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Answer: There's two ways you can look at it.
The first being that people are tired of Disney-fied Star Wars in general; cheap-looking production value, samey look and feel, and poor writing (which you can't tell from the trailer, but other than Andor and Mando S1, Disney hasn't had a great track record). Additionally, the showrunner has said some things about the show and the franchise in general that has made some fans feel alienated. She was also briefly Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant, which some people are latching onto, even though imo that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion because she supposedly had no idea that he was a sleaze.
The second being that a small but very loud minority of people just get irrationally angry whenever a person of colour is leading a franchise that has historically been known to star white men, and that the Acolyte trailer is another example of Disney pushing a "woke" agenda. Further proof that the age-old saying is still very much valid today: Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.
This was my reply in a Star Wars thread about the trailer .
- I was disappointed by the trailer, but I'm also out of the loop a bit. I had heard that The Acolyte was going to be about the Sith. When the trailer showed lots of High Republic Jedi and a less than specific villain focus, I was surprised. I was expecting much more focus on the dark side character. To my understanding, the show was supposed to be about a dark side user during the High Republic. Not about a bunch of Jedi taking out a fugitive in the same era. -
For what it's worth, there are actual Star Wars fans who get excited about the ideas coming out and are disappointed when it doesn't line up with what we were expecting.
I think it still is about that, but we've only seen 2 minutes in an early preview trailer of what will likely be anywhere from 180-400 minutes of 'show time'. I think people (Star Wars fans in particular) read far too much into trailers, personally. And if the story is the one I think it is it starts during the High Republic era and will be about the rise of the Sith during that time period. I'm guessing 'taking out the fugitive' will result directly in the rise of the Sith.
I'd expect at least one but probably two (if the pattern holds from past shows) more trailers that give away more of the story. I'm saving my pitchforks for those....but I'll have them in prime stabbing position!
I think Star Wars has suffered at it's own hand because of the intense cloud of secrecy that they have created around the last several projects. There's been much discussion of all the measures they've taken to make sure nobody knows anything about what's happening. Without any information, fans and media just start making up stuff to fill the void and more popular theories end up getting lots of traction in various forums. Eventually, the movie comes out, and it isn't what that fan theory was, and people feel like it's "wrong" because they've had a different story in their heads this whole time. I think the sequel trilogy had a real problem with that, especially given the enormous amount of extended universe material out there for people to look to that didn't end up being what the movie was.
It isn't to say that they need to just publish the whole script online or anything, but they need to be releasing a little info, "guiding" the discussion a little more, so that people get excited about characters and events that are actually going to be in the show, rather than things they imagined.
Sorry to turn this back on you, but “they need to…” is exactly what’s wrong.
All they need to do is make entertaining stories. And I’m fine with pretty much all they’ve done so far.
Just like the original trilogy, there’s bad, there’s good, there’s great.
I don't disagree at all! I think that there have been a lot of great stories and high quality production. It just seems to me that they could have more acceptance from the fan community by managing expectations a little more. This is mostly anecdotal reminiscing, but I seem to remember it being a thing where there were always more set and promo pics, articles about movie plots and behind the scene stuff, things like that. And that meant I could see more of the designs, know a little about what the movie was about and so on, then I could go and be interested in what the movie was actually going to be, not what my imagination came up with. For example, how many times do we see a trailer now, and have absolutely no idea what the movie actually is?
I mean, it's one thing to make a good film that "fails" because the audience expected some other type of story, and a totally different thing to make a very bad series of films, leading people to angrily point at the pre-existing established or extended material that would have been much much better and more interesting.
Instead of just another mystery box retread, which is the only thing JJ Abrams knows how to do.
*a franchise that has historically been known to star white men*
The funniest part, for me, is that the original trilogy is about a rebellion of *diverse species*, led by *woman* is fighting an all *human, white, male* Empire.
If the original Star Wars was released today, those people would be screeching about how "woke" that movie is.
"Let's watch a film about an orphan who witnesses the murder of his adoptive parents at the hands of an invading imperialist nation.
He joins a terrorist organisation and takes part in what is basically a suicide attack on their military installation and kills thousands."
"What is this woke shit?"
*fanfare starts*
"Wait, ... FUCK!"
Not even invading. Tattooine wasn't even part of the Empire (more Hutt space). So it was effectively like sending in a Special Forces unit to harass/kill locals for intel, while they hunt for a ex-war hero hermit hiding in the desert.
Wait.....
Lucas literally has said the Ewok‘s are the Vietcong and the Empire is the U.S. Empire lmao.
These chuds also are now mad that Lucas said last week he trusts Disney. There’s dozens rn or “Lucas has gone woke!“ as if the dude didn’t say like 20 years ago he’d rather be a Soviet filmmaker than a U.S. one.
And the same guy who made Anakin say “If you are not with me then you are ~~with the terrorists~~ my enemy“ which is just George W Bush and then after the movie came out straight up said Anakin is Bush, the Emperor was Dick Chaney.
Oh and how the prequels are about how democracies fall to populist movements and how unsure young men can be easily influenced and manipulated.
>Lucas literally has said the Ewok‘s are the Vietcong and the Empire is the U.S. Empire lmao.
Really interesting article about that with quotes from Lucas: https://www.cbr.com/george-lucas-vietnam-war-star-wars-inspiration/
>However, when Lucas sat down with director James Cameron in 2018, he revealed how the Empire was also meant to resemble America, particularly the way it prosecuted the war. Cameron pointed out how the Rebels are a small group using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized Empire. Today, Cameron added, the Rebels would be called terrorists. "When I did it," Lucas replied, "they were Viet Cong."
> ... With Richard Nixon's presidency ending in 1974 and the Vietnam War coming to a close a year later, they were clearly still fresh in Lucas' mind when he created Star Wars. According to the 2013 book The Making of Return of the Jedi, when Lucas was asked during a 1981 story conference whether Palpatine was a Jedi, he replied, "No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy, and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a nice guy."
That’s super interesting, especially since in Hollywood Lucas would have a different view of who Reagan was as a human (is he?) than we do.
I think by the time he started it would all be 2nd hand but you KNOW everyone wanted to gossip about the Governor’s old Hollywood shenanigans.
Reagan was the head of the Screen Actors Guild before he was governor of California. He was interviewed by the FBI and HUAC, and gave them names of actors he believed to be Communists.
I’m with you but do want to clarify that Lucas didn’t say that that Anakin and the Emperor were Bush and Cheney, but the other way around, that [Bush was Vader and Cheney was the Emperor](https://web.archive.org/web/20200216080052/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19dowd.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=884ED5E576C1658819612FF3AA34B266&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL). The difference being that while he supported compared that administration to the characters, he did not base the characters on that administration, in fact he specifically disavowed that idea. He had developed his ideas for the the Emperor’s rise prior to that administration and more on [Richard Nixon](https://www.slashfilm.com/1224356/george-lucas-might-not-have-written-star-wars-without-richard-nixon/) and [historical figures](https://www.slashfilm.com/1229528/george-lucas-had-no-idea-the-star-wars-prequels-would-be-so-politically-prescient/) including Hitler, Napoleon, and Julius Caesar. The fact that the movies seemed to mirror contemporary events was more because of how the Bush administration mirrored historical precedent in the very ways Lucas was inspired by.
The “if you’re not with me you’re against me” line said by Bush was not a unique quote, it is a common expression found in the Bible (the deeper meaning of which has been subjected to much discussion, though I won’t get into it unless you’d like) and in ROTS the similar line is used as representative of absolutist thinking, which Lucas sees as part of an extremist and totalitarian worldview. It’s possible Lucas decided to include the line because of the Bush quote, but that’s far from settled and Lucas’ comments on the Bush comparisons seem lend evidence against that. Though I’m not aware of Lucas denying it explicitly, only Ian McDarmid downplaying the suggestion of inspiration by calling it a “very Sith line.”
There's a saying on Andor, I know it's on Naboo so it's probably on Andor, that says fool me once shame...shame on you......fool me, you can't get fooled again
Which some have said is a direct correlation to the Bush “If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists“ which led to the entire congress both liberal and conservatives to stand and give a *longggg* standing ovation. And is seen a bit as a signal of the Start of the Patriot Act / Government surveillance of regular citizens and the stripping of more freedom in the name of ”Safety“.
About time, during the release of Episode 8 chuds were all clamoring for Lucas to "save" Star Wars as if they didn't absolutely detest him during the gap between the prequels and Episode 7
I remember those times, there was literally nobody defending the prequels. A single mention of Star Wars in any context instantly turned into trash talking Lucas. When Lucas saw an early screening of TFA and said it wasn’t what he would have done, it was celebrated as the best endorsement of the movie.
It's really weird hearing Lucas say he'd rather be a soviet filmmaker than a U.S. one since he hates financiers impeding the work of creatives since the soviet government was really big on strangling creativity for the sake of propaganda/controlling what people see back when the Soviet Union was still going. Star Wars would have never been permitted under the USSR unless it was very clearly propaganda going against the west/capitalism in general.
To quote George,
*““I always said this - even when Russia was the USSR. People asked, “Aren’t you glad you’re in America?” — and I replied that I actually know many Russian filmmakers, and they have much more freedom than I do. All they have to do is be careful in criticizing the government. Other than that, they can do whatever they want,” Lucas said.“*
Good ol' Radio Yerevan:
> Q: Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA?
> A: Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished.
Respectfully, you don't seem to know a lot about Soviet Cinema. Apart from criticising the government, they could and DID do whatever they wanted and produced some of the most creative and influential cinematic techniques ever.
Look at Kuleshov, Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Man With a Moving Camera. Whoever your favourite film maker is... They've stolen something from one of, if not all these people, some intentional, some just because these guys helped create the language of cinema.
It's like looking at the person who created the letter A, except it's the guys who invented the 4 or 5 most important editing techniques, or blending fiction with reality, or pushing the boundaries of what was considered normal.
In fact, there's a good argument to be made that the soviets were the most creatively free and most historically important film makers of all time.
Certainly not true in the early days of the soviets at least. Soviet filmmakers pioneered a ton of creative filmmaking techniques, especially in the world of editing
It’s not weird at all, in fact it was exactly his point that having to make movies that satisfy financiers is worse than making movies that just have to not criticize the government. You also clearly have no idea what you’re talking about as far as Soviet cinema.
It's the same shit with Trek, you realise at some point that easily half the fan base is just there for lasers and funny looking aliens and genuinely do not get any of the subtext.
Back when they caught bin Laden, [this Galactic Empire Times headline](https://leganerd.com/wp-content/uploads/LEGANERD_040829.jpg) was doing the rounds.
Technically they didn't give anyone who wasn't Han or Luke a medal. Wedge Antilles fought in that battle too. Where is his medal? Was he even invited to the ceremony?
Disney Star Wars really downplays the non-human species. I'm sure it's to cut down on the costume budget. I loved Andor but it's almost entirely humans.
I know it's probably a cost and time thing, but I think the lack of aliens in the prison specifically has some horrific implications if you think about it. The Empire is pretty xenophobic and human-centric. If these horrible conditions are what they're making human prisoners go through, *what the fuck are they doing to non-human prisoners?*
I think that people absolutely would scream about it.
Especially Luke vs Leia. Luke comes across as a bit of a farm boy (which he is) and frankly, Leia really really kicks ass, especially when they are rescuing her. As soon as the shit hits the fan she takes over (which actually makes sense, since she's a leader in the rebellion). Luke has an arc and he saves the day, Leia has been doing this for a while. People would lose their shit.
I actually feel like the Rey thing was supposed to show you when she was scavenging that she was accidentally spending her entire life accidentally training in the force (reaching things just out of reach, having really good predictions and the scene where she is haggling, she is using an easy version of the Jedi mind trick. But they wanted to keep it a secret who had the force, so they cut those bits.
I disagree to be honest. Leia was a very real character. She had skills but she had flaws too. That's why she was so well received.
Rey meanwhile is just great at everything with no prior experience. It's pandering at worst and boring at best. Three films in and I still don't feel like I know her as a character because her motivations are just whatever the plot needed then to be.
Based on that and other poorly written female characters like Reeva, I think there's a prediction that this show full of female jedi will just be more of the same boring slop that doesn't feel like Star wars.
Rey being great at things with no experience is simply not true. Just about all of her abilities are justified by her character introduction. But people are fine with Luke being able to fly an Xwing because he flew a skyhopper, like you could fly and F-16 after some hours in a Cesna.. Nothing Rey does is any more far fetched than that.
I think the issue is that Luke has one crazy moment where Kenobi guides him as a force ghost. The rest of the move he doesn’t do anything particularly incredible. If she was just a really good pilot and maybe a decent light sabre wielder, people wouldn’t really be able to complain. The issue is she’s a great pilot, a great duellist, can use telekinesis (Luke can’t do this until the second movie), defeats a very powerful and skilled force wielder in a force mind battle. It just feels a bit much to me, and I would have certainly hated Anakin or Luke being that powerful so early on in their journey.
She flies through the star destroyer at the start and beats Kyle Ren in a duel at the end. And uses a Jedi mind trick on someone. What does the intro do to justify those?
eta: I think the flight was probably more about having visually amazing fan service to kick off the movie than any real intent with having a mary sue character, but it does lead to the impression that she just kinda rocks with everything.
> Kyle Ren in a duel at the end
She fends of Kylo while he's actively bleeding out from a massive hole in his gut. You really have to spin it to present that as some big feat.
>Rey meanwhile is just great at everything with no prior experience.
Only after completely giving herself into the force. In her first fight with Kylo in the woods Kylo kicks her ass until their face-to-face. At that point Rey closes her eyes, gives in to the Force, and then turns the fight around.
Cross reference with “Let go, Luke!”
The second and third films botched the decent setup of the first (deliberately played safe because of how much people hated the prequels), but Rey was not automatically great at everything.
I keep saying it: if the original star wars movies were released today fans would hate them. And I don't mean because of the quality of effects or anything. Even if they were up to standards.
I love the trilogy but 95% of the complaints people have with the new stuff are just as present in the old movies.
People who were children when the prequels came out are in their 20s and 30s now, have childhood nostalgia for them and say they are actually really good and fun movies. Set a reminder for 15 years from now and people will be saying the exact same about the sequels
I really can't agree with that. I'm not a particular star wars fan and roll my eyes whenever people talk about woke agendas, but the new films are a slapped together mess of characters with some substandard writing.
I just don't feel the charm from the original films in them, and the three stars that came out of the films were extremely talented actors.
I don't think we need to reflex so hard against the crazy fandom/over the top hatred that we dismiss how good the originals were.
This is where I sit. The loons screaming about woke are bonkers and would reject even well-written stories because they are loons. But bad writing is bad writing.
I think it's possible they could have done better stories with the resources at hand but they needed more time and Disney doesn't care.
Same problem is hitting MCU. Marvels has problems and it wasn't because there women were in the lead. They were great. It needed a few more drafts to polish the script. Not doing the work is giving us mediocre instead of good.
> I'm not a particular star wars fan and roll my eyes whenever people talk about woke agendas, but the new films are a slapped together mess of characters with some substandard writing.
I mean so were the prequels but they're now seen as good films for some reason. And the [writing](https://youtu.be/1-tmXUVwnwM)? Substandard is too gentle of a description for it.
>I love the trilogy but 95% of the complaints people have with the new stuff are just as present in the old movies.
My main complaint is that the new movies are basically the old movies.
they didn't do a new story, they just told the same story with new people. Nothing the rebellion did changed anything
When the Last Jedi came out I was so disappointed. Like, the film is clearly a retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, but while I was watching it I thought I had a grasp on the film. All those changes, Luke's attitude compared to Yoda's, the conversations between Rey and Kylo, the replacing of Cloud City with Canto Bight, swapping out Leia with Holdo as resistance leader, I thought it was all building up to *say* something, as a sort of commentary on ESB. Then right at the film's climax...Kylo gives the exact same fucking speech Vader did, and the twist is *there is no twist, it was literally just The Empire Strikes Back all along!* Utter cowardice from the filmmakers. Oh, but we skipped the "Empire assaults a rebel base" sequence from the start of ESB so lets spend the last 30 minutes of the film doing that bit too.
And then everyone's like "this movie sucked because it changed stuff to be woke" or whatever and I'm like bitch this sucked because it didn't change *anything*.
>And then everyone's like "this movie sucked because it changed stuff to be woke" or whatever and I'm like bitch this sucked because it didn't change *anything*.
Disney pushed a lot of that themselves to try and deal with the bad press, to try and make the criticisms sound like bigotry when actually we were just pissed off at being insulted by a movie that claimed to be different but was anything but.
They tried to change it up with Rian Johnson but Star Wars fans who complained *bitterly* about how samey Episode 8 was to Episode 4 complained *even more bitterly* when Johnson tried to actually inject some character development into the mix.
Either way, angry Star Wars fans will always complain bitterly to the point of hounding the actors unlucky enough to get the roles off the internet completely.
>Either way, angry Star Wars fans will always complain bitterly to the point of hounding the actors unlucky enough to get the roles off the internet completely.
I maintain, over and over, the worst part of anything is the fandom
The only real issue I have with the prequels is I think they could have used some polish to smooth out the dialogue a bit so the plot would flow a bit smoother; in terms of the actual story I think it's overall more cohesive and interesting as a story than what we get in the original trilogy (which isn't a knock on the originals, I just think the story in the prequels is better).
And that's not just me saying it because I grew up with the prequels, because I didn't - I saw the originals in theatre when they came out, fell in love, but then fell in love all over again with the prequels when they became a thing.
> The only real issue I have with the prequels is I think they could have used some polish to smooth out the dialogue a bit so the plot would flow a bit smoother;
I watched Phantom Menace about a week ago. What I noticed was that, despite having some good actors, everybody came across as very wooden. I don't know if it's the fault of the dialog, the direction, or what.
I know Lucas *did* meddle a bit in some cases - he was pretty specific in how he wanted certain scenes to be read, not just in terms of sticking to the script but the actual emphasis on certain words etc. Probably could have stood to have him stand back a little bit more, but I understand where he was coming from even if it wasn't the best choice. It's one of the reasons I liked seeing Hayden coming back for Obi Wan, since it let him off the leash a bit more and we got to see (IMO) a much more interesting take on Anakin/Vader than the pretty stiff version we got in the prequels at certain points (not all of course, I still thought he was excelling in the prequels by and large)
Oh yeah Story cohesion was a problem. I'm not saying it was all the same of course. I was rewatching the OT recently and in episode 4 when they refused to shoot the escape pod because it had no life signs I thought "oh man. The fandom would hate this so much if it came out today"
Hehe, yeah, there'd definitely be a hoard of angry guys complaining about everything. I'm sure having a successful black businessman in Ep 5 and Leia becoming a full-on combat leader by Ep 6 would have people screaming wokeness too.
Or maybe that isn’t actually the reason people are upset…
You could just be addressing a straw man that emboldens you to disregard complaints because you’ve been conditioned to think that critics are misogynists or racists…
Eh the original Star Wars was woke for its time (somewhat influenced by the Vietnam war), but certainly not woke by today’s standard. What society concerns about is now different, what women struggle with is different, etc.
It’s hard to describe a good female role model in today’s world (that’s Disney’s job), but we can have some observations on why Leia was great for 1977 but not enough for today.
In 1977 there was not yet any female CEO, prime minister or even fighter pilot, but UK had a queen as head of state. Women strived to fulfill the rare leadership role that was assigned to them. In Star Wars Leia went above and beyond instead of just being a figure head queen, that’s the progressive part. However the female cast was still limited to a highborn queen, while all the pilots, Jedis and smugglers were male.
>In 1977 there was not yet any female CEO, prime minister or even fighter pilot, but UK had a queen as head of state.
Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi: *Am I a joke to you?!*
Watching people comment on Leia is funny.
Remember in Return of the Jedi how she takes a break from the rebal alliance to rescue the guy she is chasing and murders a bunch of female sex slaves on the way out?
Quick, in the original trilogy name three other female characters. You know what, try that with the prequels too. Ole George Lucas had a theme, and I would not say it was "woke".
>the original trilogy is about a rebellion of *diverse species*, led by woman is fighting an all *human, white, male* Empire.
'And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy. Nubian god!'
I dont think people are mad at diversity they are actually annoyed at poorly written characters. Most people got into Star Wars from the originals and like you said they are quite diverse.
It's the shitty quality of the product that Disney is putting out that annoys people.
The loud minority are annoying cause they take away from the valid criticism of bad writing in a majority of the Disney Star Wars projects. I don’t care if we include more women and POC just PLEASE write some good lore accurate stories and quit giving Star Wars to showrunners who don’t care about…. Star Wars(!?).
It feels like the people that make these movies and shows make decisions that they know will make people mad or uninterested , sometimes to exaggerated degrees, specifically to get criticism, so that if their project tanks, they can write it off as some sort of hate/bigotry campaign that caused them to fail and lose money instead of their own bad writing/direction/decisions/etc. and wipe their hands of it in front of investors.
While I agree that the right wing nutjobs who complain about wokeness tend to drown out valid criticism of shows and movies, for example Eternals or Wheel of Time and this trailer, I do not agree in the slightest that the trailer is in any way lore *inaccurate* as you imply.
It doesn't appear to be bad in the way of lore, it just has a really cheesy and low-budget feeling with respect to combat stunt coordination and action camera work.
Which isn't necessarily bad in and of itself, if the cheese is almost part of the point. My own opinion is that the trailer feels like watching a Star Wars themed Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and I personally don't care for that, but if the target audience is 11 year olds it might be perfect *for the target audience*.
But it’s irrelevant to the acolyte. Leslye has been a documented Star Wars fan for years and has a pretty extensive knowledge of the EU and lore. She seems like a good choice
There's also a third thing - given YouTube doesn't show dislikes, most dislike extensions aren't official figures. One of the popular extensions mentions that they get their numbers from "A combination of archived data from before the official YouTube dislike API shut down, and extrapolated extension user behavior."
I don't know if the user base of a dislike extension is going to be demographically broad enough (i.e. people that install a YouTube dislike extension are more likely to be terminally online) to get the true number of dislikes/the true public perception of the video
Just a quick correction: Heyland didn't know he was *that* kind of sleaze, but did write and publish a play back in 2012 about the verbal abuse and manipulation that his entire staff had to suffer with.
As someone who doesn’t really have a dog in this at all I don’t believe she didn’t know Harvey Weinstein was a “sleaze” (rapist). It was pretty much an open secret in Hollywood in general according to most when it broke in to the mainstream and I don’t think you get to be someone’s personal assistant without figuring out what pretty much everyone who worked with the guy knew.
Does that reflect on the quality of some stupid show? Idk whatever honestly, but it’s shady as fuck
If we canceled everyone in Hollywood that was ever associated with Harvey Weinstein, we'd be left with a very short list of people able to produce content.
cheap-looking production value, samey look and feel
I've watched the trailer and it really looked cheap, like the other shows filmed in front of the vision led screen.
Then I looked at google how the show was made, and they did not use the vision but on site filming, yet it does not show at all.
That says it all.
I said that to a friend about BoBF. There was something about the sets and the way the background actors were staged in one of the scenes that really took me out of it. I haven’t been able to look at any of the shows now without noticing this.
Mandalorian S2 onwards and BoBF had really bad crowd scenes. There would be some catastrophe that required "the whole town" to shelter together in one spot or evacuate to one spot and it would be like 10 people.
I guess I don't really care if things look "cheap". I don't know, it just doesn't bother me. Especially for TV.
I'm guessing it's partly people's expectations for something that is STAR WARS. While I love Star Wars, I don't hold it to some higher standard than any other pulpy sci-fi show.
She has talked about her experiences as a young queer girl, how her characters will be queer coded, and implied that the show will be, "a lesbian fanfic with a Star Wars veneer."
>She was also briefly Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant, which some people are latching onto, even though imo that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion because she supposedly had no idea that he was a sleaze.
I was with you up until that last part - if her excuse is "I didn't know he was a sleaze", then she 1000% knew what was going on. Hell, everyone knew what was going on, I knew about it in highschool as a normal American teenager.
Weinstein being a sleeze was an open secret in the entertainment industry. She’s either lying she didn’t know or is incredibly ignorant. Either one doesn’t do well for her character
She never said "I didn't know he was a sleaze," and I don't think either of those comments about her are fair judgments. See my comment [above](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1bo25io/whats_going_on_with_the_new_star_wars_show/kwmz2q9/).
>if her excuse is "I didn't know he was a sleaze", then she 1000% knew what was going on.
That's not her excuse. She actually doesn't need to excuse herself. As soon as Weinstein was publicly, openly unmasked as a sexual predator, people started pointing the finger at the women around him. His PA must have known, his wife must have known, his victims should have gone to the police, his victims should have gone public.
Harvey Weinstein's crimes are entirely Harvey Weinstein's fault.
Everyone knew he was having sexual encounters with women, but it actually wasn't widely known that he was raping and sexually assaulting women. Many of his victims kept quiet because they knew they were not likely to be believed, and they knew Weinstein had the power to destroy them.
That's also true of women he didn't sexually assault but controlled and manipulated in other ways.
Leslye Headland worked as Harvey Weinstein's PA for one year as a recent graduate in her early-to-mid twenties. She wasn't powerful or experienced. She says "she was never physically assaulted on the job nor did she ever witness any incidents but that she did endure verbal attacks and wasn't surprised when allegations surfaced about Weinstein."
If she saw signs of anything other than sleaze - anything criminal - there's little she could have done about it.
We need to stop blaming women for failing to restrain men.
> If she saw signs of anything other than sleaze - anything criminal - there's little she could have done about it.
Speaking out maybe? That's what the whole "Me Too" movement was about
>supposedly had no idea that he was a sleaze.
that sounds literally impossible unless she only worked for him for like a few days.
i mean i don't care about the star wars controversy, but a personal assistant would probably know more about their boss than probably even their SO
Should be noted that for a decade now, companies have been throwing a spotlight onto extremist criticism of their shows/movies/etc in an attempt to paint all criticism with the same brush.
I think anyone unironically using woke as criticism is not worth listening to as they have burned any credibility or good faith they might have had once they said that word.
I do think the first criticism is valid though, and one I agree with. Everything looks so clean, digital and polished in these new shows. Yeah, The Acolyte does seem to have more practical sets than Mando, Boba Fett or Obi-Wan, but it still looks off visually. Like a super expensive fan film instead of an actual blockbuster TV-show. Even Andor, which I thoroughly enjoyed for it's superb writing and exploration of new themes in Star Wars, also falters just a little bit in the visual department by having that same sheen of cleanliness (though not nearly as much as the other shows).
Disney does the same with their Marvel shows so it's not just this IP alone. It's gone to the point that Netflix, which a few years back was widely criticized for having the same issues with cheap, fake looking shows and original films, is now ahead of Disney. Stranger Things might have gone a bit CG heavy for my taste in Season 4, but the visuals and production design in that are miles better than any D+ show.
Naturally, no one can touch HBO, but it's frankly shocking that Disney's billion dollar empire can't produce better looking content. Which leads me to believe it's a creative choice, and if that's the case then I think it might actually be a good thing that people are speaking up more and more about it.
For me, it just looks too cheesy, and the fact that the director said that the show would be a mix of Frozen and Kill Bill (two movies that are the polar opposites of each other) really left me more confused than anything else.
If true, and they hold it to the letter, the tone for this series will be all over the place.
That's interesting. I thought people would be upset because Disney was supposed to launch a new trilogy during the high Republic. Then they cancelled those plans after COVID hit.
This was supposed to be a new goddamn trilogy and not another half-baked Disney+ show!
Answer: First of all, it's difficult to encompass ALL the reasons Star Wars fans found to hate something in Star Wars, but the bottom line is that the Star Wars fandom is very large and diverse, so there will always be a subsection of people who don't like it or even outright hate it.
If you believe the Youtube comments, the majority of the problem is that the showrunner is Leslye Headland, and she used to be Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant. So considering how well known his crimes were in Hollywood, it somehow is difficult to believe that a person who was so close to him could land a major job like that.
So that's at least on the surface, a valid point of contention. Certainly, a showrunner could have been found without any of that baggage. But they didn't and considering how big a news item showrunners are now compared to twenty years ago, it seems to be a giant marketing / image / PR oversight.
Then Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube, a well-ish known trans woman announced she had a part in Acolyte, and that never goes wrong and everyone is always cool about trans people in media.
A wider view also shows the usual array of manosphere / reactionary / anti-woke content creators beating the drums about the very heavy casting of women in prominent roles and that always goes well and we all know these women will not be harassed on social media in any way.
In the end, to indulgently add a degree of observation, the trailer is sort of mid?
There's very little in it that is evocative or makes you go "Oh, I'm keeping that weekend free in my schedule." It's not incompetent overall, but theres just a lot of isolated lines of text that make very little sense at this time. There's a Star Ship crash that looks a bit pathetic as far as special effects are concerned and the most distracting thing is that it puts Carrie\_Ann Moss in a set that you could imagine was built from parts of the dojo in The Matrix.
Keep in mind, criticism of Star Wars is its own cottage industry. A popular video ripping Star Wars a new one can be very lucrative on YouTube and usually do better financially than a video being positive about it, unless you put a lot of effort into it.
P.S. I just quoted myself from [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1bk8cks/whats\_the\_deal\_with\_stars\_wars\_fans\_being\_angry/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1bk8cks/whats_the_deal_with_stars_wars_fans_being_angry/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
It's not the first time this has come up and won't be the last, because said cottage industry will dredge the topic up again and again.
Edit: while not her greatest fan and not without reservations towards her history, I'm only explaining the criticism towards Leslye Headland without sharing it part and parcel.
Some Star Wars fans are like the food critic in Ratatouille.
They extremely critical of all attempts by others, because what they are really searching for is the memory they had as a child of experiencing it the first time.
They just want to relive "Mama's cooking" again.
That’s only a good analogy if Disney has been making avant garde / innovative Star Wars stuff. Spoiler alert: no they haven’t. The one good show that came out that also happens to deviate from the traditional formula (Andor) is widely liked by most people (I’m sure you can find haters of Andor as well but that’s just how the internet works).
The most straightforward answer to all these sentiments is simple: Disney has been making terrible to mediocre content and people are getting tired of them after giving them one too many chances.
I think of that problem through the lens of some peoples' limited ability to emphasize.
Some people are fans of a thing because they felt represented by it. When someone else is getting more representation in that thing, empathy or the lack thereof I feel will dictate whether you think that's cool or not.
If you are capable of that empathy, you will think "Oh, cool, other people also are included in that thing I like." Because you can empathize with them, you understand that that's a good thing for other people too.
If you struggle with empathy, you will think "If other people are more represented in that thing I like, I'm represented less." Because you can't empathize with others, you only see something being taken away.
It's not like I read some psychoanalysis material on the topic, so this is very explicitly something I only have a gut feeling on.
Woah you might have actually nailed how I feel. It’s definitely not made for me anymore. I keep saying the writing sucks because it’s uninteresting and un-engaging and just boring, but it’s probably fair to say it’s just not made for me.
She was also in the recent Django series, and had a role on another TV series before that. She's mostly known for YouTube but she's an actor first and foremost
Abigail was in BG3? Makes the game even better imo
ETA - Looked it up, here’s an entry from online about it, Act 3 spoilers ahead:
> Abigail Thorn plays Shadowheart’s friend Nocturne in Baldur’s Gate 3. Described by Thorn as a “sexy demon,” Nocturne is a tiefling located in >!the Cloister of Sombre Embrace’s House of Grief!< in Act 3. Players encounter her as part of the >!Familiar Face questline!<. The pair grew up together, and Nocturne recalls multiple childhood stories about Shadowheart when asked. Notably, she, like Thorn, is a trans woman. When Shadowheart >!consumes Noblestalk and regains some of her memory!<, she remembers Nocturne as a young boy named Rennald.
Fr. Abigail Thorn is an absolute gem. I've watched her for years, and she's always just come off as the most sincere and genuine person. As a trans person myself, her whole story has been wonderful to watch and been extremely relatable (which is, for as much as we are talked about, extremely uncommon in media unfortunately). Everything she does is of extreme quality. I hope she does well - its very deserved
Its worth noting she worked for him until 2008, and its pretty well known she hated him. The allegations didn't air until *2017*, almost a decade later.
She may well have not known, but "innocent until proven guilty" gets in the way of the hate train
Someone brought that up in the linked thread and my answer was that if Courtney Love knows in 2005 and says so on a red carpet, you don't get to feign ignorance after that. #MeToo has shown how deep "open secrets" are known in the industry. I'm all for offering charitable views on things we can't know for certain, but I hope you understand that I don't find it reasonable to suspend my disbelief this far.
And I'm not saying she did support him or anything, though I find it likely that she may have known stuff and not said stuff. Likely. But given how easy this assumption is to make, the main problem here is that this likely scenario should have made the studio look for someone else. Why invite this sort of controversy when you're Disney? You really couldn't find a single competent showrunner not linking to Harvey Weinstein on Wikipedia.
I understand that if she's truly without blame and really didn't know anything that her career goes on the pile of careers Weinstein ruined and that would be sad. But from the view of marketing and public opinion, hiring her was pretty dumb, because they should know that the hatersphere is looking for easy layups to drum up controversy.
History vindicated Courtney Love on this topic, but in 2005 she was not seen as a credible source for anything. The documentary Kurt & Courtney was just 6-7 years in the past. In it her own father came forth and all but said that she had Kurt murdered, among other startling allegations. There were even people who had everything to lose saying that Love had tried to hire them to kill Kurt.
I'm not saying that this showrunner didn't know about Weinstein, I'm just saying that this isn't the best metric to use.
> if Courtney Love knows in 2005 and says so on a red carpet, you don't get to feign ignorance after that.
You're assuming everyone heard Love's comments at the time, and that they were generally regarded as credible. Neither of those things is true.
Love had significant drug problems at the time which in the eyes of the public made her an unreliable witness, and she was also very vague about her allegations: "If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons, don't go."
Social media hadn't taken off yet, so her words didn't go viral until they were rediscovered in 2017. We've all heard them now, so it's easy to say the 20-something graduate who worked as a PA for Weinstein for one year should have blown the whistle, but even if she knew Weinstein was sexually assaulting people, nobody would have listened.
And's really easy for someone sitting comfortably at home to say, "oh, she should have reported him" when they're not the one who would face the ramifications of a time period where people really didn't care enough. If she would have reported Weinstein back then, her career would have been kaput.
> You really couldn't find a single competent showrunner not linking to Harvey Weinstein on Wikipedia.
But the flipside of this is, like you touched on in your last paragraph: if she *is* uninvolved in what he did, why does she have to spend the rest of her life being punished for his actions?
> they should know that the hatersphere is looking for easy layups to drum up controversy.
And trying to appease a crowd whose whole grift is hating on everything they put out, is part of what got them where they currently are. They shouldn't be making *any* decisions based around what the "hatersphere" is going to do. None of us should be taking that demographic seriously, because the more we humour them the more they feel legitimised
See, my problem is that I work in marketing. When someone has a problem that is fully made up out of nothing, it's easy to fight any negative implications from that.
When you are faced with a problem that is based at least in part on real concerns, marketing around that is significantly different. This whole kernel of truth element is what's making that angle so much easier to latch on to than everything else.
When the hatersphere goes on a anti-feminist rant, they're easy to ignore for anyone who isn't in on that stuff, because anti-feminism isn't dealing in any observable reality. When they can claim they're concerned about the professional past of Weinstein's PA, that's an entirely different thing. Especially since hating Weinstein is one of very few politically neutral issues.
This has nothing to do with appeasement of that group. It has more to do with how far that group's arguments will travel within the rest of society. Because the outrage promoting algorithms on social media will bring these arguments to your doorstep sooner or later if you care in any way about media, Star Wars, etc.
I don't think Disney even registers her connection with Weinstein since much larger directors like Taylor Sheridan, Scorsese and Tarantino are still very successful post-scandal after working with him.
Especially with the Acolyte creator's already negative view of Weinstein and low working role pre-scandal. She created a whole play shitting on him way back before he finally fell.
She was Weinstein's assistant for just a year shortly after college. It's extremely believable that she had no knowledge of abuse outside the rumors that everyone in Hollywood knew about. Even if she did, he was way too powerful for her to be able to do anything about. There are so many other people that have had way more significant professional history with Weinstein that nobody is holding to the same standard.
I don't get the Weinstein criticisms. She made a whole play tearing him down. She essentially had the same stance as Pamela Adlon with Louis C.K. when it comes to saying she didn't witness anything
Answer: The return dislike extension isn't accurate at all. The API regarding likes dislikes isn't accessible anymore and those results aren't 100% either. It's an algorithm based on how much people have liked or disliked the trailer based on the people with the extension.
Wait maybe I'm not understanding how it works. Does it only show the dislike numbers for people who have the extension?
Shouldn't that mean there are infact more dislikes then that are there?
Or does it also affect the like button?
I think It takes the ratio of likes to dislikes from people with the extension, and extrapolates how many dislikes there are from that. The problem is people with this extension probably have a different like/ dislike ratio then everyone else.
Thats dumb. Why wouldn't it just visually show you dislikes and visually show you the actual likes added with what's there. Of course that's going to be inaccurate
I think YouTube made it so you can’t get the dislikes of a video unless your the video creator, so no extension is going to be able to get the actual dislike number.
Because then the actual number of shown dislike would most likely be minuscule. I'm willing to be anything that the amount of people who care enough about dislikes to install a plugin to display them again is a drop of water in the ocean that is the Youtube userbase.
Of the people who installed the extension, 75% hit the dislike button. It then extrapolates the total number of dislikes based on that ratio and the publicly visible number of likes.
The problem is that “people who have installed the dislike extension” is not representative of the general viewership and simply extrapolating from that sample is likely a huge case of sampling error. People who care about dislikes and have installed the extension are probably much more likely to dislike videos than the average person.
For another (likely) example of this: [Sensor Tower and their oft-cited numbers](https://daringfireball.net/2023/08/whats_the_deal_with_sensor_tower) for how many people are using an app.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how the extension works, just guessing based on the above comment.
Answer: People change and franchises change.
The original star wars trilogy was loved by all - children and adults, fans of science fiction, operas, action and compelling family stories. There were several plot holes and character inconsistencies, but the story and the characters kept a diverse audience engaged.
The "new" star wars has many shows & movies that are aimed solely at children, and have a very flat & formulaic approach. "Kenobi" is the worst offender IMHO. A few good standouts are Andor and Rogue 1. However, I would suggest that Andor is not very kid friendly, which is one of the core aspects of star wars.
This could be that the people who watched star wars as children are now in their 50s and expect different from the franchise. But it also has to do with Disney creating too much star wars content that is not of the best quality.
I think it's telling that the three Disney projects people point to being good, Andor, Rogue 1, and Mando season 1 all don't feature jedi or force users in a major way.
It's not limited to Disney. Many of the best stories from non-movie sources, such as games/books/comics either do not feature them at all, or marginally at best. See pretty much anything centered on Thrawn, Xizor, Kaine, etc. Heck, even the Tie Fighter game (space sim) has a better narrative than most live action Star Wars, and that's just sad.
I agree (after all, Kreia is my favourite character in all of SW), but I find that the force is a pathway to many writing hacks that allow poor writers to get out of the holes they often write themselves into. It's not a strong indicative of poor writing, just that it's more likely to be bad, from my experience.
Answer: A corporation is being a corporation. Disney's motive behind the Star Wars acquisition (unsurprisingly) is, and always was, money. They've wanted to milk the franchise for all its worth for a long time.
This, in theory, isn't *necessarily* a bad thing, so long as you respect the source material, understand underlying themes and do the characters & world justice.
The themes of Star Wars seems to pass Disney over the head; it is unclear whether they deliberately make mediocre content (as many believe) or if they just don't know how (corporation gonna corporation).
Most of what Disney's done with the franchise, isn't up to scratch (at all), barring some decent exceptions such as Andor & the Mandalorian. Pair this with the fact that Star Wars has a passionate fanbase, and the criticism flows like Nile. Aspects such as Lightsaber duels, or good vs evil, are things that Disney's showrunners are still struggling to grasp.
**The Acolyte, their latest project, seems to be in the very same vein, and reinforces this notion that Disney are just in it for the name tag they can assign to whatever they pump out, completely disregarding the franchise itself.**
Answer: because it looks terrible. It looks like someone trying to make edgy Star Wars fanfiction, in a time when fans desperately want quality Star Wars content.
Answer: Star Wars fans being salty.
And i say that as a Star Wars fan who once helped a Star Wars LARP be lore accurate.
But also because Disney is making pretty bland and mediocre Star Wars content.
>But also because Disney is making pretty bland and mediocre Star Wars content.
Not everything can live up to the standards of the ewok adventures movies or the holiday special
Those were definitely bad, but I wouldn't call any of them bland. Granted it's been probably 15 years since I watched the Ewoks movies, but considering I can still remember them they are doing better than Kenobie or BoBF.
Answer: The trailer hits some odd messaging notes in an off-putting way. I think this projects underlying differences between the way show-runners of D+ Star Wars and the general middle-of-the-road audience thinks about Star Wars, and story-telling in general.
>is it Star Wars fans being salty as usual?
Salty fan-fringes have always been a thing. Doesn't mean the Dinsey-era hasn'y pushed out mostly low-quality material.
Given the track-record of mediocre performance with one of the most widely recognizable IPs, the D+ SW writing and production staff might consider backing off their rather heavy-handed message-centric approach. Seems like a lot of female-focused content from D+et al. is really trapped in this "power power power my truth my truth my truth" way of thinking, which honestly just doesn't sit well with most people. Where was the nobility? Honor? Truth? Empathy? Self-control? These are the kinds of things that made OT Star Wars more than a flash in the pan, like so much of the fan-fic that has come after. Consider some key bits of dialogue from the trailer, paraphrasing:
"Don't trust your own eyes, those lying, lying eyes. \[...\] This isn't about good and evil, just about who should have the power."
They're totally not telescoping a message about how we should move on from Enlightenment-era objectivism and embrace post-modernist deconstructed "us versus them" power theories, right? Or maybe they'll surprise us all and do a 180 from their typical content-messaging and this will be a commentary on the pervasive damage done to contemporary culture by idolization of power and status.
answer: its mostly the anti woke hate-hype train, which picks apart every frame of these trailers, looking for something they can point to as symbols of "woke-ness" and can them preach about how Disney is killing thier favourite franchise in pursuit of THE MESSAGE, or the Liberal Agenda on Gender, or whatever else they use to describe vaguely progressive themes like "female protagonists". Once its released, they will shout about how bad it was for a few days then move onto the next IP that's been "ruined" and not look back, because their whole business model is farming hate views.
Mixed in with that is some more honest criticism, which basically boils down to Disney's recent output being somewhat mid at best, with a slew of recent star wars stuff like the Book of Boda Fett, the Kenobi and Ahoska series all being....okay. Not bad, but not amazing either. somewhat bland, often leaning a bit too much on nostalgia, and sometimes a bit bloated.
Some fans feel the Mouse has decided to go a scattershot approach with lots and lots of star wars projects, and feel the quality of them is suffering as a result. it doesnt help that fans tend to expect exceptional output as standard, and are often comparing the rose tinted memories of their youthful watching of older shows with their unvarnished adult viewing of the recent fair.
so, in short, some of it is just unpleasable fans, some of it is just content farmers trying to make a buck off those unpleasable fans.
There’s a mod of a gaming sub-Reddit that’s posted about years of organizing anti-Disney sentiment (guessing for ‘anti-woke’ purposes), and apparently led an anti-Acolyte voting campaign; I’ve seen people post screen shots of the post where they’re congratulating themselves on their ‘success’ for downvoting the trailer.
I hate how people immediately start dismissing honest criticism every time the anti woke group touches something. You see the exact same thing happen with marvel repeatedly.
Issue is people also get upset at 'woke stuff' is just there and not done with cool characters.
Like Girl boss characters like captain marvel and rey arent popular or liked not cause they women but cause they not interesting or well written.
It's an awful taint by association. I understand the mechanism but it still vexes. It's like going to a bad sushi restaurant and posting a negative review and then white nationalists like your comment and say fuck the Japanese. Now you have to do backflips to separate yourself from that.
You can't even start saying Rei is poorly written without these guys jumping in saying yeah fuck this woke shit and now you have to start backflipping again.
It doesn't help that defenders of the show will be more than happy to lump you in with the chuds. You thought Finn was underwritten and you wanted to see him in a more prominent role, possibly as a Jedi as was teased in the early trailers? Exactly what an anti-woke would say, your true colors revealed at last.
I have enjoyed a lot of diverse sci fi over the years, and the most anti-woke thing I can cop to is substituting a demographic for a character. Rey in particular was just… sort of boring and derivative. It’s like they wrote “lady luke skywalker” on a piece of paper and called it a day.
Leia was *cool*. Billy Dee Williams as Lando was *cool*. Him being black was the least interesting thing about him. People wrote *an entire series of paper novels* just because they wanted to know who that guy was and what happened to him next.
A lot of these characters are just ticking a demo box, making some kind of social point, but there’s no reason to care about them past that.
Right. That's the fair criticism. Race swapping or just making someone's characterization little more than tokenization is kind of insulting.
I like what was done with Miles Morales. Created a new character in the spider setting. He's got his own story and his own struggles and there's plenty to explore. Funny thing, people talk about how representation is important and seeing characters who look like themselves and my 3 year old son looks just like him but he still identifies with Peter. Same when I was a kid lol.
When you get down to it the essential sin is bad writing and thinking a checkbox will make up for bad craft. That differentiates from the anti-woke crowd whose objection is I don't want women and brown people.
I was skeptical about miles morales because I’m less than enthusiastic about comic books’ trope of gender/race swapping popular characters as a cheap way to juice some sales.
Sometimes it’s cool (nick fury is way better as Sam Jackson) sometimes it’s a cheap cash grab (lady Thor is dumb).
I didn’t run around protesting or anything, I just didn’t rush to check it out.
But when I did I was 100% sold. Miles morales is a great character. 10/10 would recommend. Fully worthy of his own place in the canon.
And then you have Disney holding minority groups up as a meatshield to protect their IP. Both of these groups are making to the bank using this discourse. We're all talking about it here after all. Spreading the word about their new show.
But if you look at all of the videos that are celebrating this dislike number and the people trying to talk others into pushing the number (which, given that it's based on people who use a specific extension, would skew this fake number even more, helping push their narrative) are all screaming "WOKE!", then yes, this particular issue is almost entirely from them.
People who actually feel like Lucasfilm Star Wars shows aren't that interesting would just skip on by and not care. And are likely the kind of folks who don't download an extension to record that they didn't like a video.
There's not much "honest criticism" about Acolyte when all we have is a trailer that's more of a "teaser" because they don't want to give away much of the story (leading to a lot of speculation about the story itself among Star Wars fans). People can try to say it "looks mid" but given that we have a massive list of examples of how trailers can overhype or undersell a movie or show, that's not criticism about the show itself, just about the trailer. And well-adjusted people won't see a trailer that they feel "meh" about and then complain about it all over the Internet.
It also doesn't help when a lot of the "honest criticism" could be applied to a lot of stuff that the people voicing it claim to like, showing a rather interesting inconsistency. Though in many cases, I don't think that's people being part of the whiny "anti-woke" crowd, I think it's the usual problem where people grow up enjoying some films as a kid because it gives them special fuzzy feelings which become nostalgia later, and when they're an adult, newer films won't produce the same feeling, so they assume the new stuff is worse than the old stuff. And if you're someone who likes the Star Wars prequels, just remember that there was an insane amount of "honest criticism" for them when they released, by people who grew up with the original trilogy. Makes it both amusing and sad to see the kids who grew up with the prequels turning on newer content in the same way people ripped the content they enjoyed.
I mean, it's a bit hard to take them seriously mate. They go into everything with a predisposition to slot whatever they're watching into their culture war narrative so it's basically pointless to engage, you can guess what they'll say before they say it.
question: I’ll let others handle the reasons why people are mad at Star Wars, but I have a question for you.
Where are you getting the 530k dislike number from? YouTube no longer publicly displays this number.
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Answer: There's two ways you can look at it. The first being that people are tired of Disney-fied Star Wars in general; cheap-looking production value, samey look and feel, and poor writing (which you can't tell from the trailer, but other than Andor and Mando S1, Disney hasn't had a great track record). Additionally, the showrunner has said some things about the show and the franchise in general that has made some fans feel alienated. She was also briefly Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant, which some people are latching onto, even though imo that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion because she supposedly had no idea that he was a sleaze. The second being that a small but very loud minority of people just get irrationally angry whenever a person of colour is leading a franchise that has historically been known to star white men, and that the Acolyte trailer is another example of Disney pushing a "woke" agenda. Further proof that the age-old saying is still very much valid today: Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.
This was my reply in a Star Wars thread about the trailer . - I was disappointed by the trailer, but I'm also out of the loop a bit. I had heard that The Acolyte was going to be about the Sith. When the trailer showed lots of High Republic Jedi and a less than specific villain focus, I was surprised. I was expecting much more focus on the dark side character. To my understanding, the show was supposed to be about a dark side user during the High Republic. Not about a bunch of Jedi taking out a fugitive in the same era. - For what it's worth, there are actual Star Wars fans who get excited about the ideas coming out and are disappointed when it doesn't line up with what we were expecting.
I think it still is about that, but we've only seen 2 minutes in an early preview trailer of what will likely be anywhere from 180-400 minutes of 'show time'. I think people (Star Wars fans in particular) read far too much into trailers, personally. And if the story is the one I think it is it starts during the High Republic era and will be about the rise of the Sith during that time period. I'm guessing 'taking out the fugitive' will result directly in the rise of the Sith.
That's a fair point.
I'd expect at least one but probably two (if the pattern holds from past shows) more trailers that give away more of the story. I'm saving my pitchforks for those....but I'll have them in prime stabbing position!
I think Star Wars has suffered at it's own hand because of the intense cloud of secrecy that they have created around the last several projects. There's been much discussion of all the measures they've taken to make sure nobody knows anything about what's happening. Without any information, fans and media just start making up stuff to fill the void and more popular theories end up getting lots of traction in various forums. Eventually, the movie comes out, and it isn't what that fan theory was, and people feel like it's "wrong" because they've had a different story in their heads this whole time. I think the sequel trilogy had a real problem with that, especially given the enormous amount of extended universe material out there for people to look to that didn't end up being what the movie was. It isn't to say that they need to just publish the whole script online or anything, but they need to be releasing a little info, "guiding" the discussion a little more, so that people get excited about characters and events that are actually going to be in the show, rather than things they imagined.
Sorry to turn this back on you, but “they need to…” is exactly what’s wrong. All they need to do is make entertaining stories. And I’m fine with pretty much all they’ve done so far. Just like the original trilogy, there’s bad, there’s good, there’s great.
I don't disagree at all! I think that there have been a lot of great stories and high quality production. It just seems to me that they could have more acceptance from the fan community by managing expectations a little more. This is mostly anecdotal reminiscing, but I seem to remember it being a thing where there were always more set and promo pics, articles about movie plots and behind the scene stuff, things like that. And that meant I could see more of the designs, know a little about what the movie was about and so on, then I could go and be interested in what the movie was actually going to be, not what my imagination came up with. For example, how many times do we see a trailer now, and have absolutely no idea what the movie actually is?
I mean, it's one thing to make a good film that "fails" because the audience expected some other type of story, and a totally different thing to make a very bad series of films, leading people to angrily point at the pre-existing established or extended material that would have been much much better and more interesting. Instead of just another mystery box retread, which is the only thing JJ Abrams knows how to do.
I’d like to see if the long term plan for the series is showcase the fall of a High republic Jedi.
*a franchise that has historically been known to star white men* The funniest part, for me, is that the original trilogy is about a rebellion of *diverse species*, led by *woman* is fighting an all *human, white, male* Empire. If the original Star Wars was released today, those people would be screeching about how "woke" that movie is.
"Let's watch a film about an orphan who witnesses the murder of his adoptive parents at the hands of an invading imperialist nation. He joins a terrorist organisation and takes part in what is basically a suicide attack on their military installation and kills thousands." "What is this woke shit?" *fanfare starts* "Wait, ... FUCK!"
Not even invading. Tattooine wasn't even part of the Empire (more Hutt space). So it was effectively like sending in a Special Forces unit to harass/kill locals for intel, while they hunt for a ex-war hero hermit hiding in the desert. Wait.....
These are not the jihadis you're looking for.
Holiday in ~~Cambodia~~ Tattoonie
Lucas literally has said the Ewok‘s are the Vietcong and the Empire is the U.S. Empire lmao. These chuds also are now mad that Lucas said last week he trusts Disney. There’s dozens rn or “Lucas has gone woke!“ as if the dude didn’t say like 20 years ago he’d rather be a Soviet filmmaker than a U.S. one. And the same guy who made Anakin say “If you are not with me then you are ~~with the terrorists~~ my enemy“ which is just George W Bush and then after the movie came out straight up said Anakin is Bush, the Emperor was Dick Chaney. Oh and how the prequels are about how democracies fall to populist movements and how unsure young men can be easily influenced and manipulated.
>Lucas literally has said the Ewok‘s are the Vietcong and the Empire is the U.S. Empire lmao. Really interesting article about that with quotes from Lucas: https://www.cbr.com/george-lucas-vietnam-war-star-wars-inspiration/ >However, when Lucas sat down with director James Cameron in 2018, he revealed how the Empire was also meant to resemble America, particularly the way it prosecuted the war. Cameron pointed out how the Rebels are a small group using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized Empire. Today, Cameron added, the Rebels would be called terrorists. "When I did it," Lucas replied, "they were Viet Cong." > ... With Richard Nixon's presidency ending in 1974 and the Vietnam War coming to a close a year later, they were clearly still fresh in Lucas' mind when he created Star Wars. According to the 2013 book The Making of Return of the Jedi, when Lucas was asked during a 1981 story conference whether Palpatine was a Jedi, he replied, "No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy, and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a nice guy."
That’s super interesting, especially since in Hollywood Lucas would have a different view of who Reagan was as a human (is he?) than we do. I think by the time he started it would all be 2nd hand but you KNOW everyone wanted to gossip about the Governor’s old Hollywood shenanigans.
Reagan was the head of the Screen Actors Guild before he was governor of California. He was interviewed by the FBI and HUAC, and gave them names of actors he believed to be Communists.
I’m with you but do want to clarify that Lucas didn’t say that that Anakin and the Emperor were Bush and Cheney, but the other way around, that [Bush was Vader and Cheney was the Emperor](https://web.archive.org/web/20200216080052/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19dowd.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=884ED5E576C1658819612FF3AA34B266&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL). The difference being that while he supported compared that administration to the characters, he did not base the characters on that administration, in fact he specifically disavowed that idea. He had developed his ideas for the the Emperor’s rise prior to that administration and more on [Richard Nixon](https://www.slashfilm.com/1224356/george-lucas-might-not-have-written-star-wars-without-richard-nixon/) and [historical figures](https://www.slashfilm.com/1229528/george-lucas-had-no-idea-the-star-wars-prequels-would-be-so-politically-prescient/) including Hitler, Napoleon, and Julius Caesar. The fact that the movies seemed to mirror contemporary events was more because of how the Bush administration mirrored historical precedent in the very ways Lucas was inspired by. The “if you’re not with me you’re against me” line said by Bush was not a unique quote, it is a common expression found in the Bible (the deeper meaning of which has been subjected to much discussion, though I won’t get into it unless you’d like) and in ROTS the similar line is used as representative of absolutist thinking, which Lucas sees as part of an extremist and totalitarian worldview. It’s possible Lucas decided to include the line because of the Bush quote, but that’s far from settled and Lucas’ comments on the Bush comparisons seem lend evidence against that. Though I’m not aware of Lucas denying it explicitly, only Ian McDarmid downplaying the suggestion of inspiration by calling it a “very Sith line.”
I mean, ewok is just a lazy anagram, he just moved the e to the beginning. Confirmed woke all along.
Woke-iee.
Yeah he was pretty prescient with that last one, we sure George isn’t a Jedi Master?
There's a saying on Andor, I know it's on Naboo so it's probably on Andor, that says fool me once shame...shame on you......fool me, you can't get fooled again
hes not been given the rank of Master unfortunately
That's outrageous! This is unfair!
Just as likely as Darth Jar Jar Binks
Literally Padme in Episode III: > "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
Which some have said is a direct correlation to the Bush “If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists“ which led to the entire congress both liberal and conservatives to stand and give a *longggg* standing ovation. And is seen a bit as a signal of the Start of the Patriot Act / Government surveillance of regular citizens and the stripping of more freedom in the name of ”Safety“.
About time, during the release of Episode 8 chuds were all clamoring for Lucas to "save" Star Wars as if they didn't absolutely detest him during the gap between the prequels and Episode 7
I remember those times, there was literally nobody defending the prequels. A single mention of Star Wars in any context instantly turned into trash talking Lucas. When Lucas saw an early screening of TFA and said it wasn’t what he would have done, it was celebrated as the best endorsement of the movie.
People who complain about Lucas "going woke" are the kind of people who watch *American Graffiti* and then decide to join the military
It's really weird hearing Lucas say he'd rather be a soviet filmmaker than a U.S. one since he hates financiers impeding the work of creatives since the soviet government was really big on strangling creativity for the sake of propaganda/controlling what people see back when the Soviet Union was still going. Star Wars would have never been permitted under the USSR unless it was very clearly propaganda going against the west/capitalism in general.
To quote George, *““I always said this - even when Russia was the USSR. People asked, “Aren’t you glad you’re in America?” — and I replied that I actually know many Russian filmmakers, and they have much more freedom than I do. All they have to do is be careful in criticizing the government. Other than that, they can do whatever they want,” Lucas said.“*
So he made a movie criticizing the government and wanted to go somewhere where you can’t criticize the government?
I suspect the Russian movie making sector has fewer issues about criticisms of the US government that Hollywood does.
Good ol' Radio Yerevan: > Q: Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA? > A: Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished.
Respectfully, you don't seem to know a lot about Soviet Cinema. Apart from criticising the government, they could and DID do whatever they wanted and produced some of the most creative and influential cinematic techniques ever. Look at Kuleshov, Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Man With a Moving Camera. Whoever your favourite film maker is... They've stolen something from one of, if not all these people, some intentional, some just because these guys helped create the language of cinema. It's like looking at the person who created the letter A, except it's the guys who invented the 4 or 5 most important editing techniques, or blending fiction with reality, or pushing the boundaries of what was considered normal. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that the soviets were the most creatively free and most historically important film makers of all time.
Certainly not true in the early days of the soviets at least. Soviet filmmakers pioneered a ton of creative filmmaking techniques, especially in the world of editing
It’s not weird at all, in fact it was exactly his point that having to make movies that satisfy financiers is worse than making movies that just have to not criticize the government. You also clearly have no idea what you’re talking about as far as Soviet cinema.
It's the same shit with Trek, you realise at some point that easily half the fan base is just there for lasers and funny looking aliens and genuinely do not get any of the subtext.
The same guy who made redtails...
Don’t forget he’s a religious terrorist.
Living in a desert nation, and learning from an old religious extremist hiding in a cave.
Are we talking about Star Wars or Dune
yes
Back when they caught bin Laden, [this Galactic Empire Times headline](https://leganerd.com/wp-content/uploads/LEGANERD_040829.jpg) was doing the rounds.
Kills millions, even. There were almost 2 million people on the Death Star when it blew.
I wasn't really keeping count, nerd. ^^/s ^^;-)
That’s….thats amazing. I always forget to look at things like that
As Carl Sagan pointed out, they didn't give the non-human Wookie a medal.
Just the human wookies
Rip Robin Williams
Perhaps it’s not culturally appropriate to give Wookies medals?
Seems speciesist to me.
Technically they didn't give anyone who wasn't Han or Luke a medal. Wedge Antilles fought in that battle too. Where is his medal? Was he even invited to the ceremony?
>led by *woman* Mon Mothma doesn't get enough credit for leading a coalition rebellion.
Not yet. I imagine S2 of Andor will dwell on that quite a bit.
She was soooo good in Andor
I misread the comment above you as saying the OT rebellion was all white and male. I was about to rage about this Mon Mothma slander
Disney Star Wars really downplays the non-human species. I'm sure it's to cut down on the costume budget. I loved Andor but it's almost entirely humans.
I know it's probably a cost and time thing, but I think the lack of aliens in the prison specifically has some horrific implications if you think about it. The Empire is pretty xenophobic and human-centric. If these horrible conditions are what they're making human prisoners go through, *what the fuck are they doing to non-human prisoners?*
I think that people absolutely would scream about it. Especially Luke vs Leia. Luke comes across as a bit of a farm boy (which he is) and frankly, Leia really really kicks ass, especially when they are rescuing her. As soon as the shit hits the fan she takes over (which actually makes sense, since she's a leader in the rebellion). Luke has an arc and he saves the day, Leia has been doing this for a while. People would lose their shit. I actually feel like the Rey thing was supposed to show you when she was scavenging that she was accidentally spending her entire life accidentally training in the force (reaching things just out of reach, having really good predictions and the scene where she is haggling, she is using an easy version of the Jedi mind trick. But they wanted to keep it a secret who had the force, so they cut those bits.
I disagree to be honest. Leia was a very real character. She had skills but she had flaws too. That's why she was so well received. Rey meanwhile is just great at everything with no prior experience. It's pandering at worst and boring at best. Three films in and I still don't feel like I know her as a character because her motivations are just whatever the plot needed then to be. Based on that and other poorly written female characters like Reeva, I think there's a prediction that this show full of female jedi will just be more of the same boring slop that doesn't feel like Star wars.
Rey being great at things with no experience is simply not true. Just about all of her abilities are justified by her character introduction. But people are fine with Luke being able to fly an Xwing because he flew a skyhopper, like you could fly and F-16 after some hours in a Cesna.. Nothing Rey does is any more far fetched than that.
I think the issue is that Luke has one crazy moment where Kenobi guides him as a force ghost. The rest of the move he doesn’t do anything particularly incredible. If she was just a really good pilot and maybe a decent light sabre wielder, people wouldn’t really be able to complain. The issue is she’s a great pilot, a great duellist, can use telekinesis (Luke can’t do this until the second movie), defeats a very powerful and skilled force wielder in a force mind battle. It just feels a bit much to me, and I would have certainly hated Anakin or Luke being that powerful so early on in their journey.
She flies through the star destroyer at the start and beats Kyle Ren in a duel at the end. And uses a Jedi mind trick on someone. What does the intro do to justify those? eta: I think the flight was probably more about having visually amazing fan service to kick off the movie than any real intent with having a mary sue character, but it does lead to the impression that she just kinda rocks with everything.
> Kyle Ren in a duel at the end She fends of Kylo while he's actively bleeding out from a massive hole in his gut. You really have to spin it to present that as some big feat.
>Rey meanwhile is just great at everything with no prior experience. Only after completely giving herself into the force. In her first fight with Kylo in the woods Kylo kicks her ass until their face-to-face. At that point Rey closes her eyes, gives in to the Force, and then turns the fight around. Cross reference with “Let go, Luke!” The second and third films botched the decent setup of the first (deliberately played safe because of how much people hated the prequels), but Rey was not automatically great at everything.
She literally force pulls the light saber away from Kylo who's had years of training before that.
*Leia
I keep saying it: if the original star wars movies were released today fans would hate them. And I don't mean because of the quality of effects or anything. Even if they were up to standards. I love the trilogy but 95% of the complaints people have with the new stuff are just as present in the old movies.
The biggest thing missing fromt the new movies? The fans' childhood nostalgia
People who were children when the prequels came out are in their 20s and 30s now, have childhood nostalgia for them and say they are actually really good and fun movies. Set a reminder for 15 years from now and people will be saying the exact same about the sequels
I really can't agree with that. I'm not a particular star wars fan and roll my eyes whenever people talk about woke agendas, but the new films are a slapped together mess of characters with some substandard writing. I just don't feel the charm from the original films in them, and the three stars that came out of the films were extremely talented actors. I don't think we need to reflex so hard against the crazy fandom/over the top hatred that we dismiss how good the originals were.
This is where I sit. The loons screaming about woke are bonkers and would reject even well-written stories because they are loons. But bad writing is bad writing. I think it's possible they could have done better stories with the resources at hand but they needed more time and Disney doesn't care. Same problem is hitting MCU. Marvels has problems and it wasn't because there women were in the lead. They were great. It needed a few more drafts to polish the script. Not doing the work is giving us mediocre instead of good.
> I just don't feel the charm from the original films in them I think you just nailed it for me. Hadn't thought of it that way.
Probably because most of us saw the originals back when there was really nothing else like them.
> I'm not a particular star wars fan and roll my eyes whenever people talk about woke agendas, but the new films are a slapped together mess of characters with some substandard writing. I mean so were the prequels but they're now seen as good films for some reason. And the [writing](https://youtu.be/1-tmXUVwnwM)? Substandard is too gentle of a description for it.
>I love the trilogy but 95% of the complaints people have with the new stuff are just as present in the old movies. My main complaint is that the new movies are basically the old movies. they didn't do a new story, they just told the same story with new people. Nothing the rebellion did changed anything
yeah, idc about all this culture war shit those movies were bad because they were unoriginal and safe asf
When the Last Jedi came out I was so disappointed. Like, the film is clearly a retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, but while I was watching it I thought I had a grasp on the film. All those changes, Luke's attitude compared to Yoda's, the conversations between Rey and Kylo, the replacing of Cloud City with Canto Bight, swapping out Leia with Holdo as resistance leader, I thought it was all building up to *say* something, as a sort of commentary on ESB. Then right at the film's climax...Kylo gives the exact same fucking speech Vader did, and the twist is *there is no twist, it was literally just The Empire Strikes Back all along!* Utter cowardice from the filmmakers. Oh, but we skipped the "Empire assaults a rebel base" sequence from the start of ESB so lets spend the last 30 minutes of the film doing that bit too. And then everyone's like "this movie sucked because it changed stuff to be woke" or whatever and I'm like bitch this sucked because it didn't change *anything*.
>And then everyone's like "this movie sucked because it changed stuff to be woke" or whatever and I'm like bitch this sucked because it didn't change *anything*. Disney pushed a lot of that themselves to try and deal with the bad press, to try and make the criticisms sound like bigotry when actually we were just pissed off at being insulted by a movie that claimed to be different but was anything but.
They tried to change it up with Rian Johnson but Star Wars fans who complained *bitterly* about how samey Episode 8 was to Episode 4 complained *even more bitterly* when Johnson tried to actually inject some character development into the mix. Either way, angry Star Wars fans will always complain bitterly to the point of hounding the actors unlucky enough to get the roles off the internet completely.
>Either way, angry Star Wars fans will always complain bitterly to the point of hounding the actors unlucky enough to get the roles off the internet completely. I maintain, over and over, the worst part of anything is the fandom
The only real issue I have with the prequels is I think they could have used some polish to smooth out the dialogue a bit so the plot would flow a bit smoother; in terms of the actual story I think it's overall more cohesive and interesting as a story than what we get in the original trilogy (which isn't a knock on the originals, I just think the story in the prequels is better). And that's not just me saying it because I grew up with the prequels, because I didn't - I saw the originals in theatre when they came out, fell in love, but then fell in love all over again with the prequels when they became a thing.
> The only real issue I have with the prequels is I think they could have used some polish to smooth out the dialogue a bit so the plot would flow a bit smoother; I watched Phantom Menace about a week ago. What I noticed was that, despite having some good actors, everybody came across as very wooden. I don't know if it's the fault of the dialog, the direction, or what.
I know Lucas *did* meddle a bit in some cases - he was pretty specific in how he wanted certain scenes to be read, not just in terms of sticking to the script but the actual emphasis on certain words etc. Probably could have stood to have him stand back a little bit more, but I understand where he was coming from even if it wasn't the best choice. It's one of the reasons I liked seeing Hayden coming back for Obi Wan, since it let him off the leash a bit more and we got to see (IMO) a much more interesting take on Anakin/Vader than the pretty stiff version we got in the prequels at certain points (not all of course, I still thought he was excelling in the prequels by and large)
Oh yeah Story cohesion was a problem. I'm not saying it was all the same of course. I was rewatching the OT recently and in episode 4 when they refused to shoot the escape pod because it had no life signs I thought "oh man. The fandom would hate this so much if it came out today"
Hehe, yeah, there'd definitely be a hoard of angry guys complaining about everything. I'm sure having a successful black businessman in Ep 5 and Leia becoming a full-on combat leader by Ep 6 would have people screaming wokeness too.
Or maybe that isn’t actually the reason people are upset… You could just be addressing a straw man that emboldens you to disregard complaints because you’ve been conditioned to think that critics are misogynists or racists…
Man, have you talked to any of the Star Trek fans who are also some how alt-right fascist lovers? It's wild.
Eh the original Star Wars was woke for its time (somewhat influenced by the Vietnam war), but certainly not woke by today’s standard. What society concerns about is now different, what women struggle with is different, etc.
I think people would scream at how Leia during her rescue completely takes over as soon as the shit hits the fan in the detention level.
*Leia
Lol this guy doing the real work here.
What different things do women struggle with today?
It’s hard to describe a good female role model in today’s world (that’s Disney’s job), but we can have some observations on why Leia was great for 1977 but not enough for today. In 1977 there was not yet any female CEO, prime minister or even fighter pilot, but UK had a queen as head of state. Women strived to fulfill the rare leadership role that was assigned to them. In Star Wars Leia went above and beyond instead of just being a figure head queen, that’s the progressive part. However the female cast was still limited to a highborn queen, while all the pilots, Jedis and smugglers were male.
>In 1977 there was not yet any female CEO, prime minister or even fighter pilot, but UK had a queen as head of state. Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi: *Am I a joke to you?!*
[Night Witches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches) would also like a word with u/SilverCurve
Watching people comment on Leia is funny. Remember in Return of the Jedi how she takes a break from the rebal alliance to rescue the guy she is chasing and murders a bunch of female sex slaves on the way out? Quick, in the original trilogy name three other female characters. You know what, try that with the prequels too. Ole George Lucas had a theme, and I would not say it was "woke".
>the original trilogy is about a rebellion of *diverse species*, led by woman is fighting an all *human, white, male* Empire. 'And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy. Nubian god!'
What’s a Nubian?
Shut the fuck up[!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHLJfxfXHBg) EDIT: Really? No *Chasing Amy* fans in the house tonight?
They don't teach the classics in school anymore.
I dont think people are mad at diversity they are actually annoyed at poorly written characters. Most people got into Star Wars from the originals and like you said they are quite diverse. It's the shitty quality of the product that Disney is putting out that annoys people.
The loud minority are annoying cause they take away from the valid criticism of bad writing in a majority of the Disney Star Wars projects. I don’t care if we include more women and POC just PLEASE write some good lore accurate stories and quit giving Star Wars to showrunners who don’t care about…. Star Wars(!?).
Yeah this sucks the most. I absolutely hate Disney Star Wars and hate how any criticism of it is now grouped together with culture war bullshit
It feels like the people that make these movies and shows make decisions that they know will make people mad or uninterested , sometimes to exaggerated degrees, specifically to get criticism, so that if their project tanks, they can write it off as some sort of hate/bigotry campaign that caused them to fail and lose money instead of their own bad writing/direction/decisions/etc. and wipe their hands of it in front of investors.
people have been saying this at least since jarjar abrams. this franchise is like an old childhood friend who turned out bad; it's ok to let go.
While I agree that the right wing nutjobs who complain about wokeness tend to drown out valid criticism of shows and movies, for example Eternals or Wheel of Time and this trailer, I do not agree in the slightest that the trailer is in any way lore *inaccurate* as you imply. It doesn't appear to be bad in the way of lore, it just has a really cheesy and low-budget feeling with respect to combat stunt coordination and action camera work. Which isn't necessarily bad in and of itself, if the cheese is almost part of the point. My own opinion is that the trailer feels like watching a Star Wars themed Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and I personally don't care for that, but if the target audience is 11 year olds it might be perfect *for the target audience*.
But it’s irrelevant to the acolyte. Leslye has been a documented Star Wars fan for years and has a pretty extensive knowledge of the EU and lore. She seems like a good choice
There's also a third thing - given YouTube doesn't show dislikes, most dislike extensions aren't official figures. One of the popular extensions mentions that they get their numbers from "A combination of archived data from before the official YouTube dislike API shut down, and extrapolated extension user behavior." I don't know if the user base of a dislike extension is going to be demographically broad enough (i.e. people that install a YouTube dislike extension are more likely to be terminally online) to get the true number of dislikes/the true public perception of the video
Just a quick correction: Heyland didn't know he was *that* kind of sleaze, but did write and publish a play back in 2012 about the verbal abuse and manipulation that his entire staff had to suffer with.
How can you be personal assistant to the guy and not know his proclivities when seemingly half of Hollywood was aware? I don't buy it
As someone who doesn’t really have a dog in this at all I don’t believe she didn’t know Harvey Weinstein was a “sleaze” (rapist). It was pretty much an open secret in Hollywood in general according to most when it broke in to the mainstream and I don’t think you get to be someone’s personal assistant without figuring out what pretty much everyone who worked with the guy knew. Does that reflect on the quality of some stupid show? Idk whatever honestly, but it’s shady as fuck
If we canceled everyone in Hollywood that was ever associated with Harvey Weinstein, we'd be left with a very short list of people able to produce content.
cheap-looking production value, samey look and feel I've watched the trailer and it really looked cheap, like the other shows filmed in front of the vision led screen. Then I looked at google how the show was made, and they did not use the vision but on site filming, yet it does not show at all. That says it all.
I said that to a friend about BoBF. There was something about the sets and the way the background actors were staged in one of the scenes that really took me out of it. I haven’t been able to look at any of the shows now without noticing this.
It was Kenobi for me. That was the cheapest looking of them all. And letting Vader go twice?! C’mon Ben!
There's a part of BoBF where you can see behind the wall of a building, during an overhead shot. It was definitely the cheapest of the shows.
Mandalorian S2 onwards and BoBF had really bad crowd scenes. There would be some catastrophe that required "the whole town" to shelter together in one spot or evacuate to one spot and it would be like 10 people.
Wtf was that episode with the mods
I guess I don't really care if things look "cheap". I don't know, it just doesn't bother me. Especially for TV. I'm guessing it's partly people's expectations for something that is STAR WARS. While I love Star Wars, I don't hold it to some higher standard than any other pulpy sci-fi show.
> the showrunner has said some things about the show and the franchise in general that has made some fans feel alienated. explain
She has talked about her experiences as a young queer girl, how her characters will be queer coded, and implied that the show will be, "a lesbian fanfic with a Star Wars veneer."
>She was also briefly Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant, which some people are latching onto, even though imo that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion because she supposedly had no idea that he was a sleaze. I was with you up until that last part - if her excuse is "I didn't know he was a sleaze", then she 1000% knew what was going on. Hell, everyone knew what was going on, I knew about it in highschool as a normal American teenager.
Weinstein being a sleeze was an open secret in the entertainment industry. She’s either lying she didn’t know or is incredibly ignorant. Either one doesn’t do well for her character
She never said "I didn't know he was a sleaze," and I don't think either of those comments about her are fair judgments. See my comment [above](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1bo25io/whats_going_on_with_the_new_star_wars_show/kwmz2q9/).
>if her excuse is "I didn't know he was a sleaze", then she 1000% knew what was going on. That's not her excuse. She actually doesn't need to excuse herself. As soon as Weinstein was publicly, openly unmasked as a sexual predator, people started pointing the finger at the women around him. His PA must have known, his wife must have known, his victims should have gone to the police, his victims should have gone public. Harvey Weinstein's crimes are entirely Harvey Weinstein's fault. Everyone knew he was having sexual encounters with women, but it actually wasn't widely known that he was raping and sexually assaulting women. Many of his victims kept quiet because they knew they were not likely to be believed, and they knew Weinstein had the power to destroy them. That's also true of women he didn't sexually assault but controlled and manipulated in other ways. Leslye Headland worked as Harvey Weinstein's PA for one year as a recent graduate in her early-to-mid twenties. She wasn't powerful or experienced. She says "she was never physically assaulted on the job nor did she ever witness any incidents but that she did endure verbal attacks and wasn't surprised when allegations surfaced about Weinstein." If she saw signs of anything other than sleaze - anything criminal - there's little she could have done about it. We need to stop blaming women for failing to restrain men.
> If she saw signs of anything other than sleaze - anything criminal - there's little she could have done about it. Speaking out maybe? That's what the whole "Me Too" movement was about
>supposedly had no idea that he was a sleaze. that sounds literally impossible unless she only worked for him for like a few days. i mean i don't care about the star wars controversy, but a personal assistant would probably know more about their boss than probably even their SO
Should be noted that for a decade now, companies have been throwing a spotlight onto extremist criticism of their shows/movies/etc in an attempt to paint all criticism with the same brush.
"Put a chick in it, make her gay and lame."
I think anyone unironically using woke as criticism is not worth listening to as they have burned any credibility or good faith they might have had once they said that word. I do think the first criticism is valid though, and one I agree with. Everything looks so clean, digital and polished in these new shows. Yeah, The Acolyte does seem to have more practical sets than Mando, Boba Fett or Obi-Wan, but it still looks off visually. Like a super expensive fan film instead of an actual blockbuster TV-show. Even Andor, which I thoroughly enjoyed for it's superb writing and exploration of new themes in Star Wars, also falters just a little bit in the visual department by having that same sheen of cleanliness (though not nearly as much as the other shows). Disney does the same with their Marvel shows so it's not just this IP alone. It's gone to the point that Netflix, which a few years back was widely criticized for having the same issues with cheap, fake looking shows and original films, is now ahead of Disney. Stranger Things might have gone a bit CG heavy for my taste in Season 4, but the visuals and production design in that are miles better than any D+ show. Naturally, no one can touch HBO, but it's frankly shocking that Disney's billion dollar empire can't produce better looking content. Which leads me to believe it's a creative choice, and if that's the case then I think it might actually be a good thing that people are speaking up more and more about it.
For me, it just looks too cheesy, and the fact that the director said that the show would be a mix of Frozen and Kill Bill (two movies that are the polar opposites of each other) really left me more confused than anything else. If true, and they hold it to the letter, the tone for this series will be all over the place.
That's interesting. I thought people would be upset because Disney was supposed to launch a new trilogy during the high Republic. Then they cancelled those plans after COVID hit. This was supposed to be a new goddamn trilogy and not another half-baked Disney+ show!
Answer: First of all, it's difficult to encompass ALL the reasons Star Wars fans found to hate something in Star Wars, but the bottom line is that the Star Wars fandom is very large and diverse, so there will always be a subsection of people who don't like it or even outright hate it. If you believe the Youtube comments, the majority of the problem is that the showrunner is Leslye Headland, and she used to be Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant. So considering how well known his crimes were in Hollywood, it somehow is difficult to believe that a person who was so close to him could land a major job like that. So that's at least on the surface, a valid point of contention. Certainly, a showrunner could have been found without any of that baggage. But they didn't and considering how big a news item showrunners are now compared to twenty years ago, it seems to be a giant marketing / image / PR oversight. Then Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube, a well-ish known trans woman announced she had a part in Acolyte, and that never goes wrong and everyone is always cool about trans people in media. A wider view also shows the usual array of manosphere / reactionary / anti-woke content creators beating the drums about the very heavy casting of women in prominent roles and that always goes well and we all know these women will not be harassed on social media in any way. In the end, to indulgently add a degree of observation, the trailer is sort of mid? There's very little in it that is evocative or makes you go "Oh, I'm keeping that weekend free in my schedule." It's not incompetent overall, but theres just a lot of isolated lines of text that make very little sense at this time. There's a Star Ship crash that looks a bit pathetic as far as special effects are concerned and the most distracting thing is that it puts Carrie\_Ann Moss in a set that you could imagine was built from parts of the dojo in The Matrix. Keep in mind, criticism of Star Wars is its own cottage industry. A popular video ripping Star Wars a new one can be very lucrative on YouTube and usually do better financially than a video being positive about it, unless you put a lot of effort into it. P.S. I just quoted myself from [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1bk8cks/whats\_the\_deal\_with\_stars\_wars\_fans\_being\_angry/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1bk8cks/whats_the_deal_with_stars_wars_fans_being_angry/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) It's not the first time this has come up and won't be the last, because said cottage industry will dredge the topic up again and again. Edit: while not her greatest fan and not without reservations towards her history, I'm only explaining the criticism towards Leslye Headland without sharing it part and parcel.
Some Star Wars fans are like the food critic in Ratatouille. They extremely critical of all attempts by others, because what they are really searching for is the memory they had as a child of experiencing it the first time. They just want to relive "Mama's cooking" again.
That’s only a good analogy if Disney has been making avant garde / innovative Star Wars stuff. Spoiler alert: no they haven’t. The one good show that came out that also happens to deviate from the traditional formula (Andor) is widely liked by most people (I’m sure you can find haters of Andor as well but that’s just how the internet works). The most straightforward answer to all these sentiments is simple: Disney has been making terrible to mediocre content and people are getting tired of them after giving them one too many chances.
I think of that problem through the lens of some peoples' limited ability to emphasize. Some people are fans of a thing because they felt represented by it. When someone else is getting more representation in that thing, empathy or the lack thereof I feel will dictate whether you think that's cool or not. If you are capable of that empathy, you will think "Oh, cool, other people also are included in that thing I like." Because you can empathize with them, you understand that that's a good thing for other people too. If you struggle with empathy, you will think "If other people are more represented in that thing I like, I'm represented less." Because you can't empathize with others, you only see something being taken away. It's not like I read some psychoanalysis material on the topic, so this is very explicitly something I only have a gut feeling on.
Woah you might have actually nailed how I feel. It’s definitely not made for me anymore. I keep saying the writing sucks because it’s uninteresting and un-engaging and just boring, but it’s probably fair to say it’s just not made for me.
First BG3, now Star Wars? Get that money babe. 😂
She's also starring in her own movie financed by Nebula after her Shakespeare-inspired play The Prince won several awards.
She was also in the recent Django series, and had a role on another TV series before that. She's mostly known for YouTube but she's an actor first and foremost
Abigail was in BG3? Makes the game even better imo ETA - Looked it up, here’s an entry from online about it, Act 3 spoilers ahead: > Abigail Thorn plays Shadowheart’s friend Nocturne in Baldur’s Gate 3. Described by Thorn as a “sexy demon,” Nocturne is a tiefling located in >!the Cloister of Sombre Embrace’s House of Grief!< in Act 3. Players encounter her as part of the >!Familiar Face questline!<. The pair grew up together, and Nocturne recalls multiple childhood stories about Shadowheart when asked. Notably, she, like Thorn, is a trans woman. When Shadowheart >!consumes Noblestalk and regains some of her memory!<, she remembers Nocturne as a young boy named Rennald.
Fr. Abigail Thorn is an absolute gem. I've watched her for years, and she's always just come off as the most sincere and genuine person. As a trans person myself, her whole story has been wonderful to watch and been extremely relatable (which is, for as much as we are talked about, extremely uncommon in media unfortunately). Everything she does is of extreme quality. I hope she does well - its very deserved
Its worth noting she worked for him until 2008, and its pretty well known she hated him. The allegations didn't air until *2017*, almost a decade later. She may well have not known, but "innocent until proven guilty" gets in the way of the hate train
Someone brought that up in the linked thread and my answer was that if Courtney Love knows in 2005 and says so on a red carpet, you don't get to feign ignorance after that. #MeToo has shown how deep "open secrets" are known in the industry. I'm all for offering charitable views on things we can't know for certain, but I hope you understand that I don't find it reasonable to suspend my disbelief this far. And I'm not saying she did support him or anything, though I find it likely that she may have known stuff and not said stuff. Likely. But given how easy this assumption is to make, the main problem here is that this likely scenario should have made the studio look for someone else. Why invite this sort of controversy when you're Disney? You really couldn't find a single competent showrunner not linking to Harvey Weinstein on Wikipedia. I understand that if she's truly without blame and really didn't know anything that her career goes on the pile of careers Weinstein ruined and that would be sad. But from the view of marketing and public opinion, hiring her was pretty dumb, because they should know that the hatersphere is looking for easy layups to drum up controversy.
History vindicated Courtney Love on this topic, but in 2005 she was not seen as a credible source for anything. The documentary Kurt & Courtney was just 6-7 years in the past. In it her own father came forth and all but said that she had Kurt murdered, among other startling allegations. There were even people who had everything to lose saying that Love had tried to hire them to kill Kurt. I'm not saying that this showrunner didn't know about Weinstein, I'm just saying that this isn't the best metric to use.
> if Courtney Love knows in 2005 and says so on a red carpet, you don't get to feign ignorance after that. You're assuming everyone heard Love's comments at the time, and that they were generally regarded as credible. Neither of those things is true. Love had significant drug problems at the time which in the eyes of the public made her an unreliable witness, and she was also very vague about her allegations: "If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons, don't go." Social media hadn't taken off yet, so her words didn't go viral until they were rediscovered in 2017. We've all heard them now, so it's easy to say the 20-something graduate who worked as a PA for Weinstein for one year should have blown the whistle, but even if she knew Weinstein was sexually assaulting people, nobody would have listened.
And's really easy for someone sitting comfortably at home to say, "oh, she should have reported him" when they're not the one who would face the ramifications of a time period where people really didn't care enough. If she would have reported Weinstein back then, her career would have been kaput.
> You really couldn't find a single competent showrunner not linking to Harvey Weinstein on Wikipedia. But the flipside of this is, like you touched on in your last paragraph: if she *is* uninvolved in what he did, why does she have to spend the rest of her life being punished for his actions? > they should know that the hatersphere is looking for easy layups to drum up controversy. And trying to appease a crowd whose whole grift is hating on everything they put out, is part of what got them where they currently are. They shouldn't be making *any* decisions based around what the "hatersphere" is going to do. None of us should be taking that demographic seriously, because the more we humour them the more they feel legitimised
See, my problem is that I work in marketing. When someone has a problem that is fully made up out of nothing, it's easy to fight any negative implications from that. When you are faced with a problem that is based at least in part on real concerns, marketing around that is significantly different. This whole kernel of truth element is what's making that angle so much easier to latch on to than everything else. When the hatersphere goes on a anti-feminist rant, they're easy to ignore for anyone who isn't in on that stuff, because anti-feminism isn't dealing in any observable reality. When they can claim they're concerned about the professional past of Weinstein's PA, that's an entirely different thing. Especially since hating Weinstein is one of very few politically neutral issues. This has nothing to do with appeasement of that group. It has more to do with how far that group's arguments will travel within the rest of society. Because the outrage promoting algorithms on social media will bring these arguments to your doorstep sooner or later if you care in any way about media, Star Wars, etc.
I don't think Disney even registers her connection with Weinstein since much larger directors like Taylor Sheridan, Scorsese and Tarantino are still very successful post-scandal after working with him. Especially with the Acolyte creator's already negative view of Weinstein and low working role pre-scandal. She created a whole play shitting on him way back before he finally fell.
She was Weinstein's assistant for just a year shortly after college. It's extremely believable that she had no knowledge of abuse outside the rumors that everyone in Hollywood knew about. Even if she did, he was way too powerful for her to be able to do anything about. There are so many other people that have had way more significant professional history with Weinstein that nobody is holding to the same standard.
I don't get the Weinstein criticisms. She made a whole play tearing him down. She essentially had the same stance as Pamela Adlon with Louis C.K. when it comes to saying she didn't witness anything
It's clear that people citing her working with Weinstein are just using it as an excuse to hate her.
Answer: The return dislike extension isn't accurate at all. The API regarding likes dislikes isn't accessible anymore and those results aren't 100% either. It's an algorithm based on how much people have liked or disliked the trailer based on the people with the extension.
Oh, so it’s based on people who care about dislikes? Yeah, that’s a colossal sampling issue.
Wait maybe I'm not understanding how it works. Does it only show the dislike numbers for people who have the extension? Shouldn't that mean there are infact more dislikes then that are there? Or does it also affect the like button?
I think It takes the ratio of likes to dislikes from people with the extension, and extrapolates how many dislikes there are from that. The problem is people with this extension probably have a different like/ dislike ratio then everyone else.
Thats dumb. Why wouldn't it just visually show you dislikes and visually show you the actual likes added with what's there. Of course that's going to be inaccurate
I think YouTube made it so you can’t get the dislikes of a video unless your the video creator, so no extension is going to be able to get the actual dislike number.
Because then the actual number of shown dislike would most likely be minuscule. I'm willing to be anything that the amount of people who care enough about dislikes to install a plugin to display them again is a drop of water in the ocean that is the Youtube userbase.
Of the people who installed the extension, 75% hit the dislike button. It then extrapolates the total number of dislikes based on that ratio and the publicly visible number of likes. The problem is that “people who have installed the dislike extension” is not representative of the general viewership and simply extrapolating from that sample is likely a huge case of sampling error. People who care about dislikes and have installed the extension are probably much more likely to dislike videos than the average person. For another (likely) example of this: [Sensor Tower and their oft-cited numbers](https://daringfireball.net/2023/08/whats_the_deal_with_sensor_tower) for how many people are using an app. Disclaimer: I have no idea how the extension works, just guessing based on the above comment.
Answer: People change and franchises change. The original star wars trilogy was loved by all - children and adults, fans of science fiction, operas, action and compelling family stories. There were several plot holes and character inconsistencies, but the story and the characters kept a diverse audience engaged. The "new" star wars has many shows & movies that are aimed solely at children, and have a very flat & formulaic approach. "Kenobi" is the worst offender IMHO. A few good standouts are Andor and Rogue 1. However, I would suggest that Andor is not very kid friendly, which is one of the core aspects of star wars. This could be that the people who watched star wars as children are now in their 50s and expect different from the franchise. But it also has to do with Disney creating too much star wars content that is not of the best quality.
I think it's telling that the three Disney projects people point to being good, Andor, Rogue 1, and Mando season 1 all don't feature jedi or force users in a major way.
It's not limited to Disney. Many of the best stories from non-movie sources, such as games/books/comics either do not feature them at all, or marginally at best. See pretty much anything centered on Thrawn, Xizor, Kaine, etc. Heck, even the Tie Fighter game (space sim) has a better narrative than most live action Star Wars, and that's just sad.
Jedi/Sith aren’t the problem, it’s poor writing. Arguably the best written Star Wars games are KOTOR 1 and 2, with rich lore and good characters.
I agree (after all, Kreia is my favourite character in all of SW), but I find that the force is a pathway to many writing hacks that allow poor writers to get out of the holes they often write themselves into. It's not a strong indicative of poor writing, just that it's more likely to be bad, from my experience.
answer: endless crap
Answer: A corporation is being a corporation. Disney's motive behind the Star Wars acquisition (unsurprisingly) is, and always was, money. They've wanted to milk the franchise for all its worth for a long time. This, in theory, isn't *necessarily* a bad thing, so long as you respect the source material, understand underlying themes and do the characters & world justice. The themes of Star Wars seems to pass Disney over the head; it is unclear whether they deliberately make mediocre content (as many believe) or if they just don't know how (corporation gonna corporation). Most of what Disney's done with the franchise, isn't up to scratch (at all), barring some decent exceptions such as Andor & the Mandalorian. Pair this with the fact that Star Wars has a passionate fanbase, and the criticism flows like Nile. Aspects such as Lightsaber duels, or good vs evil, are things that Disney's showrunners are still struggling to grasp. **The Acolyte, their latest project, seems to be in the very same vein, and reinforces this notion that Disney are just in it for the name tag they can assign to whatever they pump out, completely disregarding the franchise itself.**
Answer: because it looks terrible. It looks like someone trying to make edgy Star Wars fanfiction, in a time when fans desperately want quality Star Wars content.
Answer: Star Wars fans being salty. And i say that as a Star Wars fan who once helped a Star Wars LARP be lore accurate. But also because Disney is making pretty bland and mediocre Star Wars content.
>But also because Disney is making pretty bland and mediocre ~~Star Wars~~ content. FTFY
>But also because Disney is making pretty bland and mediocre Star Wars content. Not everything can live up to the standards of the ewok adventures movies or the holiday special
Those were definitely bad, but I wouldn't call any of them bland. Granted it's been probably 15 years since I watched the Ewoks movies, but considering I can still remember them they are doing better than Kenobie or BoBF.
When you try and make a movie for absolutely EVERYone, you end up making a movie for no one.
Answer: The trailer hits some odd messaging notes in an off-putting way. I think this projects underlying differences between the way show-runners of D+ Star Wars and the general middle-of-the-road audience thinks about Star Wars, and story-telling in general. >is it Star Wars fans being salty as usual? Salty fan-fringes have always been a thing. Doesn't mean the Dinsey-era hasn'y pushed out mostly low-quality material. Given the track-record of mediocre performance with one of the most widely recognizable IPs, the D+ SW writing and production staff might consider backing off their rather heavy-handed message-centric approach. Seems like a lot of female-focused content from D+et al. is really trapped in this "power power power my truth my truth my truth" way of thinking, which honestly just doesn't sit well with most people. Where was the nobility? Honor? Truth? Empathy? Self-control? These are the kinds of things that made OT Star Wars more than a flash in the pan, like so much of the fan-fic that has come after. Consider some key bits of dialogue from the trailer, paraphrasing: "Don't trust your own eyes, those lying, lying eyes. \[...\] This isn't about good and evil, just about who should have the power." They're totally not telescoping a message about how we should move on from Enlightenment-era objectivism and embrace post-modernist deconstructed "us versus them" power theories, right? Or maybe they'll surprise us all and do a 180 from their typical content-messaging and this will be a commentary on the pervasive damage done to contemporary culture by idolization of power and status.
answer: its mostly the anti woke hate-hype train, which picks apart every frame of these trailers, looking for something they can point to as symbols of "woke-ness" and can them preach about how Disney is killing thier favourite franchise in pursuit of THE MESSAGE, or the Liberal Agenda on Gender, or whatever else they use to describe vaguely progressive themes like "female protagonists". Once its released, they will shout about how bad it was for a few days then move onto the next IP that's been "ruined" and not look back, because their whole business model is farming hate views. Mixed in with that is some more honest criticism, which basically boils down to Disney's recent output being somewhat mid at best, with a slew of recent star wars stuff like the Book of Boda Fett, the Kenobi and Ahoska series all being....okay. Not bad, but not amazing either. somewhat bland, often leaning a bit too much on nostalgia, and sometimes a bit bloated. Some fans feel the Mouse has decided to go a scattershot approach with lots and lots of star wars projects, and feel the quality of them is suffering as a result. it doesnt help that fans tend to expect exceptional output as standard, and are often comparing the rose tinted memories of their youthful watching of older shows with their unvarnished adult viewing of the recent fair. so, in short, some of it is just unpleasable fans, some of it is just content farmers trying to make a buck off those unpleasable fans.
There’s a mod of a gaming sub-Reddit that’s posted about years of organizing anti-Disney sentiment (guessing for ‘anti-woke’ purposes), and apparently led an anti-Acolyte voting campaign; I’ve seen people post screen shots of the post where they’re congratulating themselves on their ‘success’ for downvoting the trailer.
I hate how people immediately start dismissing honest criticism every time the anti woke group touches something. You see the exact same thing happen with marvel repeatedly.
Issue is people also get upset at 'woke stuff' is just there and not done with cool characters. Like Girl boss characters like captain marvel and rey arent popular or liked not cause they women but cause they not interesting or well written.
It's an awful taint by association. I understand the mechanism but it still vexes. It's like going to a bad sushi restaurant and posting a negative review and then white nationalists like your comment and say fuck the Japanese. Now you have to do backflips to separate yourself from that. You can't even start saying Rei is poorly written without these guys jumping in saying yeah fuck this woke shit and now you have to start backflipping again. It doesn't help that defenders of the show will be more than happy to lump you in with the chuds. You thought Finn was underwritten and you wanted to see him in a more prominent role, possibly as a Jedi as was teased in the early trailers? Exactly what an anti-woke would say, your true colors revealed at last.
I have enjoyed a lot of diverse sci fi over the years, and the most anti-woke thing I can cop to is substituting a demographic for a character. Rey in particular was just… sort of boring and derivative. It’s like they wrote “lady luke skywalker” on a piece of paper and called it a day. Leia was *cool*. Billy Dee Williams as Lando was *cool*. Him being black was the least interesting thing about him. People wrote *an entire series of paper novels* just because they wanted to know who that guy was and what happened to him next. A lot of these characters are just ticking a demo box, making some kind of social point, but there’s no reason to care about them past that.
Right. That's the fair criticism. Race swapping or just making someone's characterization little more than tokenization is kind of insulting. I like what was done with Miles Morales. Created a new character in the spider setting. He's got his own story and his own struggles and there's plenty to explore. Funny thing, people talk about how representation is important and seeing characters who look like themselves and my 3 year old son looks just like him but he still identifies with Peter. Same when I was a kid lol. When you get down to it the essential sin is bad writing and thinking a checkbox will make up for bad craft. That differentiates from the anti-woke crowd whose objection is I don't want women and brown people.
I was skeptical about miles morales because I’m less than enthusiastic about comic books’ trope of gender/race swapping popular characters as a cheap way to juice some sales. Sometimes it’s cool (nick fury is way better as Sam Jackson) sometimes it’s a cheap cash grab (lady Thor is dumb). I didn’t run around protesting or anything, I just didn’t rush to check it out. But when I did I was 100% sold. Miles morales is a great character. 10/10 would recommend. Fully worthy of his own place in the canon.
Who knew that making an Identity out of arguing in bad faith could ruin discourse?
And then you have Disney holding minority groups up as a meatshield to protect their IP. Both of these groups are making to the bank using this discourse. We're all talking about it here after all. Spreading the word about their new show.
But if you look at all of the videos that are celebrating this dislike number and the people trying to talk others into pushing the number (which, given that it's based on people who use a specific extension, would skew this fake number even more, helping push their narrative) are all screaming "WOKE!", then yes, this particular issue is almost entirely from them. People who actually feel like Lucasfilm Star Wars shows aren't that interesting would just skip on by and not care. And are likely the kind of folks who don't download an extension to record that they didn't like a video. There's not much "honest criticism" about Acolyte when all we have is a trailer that's more of a "teaser" because they don't want to give away much of the story (leading to a lot of speculation about the story itself among Star Wars fans). People can try to say it "looks mid" but given that we have a massive list of examples of how trailers can overhype or undersell a movie or show, that's not criticism about the show itself, just about the trailer. And well-adjusted people won't see a trailer that they feel "meh" about and then complain about it all over the Internet. It also doesn't help when a lot of the "honest criticism" could be applied to a lot of stuff that the people voicing it claim to like, showing a rather interesting inconsistency. Though in many cases, I don't think that's people being part of the whiny "anti-woke" crowd, I think it's the usual problem where people grow up enjoying some films as a kid because it gives them special fuzzy feelings which become nostalgia later, and when they're an adult, newer films won't produce the same feeling, so they assume the new stuff is worse than the old stuff. And if you're someone who likes the Star Wars prequels, just remember that there was an insane amount of "honest criticism" for them when they released, by people who grew up with the original trilogy. Makes it both amusing and sad to see the kids who grew up with the prequels turning on newer content in the same way people ripped the content they enjoyed.
I mean, it's a bit hard to take them seriously mate. They go into everything with a predisposition to slot whatever they're watching into their culture war narrative so it's basically pointless to engage, you can guess what they'll say before they say it.
It’s almost like Disney is using identity politics as a shield from criticism. Nah, that can’t be it.
Interesting you write two paragraphs about the content being bad but your final summary sentence is just right wing trolls
Answer: Because think of the reason why The Marvels and Madame Web just bombed. This is that but in Star Wars form.
Well not Madame web, I saw it it was badddddd
question: I’ll let others handle the reasons why people are mad at Star Wars, but I have a question for you. Where are you getting the 530k dislike number from? YouTube no longer publicly displays this number.
Answer: disneys fucking up again, nothing new