FA+
Shop
Lucas Films Cancels/Postpones Future Star Wars Movies
7 years ago
So i'm taking a little break from FA And other places to kindof play with idea's and such but I thought this was a big thing that I like to talk about.
So...yeah! Disney/Lucas Films has decided to postpone or even out right cancel all its future installments of Star Wars Spin Offs for now This is pretty new news so it hasn't been concrete but here is a link for some info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPFaPTXQVY
Now you can look at this 2 ways.
1. They are postponing the spin offs to put more focus on the trilogy series or
2. They are the spin offs thinking that they don't make as much money.
I am really hoping it is the first one because...well...star wars as it stands now sucks. Now this is not an attack on anyone one except the poor decisions made by the head of lucas films who may have been silently let go. Pro or Against the new star wars series, you can't denie the fan base has been split.
I am on the against side and have been holding back this rant for a while now so if you don't want to hear me talk about the failure of the films i suggest you leave now and hope the films are better after today
1. The cancellation of the extended universe and lack of continuity
This isn't really a big deal so much so as a piece why everything seems like a mess now. Unlike star wars universe, the marvel universe could pump out decent stories quickly because the characters and stories were already made and just needed tweaking to fit in a movie. The star wars universe not only started from scratch but also removed the "Continuity experts" that George had on staff to help keep the everything (from books to games) in line with the universe.
This wouldn't be a problem if they had a thought out plan on how the trilogy were to go but they didn't. In fact they treated the new trilogy like a hot potato where who ever gets the potato gets to spit out a story. Ryan Johnson even said they had no plans on how to continue from the force awakens and was given full freedom to do what ever he liked so long as he followed Kathleen Kennedy, which brings me to my next point.
2. The Mismanagement of the SWU and its criticism
Kathleen Kennedy, the person in charge of the star wars saga now, seems to have bitten off more then she could chew. Or maybe she thought this was a chance to do star wars how she felt star wars should be. I really feel it is the latter as evidence by how many directors had been fired and how high the cost of each movies have been because of it. Solo and episode 9 both lost their original directors for "creative differences". These movies are already on an extremely tight schedule and a massive budget, increasing their chance at failure. Most of this was shrugged off though even though criticism.
In fact it seems any criticism of the movies was ether hidden or was out right attacked back by the creators, blaming the fans even for the failure of the movies. Which to some degree is true but not the same reason they say the movies failed. When ever the creators of the new star wars fire back at the fans they cast this huge net. You don't blame the people who buy 1000 dollar light sabers and buy tickets weeks in advance...you just don't! They are your bread and butter and yet because you think your movies is a master piece (an actual quote from Ryan Johnson). In fact, if i could find it, Ryan Johnson even said in an old interview that his philosophy was to get people to ether love or hate his movies straight down the middle...you literally gave a guy who's whole philosophy in movies is to make people love it or hate it! Not to make a good movie. So yeah, i think it is a master piece in his eyes because that's exactly what he did to the fandom! And then you give him a whole trilogy to write! Are you trying to lose everyone? What the he-
3. Agenda Pushing and Forced Diversity
This is the last point i think i can make for now. I won't even go in to the movies themselves too much because that's a whole beast to tackle by themselves. Maybe I'll do that in the future if they don't learn from episode 9. I want to make this clear too, I AM NOT AGAINST DIVERSITY. I actually think Finn had the most compelling story arch to tell out of all the characters. Shame they seem to squander it.
But it became very clear that Star Wars was a means to push an agenda with force diversity in mind. Mainly pushing for powerful female characters. The force is female, this isn't the star wars you grew up with, this isn't for boys...all of these were quotes used to promote the new star wars. And the characters are a clear sign of this. We've had more female characters in the latest movie then all the other star wars combined. And yet all for the wrong reasons.
I could go on on how haldo kept her plan for a secret for no reason just to look like a hero in the end and she smashed her ship in the enemy ship known as the Supremacy...do you get it!, or how rose sabotaged finn sacrifice for no other reason to then to look like a hero, or how ray had abilities that she couldn't possibly have yet master them in days, or how the males, even luke skywalker, was made in to a idiot or fodder for the female leads to look better...i could go on but i'll just say this...
Female characters can be done very well. But story, character archs and struggles, and plot come first! Everything else comes second other wise its not a story, its an agenda and a very blatant one at that.
This was a pretty long rant so I'll end it here with this metaphor.
When George Lucas Star wars was bought out, he handed them a gold egg rich with history and a massive amount of people who love to look at said egg. It was old and dinged up but it was intact and priceless as it was and yet still could be made better. Instead though, Disney said that the egg was flawed. It didn't match what they wanted to do with it. The egg now is cracked, damaged, and almost nothing like what it once was. That to me is what star wars is now. A shell of what it once was.
Will this decision to hold off the spin offs save it? Maybe but the damage seemed done. And to those who may criticism me on this, i am open to having my mind changed but ask yourself first. Was it shown or explained in the movies? If it wasn't then ether i have to read some third party novel or something which the movies don't warrant me to do so or you are just writing the story for them.
In any case i do hope the franchise can be saved. I love star wars and i can only hope they can save it.
(I didn't really double check my work so i apologize if it seems a bit cluttered)
So...yeah! Disney/Lucas Films has decided to postpone or even out right cancel all its future installments of Star Wars Spin Offs for now This is pretty new news so it hasn't been concrete but here is a link for some info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPFaPTXQVY
Now you can look at this 2 ways.
1. They are postponing the spin offs to put more focus on the trilogy series or
2. They are the spin offs thinking that they don't make as much money.
I am really hoping it is the first one because...well...star wars as it stands now sucks. Now this is not an attack on anyone one except the poor decisions made by the head of lucas films who may have been silently let go. Pro or Against the new star wars series, you can't denie the fan base has been split.
I am on the against side and have been holding back this rant for a while now so if you don't want to hear me talk about the failure of the films i suggest you leave now and hope the films are better after today
1. The cancellation of the extended universe and lack of continuity
This isn't really a big deal so much so as a piece why everything seems like a mess now. Unlike star wars universe, the marvel universe could pump out decent stories quickly because the characters and stories were already made and just needed tweaking to fit in a movie. The star wars universe not only started from scratch but also removed the "Continuity experts" that George had on staff to help keep the everything (from books to games) in line with the universe.
This wouldn't be a problem if they had a thought out plan on how the trilogy were to go but they didn't. In fact they treated the new trilogy like a hot potato where who ever gets the potato gets to spit out a story. Ryan Johnson even said they had no plans on how to continue from the force awakens and was given full freedom to do what ever he liked so long as he followed Kathleen Kennedy, which brings me to my next point.
2. The Mismanagement of the SWU and its criticism
Kathleen Kennedy, the person in charge of the star wars saga now, seems to have bitten off more then she could chew. Or maybe she thought this was a chance to do star wars how she felt star wars should be. I really feel it is the latter as evidence by how many directors had been fired and how high the cost of each movies have been because of it. Solo and episode 9 both lost their original directors for "creative differences". These movies are already on an extremely tight schedule and a massive budget, increasing their chance at failure. Most of this was shrugged off though even though criticism.
In fact it seems any criticism of the movies was ether hidden or was out right attacked back by the creators, blaming the fans even for the failure of the movies. Which to some degree is true but not the same reason they say the movies failed. When ever the creators of the new star wars fire back at the fans they cast this huge net. You don't blame the people who buy 1000 dollar light sabers and buy tickets weeks in advance...you just don't! They are your bread and butter and yet because you think your movies is a master piece (an actual quote from Ryan Johnson). In fact, if i could find it, Ryan Johnson even said in an old interview that his philosophy was to get people to ether love or hate his movies straight down the middle...you literally gave a guy who's whole philosophy in movies is to make people love it or hate it! Not to make a good movie. So yeah, i think it is a master piece in his eyes because that's exactly what he did to the fandom! And then you give him a whole trilogy to write! Are you trying to lose everyone? What the he-
3. Agenda Pushing and Forced Diversity
This is the last point i think i can make for now. I won't even go in to the movies themselves too much because that's a whole beast to tackle by themselves. Maybe I'll do that in the future if they don't learn from episode 9. I want to make this clear too, I AM NOT AGAINST DIVERSITY. I actually think Finn had the most compelling story arch to tell out of all the characters. Shame they seem to squander it.
But it became very clear that Star Wars was a means to push an agenda with force diversity in mind. Mainly pushing for powerful female characters. The force is female, this isn't the star wars you grew up with, this isn't for boys...all of these were quotes used to promote the new star wars. And the characters are a clear sign of this. We've had more female characters in the latest movie then all the other star wars combined. And yet all for the wrong reasons.
I could go on on how haldo kept her plan for a secret for no reason just to look like a hero in the end and she smashed her ship in the enemy ship known as the Supremacy...do you get it!, or how rose sabotaged finn sacrifice for no other reason to then to look like a hero, or how ray had abilities that she couldn't possibly have yet master them in days, or how the males, even luke skywalker, was made in to a idiot or fodder for the female leads to look better...i could go on but i'll just say this...
Female characters can be done very well. But story, character archs and struggles, and plot come first! Everything else comes second other wise its not a story, its an agenda and a very blatant one at that.
This was a pretty long rant so I'll end it here with this metaphor.
When George Lucas Star wars was bought out, he handed them a gold egg rich with history and a massive amount of people who love to look at said egg. It was old and dinged up but it was intact and priceless as it was and yet still could be made better. Instead though, Disney said that the egg was flawed. It didn't match what they wanted to do with it. The egg now is cracked, damaged, and almost nothing like what it once was. That to me is what star wars is now. A shell of what it once was.
Will this decision to hold off the spin offs save it? Maybe but the damage seemed done. And to those who may criticism me on this, i am open to having my mind changed but ask yourself first. Was it shown or explained in the movies? If it wasn't then ether i have to read some third party novel or something which the movies don't warrant me to do so or you are just writing the story for them.
In any case i do hope the franchise can be saved. I love star wars and i can only hope they can save it.
(I didn't really double check my work so i apologize if it seems a bit cluttered)
'A report earlier this week stated that these might now be on hold following the commercial failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story. However, Lucasfilm has now denied this is the case ... It took a few days for a Lucasfilm response to emerge, but yesterday ABC News stated that the studio had told them that Collider's initial story was "inaccurate."'
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/s...../1100-6459966/
How ever to your other point, yes, plot is far more important to a story then real world messages. Why? Because a great story with a message can become timeless but a message with a story is nothing more then propaganda. People don't want to go to star wars to see propaganda, they want a good story.
Then there is handling them like Captain Planet, old 80s and 90s cartoons with token characters whose one trait is their racial or gender trait, and Ghostbusters 2016.
As someone who went to university for writing, I can tell you that the worse way to get your point or message across is to give zero care or concern for the story and characters were good, enjoyable and wanting to be emotionally invested in for the audience.
If your story is not engaging in the slightest or the be the majority and/or minority characters who aren't given engaging good and bad traits that make em relateable (due to how human they are and remind people of themselves or others they know), then your message and points aren't going to matter because you give people no reason to be emotionally invested in them.
Like I've seen many creators try to recreate Ellen Ripley's impact on audiences, even her own creator. And all the time they seem to ignore her actual development and character and instead go for a generic flawless, pissed off strong woman without giving any depths to her like Ripley or say Sarah Conner had.
Like if you care about highlight real-life issues and topics more than a plot than documentaries seem to be the better choice to do it. After all, you are asking your audience to sit and while and listen to your story, and if you don't care about making your characters and story engaging to help your messages get across better due to human faces to care and emotional connect with like the To Kill a Mocking Bird, Creed and Rocky movies or Brokeback Mountain, then why should they sit around and listen to you when there are better storytellers around?
Like Things Fall Apart is one book by an African author which explored some of the issues that African society had before, during and after White missionaries came into contact with Igbo culture and the positives and negatives of both sides of those who wanted to be traditionally African and those who were taking on the teachings of Christians.
One of the main characters Okonkwo is probably one of the most fascinating humanly flawed characters I've read who while you can either like or dislike or disagree or agree with him, does at least have your understanding of why he is the way he is. Which is like I say kind of like a good some of the characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies like Tony Stark, Steve Rodgers, Killmonger and the Vulture.
They can have their cake and eat, but they're gonna have to work and think really hard to earn it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....Discrimination
In real-life it is basically kind of like cuddling or kissing a discriminated group's ass so much that it feels demeaning like white man's burden type of thing.
Sometimes it can tie into this
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....naWhoreComplex
Positive Discrimination, of course, is a heavily debated subject, sometimes it is accepted like say elderly getting more treatment and other times questionable like someone just hiring you for your age, sex, race, other stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gQP4ffowCY
Warning, spoilers.
I like diversity for looking into stories cultures and groups might have that would likely be very interesting and might teach people more about the world they live in, to get rid of some of the stagnant feeling that the entertainment industries has these days, and make creators go out of their comfort zone to explore how far their talents can go.
I am not, however, for how the entertainment industry is simply trying to use these real-life issues and diversity in lazy ways to look like they're trying when in fact they're not trying at all just for a cheap buck. Like can you imagine what it would be like of the Last Jedi explored more into Finn's past as a stormtrooper and him trying to convince his former stormtroopers to reconsider what they're doing and show that they're human beings like this and maybe gave Captain Phasma more stuff than Boba Fett got in the movies maybe like this deleted scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzeIb-TZo_I
Like there is one case of male gender inequality between the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers with the former treating the latter like complete shit usually, and I imagine there are other places in the galaxy where the reverse happens plenty of times.
Although ultimately the Star Wars universe is an unstable shithole where slavery is practised a lot even in the Republic Era, where being brutal and ruthless is needed to be a bounty hunter or mercenary, and where massive corporations and criminal organizations can literally own or take over planets and the locals can do nothing about it.
Hell, if some of the nastiest aliens don't get you like abersyn symbiotes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJn9j28QQNA
Then trying to complain or peaceful protest against how the Imperials govern your planet could easily get you killed like in the Ghorman Massacre where Tarkin who dealt with protestors by landing his ship on them, which killed many instantly and killed many more dying from the resulting injuries and the few who survived at all having severe trauma afterwards.
I'm going to ignore that question and consider Gen bringing it up to be a valid inclusion because, regardless of how you may answer that question, it is more or less reflective of what I consider to be the biggest problem with Disney's treatment of the license: The fact that they are turning it into something else entirely.
The problem isn't that the sequels and spinoffs are objectively bad in any way. Rather, the problem is that they are wrong. As in, the wrong kind of movies to be made under the Star Wars license.
Star Wars doesn't just take place long ago in a galaxy far, far away. It takes place in an alternate universe, where the very fabric of reality is governed by rules unlike our own. A world where there is sound in outer space, and where everybody can understand a million languages but can only speak the one (either that or they can read the subtitles at the bottom of the screen with the rest of us).
George Lucas has even gone on the record and stated that there are no railings anywhere in the original Star Wars movies, or its prequels, specifically because they wanted to make their worlds seem that much more alien -- that much further removed from our own.
Then Disney took over, and suddenly everything got real. The light sabers looked more like flame sabers, the combat got gritty, the camera got shaky. . . Which would be awesome if this were an original license created by Neill Blomkamp or Guillermo del Toro. But it's not. It's a space opera that has existed for forty years, and which, though not without countless stumbles over the decades, has maintained its own unique identity until recently.
That, I believe, is the core problem. The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi may or may not have been good movies, but they are definitely not good Star Wars movies.
The original trilogy satisfied both the casual viewers and the hard core people who wanted to know more. It had a great story that drew people in and a world that was built with logic and yet still foreign. Like exploring a new world. And this was extremely important to star wars as a whole. Rules and continuity Not to mention a great amount of balance to the characters abilities.
The Prequels, while not as good as the original, expanded the lore ten fold in my opinion. We had massive space battles, how robots and clones work, how trained jedi's could use the force, ect ect. While the prequels were not as great, they still felt like star wars.
Like Terastas said though, this new series takes what ever was built up and threw a lot of it out the window. As if it is to say "its ours now, we can do what we want" Most of this being seen in the last jedi i might add. And I will go as far as to add not only does it destroy some of the old lore, it adds nothing to replace it. Or if there is lore added, its AFTER the movies not during.
Who are the resistance? What is the New Republic like? Who is snok? Who is the first order and why are they so powerful? Why is Ray so god damn powerful and masterful at everything? WHY PORGS? But seriously none of this is answered in ether The force awakens or the last jedi and you can't build a world off such a lack of information.
If Disney was smart they would reign back power from...who ever is head of LucasFilms now...give more power to the directors so they stop firing them, and bring back the continuity experts to help continue the lore.
Now, as for why Solo failed? That's very very simple. Because The Last Jedi failed. Solo has a pretty good review and good ratings, but fans paid through the nose to the TLJ, and were... disappointed, and the movie was just bad. Look at almost any website for community reviews and you'll see what I mean. People then are always reluctant to watch the next movie, no matter how good it is, Solo suffered because TLJ was just plain and simple, bad. Now, I haven't seen Solo myself, and can't comment on how it was, but from reviews I've seen and the few folk I know that actually did watch it, apparently it was decent.
As for if the franchise can recover from this? Yes, because [s]fanboys[s/] fanpeople will always support the films. As long as they can stop shitting on the plot, the lore, making every character forgettable, or a mary sue, and spending 1 1/2 hours with the most boring "chase" scenes ever... yes, they can recover... but they have to actually start trying, making an effort, and stop ignoring every criticism as just "Well, it's just males wanting power" or "It's just sexist reviewers" and actually at least try to listen to the criticism.. whether or not these directors are even capable of doing that though, I'm not sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCB8DUGpYQQ
And to be honest, you can actually argue that the movie depicts the minority and some of the female ones in just as careless and awful light.
Like Rose stops Finn from sacrificing himself to save her and everyone from the First Order, which makes her look like an idiot since Haldo did it earlier and then there's the fact she does it because she loves Finn. So you could look at that as saying that woman are overly emotional idiots who will doom their allies to certain death because of their lust.
Haldo can be seen as a stereotype of a woman just can't explain shit and love making conservations difficult for men just because she can and knows better, even if it is at the expense of everyone and looking like a complete moron.
And then how Finn is pretty much the butt monkey funny black guy of the movie who is humiliated a lot and has one good moment of triumph before being overshadowed by everyone else.
And of course, Poe who is played by a Latino/Hispanic is shown as an unprofessional hothead who the movie considers may have done a questionable decision (taking out the dreadnought good idea, but the phone call before it good fucking christ) in the first half of the movie then continues to treat him like shit when Haldo is in charge and plays mind games with him.
Maybe they're just giving up on making decent characters for the sake of... whatever they're trying to achieve.
It doesn't seem to know what it is trying to do or where to go.
Like it is trying to copy Marvel bathos/sense of humour, but the Marvel movies were established on having that humour and for the most part knew when to drop the humour and be serious and emotional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuuDTnMPMgc
Then there's how the movie does everything to try and deconstruct everything before it, then backtracks on it all near the end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLYUc5t6wag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O7sBMVUFFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCyuIW16Bj4
Although Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy seem to be two driving forces behind some of the Last Jedi's other issues and seem pretty damn arrogant and stupid enough to repeat the mistakes of Ghostbusters 2016's cast and crew in saying any critic is a racist and sexist despite how many people were tired of reboots and that the extreme Ghostbuster cartoon pulled off diverse characters much better than that movie.
And there is one problem I notice with some creative people when they're trying to be either to put their politics into their work or address real-life issues, they can often end up hurting the causes they are going for by a lack of talent, research, understanding, thought and unwillingness to even consider polite constructive criticism about their work (then there are some who just pay lip service to politics and real-life issues for money and popularity reasons without really exploring them).
Like I remember JK Rowling being criticised for how she handled Native Americans, and one area she failed in is researching how to the Native Americans believe in skinwalkers. Which is to them a real spiritual being in the same way a demon is to a devout Jew or Christian and are generally considered evil or at least malicious enough to be scared of because they had to do something terrible like murder a family relative for the powers they gained. So her making them out to be misunderstood and prosecuted wizards is actually treading on religious beliefs that some Native Americans have.
https://www.newmexicoexplorer.com/n.....n-skinwalkers/
https://legends.atavist.com/sedona-.....ient-wolf-pack
I remember JK's criticism on the skinwalkers.. myself as native american it was very disappointing to see that done that way, but even worse considering it was in direct conflict with lore she herself had written down a few years prior (it was on the harry potter website, sadly pulled down/changed now after the movie came out and "updated') It's almost like she wanted to throw out old lore to try to appease the edgy teens watching.. because I remember in old lore they were proper creatures, and one of the reasons the wizards of america (Who were basically ALL native Americans, something else she changed), went into hiding, was being blamed for what the creatures were doing.
Also, thanks for citing your sources, I'll have to look through a few of those.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWTCGhZtRtk
That and the film industry is getting into the billions more often than ever before with budgets getting bigger as well (probably due to how things are economical, not sure really). Although it is interesting to note how for example Jurassic Park at the time with a budget of around 63 million (maybe add in 65 million marketing campaign) in 1993 was able to gross 914 million at the box office which was not reached again in the franchise until Jurassic World. The issue is that many people have started to note how safe the movie industry has played it more over the years, with reboots, sequels and such, probably due to how in the past they needed new original titles to make bucks to feed themselves, nowadays they can mine and drain franchises until there isn't much they can do with them anymore. Then there is also how some studios repeat the same mistakes because the learned the wrong time from them like release dates as well as marketing, case in point Disney with its 2D animated movies like Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog or how Fox spoiled a twist in the recent Terminator movie with a trailer.
I didn't know that about Rowling, which is a shock that she did it that since if she thought that she was fixing a problem then she basically made worse. I had a hard time trying to find accurate sources about Skinwalkers since again, native American nations/groups with it primarily being the Navajo don't like saying much about skinwalkers, but at least I've goddamn tried to find out most that I can (with smaller time, money and access to stuff). In fact, Tony Hillerman was a writer who did much on Navajo culture and faith and did it so well that he earned Special Friends of the Dineh Award for it. How the hell Rowling didn't bother to use her larger access to resources and fame to go to speak to the Navajo and other Native American nations is beyond me other than she got lazy.
And the citing of sources is kind of a habit for me due to some university education.
This here was some grade A wearing it on their sleeve, and I have no problem with the message or rather theme they were trying to say, the one where "Anyone could" be force sensitive and Try and fail, learn from your failures. The execution however... and message getting confused while shitting on old characters
You know it's funny... but you know what thing was more respectable to it's own brand and was a great sequel.
Cobra Kai.
It managed to pay homage to its predecessor while being a surprisingly good sequel that did its own different thing.
Getting back to Solo... well what the hell did people expect? The threat of a boycott was issued during the TLJ drama and the sheep were stupid enough to call the bluff. Bluff was called and acted upon. A pity because from what I've heard it's not a "bad" movie though the plot did suffer from a change of directors and direction roughly halfway through production.
As for diversity... diversity is not the problem. The problem is when "diversity" is used as a shield to cover up subpar writing and art. Calling legitimate critics bigots leads to a "Cry Wolf" scenario; if everyone that disagrees with you is a bigot, then no one's going to help you when the real bigots show up.
From the bombs being dropped by roses sister, Leia demoting and berating Poe, Maz telling poe, finn, and rose where to find a code breaker, Ray convincing luke he was wrong, Haldo blowing up the supremacy, Rose stopping finns sacrifice, and Ray lifting rocks to save everyone (the ones i can think of at the top of my head).Gets worse when you notice some subtle things like when Haldo berates Poe there are like 3 other woman around him and her and a deleted scene where hux is stroking roses cheeks then her biting his fingers. I hate that i have to say I'm not against females being hero's (infact i really like it when its done right) or anything but that's a bit on the nose with "female power" agenda.
As for the diversity thing, you are definitely right. And I think it can also be bad if it becomes a "qouta" that must be met for some reason. That can be derailing as well cause you could be adding characters unnecessarily...ironicly making a form of "tokenism"
- Admittedly you're probably getting into tinfoil headgear territory here but considering some of Kathleen Kennedy's comments and how they can be (and have been) interpreted, it's hard for me to dismiss this out of hand entirely. Beyond that, not sure what I can add. Yes, we have had female leads before in sci-fi (Ripley, Honor Harrington, and Captain Kathryn Janeway to name a few) and at least from my perspective it's been done fairly well. No, these new "Girl Power" heroes generally do not pass muster in comparison (Rey and Jyn get a "maybe" from me but Janeway or Harrington would have probably out-maneuvered Hux AND Holdo in getting the Resistance fleet out of that train wreck.)
- Yeah that has occurred to me as well and ultimately why I have to balk at this new wave of "diversity." Diverse characters are all well and good but they are still characters first and foremost, a cardboard character is cardboard no matter what color you paint him or her. Arbitrary quotas, especially ones where the numbers fluctuate on the whims of individuals that are often the least qualified to direct creative activities, are not creative. And of course, like you said, this ends up leading us right back to having "tokenism" in creative works, a writing relic of the 80's and 90's that frankly can stay there.
And yeah your absolutely right. You should only use diversity if it adds to the story or you can afford it. Or hell if it can be fun like Punch Out for the Wii is the best example of how stereotyping can be use to add to the character...though one could even say that 40 years from now that would be considered racist too so fuck it.
- Well, I wouldn't say "only if" but if the character's only defining trait is their race, gender, or orientation then you are definitely doing something wrong.
Yep! Its a shame this has to be discussed like this again when it should have ended in the 90's
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-s.....e-toy-industry
And the series has gone to some areas before Disney where it is obvious that their focus was getting your money and hopefully you would have fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84YXPw4htnQ
Although the big difference as many people noted is that there doesn't seem to have much of a focus on what direction is meant to go. Like Lucas did make up much stuff as he went along, but he did have some idea where the original trilogy was meant to go and the prequels had a better and clearer goal of telling Anakin's story and how he fell to the dark side as well as how the Empire was born.
I'd recommend SF Debris's series about George Lucas and Star Wars as it does provide a great insight to the making of Star Wars as well as George Lucas which shows him as pretty much as a human person with admirable strengths and terrible flaws.
https://www.sfdebris.com/videos/spe.....rosjourney.php
https://www.sfdebris.com/videos/spe.....owsjourney.php
https://www.sfdebris.com/videos/spe.....itsjourney.php
And now that I think about it, the terribly executed, blunt and lore damaging agenda pushing isn't the first time Star Wars had the issue. Like the Star Wars' EU had Karen Traviss trying to remake Star Wars into basically her fanfiction and pushing her beliefs that ended up hurting the stories and lore http://thegoodthebadtheinsulting.bl.....t.com/2011/09/ , on top of calling her critics at the time these things.
"Later on she began directly insulting any fan who began questioning her writings or the portrayals within them.
When a fan questioned why she hated the Jedi, Traviss responded that it was 'impossible to hate a non-existent idea', then started calling fans neo-Nazis for liking them. Regarding the Jedi as being just Nazis for somehow trying to create 'genetically superior master race' by only accepting Force sensitives into their ranks.
She accused fans of being low life misogynists for telling her that she had clearly not done her research upon many of the subjects she was writing about. Insinuating that they thought a woman could not understand Star Wars. In truth no one I have seen or spoken to ever stated 'no woman', just her.
And finally she began to refer those who continued to point out the errors of her works and try to get her to correct them as being 'Tallifans'. And yes, that was an intentional reference to a certain extremist group of religious suicide bombers killing soldiers and civilians alike within the Middle East. Classy.
Amidst all this she constantly dared critics who pointed out flaws in her works to do better, challenging them to write something better than she had produced.
Many of these blogs and messages were deleted by her when even she began to realise she was going too far but records of what took place still exist within some circles."
I feel like people throw expectations WAAAAY out of proportion for these new films. It’s not he same people, it’s entirely new stories with new characters, and you can’t expect the stories to be flawless, because they’re not.
Anywho, that’s my little rant about it.
I like the new ones. They’re not perfect, but I like them a lot.
Now i'm not saying your wrong for liking them, that's your opinion and i don't need to change it. But using only 7 and 8, it has objectively become bad story and Disney is suffering from it.