Threads about a trick. Turn down the saturation. Bump the contrast. Switch the audio to Japanese with English subs. The Phantom Menace becomes the best “Space Kurosawa” movie ever made. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think he’s right. Strip out the color and Liam Neeson’s accent, and what’s left should look a lot closer to Hidden Fortress. Lucas always said he was riffing on Kurosawa. Turns out the riff was buried under the color grade.

The other thing is a quieter trend. Nielsen released Q1 viewership data for Disney+, and the sequel trilogy is just… not there. No Force Awakens. No Last Jedi. No Rise of Skywalker. Fans watched 637 million minutes of Star Wars content on May 4 alone, and the most-streamed films were A New Hope, Phantom Menace, and Rogue One.

I’m not sure what any of this means. My guess is that a lot of Disney execs are banking on The Mandalorian and Grogu in a couple of weeks.