Category: corporate tomfoolery

‘Star Wars’ and the endless sequels of a corporate cash cow

Brett Arnold of Yahoo! is distinctly unimpressed with the latest, endless installment in the Star Wars franchise:

“‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is easily the worst Star Wars movie, but even calling it a movie feels like giving it more credit than it deserves. It’s a feature-length episode of streaming-era television, and boy, does it look and feel like it. It’s uncinematic in pretty much every way, from the drab visuals to its repetitive structure that lacks the storytelling heft needed to make the jump from TV to film. Say what you will about ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ or the prequel trilogy; at least they’re movies!”

Reading the above, I feel a little like the lead singer in the J. Geils Band, who discovered that his high school sweetheart had been turned into onanistic fodder for a girlie magazine:

Star Wars was amazing when it first came out. I can say this with certainty because I was there at the beginning.

It was the summer of 1977 and I sat with my dad in a cinema in northern Kentucky as the very first Star Wars film began.

I was nine years old.

I will soon be 58.

I’m sure you caught the irony. That was almost half a century ago.

The last Star Wars movie that was really necessary was Return of the Jedi in 1983. I remember watching The Phantom Menace in 1999, sixteen years later. It didn’t feel like Star Wars.

Since then, the movies have only gotten worse. It’s obvious that Disney is just milking the Star Wars universe as one of its few reliable cash cows.

Star Wars was great! But it’s time for new science fiction stories and fresh space operas.

-ET

Rescuing restaurant chains from the MBAs

Back in the 1980s, Pizza Hut was one of my favorite places to eat. I ate at several local Pizza Huts here in Cincinnati with my parents, my friends, and some dates.

Even back then, Pizza Hut was a national franchise. (In fact. I think it was already an international franchise). But Pizza Hut was distinctive, atmospheric, and wonderfully quirky. Those glass light fixtures, and the red-and-white checkered tablecloths. The arcade games in one corner.

And then the MBAs ruined Pizza Hut, as the MBAs ruined so much of American business.

Some time around the turn of this century, corporate management teams in multiple restaurant chains decided that restaurants should lose their distinctiveness, and aim for a stripped-down, ultra-modern corporate look. The idea seemed to be that restaurants should mimic the Apple Store.

Suddenly, Pizza Hut wasn’t a fun place to eat anymore. Ditto for others. Very few fast food restaurants provide anything approaching an immersive experience nowadays.

There have been some notable consumer backlashes. Last year, customers expressed their vehement disapproval on the internet when the corporate pointy heads decided that it was time to give Cracker Barrel a makeover. Cracker Barrel’s management team promptly backpedaled.

As the attached video from CBS shows, a Pizza Hut in rural Pennsylvania has discovered a new formula for success. That formula turns out to be—lo and behold— going back to the distinctive Pizza Hut decor, menu, and layout of the 1980s.

The video also mentions that the store has brought Pac Man back. This is a nice touch, but I don’t think it’s necessary for every restaurant chain to literally go back to the 1970s and 1980s. For example, those famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) aluminum ashtrays are not coming back to McDonald’s in an era of smoking bans. And I’m okay with that. We can leave the aluminum ashtrays (and all the second-hand smoke) in the Reagan era.

But there are a lot of good things that should be brought back to national restaurant chains—wonderful elements of well-known brands, that were eliminated in the name of nonsensical “modernity”.

Every restaurant should not look the same. And restaurants certainly shouldn’t look like the Apple Store.

-ET