What if Star Wars isn't Dead?

What if it's just fishing with the wrong bait?

Some life lessons are simply too dangerous to our egos and must be studiously ignored by our subconscious mind, lest we become aware of our own impending mortality.

Over the weekend I took my two boys (10 and 14) to see “Jurassic Park: Rebirth” in the theater. The 10-year-old was excited about it and specifically asked to go. The teenager didn’t really want to go, but tagged along anyway. I thought the movie was just OK… I love dinosaurs, but it’s too long, it has subplots that aren’t necessary and which drag the movie down, and a lot of the dialogue and character arcs are dull and unoriginal.

But a funny thing happened on the way out of the theater. The 10-year-old absolutely loved it, and spent the rest of the day excitedly walking his mom through every plot point. Even the teenager, who had been sullen on the ride to the theater, said “thanks for making me go, that was pretty good.” And in that moment, I had a very intense and very hard emotional realization… “Jurassic Park: Rebirth” was not made for me.

If I have a cultural blindspot as a man just recently past the age of 50, it is that I still think of myself as a 15-year-old movie fan. Part of that can be blamed on the fact that the franchises I grew up on, “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, “Indiana Jones”, “Ghostbusters”, “Predator”, “Alien”, “The Terminator” and a million others, remain vital pieces of IP to this day… or at least they remain almost universally recognized by movie fans and therefore still have some value and goodwill in the marketplace, even if the movies they’re generating aren’t very good anymore. And my childhood connection to those franchises conspires to make me feel as though my movie tastes haven’t really changed that much, even in the face of a mountain of contrary evidence.

I’ve always loved movies more than most people. Movies have been almost an obsession for me throughout my life. And they are the reason I moved to Los Angeles 35 years ago to seek my fortune in an insane business that chews most people up and spits them out… I simply couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But as I’ve grown up and my priorities have changed, to say nothing of my tastes, I have also evolved as a movie fan. I find that I am no longer looking for the kind of light campy “fun” delivered by silly movies like “Minecraft.” As a grown man, I’ve become more interested in well-made sophisticated original adult action, thriller and horror. By way of example, Soderbergh’s “Black Bag” has been my favorite movie of the year so far.

“Jurassic Rebirth” was a shocking reminder that I’m no longer that star-struck pre-teen who long ago marveled in the dark as the Paramount logo slowly gave way to Indiana Jones’ iconic hat moving confidently through the South American jungle.

What this means is that I am no longer a part of what should be Hollywood’s primary target audience. The blockbuster movies of my youth were built on the tastes of 15-year-olds. And it makes perfect sense why that would be. If you want to build lifelong customers who will be with you for 50 years or more, you don’t start by appealing to 50-year-old men… you start by making movies for teenagers.

Which is exactly what “Jurassic Rebirth” does… it is a movie made for my 10 and 14-year-olds. They loved it, and now they want to go back to the theater again next weekend to see something else. And that, ladies and gentleman, is exactly how it’s supposed to work. That is how you create a loyal repeat customer who sees 20 movies a year.

As for me, there was a melancholy feeling I had as the Jurassic credits began to roll that I did not matter to the process at all, that my reaction to the movie was entirely immaterial and beside the point. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn on a Sunday afternoon in 2025 when the truth is that whether I like it or not, I am well on to the “back nine” of my career.

All of which brings me to “Star Wars.”

A couple weeks ago I was listening to Hugh Hewitt’s radio show when he was joined by frequent guest James Lileks. After the typical introductory small talk, Hugh and James spent two or three minutes of valuable morning drive time radio discussing, not Donald Trump or China or the Border or Israel, but “Andor” the Disney “Star Wars” spinoff TV series which had just completed its second season. “Andor” is great, both men gushed… the best thing Star Wars has done in years… maybe Lucasfilm and Disney have finally found a successful formula for pulling the mortally wounded airplane out of its nosedive, they mused.

Well… Hugh turns 70 years old this year… Lileks will be 67. This matches a pattern I’m seeing across my Twitter/X feed with respect to “Andor.” The recognizable names who tweeted enthusiastically about Tony Gilroy’s show, from Hugh and James to Matt Continetti, Noam Blum, Ben Domenech, Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker (who loved “Andor” but hated “Jurassic: Rebirth”) are all older (40+ at least) and male.

Now, obviously this is a very narrow sampling… my Twitter/X feed is dominated by political figures, and mostly Conservative political figures at that. But I think the trend is holding across the cultural landscape. “Andor” is a show targeted at, and enjoyed by, primarily men who are middle-aged and older.

Which is an audience Disney not only doesn’t need, but already owns. What Disney desperately needs is for a new generation of kids to fall in love with “Star Wars” in the same way my contemporaries and I did almost a half-century ago. The problem is that this is largely not happening. The Disney audience (including theme park visitors who are getting steadily older and much more childless) is in full demographic collapse because the studio, like most Hollywood studios, is being run by Boomers… folks who, while they may know what they personally want to watch, no longer have any idea how to make movies and TV shows that connect with kids and teenagers in anything other than a superficial way.

Moviemaking is a young man’s game. All of the franchises I listed above were created by filmmakers who were young and hungry and who still remembered what it felt like to be a kid sitting in a movie theater as the lights went down… Spielberg wasn’t even 30 yet when he made “Jaws.” But even the men and women who ran the studios which gave those young hungry filmmakers their shot were much younger by comparison with those who run the studios today. Here in 2025, Lucasfilm is being run by an increasingly out-of-touch Kathleen Kennedy who is 72-years-old, and who is not even the oldest person currently running a Hollywood studio or branded movie division.

What I’m getting at here is that I don’t think “Star Wars” is dead, I simply think that it’s under the control of people who no longer understand what kids want or need from the movies, and that someone needs to slap the franchise out of their hands, pick it up and hand it to a “kid” in his 20’s or 30’s who understands how and why the original trilogy brought wonder and adventure into the lives of young people and made them lifelong brand-loyal customers…

… in other words, someone who thinks more like my 10-year-old, and a lot less like me.

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