I love all things Star Wars as much as the next guy, and I am extremely pleased to see that Rogue One is annihilating the competition at the box office, but I’m beginning to wonder whether Disney’s hubris is about to send the franchise into an inescapable tailspin.
As is the case with most movies that top the box office, the new Rogue One TV spots make sure to highlight that fact. Except Rogue One is taking things pretty far in bypassing the worldwide box office and making the wild claim that this is the top movie in the ENTIRE galaxy.
How the hell would they know that? There are potentially 100 billion planets in our own Milky Way galaxy, so is Disney trying to tell me here that they’ve been tracking the box office rankings on every single planet? They’ve learned every alien language and culture, figured out how to compare our currencies, and somehow devised a system that is able to collectively rank every planet’s overall box office? Please. If anything, this is terribly reckless, because we really have no idea how an alien civilization would react to this potentially catastrophic slight.
I guess none of this matters anyway, because in today’s post-truth society, whether or not you have the facts doesn’t make a difference. You just need to state your baseless claim with enough conviction that no one really bothers to fight it. And then when people do start to investigate your claim, you just immediately make another one to deflect the attention.
So when the next Rogue One TV spot says it is the #1 movie in the universe, you’ll be able to see right through it. And you’ll be able to see just how dangerous a claim it is.
Stay vigilant, my friends.
