"Who hates Star Wars for its newfound diversity?" Topic

"This morning, the Washington Post published an article titled "Who hates Star Wars for its newfound diversity? Here are the numbers." It comes to the perhaps unsurprising conclusion that, as ferocious as it has become lately, the toxic subculture that has developed in Star Wars fandom is a vocal minority. But its sampling is still too narrow.

Written by the University of Rochester's Beth Lacina, an associate professor of political science, the study as presented in the Washington Post's analysis piece examines a very tight selection of Star Wars associated tweets in the wake of hostile reactions to the latest film in the main saga, The Last Jedi, as well as the controversy surrounding hateful attacks that drove actress Kelly Marie Tran, who played new hero Rose Tico in the film, off social media. Based on random selections of tweets relating to Star Wars, The Last Jedi, Kelly Marie Tran, and Rose Tico up to the point Tran quit social media in June of this year, the analysis finds that about six percent of the gathered tweets contained offensive language and a much smaller subsection of those—around one in 100—contained hate speech.

Those metrics sharply increased when examining just the data that related to Kelly Marie Tran and Rose Tico specifically. Offensive language went from six to 12 percent, and hate speech rose from 1.1 percent of the sampled tweets to 1.8 percent—and it rises even further when specifically examining negative tweets about Rose and Tran, indicating that discussion becomes significantly more toxic when discussing Star Wars' first non-white female lead negatively than it does with any other criticism of the franchise…."
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Amicalement
Armand

For its diversity? Why would I?

I dislike most of the new ones because of their weak or convoluted plots and the bad acting. The special effects made up for that lack in the 70s, because no one else was up to that level in fx.

But now that every movie has the same toolbox, they better fill them plot and acting bones with some meat. Some substance. Special effects won't oooo and ahhhh me (and most kids) into forgiving the blandness any longer.

Dan
PS. For the record I sorta liked Rogue One and Solo. The rest of the new ones I didn't like one bit.

"The Force Awakens", which stars female actors Ridley and Fisher in leading roles, still only presented women speaking 27.8 percent of the dialogue. In that same film, white people spoke 62.5 percent of the dialogue.

So where's this diversity you speak of?

New found diversity? If I recall in the original movie there was a female and a wookie lead, half of the hero group of four.

Look at the source of the article, the Washington Post, enough said. BTW I do not care for the Star Wars saga after the first 3 movies.

a wookie lead

And the world wide wookie community were ecstatic at the recognition.

Someone would bother to read the Washington Post? Why not just make up your own news? Cheaper, and no less accurate.

For decades Hollywood assumed that only white teenagers consume their steady stream of blockbusters and to a certain degree they still make up a part of the demographic, but what has changed is the prevalence of pop culture into daily life.

20-30 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find pop culture merchandise outside of toys and comics and what was available was mostly the domain of specialists : books, model kits, "underground" designer toys or duplicates of copies of video recordings of once-in-a-lifetime television broadcasts of rare films.

Shows like Comic Con were pretty much the domain of the geeks and nerds. It all existed under the radar.

Networking was done at conventions, through fanzines and fanclubs. The rare few magazines like Fangoria or Famous Monsters of Filmland were usually the only source of news and the ads were a treasure trove or highly sought out after items.

When a thousand people went to see a movie like Star Wars, maybe a handful of them were what we would call "fans" Most people would watch any movie that fickles their tancy and they didn't give a damn about three quarters of what happened on the screen.

Flash forward to today and on the surface not a lot has changed. The main difference is that your average Wall-Mart, B&N etc will have sections on games, movie merch, comics, and other tchotchkes.

Of a thousand people watching a movie the number of fans has increased, but they are still a minority, while quite a few average movie goers are now more savvy about the various properties, there is more exposure.

The fans are now networking like never before and with a larger crowd you get a wider mix of people.

The fan still obsess about minutiae and details that most people don't even register. It's the common discussion fodder on the internet.

One thing that has changed is that with an influx of people who may not be hardcore fans, but more casual group of people who flirt with fandom, but are just as likely to switch to something completely different if something new and shiny catches their eye. But the nice thing is that on the whole pop culture is growing and getting new members all the time and this group is more diverse than ever.

Now the Media industry has started to notice that the proportion of women, minorities etc are steadily rising and they like video-games and movies and who doesn't love an influx of new people to sell merch to ??? All you have to do is mention how you now have movies with women in the lead role or that a certain character is now portrayed by a minority actor. And judging from reactions, it is working, girls suddenly want to be Wonder Woman and people will say how excited they felt when they saw somebody in a movie they could identify with …

And then the ugly side of people reared up. Remember when you were a kid and discovered a music genre that was only known to you and a handful of others, the heady days you were part of a tiny group of people "who got it" and the wider world was blissfully unaware ? And then the genre became mainstream and suddenly you weren't listening to your favorite band in a dank basement having the time of your life, you were pushed to the back of the stadium because all the people who wouldn't give a damn to what they were listening to had to get all the best seats ? Where were they when it was all done in a dank basement ? Where were they when the fans still helped to set up the band's instruments ? Where were they back then and why are they suddenly here to listen to "our music" and pretend they are the biggest fans since day one !!!

It's the same all over again.

Pop culture fandom was a niche and suddenly everyone and their grandma is cosplaying, buying lightsabers, wands and watching those obscure Japanese shows you were the only one outside of Japan to know about.

It's the same mechanism why some people will never watch either Star Trek or Star Wars or why they would rather die than to support another sports team.

It's the same mechanism why people are angry at companies like Warlord, GW or FOW for delivering a product that is dead easy to get into and requires no effort, not like you in the olden days with a copy of mimeographed rules, trying to convert old Airfix figures and you had to go to the library to research the subject … "You got it too easy you damn kids !!!"

Toss in the fact that some fans are now middle aged men, politics, current social issues and a liberal dose of trolling and people who are manipulating things just to watch the world burn and you end up with toxic fandom.

The real problem is that "fans" are only a minority in this game, the average moviegoer still makes the box office, but they are extremely vocal and everything related to the fandom is often seen through a distorted lens.

It's a complex web, whereas at one time adding minorities was kinda organic and never warranted a lot of fanfare, ever since a number of major comic book releases that got some headlines the industry now needs to toot the horn to draw media attention, generate tons of publicity and gets a cookie for being socially progressive. Everybody wins !!

Except the guy who feels he's been pushed at the back of the stadium and those who noticed a bunch of people feel they have been pushed to the back of the stadium they now have a platform and can be really loud to the point that the media smell a story and controversy never diminished sales so …

And suddenly it's all part of a "cultural war".

If Lucas got flak for doing something radically different with The Phantom Menace back in the primordial long ago days of 1999 and personally raping every fan's childhood, these days if you insert a woman or a minority you're part of "white genocide" and suddenly people start to claim pop culture as a political weapon.

We're living in the age of outrage where between the Weinsteins the Joneses the Sarkeesians etc. It's starting to become damn near impossible to sort out the chaff from the wheat, there is no debate, if Weinstein has to go for improper conduct then some people will dig up your social media past and find a rope to hang you with in retaliation, mr Gunn.

Because it doesn't matter if the guy is guilty as hell or innocent, he belongs to the other side and it's all about retaliation, "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue!" Doesn't even matter who gets killed, as long as one of the others ends up in the morgue.

I don't see it getting any better and it's going to get really nasty …

That's why I always go back the wise old words of William Shatner : "Get a life, will you people? I mean, I mean, for crying out loud, it's just a TV show!"

Intelligent post, Patrick.

Spot on, Patrick.

Why do people seem to dislike the new films ?

Short answer they don't. They still make a crapton of money, maybe not as much as some people would like, but for the foreseeable future they will keep on cranking them out as long as the main movies make money. Sure Solo kinda bombed, but that's because half the audience wondered where that nice mr Ford went and why he was replaced by some unknown guy. Solo was the much anticipated answer to a question nobody asked.

There are many reasons why people dislike Lucasfilm's approach, it's not entirely fair to blame it on Disney as they tend to be fairly hands off when it comes to properties that come with their own studio like Marvel and Pixar.

first of all TFA was a reboot, they are simply doing what happens as default to any movie that's more than a few decades old and that's to reboot it, in this case they did a seboot or a requel trying to get your pie and eat it at the same time.

Next they did something that seems to upset certain fans into fits of apoplexy : they didn't simply film the Expanded Universe verbatim … There are tons of reasons why they wouldn't do that, they don't want to pay millions to the writers and they would rather jump in a shark tank than to slavishly adapt the work of somebody else, most Hollywood types want to claim it's all 100% original (try to find all the cognitive dissonance in that principle)

Next up JJ Abrams, the guy who loves to set up a mystery and then runs away because he doesn't know how to reveal the mystery. TFA was dripping with promises, Snoke, Rey and all that. The stuff he does is very cheap, and he usually bails before he has to pay the bill and let somebody else pick up the tab.

That's where we come to Rian Johnson who is the latest victim of one of those Hollywood peculiarities that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's that voodoo magic they mistake for sound business practice because in the past some young eager directors produced huge hits they now throw them to the lions in the hope they will be the next new magical Spielberg-Willy Wonka-King Midas that will spawn an endless series of hits.

Johnson is not a bad director, but he used the second-easiest trick in the book the "Wouldn't it be cool if ?" Subversion of expectation. Now this was inevitable because the 24/7 collective of type-writing monkeys that is the internet is always going to brute force its way to figuring out your awesome plot twist and people were convinced that Rey was a secret Kenobi because her being a Skywalker or a Solo was too obvious. So Johnson at least wins a cookie for originality in that he simply defused the expectation by making her a nobody. And if you're good and set it up right, it's another "No, I'm your father" moment. Sadly Johnson isn't that good he's got good ideas, knows how to put a film together, but he made a mess of it.

Now while it's unfair to blame Disney, it's not entirely fair to blame Lucasfilm either. Sure somebody greenlit the stupid ideas and script, but remember that Luasfilm was a machine designed to serve only one man, Uncle George … everybody else is a yes-man in the system. Kennedy is doing her best to second-guess George. Kennedy isn't a bad producer, she's generated more hits than you and I, but she's not George Lucas and something will have to give, either Kennedy or Lucasfilm.

A chunk of the Star Wars fandom grew up with the prequels, it's their films and they are effing tired of being the lunatic fringe of the fandom, that's why they have tried everything in the book to pretend it's all about the prequels, the sequels were just an early draft done mostly by others and the master reserved all his talent to make perfect films (look up circle storytelling, have a good laugh, then forget all about that nonsense) And only they and Lucas understand that the prequels were special only made for an elite. And boy are they pissed that the new trilogy is all about continuing the OT rather than bring back Mace Windu, Jar Jar and completely sidestep the sequels entirely.

And sadly there are those who do believe in the weird "culture war" conspiracy crap, normally nobody would pay attention to them, but these days a single tweet becomes world news …

Then there is the fundamental problem that Star Wars isn't really much more than jedi, the force, the Skywalkers and some space stuff thrown in. Given that Hollywood likes to hedge the bet and dislikes risks, they won't try to change the formula to any degree, unless they are really desperate and it's more likely to go bad than become another super-hit. They are already recycling previous movies to make new ones. They paid billions for a pulp story that is probably already past its best by date.

All this to remind us that maybe 10-20% of any movie audience are actual fans or care about the films, they are kids who have no clue who Darth Vader is, much in the same way most people don't know who Jack Colby is or even Hans Beckert. Even the greatest villains will fade from popular consciousness, especially in an age where media is generating more characters than a marathon session of Ready Player One on a fast forward loop.

George Lucas for all his awesome ideas, a healthy dose of serendipity and all his flaws at least had his own vision, as soon as Star Wars becomes part of an immortal media empire that wants to see as much returns on their multi-billion dollar investment we're doomed to get a Star Wars movie every year until the day we die and when the Tolkien or Rowling heirs finally give up resisting in return for a fleet of dump trucks of money we'll the the same with Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter etc, will all become basterdized offspring, told and retold until we've had every single permutation only to go back to start and do the whole cycle again …

So maybe Star Wars crashing is not such a horrible idea after all.

It's just a movie and nothing more. 2 Hours of someone vision of the future.It's all just rip offs of Saturday Morning Serials from the Golden age of Hollywood/Sci Fi.

This is tiresome. I was fine with female and black leads in the original trilogy, but suddenly when I don't care for the second and third trilogies, it makes me "anti-diversity." Logically, this suggests that bad scripting and directing promotes racism and misogyny. No chance we could get Hollywood to work on that?

And who on earth would go to the Washington Post for facts, much less useful analysis of opinions the paper dislikes?

100% of the characters don't come from Earth, I'd say that was pretty diverse.

It's the same mechanism why people are angry at companies like Warlord, GW or FOW for delivering a product that is dead easy to get into and requires no effort, not like you in the olden days with a copy of mimeographed rules, trying to convert old Airfix figures and you had to go to the library to research the subject … "You got it too easy you damn kids !!!"

You're not a true wargamer unless you know what banana oil is, and where to get it…

Damon.

It's science fiction. Anyone who actually cares probably needs to get back in touch with reality.

You'd think people would let it slide, but if you look carefully at the group known as "Fans" you find a heckuvalot of people who strongly identify with what they love. It becomes part of their identity to the point that if you change it too much, the reaction goes out of all proportion.

It's what killed New Coke or causes teams to lose a ton of money when they change their stadium and thousands complain "it's not the same any more"

You don't just change or remake Star Wars, you are attacking somebody's core identity and this group has never had so much mutual reinforcement, so many vocal platforms and been plugged into so many pundits, ready to add their brand of acid to the mix.

The internet is the perfect tool for some people to weaponize pop culture and it's not pretty. The fact is that these people are far more in touch with reality than most people think, because they have a powerful emotional lever they can use for whatever motives they have.

We're living in the age where there is no stepping back, no introspection, if Jesus pulled his "He who is without sin" trick today, he'd end up in the emergency ward. "That guy said I was a sinner, so I broke his face and I broke it again, and again, and then a bit more."

There already WAS diversity in the first Star Wars Trilogy!

Now Disney is being too PC and heavy-handed about it!

Whenever someone says SW fans need to get in touch with reality, I'm reminded of sports fans. Just as bad.

Damon.

So a SJW rag that from a dying media defends a SWJ movie company. New movies fail because they are crap? Blame the racists! Our new centralized food program failed? Blame the Kulaks.

"It's science fiction. Anyone who actually cares probably needs to get back in touch with reality."

Thank you for your concern, Choctaw, but I've already been in touch with reality. It was scary and depressing. I am now focusing on my core competencies--heroic fantasy, space opera, Regency romance, fair play mysteries and playing with toy soldiers.

Make a good movie, or get gud Disney in gamer speak.

Diversity or the lack of isn't the problem with the new SW movies its that they just aren't that good. The problem for me stems from the shitty way they treated the lore for the history after the originals. The Empire still rules over the core of the Galaxy, the New Republic settled apparently for freeing only part of the galaxy after the battle of endor in effect the original trilogy isn't a triumph of good over evil. Evil survives and actually controls the most richest most settled part of the galaxy. Han's a dead beat dad, Leia's a failed politician, Luke's a total failure as a jedi master, Admiral Ackbar apparently went senile after the Civil War and forgot how to command a fleet etc.

Add to that a okayish start to the new trilogy followed by dud and its not surprising that the new trilogy is getting so much hate. For me at least Rogue One, showed Disney could make a good SW movie (although I would have liked to see the original version before the re-shoot), don't know about solo since I haven't seen it yet.

I second what Cacique Caribe and Earl of the North said -- it's scifi, cast whomever you want as the leads, but *make a good Star Wars 'verse movie!* Rogue One was a good Star Wars action movie, I enjoyed it and was disappointed when they killed everyone to make sure there would be no competition for the SW7-8-9 movies…which so far are worse than SW1-2-3!

Why? TFN was a lazy New Hope reboot with an even BIGGER Death Star that makes even BIGGER BOOMS! Ok, I thought, let's give it a chance, maybe TLJ will tie stuff back together. Nope, a completely incoherent movie -- bad pacing, bad plots, big disconnects from established movie/Star Wars 'verse, and poorly executed character development.

I think Screen Rants does good job of explaining this.

The Force Awakens Pitch:
YouTube link

The Last Jedi Pitch:
YouTube link

Well said Patrick….

Amicalement
Armand

Its the endless repackaging of essentially the same plot, over and over, and over and over, and over and over, ad nauseum, that gets to me.

That, and the writers/directors seem to have little creativity.

Though to be fair, from what I've read and heard, a lot of the issue is less about the writers/directors, and more about the Corporate suits tightly limiting the storylines, so its really more an issue with them, than the others, I suspect. So much so that in a number of cases, on the SW series, they've fired multiple directors mid-movie, since they're trying to do something better, and the "suits" don't like that.

Rogue One was the ONE bright spot in ALL of the releases, after the first trilogy.

Solo was fair, but had the potential to have been so much better.

The storylines/scripts are basically crap, and even the expensive, and in some cases, superb CGI can't save the movies from that.

Conan Doyle once thought he had control of the Sherlock Holmes franchise. He got sick and tired of writing Holmes stories and tried to kill him off. But no. The fans wouldn't let him. Imagine. No internet in the 1890s!
So, Doyle brought him back, with one of the stupidest "Hah! Fooled you!" lame reasons why he wasn't really dead. And the later stories were really not as good as the early ones.

Flash forward a few decades. Lucas, a pretty low on the totem pole director, somehow gets the wherewithal to do a pretty good space opera. With great vision, he secured all the toy and merchandise rights. To the surprise of nearly everyone, it's a huge success. He hints that Star Wars is really just Part One of a middle trilogy. He gets to finish that middle trilogy, and quite good it is too!
Then, he kind of loses interest or traction or both. Years pass in which he allows "canon" to develop among fanfic and licensed and approved storytelling.
Then he has his own Reichenback Falls moment. The prequels come out to near universal puzzlement. But more toys get made. Not much canon to contradict here, but enough.
Well. Let's finish with a final trilogy, but let's do it like Spiderman when the kid grows too old. Start it all over again. But let's throw out the EU "canon", because quite frankly, who is going to notice or care. (Did you ever quite Monty Python incorrectly at a game store?)
Throw in the Internet, and guys living in the basement with toys still mint in packaging because …. because …. because they're more valuable that way.
We now have a perfect storm of nerds who never got lucky with Gurls, their fanatically memorized canon being thrown under the bus, and the anonymity of the Internet. Girls and people who aren't white? What's all this about?
Quel Surprise! I'm not saying it could have been foreseen. It's just easily explicable.

To address the superiority of the original Middle Trilogy. How many cultural themes have emerged from it?
"Luke. I am your father."
Many more.
How many from the First Trilogy?
Well?
Crickets.
There will be no "Leave the gun. Take the cannolis" or "You broke my heart!" from the final trilogy. It's just going through the motions. Very profitable motions to be sure, but totally forgettable motions.

One thing about the latest trilogy is that it makes the prequels look better, not good but better. They are still going through the motions, but at least the story doesn't seem tacked together like TLJ especially.

About 2/3rds through the making of Star Wars saw George Lucas on the brink of collapse. Fox was threatening to shut down production due to a runaway budget and Alan Ladd jr was just barely keeping the executioner's axe away from Lucas' neck. The first rough cut was incomprehensible, while Gary Kurtz and his wife spend countless sleepless nights trying to fix Lucas script and dialogue into something halfway decent. Alec Guinness looked on and realized this would be a complete disaster. Lucas' wife Marcia then started to edit the movie, the fx guys finished their work and boom Alan Ladd saw nothing but cheering people at the premiere and within weeks Star Wars exploded …

And George Lucas must have been reeling because on the one hand he had almost brought the whole thing down crashing and burning and a bunch of people had to rescue his film. It didn't get better when he didn't fell up to the task of making the sequel and asked his teacher and mentor Irwin Kershner to direct for him. And while he delivered the most solid film in the series, Kershner humiliated Lucas on every level, the cinematography in Star Wars is very static, lots of middle shots, lots of panning, nothing really special. Empire is vibrant and dynamic.

Lucas then hires a skilled but perfectly obedient Marquand to helm the third one who returns to the same boring cinematography, possibly even less inspired than Star Wars and the third film while still pretty decent is not the crescendo Lucas might have had in mind.

After three movies Lucas is feeling like an imposter, he's getting credit for something he personally completely messed up and couldn't get done in any competent way.

Important debunk of a Star Wars myth : Lucas only ever made the claim that there would be nine films in total in a narrow period of a few weeks around the release of Empire. He played with that idea for years and while he could figure out a story for the prequels, he never found a satisfactory story to continue the saga because he bookended it so well in ROTJ there was nothing he could add that wouldn't feel forced. And some things that should have been forgotten became absolute dogma. A claim became promise. Promise became Gospel. And for two and a half years the fans waited for the promised nine films.

Lucas wanted to make the prequels mainly to show to himself he could pull it off. And while George is far from being stupid, he's not a good storyteller, which he admitted openly. He's not a terrible director, but hardly a genius. He's quite ok with the technical side of it and like stuff that he can assemble in the editing room like Lego blocks.

But the prequels shows that Lucas can get a full trilogy made it's not effortless and the result shows why he needed people like the Kurtzes to fix scripts, dialogue etc.

I think that in the end Lucas himself was disappointed about the prequels, it felt like he had tried and kinda failed. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't a work of genius. Not the genius people tend to mistake Lucas for.

Honestly my respect for Lucas has increased since the sequels. For all his flaws, he remains true to a personal vision, he ended up making the movies his way, the Prequels were at least original and different from the OT. Yes fans hate him for that, and while you can discuss the merits/flaws of the prequels, they are their own unique distinctive personal creation.

The Sequels are a media empire franchise designed to appeal to people by giving them what they want, and if you ever saw Red Letter Media's Rich Evans screaming AT-ST on an hour long loop you know what Lucasfilm thinks of their audience.

"girls suddenly want to be Wonder Woman" So, before this it was boys who wanted to be Wonder Woman? :)

In all honesty, even Rogue One was strangely underwhelming, and it is by far the best of the films released since the first three. As mentioned above, the problem is that the original trilogy was wrapped up so well. But as there was (and is) money to be made, Disney will keep churning them out for a good long while.

Being on something of a Star Wars kick lately, I've been reading a good number of reviews and analysis of the films. One interesting thought I came across (which naturally now I can't find again) stated that the prequels actually had some good ideas but failed miserably in their execution, whereas all the films after Return have been well executed while failing miserably in the idea and storyline department. On reflection I guess I basically agree with this.

The original three still hold a lot of magic, though.

Well said John….

Amicalement
Armand

My main problem with the Prequels is that many of the actors delivered flat toned dialogue. Like they were reading their lines off a teleprompter or cue cards. Granted they may have improved as actors since then, but back then their inexperience was glaring…

The newer sequels, there were just too many new "main" characters introduced. That may work to help individual viewers to "identify" with their favorite character (& please the "we want diversity!" crowd), but it dilutes storylines away from a core of characters (e.g. the 1st trilogy kept to this), and just muddles things up.

p.s Han's not dead! He'll be back…

Dn Jackson: "So, before this it was boys who wanted to be Wonder Woman? :)"

I'm sure many still do. :)

Dan

"(…) with toys still mint in packaging because …. because …. because they're more valuable that way. "

Yeah, I'm not depending on the unopened box of 1978 Star Wars Dixie cups I have to fund my retirement LOL (The 'price guides' a few years ago said each cup was worth 5$ (ha!), but the whole box usually goes for that… ;-)

As long as people choose to think of the skin tone and gender "diversity" – or lack thereof – of the actors in SW films as the reason that people eitehr enjoy them or not, they will never address the real problems with the recent two SW main saga films – that they are not well written, have huge plot holes, and don;lt have enough "oomph" to pull the viewer through without breaking the willinmg suspension of disbelief.

Even the best of the current crop (I have yet to see "Solo", but think that mys tatement here is safe) "Rogue One" has some huge holes, but is an engaging and enjoyable ride, so you are willing to overlook them, like a bumpy ride on a road with beautiful scenery, good music playing, and good company in the car with you.

Kids loved the new Star Wars, even TLJ: link

The people with the most issues with Disney SW are the adults who grew up on the original trilogy and who found to their dismay that, decades later, SW just isn't as magical as it used to be when they were kids, when their innocent eyes were filled with so much wonder. That's why they speak so fondly of the original trilogy with nostalgia, even though rewatching it today would bore one to tears.

Now they dissect SW and endlessly nitpick through their critical adult eyes because they no longer are capable of enjoying SW like they did a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Lucas is right in one thing. SW has always been "for the kids": link

Chill, dudes. It's just a movie. If we're still 12-year olds we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd probably be describing TLJ as "cool!" and "awesome!"

Well they found out what happens when they try and change things to push their Agendas.

Their latest movie bombed at the Box Office.

Just like Mary Queen of Scots & the First Man will do as well.

They are so focus on ensuring Diversity is forced on us that they end up trashing their own movies.

If we're still 12-year olds we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd probably be describing TLJ as "cool!" and "awesome!"

Not to be argumentative… but what character would our 12 year old selves be running around pretending to be?

"I'm Poe… I stage mutinies and get squadrons of bomber crews killed defying orders!"

"I'm Admiral Whoever… I won't tell people the plan and then blow myself up spectacularly!"

About the only character I found inspiring at all was Finn… and he messed up big time when he told the admitted criminal he just met the whole rebellion escape plan.

I should point out I don't think diversity is the problem. Bad writing is. Diversity is being used as an argument to deflect criticism. Not that there aren't a vocal minority (like everywhere else) that DOES have an issue, and lashes out.

I never bought Lucas' excuse that Star Wars was only ever meant for 12-year olds.

Unless of course kids these days have a taste for movies with boring, badly written political undertones.

The Phantom Menace was poorly received and got the "Lucas raped my childhood" reputation.

Lucas simply tried to defend himself and like all normal people he will find every convenient excuse to explain why his own writer and directorial skills were not up to his ambitions and more importantly vastly inflated expectations.

Remember his ambition was to remake the Buck Rogers serials of old, which at the time where enjoyed by kids and adults alike and while I don't have a breakdown I wouldn't be surprised that Star Wars films have always resonated most with the 15-30 year old age bracket.

I liked TFA. As for TLJ why wouldn't I like it? The rebel fleet being chased slowly thru most of the movie? The rebel leader going down with the ship instead of a droid (or just pushing the auto-pilot button)? A main character who has shown no special abilities suddenly flies thru space? Another main character, who didn't say a word in TFA, finally does something and then simply disappears because…? If you know what the point of that was please fill me in.

I and many others do and we are speaking out with our Wallets.

I.E. we are not going to spend money on their SJW infused movies.

I assume catavar was being sarcastic.

I and many others do and we are speaking out with our Wallets.

I.E. we are not going to spend money on their SJW infused movies.

And as long as the Star Wars universe remains the sole province of angry white males and eschew diversity, it will continue to wither on the vine and become ever more irrelevant, as 'Solo' has amply demonstrated at the box office.

???

How did Solo 'eschew diversity'?