Starbucks Can’t Spell, But They Can Name Rogue One Planets
By Buckie Wells
After the typical “how badly can we mess this up?” naming disaster at Starbucks, Gareth Edwards named a planet in Rogue One after the mishap.
It’s the kind of joke that’s only funny once or twice, but Starbucks has based an entire marketing campaign — and a free one at that — on spelling people’s names wrong on their Starbucks cup. Sometimes, the mistakes are clever jokes on the pronunciation. But more often, they’re just a tactic to get someone to post a picture of the blunder on social media. For example, spelling Mike as Mic is stupid and yet a surefire way to get someone to use the hashtag #Starbucks followed by #MicDrop on social media.
(I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find an Instagram shot of this already being done.)
But there are rare cases where Starbucks hits the jackpot and earns themselves a righteous caramel macchiato win.
Like naming a planet in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Albeit, it was inadvertent. But it was the exact shot of espresso that director Gareth Edwards needed.
"“I go over to get a coffee from Starbucks. I’m thinking, ‘What could be the name? It could be this. Maybe we could use that?’ Then at the very end, she gives me the drink and they must have asked my name and I must have said, ‘It’s Gareth,’ but they heard ‘Scarif.’ They wrote Scarif on the cup and I was like, ‘That sounds like Star Wars.'”"
To be fair — Gareth is an atypical name and he does have an accent. Plus, he strikes me as a mumbler, so I can see how that would happen. But Gareth sounds like Garrett … or something else with, I don’t know, a G.
The thing that bothers me most about Starbucks and their screw-ups is that Scarif isn’t a real name. It’s the most made up thing in the world. So some barista opened their sharpie, looked at the cup and just smashed some letters together. It’s an abuse of power.
(Also, special shoutout to all the baristas who don’t screw up the name because they have other, better things to do.)
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Look, if that’s what it takes to name a Star Wars planet, then boy, Mr. Scarif Edwards, I have plenty of ideas for your next film.