One of the most captivating pieces of entertainment I’ve seen so far this year is a four-hour-long YouTube video in which one woman describes her stay at a Disney World hotel. I’m as shocked by this as anyone. To be clear: I was initially resistant when my partner encouraged me to watch Jenny Nicholson’s epic “ The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel ,” which breaks down in microscopic detail her visit to Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.
During the experience, now closed, guests on vacation were encouraged to live out their George Lucas dreams by participating in a role-playing game while staying in a structure on the outskirts of the park near Orlando, Florida. Nicholson’s monologue, which runs longer than “Lawrence of Arabia,” has been viewed more than 7 million times since it was uploaded last month and has been the talk of social media, yet I was still unprepared for how absolutely riveting it was. While it highlights a litany of problems with the hotel, the video can also be viewed as a diagnosis of the entertainment industry’s current ills writ large.
In her frustration, Nicholson becomes a valiant truth teller, clearly articulating how corporate greed betrays loyal fans to sell a cheaper and less emotionally enriching product. And she does this against a backdrop of stuffed animals and while wearing various costumes, including, at one point, a giant suit resembling a Porg, the puffinlike creature in “The Last Jedi.” Nicholson is .
