The Walt Disney Company is famously litigious, so it’s perhaps only just desserts that someone has finally sued Disney on an incredibly weighty matter. New Jersey resident Joseph Alfred has sued Disney, along with CEO Robert Iger and company President Bob Chapek, for breach of “implied-in-fact contract” and “promissory estoppel,” because the company refused Alfred’s request to give him the rights to build Luke Skywalker’s scientifically-implausible and heavily-copyrighted X-Wing fighter from the Star Wars films.
Alfred, who unsurprisingly is representing himself in this matter, outlines a scheme in which Terrafugia Inc., a company that is already prototyping a flying car, would build one in the shape of an X-Wing. Alfred estimates 93,000 people would would contribute $10,000 apiece towards a Kickstarter campaign he has not actually started, netting just under a billion dollars to build a thing that only exists in a movie with laser swords and magical backwards-talking Muppets.
As restitution for his entirely-plausible scheme, Alfred is demanding that Disney not only allow him to use the X-Wing design, but also that Disney give him two minutes of airtime on ABC, “during a nationally televised Florida State football game to sell the campaign and showcase the before vehicle.”
But that weirdly specific demand is only the tip of the weirdly specific iceberg. Alfred’s legal brief makes lengthy arguments that only undefeated Florida State has the clout to effectively sell a flying car shaped like an X-Wing, a working X-Wing has to be built and ready to sell in time to coincide with the premiere of Episode VIII: Cloud City With A Chance Of Meatballs, and that the X-Wing is uniquely suited to capture the public’s imagination because it destroys the Death Star, which represents “global genocide.”
As Alfred goes on to explain at great length, only three stories, in his opinion, adequately tackle “the weighty subject of global genocide.” The other two are Noah’s flood in the Bible, and, perhaps more importantly, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot. Alfred’s legal brief then spends several pages describing in detail the plots of both Star Trek and Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: Let’s Retcon In Some More Colons:::
There’s more, including a promise to use the proceeds from the X-Wing to buy over $6 billion in Disney stock, and the claim that Alfred is merely doing his patriotic duty to pick up America’s slack after Congress voted down President Obama’s infrastructure bill. In fact, Obama shows up multiple times in the brief, which is odd considering he never built that Death Star we asked for. All that’s missing from Alfred’s lengthy missive is the signoff “I’m not crazy” translated into Wookiee-ese.
So, good news, America. If all goes according to plan, Disney will pay out the damages for breaching a contract that never existed, help build a spaceship that never existed, using a Kickstarter that doesn’t exist, and Joseph Alfred can watch 93,000 of us zip around in our own personal X-Wings in time for the premiere of Star Wars: Episode VIII: Much Naboo About Nothing, as is his right as an American.
[story via Uproxx]