This Week in Startups - Sheryl Sandberg leaves Meta + This Week in Streaming with Lon Harris: Obi-Wan Kenobi | E1474

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Today, we dive into Sheryl Sandberg leaving Meta (2:14), then Lon Harris joins for This Week in Streaming where we cover Kenobi episodes 1-3 (12:36). We talk about Disney’s response to racism (26:54), where the Star Wars sequels went wrong (36:00), and the Depp v. Heard trial coverage (51:00). (00:00) Jason and Molly introduce today’s show! (2:14) Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg leaving the company after 14 years (11:25) Vanta - Get $1,000 off automating your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (12:36) This Week in Streaming w/Lon Harris: Obi-Wan Kenobi episodes 1-3 (25:37) Masterworks - Skip the waitlist to invest in art using promo code TWIST at https://Masterworks.io/twist (26:54) Discussing Disney’s response to racism (34:44) LinkedIn - Post your first job for free at https://linkedIn.com/twist (36:00) More on Disney’s response to racism: where the sequels went wrong (41:52) Filoni and Favreau filling in the holes for Star Wars (45:40) Teasing next week: Star Trek Strange New Worlds, Amazon + 007? (51:00) Depp v. Heard trial: fishing for views

Hey, everybody, it's Thursday. And tonight, Molly and I will be going to the Warriors game. Yay. Pretty good seats. So if you are looking at the Warriors bench, look just to the ride. And we might have pretty good seats tonight for game one. Go dubs. But a big show today.

What do we got on deck for today, Molly? Big show today. We're going to start with just a little bit of a news update that broke after we stopped recording yesterday, which I hate it when that happens. But it allows us to have a slightly more nuanced conversation about Cheryl Sandberg. leaving meta after 14 years. And then we're going to go on to talk to our friend Lon Harris. It is this week in streaming Thursdays.

And so we are going to go all in on Obi-Wan Kenobi and the first three episodes. Lots of spoilers. So if you haven't seen it yet, you don't want to save this episode until you catch up. And episode three is a doozy. We also talk about maybe the racism issue in the Star Wars community. Is it representative of something bigger? and then what happened in the sequels and in this show. It's a complicated discussion, but a good one.

And we'll also touch on the court TV streaming success of, or there's the crazy numbers for the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial, which is thankfully open. It's going to be a great show. What is happening in society. Stick with us. It's going to be a great show with some dystopian moments. Stick with us.

Stick with. Stick with. Yes. I'm going to say stick with us. Stick with us. I'm going to say stick with us. For sure. This weekend startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC2 report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist.

Masterworks. Masterworks is the first company allowing investors exposure into the blue chip artwork asset class. Twist listeners can skip the 30,000 person wait list by going to Masterworks.io and using the promo code Twist. And LinkedIn Talent Solutions. A business is only as strong as people and every hire matters. Go to LinkedIn.com slash twist and get a $50 credit towards your first job post. Before we get to Lon, let's talk about the breaking news that occurred yesterday. It was funny too because there was a Bloomberg article that was like, well, this is like 11 years in the making, but it finally happened.

Fedda, Chief Operating Officer, Cheryl Sandberg, she, the architect of the business model and all of the good and ill that that brought is leaving the company in the fall. After a full 14 years there, she joined, of course, in 2008, built out the ad business, wrote the book, Lean In, became the face of things like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook's handling of election interference and misinformation. Apparently, recently there was a story that said that she allegedly

manipulated the daily mail not to post a story about her former boyfriend a complicated to say the least legacy, not only this company but in this country. Yeah, I mean, let's face it. She was very

close friends of her former, of her husband who passed away Dave Goldberg and I am friendly with Cheryl, so just as a slight disclaimer here. And in fact, I texted her last night and just say congratulations on a 14-year run. We're friendly and we're friends.

And your husband was a dear friend of mine. So, you know, it's complicated. Facebook, you know, I've been super critical of for many years. And Cheryl is an extraordinary executive who helped build Google's ad business and then built Facebooks. And those are the number one and the number two. So in the column of, you know, competency and perhaps. Perhaps, you know, one of the greatest executives in the modern history of Silicon Valley,

Cheryl Sandberg's on the short list, if you were to look at COOs and people in operations, you know, not founders, but people who helped founders build companies, she's in the top two or three, along with people like a Tim Cook or a Sundar. You know, there are people who are the people behind the founders who actually build these businesses, and she is a legendary one and obviously had a lot of influence on culture and women in business and leaning in. Those are all the great things.

But Facebook also had a lot of challenging things and its ability to really handle disinformation, election fraud, all of these things was clearly suboptimal and bad. And I think Zuckerberg's decision making is horrible and he made decisions to grow the business.

And I thought maybe she should have left, as you were referring to in the Bloomberg one, you know, seven years ago. And she also had to be the face of this because, let's face it, Zuckerberg's a horrible communicator. So for many years, she had to go out and take the arrows for decisions Zuck made. And I think people kind of recognize that as well.

So I wish her well in her philanthropy and everything else, you know, in her life. thing that it says about the future of this company. Because we've speculated on this show that maybe Zuckerberg would become executive chairman or that he would spin out meta into sort of its own thing and maybe, you know, give Cheryl the CEO title at Facebook, much like Google did with Susan Wojicki at YouTube. Yeah. And so this to me just feels like, I mean, look, if you're a multi-billionaire and you've put your time in and you've taken a lot of arrows and like you just want to live your life and live it well and do philanthropy and do whatever else. Great, right? You should totally do that. But also when you're dealing with ambitious people, you do wonder if there was a job that she wasn't going to be given. Well, that's what happened at Google. So I have no idea what's happening here. I have no inside information. I don't talk to Zuck. I rarely talk to Cheryl, but we're friendly. So I don't have any inside information in this case. I'm always very honest with that.

with the audience. So, but she did, she should have become a board member at Google. Uh, she should have been president, maybe, or CEO candidate. And I think that's probably why she left there. You know, sometimes you have to leave a company to get recognized for your unique talent. You might have experienced that yourself, Molly. Um, and it, I don't think it's even a gender-based thing, but it might be more acute for women. I don't know. Um, but a lot of times talent has to leave a place because there's no more slots ahead of them, right? There's, there's, there's, backlog, right? And so the easiest way to move up the ladder is to go jump onto another ladder and go one rung up. And I think that's what she did at Facebook, right? She became the number two,

where at Google, you know, it was a little bit of a Game of Thrones there for a bit. Marissa Mayer, Salar, there were a lot of different people, you know, Susan and Jackie who were in the running for different departments. And, you know, I guess that causes some air traffic control in the executive ranks. So, yeah, I think there, it clearly should. shows that Zuckerberg wants to run this. Yeah. I think Zuckerberg probably feels with the pullback in the stock, with everybody hating on him, with, you know, the scrutiny they're under that maybe he needs to just rule with an

iron fist and be in charge. And, you know, for society writ large, I think it's probably a loss because I have a feeling she was the rudder that was probably protecting Zuckerberg from bad decisions. So as much as people would be critical of her, I actually think the story might be if she wasn't there, this thing would have been 10 times worse and the bad behavior would have been worse. And, you know, policing the system would have been worse. She's a good actor, I believe, knowing her and always tried to do the right thing. I think she didn't have the power and the final decision to do the right thing. That falls on Zuck.

Who is the God King, who not only controls whatever decision making, you know, Cheryl? wanted to make, he controls the board. So he answers to no one. And he, by every single whistleblower account, by every internal account, by every, like, you know, named employee account, made all of the decisions around, right? Prioritize the engagement no matter what. Like, yes, targeted advertising, the business model that she built, it got to become an out-of-control monster, right? It violates people's privacy. It, like, incentivizes terrible behavior.

it like distorts reality. There are all of these things that are issues when you build targeted advertising at scale that don't have anything to do with morality specifically. That's like an organism that grows out of control becomes dangerous. What we hear over and over and over is that the decision making that caused so much of this harm and exacerbated that harm came from Mark. Yeah. And he is now like now he's booting generals and consolidating all the power.

And so like, don't buy that fucking metaverse. Don't do it. There's definitely some, I would be very concerned. You know, if you care about society and the impact social media has on society, I think losing Cheryl is, yeah, a big loss. If you care about the stock price and you want to have a marauding capitalist, yeah, I think, you know, this means that maybe he was. will become even, I think you will become more freewheeling. And, yeah. So, I mean,

listen, we don't know. Like, somebody in our comments is saying, you know, he gets all the credit and well, she's getting all the credit and zero blame. And I think that's a fair comment. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I think she gets some blame for being. I think she should get some blame for for this business model for Cambridge. She was there. She was there. Like, there's no, you know, if you're, if you want to quit and protest and become the whistleblower, you can totally. do that and that did not happen. So I think like I maintain what I said at this top of the segment, which is it's always going to be, I think, a complicated legacy for show of course. If she had left it, she had left before the elections, you know, that would have been better.

And I think she would have been amazing as a politician. I think she would have run for president eventually. I think she would have been secretary of state or something like that. If Hillary had won, I think I could see her leaving her post earlier and then, you know, being the government, she's she started in government, as my understanding. And so, you know, and now you have to wonder, you know, is it too hard now for her to go into politics? Because, my God, Facebook was such a disaster at times. There's a sting. There's a sting.

Yeah. I think that that could, yeah. But, I mean, maybe better, ultimately, because a life in politics sounds pretty brutal. Also terrible. Also terrible. Well, on that note, now that Darth Vader has completely cemented his control of meta, let's talk about Star Star Wars, shall we? Yes, yeah, here we go. This week in, this week in streaming with Lon Harris up next. So it is really important for founders to understand what SOC2 compliance is. Basically, I'm just

going to dumb it down real quick. If you are a SaaS or a services company and you need to store customer data in the cloud, then you need to be SOC2 verified from a third party in order to close major customers. If you're not SOC2 compliant, you cannot close big deals. Okay, we got that. out of the way, but here's the thing. Sock two verification is brutal. It is time-consuming, tedious, and expensive, or at least it was, but now there's Vanta. Vanta's software makes it way easier to get and renew your SOC2 compliance. On average, Vanta customers are SOC2 compliant in just two to four weeks. That's compared to three to five months without Vanta. You don't have that kind of time. You're running a startup here. And Vanta partners with over two dozen audit

firms who have been trained to file SOC2 reports directly within Vanta. And here's the best part. Vanta is going to give you $1,000 off. Get $1,000 off at banta.com slash twist. That's vanta.com slash twist for $1,000 free dollars. Hey, everybody. It's Thursday. That means this week in streaming the unofficial new show slash segment with our pal,

Lon Harris. How you doing on? I'm pretty good. I feel like it's very official at this point. It's official. It's official. I mean, we have to make another stream and just go out this week in streaming.

Exactly. I guess we got to start with Obi-Wan. Let's start with Obi-Wan. We're three episodes in. I'm wearing my Star Wars. Oh, my Lord. Nice. Where do I begin?

I think just, I am absolutely loving it. I am thrilled. There are things I could criticize. But for for a sake, the third episode and there's this is going to be super spoilers so if you haven't seen Obi-1

oh yeah just fast forward 15 minutes but this is we're here to talk about spoilers this is the most sadistic insane Darth Vader that we have seen to date period full stop it is absolutely

this last episode whatever problems people have with the first two episodes I think you have to look at Darth Vader walking down a street randomly cracking children's necks dragging Obi-1

through burning fire and saying like your pain is just starting like I'm going to torture you forever and you you didn't think Darth Vader could be more terrifying and I think this is the most terrifying I've ever felt about Darth Vader Juan Molly

am I crazy or just reliving my youth I think what's going on here Rogue One if you'll recall that movie. They had that one scene that fans really took to that was like a horror movie where it's like there's the few rebel soldiers and they're stuck in that little corridor and then Darth Vader comes in and it's just like Jason Borges. He's just like murdering the taking them out. And everybody loved that scene so much. Obviously that was in their minds when they were like, let's put Darth Vader in the show. But I think this even does take it up to the next level.

And they really, we've only, you know, we got, we went back to the prequels, which was this, you know, here's Anakin Skywalker before he became. Dave Darth Vader. And then, you know, Return of the Jedi is this sort of redemptive story. So we've only really ever had a little pocket of time when Darth Vader was really like at his peak level of evil. And it's fun. Yeah, it's fun that they're getting to like live in that world where it's just like he's the ultimate super villain. And also three little words people, James, Earl Jones. Yeah. I was like, oh my freaking God, it's actually Darth Vader. Like it's so as fan service, it's phenomenal. And yeah, like, Like, we've only encountered Darth Vader, like, after he's already hella scary.

Yeah. Slightly on the decline, right? They're like... He's an old man. He's an old man. And there are hints that there's this kind of rebellion against his kind of like Jedi, but, you know, they're just like, whatever old witch man. Yeah. You know, and then he's redeemed.

And this is just like, oh, my God. Yeah. He is beyond people. I also love that. Yeah. They talk a little bit about, you know, Star Wars. is kind of like, it's like a poem. It rhymes.

Like you take stuff from the old stuff and then work it into the new stuff. And the lightsaber battle really feels like those original trilogy, Darth versus Luke, where it's because it's character development while they're having the battle. And also, I felt like they did a little bit in the performance where he's kind of toying with Obi-Wad. Like, it's almost like the Empire Strikes Back battle where he knows he could easily kill Luke if he wanted to. He's playing with his food. And he's toying with him and letting him kind of get a little bit ahead and then striking back. It's delightful.

I thought it was really great. You know, when Darth Vader's like, oh, Obion wants escaping, it's like, there's some things like logically you have to think through. Because you have to talk about the fight scene because the first two episodes, you're like, okay, where are the lightsabers? Like, are we going to have six episodes of no lightsabers? Because this is Star Wars. This is Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. And so I thought this is, you know, I thought this was coming in episode six. Right.

So brilliant. Most of us thought they would kick this to the end. Yeah. We thought this would be the build-up, right? We're going to have five episodes where he doesn't turn on the lightsaber. And then on the sixth one, he's magically the greatest Jedi again, you know, and Ewan McGregor puts up a good fight. Nope. No.

Episode three gets his ass kick. He gets his ass handed to him. You have not been practicing. You're out of touch. You've got PTSD, clearly. and I am now going to torture you the way I was tortured. And that's when you're like, wow, he's on Mustafa, the planet. Yeah.

Looking out, I kind of had this thing. I'm like, why is he on Mustafa? Like, it's like, oh, yeah, this is where his pain and suffering happened. Right. Being a sip is about pain and suffering. Exactly. It's about embracing your hate, you know? Yes.

When he says, like, you know, like, yeah, turning to the dark start, embrace your hate. The emperor always is, you know, egging people on. And that's what he did. Lean in, lean in to our other story that will be coming up today. You want to lean into that dark side. And my lord, he leaned in. He's like, yes, I got burned alive and lost a limb. And now I'm going to drag you through fire so you can feel what it's like to have your flesh melt off your body.

Yeah. Like, oh my God. But here's the thing. It makes no logical sense that he, because he extinguishes the fire, right? like instantly with his Thorstein. He allows Obi-Wan to go. You just lifted Obi-Wan in the air. You just drag and fire. Why don't you just

lift Obi-Wan's body back to you and take him to torture him some more? So it's like, well, there's some logic problem here. But I'm going to forgive it because it's clear he wants to extend this torturous relationship and make Obi-Wan suffer

until he's in a back-to-tank with one of four limbs. I mean, this is where this sadistic insane. Like, this is, I mean, a level of sadism that you didn't even know Darth Vader have. Like, what have we seen Darth Vader do? Cut of Luke's hand.

Mm-hmm. Force choke people. Right. Okay. And he's really arguably not even the one who blew. He didn't have the idea to blow up Alderon. Like, yes, they developed the Death Star and whatever. But, you know, he doesn't, he's not the guy who gives the order to destroy Aldron.

Yeah, that's that. Yeah, exactly. Tarcan is the guy who blows up home. So a lot of crime is sort of lay. on Darth Vader in the background and in the buildup to the movies that we have seen. But this is like, oh, yeah, no, he is horrible. So we got Darth Vader. Amazing.

I mean, that was like thrilling. Peak Darth Vader for me was not what I expected. I kept my expectation super low on this because Bobufet didn't hit a lot of notes. Mandelorian hit all the notes. So now they're sending me on this roller coaster. I'm like, it's not like Marvel. where like, I don't know what the run of Marvel was, but I can't remember like the Marvel movie

I was disappointed in during that super stretch. And here I was like, Beau Befette, you know, I really wanted to root for it. We talked about it here. And, but, you know, it was like a seven of ten for me where Mandalorian was 10. This thing's at 12 for me now. Like, this is just blown away my expectations.

That episode really hit for me. And I was, I was, and I'll be curious to know what you. I am not, I'm loving everything about Little Leia said, up in terms of my next question. Yeah. Let's go late. Like, and yet, like, old guy and annoying kid, uh, romp and adventure is like, not my favorite genre.

So I wasn't sure about one and two. You know, I was like, I'm here for it because it's very satisfying to build up this understanding of why Leah would go to Obi-1, right? Like the, the building of the relationship and learning a little more about Leah and how she's more sensitive. Like, that's all very exciting. But also like a 10-year-old kid is an. annoying, I think we can all agree.

Well, the running through the woods and not getting captured in that episode. There's a lot of kind of goofy-looking action in all the Star Wars things. I was like, come on. All the fight scenes are so weirdly slow in those first two episodes. It's almost like a slow-mo like, you can sort of see. I think that's where. So tell me what you think of Leah. I really like the Leah thing.

Okay. I thought I really liked how they leaned in very purpose. on making us think that this was going to be about Obi-Wan and Luke. Like they even announced, Here's the young actor playing Luke before the show, and they released those early photos of here's him watching Luke. And then that was a nice, you know, fake out that it's actually him and young Leah that we didn't really, you know, we thought of her.

She's with the organas on Alderan. She's fine. You wouldn't have thought of that. So I thought that was a clever thing to do. I love this young actress. It's, listen, she's, she's precocious. She's a young girl. It could be a little chirpy and annoy.

I get that. But I do feel like this is a very realistic depiction of what Princess Leia's character would have been like as a 10-year-old girl. She would have been very bossy. She would have been very much like her. Yeah, a lot of attitudes. Like she's playing young Carrie Fisher perfectly. Perfectly. She looks like her.

The outfits are totally reminiscent. The hair is perfect. I should be clear, mainly I'm saying I'm happy that the series is about. I did not want six episodes of them running through planets and having adventures. Right. I mean, that was also, if you recall, this was originally going to be a moot. The original Obi-Wan concept was pitched as a two-hour film.

And then they were like, no, forget that. We're going to do it as a Disney Plus show. But then John Favro and Dave Filoni, who do Mandalorian and Asoka, Boba-Fat, all the other Disney Plus Star Wars shows, they said, this is too similar to Mandalorian. You have to mix it up. So I think you could still tell. They rewrote it. They made it less like Mandelori, but it is still functionally.

It's that Shane Lone Wolf and Cubb. Logan. I mean, we've seen this story a whole bunch of times. Protect the child. The seasoned old warrior comes out of retirement to protect the young child and reconnects with his humanity, blah, blah, blah, blah. The problem here is it with the Obi-Wan story. It's that Mandalorian stole that. This is the Obi-Wan story. It feels very natural. It does. Because he went to Tattoine to look over one of the twins and Balorgana is supposed to take care of the other, right? That's his name, Balergan.

Belorgiana. That's Jimmy Smith's, yeah. And who else? Which is a delight to see him. So fun to see him back. And who else? It does make sense. If something did happen to lay him, well, who else would Belorgana go to?

There's really not that many Jedi, well. Yeah, Yoda is really old. On Dagaba at this point. Yeah. I mean, it is, it couldn't be more satisfying. Like, I want to be clear. I'm, so I'm sort of saying, like, I'm happy that it's already evolving in an even more satisfying way already as of episode three.

Like, it's. They're also so good at. filling in, they're so good of filling in these supporting roles with, like, fun people who you want to see pop up. Like, Mandelori, too, you had Amy Sedaris in like a role. Yeah, so great. Brian Poseid. And this one, I've really enjoyed, you know,

Kumail Nanjiani getting in the flea. As the fake Jedi. Yeah. Flee. Freak and flea. Flee is the, as the bounty hunter in the first one. Did you guys catch the guy with the snout in this most recent one was Zach? Incredible. Yeah, he was funny. And the fact that, like, he's paling around with stormtroopers

and stormtroopers are like, grunt workers who are like punching a cloth. I felt like they're giving them. That was like a very nice like, okay, we get to me. Like what? Oh,

they make them told their total cops. Like they gave them like police dialogue in this episode. It was like cops. Like, where we got to go now? These guys don't know what they're doing. Yeah. Another day.

It's just like they're going through their routine. Right. And of course, they're not, they're hassle and civilians of course. And yeah, they are. Rex like friendly mega.

Who doesn't like a little order? Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty, that's pretty magabom. A little light tyranny. Yeah. A little light tyranny. Who doesn't like a little water was a nice, that's a nice Polly. We're going to explore this also in Andor, which is the other series.

Oh my God. Did you see the trailer for Andor yet, Molly? No. Oh my God. It is next level. It's like no other Star Wars world you've seen. It feels totally. It's the pre-pulled the Rogue One where we're going to follow Diego Luna's character

before the events of Rogue One. So it's the formation of the Rebel Alliance, basically. Oh my God. I love everything about this. I mean, honestly, and I'm happy to see that Obi-1 Canobi is, in fact, the most watched Disney Plus original. It shows that, like, commitment to the original characters in some ways, possibly way too much, as we have seen from the family. But just that was just a throwaway line because we want to acknowledge it. But it just is like, it's perfect.

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com. We have to talk about, I think, the sequels and the fact that Star Wars fans, some number of them are horrible and don't like Black Star Wars characters to the point at which the Star Wars Twitter handle has to remind. mind people to not be racist pieces of garbage? What is happening, Lon? Like, I, I mean, I think that...

We have one in our chat right now saying it's just a social justice warrior show. Oh, no. You're going to want to go now because it's going to get worse for you, friends. It's going to get super woke in here right now. Yeah, it is. Well, I don't want to be woke. I don't want to be... I don't.

There's like a... There's like, there's this. There's like, there's like, there's like, it's a sci-fi movie. Can we? be normal everybody? I think we make a mistake sometimes where we refer to we refer to this idea

of the Star Wars fandom or the Star Wars community as if it's like a community that you could put a dome over and say these are it's really talking about hundreds of millions maybe billions of people. It's everybody.

Everybody loves Star Wars. I mean, listen, it's not everybody. There are some people who don't care about Star Wars. Most people. It's a lot of people. It created the blockbuster concept along with Jaws, correct? Yes.

And there are literally crossover. There are very few other IPs that you can't even really talk about the community in any rational way because it's just too many people. So of course, any group that's that big is going to contain awful people and mean people and racist and aggressive, whatever. I don't think it's necessarily a reflection of Star Wars. I think it's a reflection of how many people around the world. It's a lot of big numbers.

When you talk about numbers that big, you're going to have a cross-section of the fandom that is, you know, Moses Ingram is an African-American woman playing the third, is it the third sister? Third sister. Yes, third sister. Third sister is the name of it. They're all hierarchical. There's the grand inquisitor and then they're all named like fourth brother, fifth brother, like where they are in the lineup. They're not Sith.

Sith operate alone. Right. And they operate as some sort of group of monks that do bidding and they're hunting the Jedi. My understanding, this is covered in the Clone Wars cartoons, which I am not as good with. And rebels too. Yeah. Right, rebels as well. My understanding is that some of them were Jedi who were converted and that others are just force-sensitive people that the empire taps to like a million become.

And Moses is clearly, his third sister is in all likelihood, the Padawan we saw her escaping. from the Jedi Temple. I think that's a smart. I think that's a smart guess. In that first episode. Everybody's talking about this theory. So again, we're going to talk about theories. But that's pretty obvious.

And that maybe Obi-Wan or Anakin, she's got some animus towards them or both of them. Who knows where this is going to wind up by episode six? But she's kind of an interesting, annoying, abrasive character to everybody. She's on her own, you know, mission here. She is pissing off the Grand Inquisitor, in fact, stabbing him in the lightsaber. And she's pissing off the brother because she wants credit for stuff. Right. Fifth brother, I believe, is the guy with the hat.

Yeah. She's taking people's hands off. She's like starring in her own revenge movie. And no one else is invited. Yeah. Exactly. So. Yeah.

I thought this was a fun twist. I don't love her character, but I think I don't love her character because you're not supposed to love her character because she's a jerk. She's mean. Yeah, she's mean. She's like taking people their arms off. But I think that's what I like about it. Star Wars has so many like deliciously evil villain.

You're Count Dukus, you know, where it's like they just, or Grand Moth Tarkini, but they love being evil and it's a point of pride with them and they're, they're ving glorious about it. Darth Mall comes to mind. Exactly. It's theatrically evil. And I like that she's not that. She's just like a jerk. Like, she's just like, if you worked with somebody you didn't like and you, they were like,

Like an annoying A old. We got to go through this now. You know, like, she's just obnoxious and awful. And like a bully, not like, uh, you know, like a, you know, Darth Sidious type figure.

There's something and there is something clearly deeper to her, right? Like very likely she was that Pottawan. Very likely. Because didn't Obi-1 tell the rest of the Jedi not to go in? Like I think she probably is like, I'm after him personally because he abandoned us to this death. than horror. That would make sense.

They're hinting around some, she's got ambition that we don't fully understand. And like, Darth Vader assumes it's to become grand inquisitor. But I think he's pretty good at bringing people at some level below that. Did you see in that third episode? So they're in that kind of hidey hole where Obi-1 sees a message from another Jedi who had gone to the dark side and then had turned back to the light. Quinlan boss. Thank you.

But she sees something in there too. that she reacts to the Jedi, it's a Jedi logo. It's a Jedi logo. I believe it's a Jedi insignia. It could be a rebel. I think it's too early for there to be a universal rebel insignia at this point. I thought it was a rebel insignia.

I thought it was a Jedi thing because she definitely reacted to that. It definitely triggered her. It definitely triggered her. And I think it was more than just, I hate the Jedi. Right. Like it was more than that. She's not, I will say that, sort of separate from all the horrific racist hate that she's

experienced online, I don't find her to be the most expressive actor. Like, I mean, I do think that's the role. I want a little more there. And so then when I saw her see that, the inquisitors are very, you know, steely. Yeah. I know. I mean, it's hard to talk about her performance because we don't want to egg on the racist pieces of garbage. Hey, right. You know, and then this, of course, triggers the discussion of the sequels. So according to screen rant to close the, loop on that, the symbol is none other than the crest of the Jedi order. Got it. Okay, so she's super triggered.

Thanks. Is she going to try to kill Darth Vader? You think she's going to try to kill Darth Vader? I mean, listen, I think that there... She wants to get close to him. Yes, there is definitely a level on which she is using this Obi-1 thing to rise in the ranks because she has some kind of an ulterior motive. Now, maybe it's, right, maybe it's that she wants to kill.

Because that would make sense if she was there when Order 66 happened, she blames Darth Vader for ruining her life, killing other friends. killing everybody. It could be, but you'd have to think, you know, like, is there, I don't know. It seems like a lot of work just to get at the same room with him when she, when she was already third sister. She was like right there. I mean, they clearly do not have access to him.

No. Well, right. We know, we just don't know he's hold up on Mustafa in that asshole right now. He's at that table and everybody else is like way at the end of the table. He's in, but that's an interesting part of this is why I think my theory that. She wants to kill Darth Vader. She wants to be his number two. And then what if episode six is her having a battle with Darth Vader?

That would be a killer lightsaber scene. Like, I mean, I think Darth Vader is going to cut her in half. Well, she can't win because Darth Vader's got to be around for more movies. And so her and Darth Vader chopping her up and throwing her in lava, you know, for shits and giggles when she becomes like the Grand Inquisitor. Could be super interesting to me, at least. That would be quite a character arc. Maybe she kills all the Inquisitors. Maybe she, who knows who else she kills.

But if she's, yeah, she's on her own tip. I think you said it well, Molly. She's on her own revenge. Spring is in the air, people. And there has never been a better time to grow your business. And LinkedIn Jobs is here to make it easy to find the people you want to talk to faster and for free. We love LinkedIn here at launch and at Insight. We've hired so many amazing candidates on LinkedIn.

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Did you know that every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Yeah, they do. And you can post your job for free. That's LinkedIn.com slash twist to post your job for free. Terms and conditions do apply because they're giving you something for free. That leads us to the sequels, you know, episode 7, 8, and nine where people did complain, oh, it's too woke or whatever. I just want to say, like, because that does relate, because the person who played Finn also

received a bunch of hate. John Boyig and Kelly Marie Tran who plays Rose Tico. Kelly Marie Tren got it much worse, right? Yeah. And I think the issue is that with Rise of Skywalker, they sort of caved. They got all this racist pushback to Finn's character, to Rose Tico, and rather than push through it and say, but this is the story now, like it or lump it, they kind of, they pulled back, Kelly Mertra barely in Rise of Skywarker at all. They were clearly setting up that Finn was going

to become a Jedi and then they don't do that. They give him this sort of other story. And it's, it's sort of, they're trying to play it both ways. They're trying to sort of coddle, coddle the racist and be like, don't stop watching the movies. But at the same time, we're going to post tweets and have you and McGregor go on Twitter like, don't be so racist, you racist. And it's like, you could just tell the stories you were. want to tell and ignore them, and that's probably what they should do. Well, it's all convoluted, right? Because you want to have valid criticism of, you want to do valid criticism here, right,

as we're giving hot takes for this. But you also have to recognize that there's this weird thing going on where, yeah, they're introducing whokeness or whatever, maybe on the margins, trying to make the cast more diverse. That's fine with me. Let's a different call it. Let's not call it wokeness. Yeah, I just, okay.

Whenever they turn it. They want to make it more diverse. They're having inclusive casting that's representative of them. I think everybody wants, right? Right. Oh, and all the alien species. They could go one step further. That's probably what they should do because it would communicate to the people who are still pushing back against this.

It's over. You lose. You lost. Like what if Finn became a Jedi and then the movie ended with him and Ray being together? Why wouldn't we do that? It feels like when we don't do that because we know it would make these people very mad. Well, I think there was another thing happened concurrently. They decided to kill.

all the characters we love and not tell their stories. And it's like I showed up for the sequels to see... They tried to reboot Star Wars. Which was not what they should have done with the sequels. They should retcon those. Throw them in the garbage. I love Last Jedi. I think last Jedi is great.

They force awakens. They make it alternate version where they tell the story of Luke and Leia running the Jedi Academy and Leah becoming a Jedi. That's what I thought I was in for. I mean, they were going to Rise of God record, in fairness to JJ, Abrams, and rarely you're going to hear me

say that, but here we go. And there's to Jay-J. Abrams. They did want to do more of that. The plan for Rise of Skywarker was to have Carrie Fisher. The idea was, Han Solo was the big character we follow in Force Awakens. Luke Skywalker was

the big character from the classic true Jee we follow in Last Jedi. And then Rise of Skywarker is supposed to be the Leah General Leia movie, but she passed away. We lost Carrie Fisher. So they had to re-jigger the movie and change their plans to use the footage they had.

And it is a real shame because I think everybody would have wanted to see that. I think so too. And then it just ended up being this like unbelievably horrible double whammy where they were like, okay, we'll go in this different direction. We'll reboot this. We'll restart fresh. Who is right? Yeah. Buffy the

vampire slayer and just like wipe the past. Start new. Everybody's a slayer now. It doesn't work. And somehow Palpatine return stuff. I still. How between terms is terrible. And who is Ray? Exactly.

I still don't have clarity. Is Ray supposed to be a clone? I really liked Ryan Johnson's thing in Last Jedi that she's no, her family isn't important. She's not from anywhere. She's just a force sensitive. She's not a skywaters. She's happened to be this person who is very force sensitive,

who came at the right moment in time and became important. It's just random. Right. And like, I like that. I think Star Wars needs a little more of that. It's very much like, you know, historical King's line of, whatever and it's a little bit of a weird thing at this point.

It would be nice if there were a few people who just came out of obscurity and became very powerful. And I hate that they retconned that. I really wish they had not. I agree. The ending becomes incredibly muddled because they retconned that. And then they chickened out, right? They chickened out and lost that it was like if you're all in on this story, then go in.

But then they chickened out. They left these actors out to dry. John Boyega and. And, poor Kelly, Rachel Bailey gets to be in it at all. She's got one see where she's like, I'm going to say here, you guys go have an adventure and that she's not in the movie. They hang them out to dry and don't acknowledge that at least part of the reason that they did that was racist backlash, right? They're just like, oh, people didn't like the story. And then now they're like, oh, it's sort of, it's a very, it's a bad situation for the actors.

It's a bad situation for Disney and it's a lack of leadership. Exactly. It was a lack of leadership. They did, you know, this is the thing. George Lucas had was an or tour with a vision. and then they gave this to J.J. Abrams. They kind of begged him to do it. They had Rain Johnson, and then you, I don't know who did the last one.

JJ Abrams again. Jay James came back to do Rise of Skywalker. I don't know that JJ Abrams had a vision here, you know. No, what the vision was, oh, no, the internet got mad. Let's just do what the internet wants, I think. And that's really a pretty much. And that's always a bad way to tell stories. Yeah, I mean, it feels like Reddit edited the movie.

And it's just like, no, you can't. can't do that. And they're trying to even do the Avengers Endgame thing at the end. Like every Star Wars ship from every timeline is going to portal in and it's like, just stop it. Just stop. Yeah. The whole thing was a mess. A mess. Chris Tarrio, the same screenwriter as Batman v. Superman and Justice Lee. Oh, great. Keep them away from any other IP. What a filmography. Yeah. Please don't touch things anymore. Do you think that what they're going to do with Mandalorian, book of Boba Fad in this time period

is this is my theory and I did talk to John Favreau and I did pitch him on this and I said like why don't you just tell the new story of what happened after Return of the Jedi since you're kind of on that way and of course Luke Skywarker showing up

and it's kind of like we now have Grogu who obviously is going to go being part of Luke's training center I think they have this like almost a path of reconciliation with the fans like me who wanted to see the Carrie Fisher story wanted to see it, recast Carrie Fisher

or used to CGI. I felt like the Luke Skywalker stuff is close to the uncanny Valley for me. Kathleen Kennedy said they're not going to re-they're not going to recast. They felt like the lesson they took from solo which did not was not a hit. Do well. It was people don't want to see different actors they don't know as these characters.

I was okay with him. I don't. I disagree with her. I don't love solo, but I don't think that's the takeaway. I think you could feel free to recast, but they're not going to do that. I don't think they're going to totally redo the sequel movies,

but I think they're going to do exactly what they did with the prequels, which is this is what Dave Faloni, the guy who did the Clone Wars show. He still did everything, yes. This is what he's so good at. He's going to fill in all of the weird gaps and make it a better story with the supplemental materials. And then people will get excited.

about it because they like the supplemental materials. It's exactly what happened with the prequels. Everybody was down on the prequels, but now everybody loves that same time period. It fills everything in with the Mandalorian War. Yeah. Exactly. And added all these characters people love, added all of this stuff that helps to sort of betrass the storytelling of the movies where it kind of starts to feel inconsistent

or fall apart. Like you can fill in. Oh, Obi-Wan had this relationship with Padme, which helps explain why they're closer at the end of Sith. Oh, here's what happened to Anakin that kind of gave him this. attitude readjustment that he just shows up with suddenly. And I feel like I'm very confident that Filoni is going to be able to do the same thing with the later ones.

Like as much as I don't love. Should they do Princess Leia? It's satisfying. CGI, like have her daughter play her and then just CGI it a bit and try to get the uncanny Valley being gone. I feel like we'll get some beats like this moving forward. I doubt they're totally done with doing that, especially because the fan response was so positive to doing it with Mark Hamill and they've had so much success.

work for me. I feel like there's, yeah, there's no stopping them now. Did you get thrown out of the film? I'll tell you what I. I'm always going to be partial to just recast. It just fine.

It got like to me, Sebastian Stan who plays Winter Soldier in the MCU, if you put him in the right wig, he looks remarkably like Mark Campbell. Yes. To me, I would just like put him in there. He's Luke Skywalker now.

It looks like it works for me. I felt the same way about Rogue One where they did Peter Cushing. They like cartooned him to be. be Tarkin in that one? Yeah. Right. What about Charles Dance from Game of Thrones? Tywin Lannister is the perfect Grand Moth Shark.

I would love to see him play Grand Moth. It's more interesting to do that. It is. They did it with Obi-Wan. They gave you an actor. It's always going to be more fun to me to have an actor. I'm sorry. They were on screen.

You're right. Like we're literally watching a whole series that's been recast. And nobody's mad because we're like, yeah, he's younger. That makes perfect sense. And Leah's not being played. I carry Fisher Daged. I'm certain that Disney's going to hear this and take the notes. I feel confidence.

I hope Kathleen Kennedy listens to Twitter. No, I mean, we cast Luke and Leah and let's go. And let's tell their story. We love Little Leia. We're ready for Middle Leia. We didn't get to Star Trek. But let's do all five Star Trek next time. So we can do them.

This has been great. We can't mix the stars. No, there's, yeah, cross the streams. Cross the star streams. That's bad. The only thing I'll say to preview our discussion about Star Trek is I thought it was like particularly weird

in science fiction to have this racist weirdness happening when you have O'Hora is the subject of episode two of the new Star Trek series which is Star Trek Strange New Worlds Strange New Worlds and I'm two in, you guys are five in for me I'm kind of digging it

but I'm excited to hear that you guys think it gets better but we're literally talking about O'Hura was a groundbreaking moment for television and for science fiction in 1960. Yeah, but nerds have the memory of, there's no cultural memory here. 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s. Well, you saw there were people, the 20s. There were people claiming that strange new worlds is too woke. Didn't you see that?

They've been like, why Star Trek woke now? Because it's always been. That's been the idea is that they've always been. they've been ahead of society and he's used I mean I'm pretty sure that at this point if you're not just straight up Darth Vader then you're woke

exactly like I'm sorry that's what it's like right I'm just like oh I'm sorry do you mean so we should cast a yeah person for James Bond

who's not English and it's not casting they would even be mad about the story then like it's like you can't there's no appeasing I would be cool with a series on Amazon because we're talking about the streaming wars here

and Bezos bought MGM which owns James Bond. But it's a little hairy. You got to make deals with the broccoli's on the side. Yeah, that's not a... They don't just own it outright. That's not a simple. They're splitting it with Eon productions.

Got it. I would be totally cool with anybody having the 007 moniker. Did you see No Time to Die? But Shauna Lynch is 007. It works great. She's totally believable as 007.

007 was still in it. So it wasn't like, right. I'm saying if they wanted to do another 007 movie with her, do it. I'm okay with it. Works for me. Who's not okay with it? It's like interesting. It's interesting to try different things.

Racists and massages. I'm also okay with it being an English dude again. I'm fine with that too. I mean, I guess Ian Fleming's books. if they're based on its books, it's based on that character, but you can't be, it's acting folks.

You can have different characters. Also, they are, they are already so different. Have you ever read a Bond novel? They're great. I really like them. The movies are already extremely different.

Like the early Connery ones are closer, but still not. Still, it always was, the movies have always been campier and a little sillier. The books have always tried to be more gritty. So it's already. different.

You can do different things. It's just got to be high quality. I think that's the bottom one. I pick good actors, big storywriters. And that's why everyone works. Racist and sexists will still be mad no matter how good the actors are.

We just need to ignore them. Like, who cares? Yeah, just ignore them. They're not relevant. Don't react. Right. Like, don't change your stories for the worst people in the world.

Right. And the idea that you would be able to come up with a middle ground that would appease them. Like, we're going to make a diverse show that's inclusive, but we're not going to offend. It's not possible. You can't thread that needle. And what percentage of people is this anyway?

Like, what is the overlay of Star Wars fans to raise us in 1%? They're just really good at internet. If we have seen anything, that's what it is. They're so good at Reddit and Twitter. They're such megatrols. They know how to make themselves appear very big and loud. But when you get down to the numbers, we saw this. Oh, boy, people are going to be mad at me for saying this.

We saw this with the Snyder cut stuff. Yes. Where the online, the noise behind that campaign was so loud. It was deafening. It was everybody. You couldn't. Warner Brothers couldn't tweet without a flood of responses that were just demanding the Snyder cut.

And then it came out and it's not even among the five most viewed movie debuts of that year on HBO Max. That group was not potent enough to make these movies a billion dollar bucks. It just felt that way. because they were so noise. It's a Twitter phenomenon. It's a Twitter-Fenomenon. They probably have a bunch of bot accounts.

It's probably one, TikTok we're seeing. It's probably two dudes with 8,000 accounts and they've just created their own bot army. 100%. It's literally two dudes got this Niterk delivered. And like in both, not to belabor this forever, but in both politics and entertainment,

nobody has figured out yet that this is a playbook. It is a strategy. It's basically a PR campaign called brigading. Yes. And yes, yeah, it's brigating. Like, be smarter. To get the science fiction that you, that three dudes want in their mom's basement eating fish sticks. I mean, a lot of the two is a business at this point, too.

We've seen, I mean, we also saw this. I don't want to get into this as a topic. But we also saw this with the debt herd trial that a lot of people just wrote it to views because it's so clickable. Here we go. And, you know, like making videos, making content about it every day is a great way to get a lot of eyes on you, whether or not you have a good faith. to say about it. It literally, I saw the, there's just, whatever the law

and order, uh, channel is on YouTube that I guess was the main feed of this. Um, you know, just once you click on one, now YouTube's like, yeah, you gotta see this. Oh yeah, they're like, check this out forever. It had tens of, the verdict, I don't know if it had 30 or 40 million views. It was like a modern day OJ thing.

Yeah. Um, but it was a streaming moment. If you think about it, uh, you know, true crime, uh, and jury trials from OJ million. and everything on is a big business. So this was a specific moment for, this is the channel. What is it called? Three million subscribers.

Long crime. Long crime network. Who is long crime network that stole the law and order logo? Some very clever folks who now are millionaires. They, how many views is that? Yes, see from here. 30 million views. 30 million views.

So then scroll down to like four months ago on this channel and let's look at what their views were. Yeah. Well, if you go to videos, then you just, yeah. But it's incredible. Like, this channel has just gone bonkers. Yeah. And it's kind of like the new CNN or what was the, what was the law channel that broke out in OJ?

I know CNN benefited from it. Wasn't there a legal channel? Oh, yeah. There was. Yeah. Court TV. Court TV. Thank you.

Cort TV. So it's like the modern day court TV. It is. Well, I was thinking about, imagine if. Twitter and TikTok and Instagram had been around during the OJ. Oh, my Lord. Crazy that would have been. Yeah.

Because that went on for a year. That was not like this was, you know, eight weeks of. And it was kind of like this too. Like it had every aspect of society, right? It had celebrity. It had racism. Yes. It was a police thing.

It was a police thing. And this had all of that too because this was all about me too thing. Yeah. He touches on so many of these things. It hits all the horrible things. in society. Exactly. Pretty much.

Celebrities, domestic violence. Anyway, I just brought that up to be like, a lot of it is more cynical than I think. I think we, we tend to talk about these topics like, we're,

like, everybody's a true believer. Right. And like, no, a lot of these people are just blatant frauds. And they just want the views and the money. Exactly.

It's just purely. That is a big part of it. Yeah. I mean, if you can get your meme game on, or you get your clip game on, you can just ride it. I know,

because I do TikTok every couple days to just, you know, remind myself how horrible humanity is. And like, they're torturing and they're making characters out of each of the people in Johnny Depp trial. Like the one attractive attorney on Depp side is like, she's dating.

They're like speculating she's like dating in a relationship with Johnny Depp. It's like, or she's a great attorney who happens to be moderately attractive or something. Gross. The whole thing came a reality spectacle. Immediately. Yeah. Like, yeah.

This is horrible. Yeah. It's American celebrity culture, I think. I mean, yeah, where do you see? The worst? The worst?

Right. Totally. You're right. It's not the, we're like the second we want to be the worst, but we're not quite there yet. We're trying hard to catch up to the sun. Okay, now we're just warming ourselves out about. The verdict was also interesting, like, that he won.

Of course, everything gets appealed, but. Both one? She won like a tiny thing about her attorney. I saw one lawyer talking about it where it's definitely going to be appealed because it's, sort of contradictory. It's like, well, how could they both have defamed the other? It sort of has to be... Well, it was the attorney defamed Amber Heard, because he said it was a host, right? They both, like, how...

What is possible, I guess, for two people to defame each other in a fight? Normally, it would be possible for two people to pay each other, but her defamation was based on lying and it's like, well, how could they, how could she, how could he have been, I don't know. I'm saying it's very, yeah, the whole thing was very weird. The whole thing is very weird and, yeah, we don't, we don't need to get it. Yeah, it's all gross, yeah. But we will talk about Star Trek next. week because it is ultimately

get more get the first five or six episodes on your probably be six at that time so try to get all six. Well, by then, six will have debuted at midnight the night before. Perfect.

Binge, binge, binge, bitch. Thank you, see you next time. Thanks guys, yeah. Bye.