(L-R): Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) and the Stranger in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

It is all about time. Big projects take time. Big entertainment projects take lots of it. If you measure them by when the public first hears the news, it is usually several years for a movie, a TV show, a cruise ship, an amusement park attraction–the kinds of things we love and pay attention to here–to happen, but in point of fact if you add in the time from the first “What if we…?” to even that first public announcement, many more are involved.

(L-R): Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, and Teyonah Parris as Captain Monica Rambeau in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo by Laura Radford. © 2023 MARVEL.

So when you figure all that effort, imagination, logistical planning, and massive millions of dollars, but get a dud or worse, the obvious question to ask (at least for those of us who lived through the famous Watergate Hearings and remember the phrase so well) is “What did they know and when did they know it?”

For example, a new Indiana Jones movie to follow the successful franchise’s track record of excellence is made…and wow does it stink–bad enough not only to fail on its own rights both creatively and financially, but bad enough to make any thought of ever making another one nigh on impossible. What did they know and when did they know it?

(L-R): Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in Lucasfilm’s INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Likewise a whole progression of movies, TV series, and other projects attempting to continue the most successful “franchise” of all media history with the possible exceptions of King Arthur and Robin Hood are planned, financed, executed, and get worse and worse until the newest one is deemed by one and all the “Franchise Killer” and probably is just that.

What did they know and when did they know it?

(L-R): Mae (Amandla Stenberg) and Master Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

The decision is made, based on utterly erroneous non-facts and politics, to transform potentially the world’s most popular and cherished theme park ride in a way that not only ruins it but is regretted by the fans of the newer IP overlay too, leading to millions in losses now and in future from lowered overall attendance and expectations of future work.

What did they know and when did they know it?

Concept art for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure

They take an inspirational, delightful, wonderful place about hope and progress and optimism and its vistas, classic architecture, and one heck of a humongous fountain and tell you they will make it even better, put up the green walls that never seem to go away, announce wonders, cancel them, and in the end deliver something unworthy of a junior college campus or a bargain convention hotel.

What did they know and when did they know it?

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser via Theme Park Review

And most recently, a highly successful cruise ship line that already has experience with their own “private island” plans and, with a world-class designer/Imagineer’s guidance, a second new private oasis in the sea, but somehow ignores that the logistics will make guests of all ages and degrees of ability walk more than a MILE just to get to/from the ship AND, when they get to the beautiful offerings, fight their way through hordes of potentially disease-bearing flies to even get a bite to eat.

What did they know and when did they know it?

View of the Disney Magic. Taken at Cozumel, Yucatan. Photo Credit: Altairisfar, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Because there’s one thing certain–they knew. They knew a long time before these things opened. They knew a long time before even rumors began to stir. They had to know. HAD to.
You don’t build a resort island overnight, and while you’re doing it you have people there who eat food and thus experience those flies and we’re supposed to believe they didn’t know?

Those people walking to/from the boat dock have feet that get sore and bodies that get winded and wilted by tropical sun and humidity just like the future guests will, yet we’re supposed to believe the managers didn’t know? People who’ve built the world’s greatest attractions, made the biggest box office movies with real appeal do what they are so highly paid to do well and create not one, not five, but years worth of utter artistic flops with plot holes and problems you can see from Bespin to Tatooine, yet we’re supposed to think that Nobody over the YEARS of doing it noticed a problem?

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: (L-R) Leslye Headland, Dave Filoni, Chief Creative Officer, Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm attend the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

They knew. They knew the artistic, creative, emotional, angry experiences they were going to put their audiences through…and did it ANYWAY. They knew. They knew with YEARS to spare to fix, alter, or admit defeat and stop these things even before announcing them to the public, and certainly once they’d embarked on them with open disclosure…or at least they knew when they LIED about the budgets, LIED about the process, LIED about the funding that was tied to legally mandated exposure in order to get tax breaks, LIED about the certain-to-be-debunked false headlines and iffy claims and dubious dollars they tried to spin into reality that the audience–for both the art AND the stock AND the credibility and reputation of a company built for a CENTURY that they’d be outed sooner or later.

THEY KNEW. They HAD to know.

MAKING SPACE – Disney and Pixar’s “Lightyear” introduces Alisha Hawthorne (voice of Uzo Aduba), Buzz’s long-time commander, fellow Space Ranger and trusted friend. Directed by Angus MacLane (co-director “Finding Dory”) and produced by Galyn Susman (“Toy Story That Time Forgot”), the sci-fi action-adventure opens in U.S. theaters on June 17, 2022. © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

SO…that famous question? “What did they know and when did they know it?”

They knew it ALL. They should have known it all WHEN they could have fixed, paused, re-evaluated, or even stopped and said “Ooops. Isn’t working. Won’t work. Sorry. Nevermind.”

In short, if you think a company run by a guy acclaimed as a business genius who says he watches everything they do 3 to 5 times before approving it for release on an unsuspecting world didn’t KNOW, well, just look at what he actually said MONTHS ago when he surveyed that new ride.

He said it was “Boring.”

Bob Iger via New York Times Events YouTube

There are lots of things you want an attraction featuring flume rides and animatronics and riding on the momentum of the fun one that it replaces. Boring isn’t one of them.

And when your first instinct at that point is how to HIDE it, how to SPIN it, how do to anything EXCEPT FIX IT??? That says you hold your various audiences, from theme park visitors to cruise ship passengers, from investors to movie ticket buyers, and from anywhere that is the source of ALL of your success in one thing and one thing only: Contempt.

Bob Iger attend the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood CA on Thursday, April 27, 2023.
(Photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages)

SO…based on that what-and-when question is clear and impossible to ignore answer, while I appreciate the frustration, disappointment, and dismay over the individual projects I’ve briefly mentioned (and there are lots more of course) in various media and arenas of business but that all have that question’s answer in common (and take the same guilty pleasure in mocking them as they so richly deserve mockery) I, for one, REFUSE to get angry about the results.

I’m not mad about storylines that don’t work, dialog that’s leaden, effects that are broken, food that is infested or any of the rest of the things they HAD to know a LONG time before we did.
But contempt? Contempt for Me, MY family, MY hard-earned dollars, MY trust, MY right to expect value or even excellence from their promises to provide it to me which clearly, thanks to their contempt, were the biggest lies of all?

THAT makes me mad.

INSIDE OUT 2 – Anger. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

And I share this with you to say that even if your hopes and, yes, wishes brought you all the way to TODAY to realize the truth about WHAT they knew and WHEN they knew it and HOW they acted on that knowledge in a way that tells you just how much contempt they have for you even while they smile and tell you about the “magic” of it all????

THAT should be what makes YOU mad, too. What did YOU know and when did YOU know it??? If this is when you finally knew how contemptuous this company has become of you, well, it is, as I said up front, about time.

Kathleen Kennedy via Producer’s Guild of America YouTube