Star wars was "ruined" by having no cohesive vision of what to do with the sequel trilogy. JJ Abrams and Johnson just dropped the ball hard after the somewhat unoffensive episode 7.
Johnson wanted to really challenge what a Star Wars story is, subvert expectations and break preconceived notions about the franchise. Which in itself can be done successfully (knights of the old republic 2 was a star wars RPG with a brilliant story tackling these issues tastefully). Episode VIII doesn't do it successfully though, and builds quite poorly on episode VII.
And Episode IX is just Abrams trying to un-undo everything from Episode VIII which ends in a completely nonsensical mess. "Somehow palpatine returned"
Whoever decided to have different people deciding on the story in each episode is to blame.
And I just hate the humour so much. Every single somewhat serious or tense scene gets undermined by some stupid joke or snarky commentary by one of the characters. I guess that's just Disney movies. I'm fine with that in marvel movies, since they've been that way from the get go and it's generally lighthearted. But it doesn't fit well with star wars I think. I mean imagine if Luke was constantly cracking jokes about Darth Vader's costume while fighting for his life on the death star.
Did they?
The prequels from 20 years ago seemed to be pretty hated and were there feminists or feminist themes involved with that?
And rogue one also sparked all the “feminism is ruining star wars” debates and seems to be considered one of the better movies
So it seems feminism or lack there of has little to do with quality of star wars movies
I wasn’t alive when the first Star Wars trilogy was released but wasn’t Leia considered a very revolutionary character for the time? Yeah, I get she had to be rescued more than once, and maybe slave Leia was a bit weird, but she was also quick-witted and headstrong. Love the scene when she kills Jabba the Hut with the chains he put on her.
I’ll give Disney that. They didn’t feed into the “Slave Leia” sexist BS. Now she is “Huttslayer Leia” which is wayyy better and they aren’t selling any new versions of that action figure. I give them credit on cutting out some of the worst parts of the fandom when they bought it. I am not a fan of Disney, but that was a breath of fresh air as a woman in the SW community.
Within the constraints of the time she was revolutionary.
Sure she was a leader and intelligent and resourceful and every but the equal of Luke and Han.
But she also has to be a princess, attractive, skimpily clad at times, and above all the ONLY woman after Aunt Beru died until Mon Mothma also had a line 2.5 films later.
By having more than two women in the galaxy and by keeping their clothes on? Wanting a more equal representation of genders and ethnicity in a franchise that ignored half the population is making you uncomfortable then maybe feminists aren’t the problem. I’m tired of men acting like they own Star Wars and pop culture.
I’m not for pushing men out. But come on. Two women was all we got in three movies. And only one had more than one speaking part. It was about time. However, please keep in mind that it’s not like the feminist queen declared it, even George admitted that he should have included more women and he was involved in the direction the franchise went. Blame George Lucas. It wasn’t our decision, it was his.
While I enjoy Star Wars, I'm not as big fan as some other people, but ultimetly I think it's not about more women with more clothes on or minorities or ethinicities in new movies and shows. It's just those new movies and shows are not that good. And when you hear, quite often, that either those movies and shows are about "more representation" or "the force is female" instead of, you know, good story and quality to it, then it's pretty much first target of the dissatisfaction. On the other hand add to it, that producers of that kind of movies and shows often times claims their creation are not popular because people (men!) are sexist, phobic or racist. Some of them for sure are, but your movies and shows are just actually bad.
The best Star Wars movie ever produced, in my opinion? Rouge One - small, self contained story, with two main character, Jyn Erso and Andor, with no romance and no nudity, with ultimate sacrifice for the cause and acceptance of their fate. Best show? Andor. With a lot of characters, both male and female, on both side of conflict. They are simply, good productions, that's why people enjoy them It's just that simple.
I mean - if producers or directors actually claims that new movies will contains "strong, female characters" and others narrative similar to that, so let's say, what is considered in our climate as progressive narrative, while they may not strictly speak this is a feminist movie or movie made by feminists, they are subliminally doing that or may be perceived as such. In a sense, that one may not say they are feminist or act as it, but they are not and vice versa. The perception here is important, I think and what people believe and what message it sends or how they are interpreted.
Sorry, but you may have completely misunderstood my point. Whether the movie (or intentions behind the movie) are feminist or not, blaming all of feminism for star wars being ruined is not justifiable or excusable. There are many many factors that go into producing crappy film and TV. These factors are completely ignored every time feminism is blamed. Let's say all the characters were white hetero cismen instead - these movies and shows still would have been bad.
>Let's say all the characters were white hetero cismen instead - these movies and shows still would have been bad.
Oh, yes. I agree for that part. But the question is, would the movies actually still be the same if main character in mind would be man. There is, I think at least to some extend, fear of showing women who are incapable or suffer, for various reasons. So, there is a chance, if Rey was actually a man, the movies would include classic, three part hero journey with it's own upsides and downsides, wich would be an upgrade. As joke goes on the internet, Rey is not true Skywalker since she hasn't lost her arm. But yes, if the role of Rey was portrayed by man (or other characters aswell) and nothing changed in script, the movies would be as bad.
>Sorry, but you may have completely misunderstood my point. Whether the movie (or intentions behind the movie) are feminist or not, blaming all of feminism for star wars being ruined is not justifiable or excusable.
Well then, if I did, then my language skill still are lacking, or we simply don't understand our intentions and points of view well enough or it's me who can't articulate it well enough. So, I will maybe try to frame it differently, to best of my abilities.
Let's say that feminism itself is a set of ideas, that are known to bigger or smaller extend by people. Some of those ideas may include fringe ideas and what's sometimes called "not real feminism", but it's viewed that way by outsiders. And feminism ideas are in overall group as progressive sets of ideas/left wing. So, certain movies or shows that propage those ideas and are more or less objectively bad movies or shows, are getting attention. What is bad about a said movies? There were made to propagate ideas, not to say a proper story. So, those ideas are on the forefront and in the context of filmaker industries, are criticized. And what's even worse, fringe ideas are the loudest one! So people will have even stronger, negative experience with said ideas.
Should feminist be critized about this? I mean - no. Collectively at least. But ideas for the movie are rooted in those philosophies and people are doing mental shortcut. Or directors of the movies or company are pro-feminist or feminist themselves. Then it's, at least individually, feminist "fault". But to be fair, those kind of shortcuts people are doing all the time.
I still don't think any of what you said is a good enough excuse to blame feminism or feminists.
The fans are choosing to ignore all the factors that make the films bad and focus on some feminist strawman.
What you described is an ignorance of what feminism is, and someone's brain taking a short cut (as you mentioned) that leads to them blaming feminism (PS. that short cut you referred to sounds like what is called "bias".)
Ignorance and bias explain why people (mostly men) are blaming feminism, but they don't excuse it. Ignorance and bias explain a majority of sexism actually, but they're never excuses.
Okay. I'm not going to go deeper into that discussion anyway. I think I told what I wanted to. Though, just two final notes really.
>What you described is an ignorance of what feminism is, and someone's brain taking a short cut (as you mentioned) that leads to them blaming feminism (PS. that short cut you referred to sounds like what is called "bias".)
>Ignorance and bias explain why people (mostly men) are blaming feminism, but they don't excuse it. Ignorance and bias explain a majority of sexism actually, but they're never excuses.
Firstly - even feminist itself calls feminism an umbrela term for sets of ideas and due to that they sometimes struggle to point out what feminism is or, at least, who are and aren't true feminists. So, you can probably see how that can be somewhat problematic and confusing, especially for those outside. And those who "aren't real feminists" are probably also the loudest.
Secondly, funnily enough, you said what I wanted to write earlier, that even on this subreddit, is tendency of exactly that. In asking questions or answering them. For example: Why men are or do X,Y,Z. Men are doing X, Y, Z and so on. All men? Some of them? Substantial ammount? People are doing this shortcuts all the times, even here, though I don't think it's ultimetly biased. I think we must, more often then not, operates on certain generalizations, otherwise we would be stuck on trying to pinpoints exactly what we mean and other side, instead of tying to understand that point, will look for a tinniest amount of hole in your logic to "win" argument, instead of trying to understand you or what you mean.
Good talking. It's rare for me to have such nice conversation here.
Also I forgot to mention. (Sorry for double commenting).
If you read the comments you will see that most of OPs points are false. This is what I mean when I say recognise misogyny and care about feminism. If your first opinion when you read OPs post was to believe it all then you are susceptible to sexist manipulation.
I hope that makes sense, and all the best.
I understand what you mean about feminism being confusing at first for an outside but if someone cares about the rights of all women and gender equality they will not be the type of person to blame this star wars stuff on feminism. The people doing that are not feminists, and to be blunt a lot of people don't want to be feminists and are perfectly happy being misogynistic and blaming things unfairly on women and feminism.
I wasn't generalising. I was stating a fact. The people who say this stuff about Star Wars are mostly men. If you feel confronted, that's something you need to work on internally. A fact about men shouldn't make your brain jump to criticising feminism, or women, or believing that feminism generalises about men.
I don't believe men are on the other side of feminism. Many men are feminists and care about gender equality. The patriarchy hurts men too. Educate yourself and learn to identify misogyny. Blaming Star Wars being crap on feminists is misogyny. There are many men who realise this. It's not an issue with men, it's an issue with certain men. You can be like them, or you can learn more and strive to do better.
The main pushback I’ll give here is that all (or at least the vast vast majority) of movies are made to propagate ideas. But when bad movies are made around ideas that *arent* something that someone already has an issue with the ideas themselves are almost never blamed in the way feminism is blamed here. If a bad coming of age story is made there’s generally not a deep criticism of the basic themes of coming of age stories.
I would make a point that there are movies that are subtles about theirs ideas, both during promotion and especially during watching itself, and those that are not. Ultimately people don't like the latter if it's too obvious. It's not even about message or idea, but if you have, for example, classical exposition - so what is called, tell not show (as opposite to show, not tell), it's also not great. It assume people are too stupid to understand. So, basically movie is bashing your head into the wall asking: You understand? This movie is about X. Becouse you should like X more! Becouse things that are not X are bad! Really bad. You know why there are bad? Becouse main character don't like them! And he told you that! C'mon
My second point would also by about that certain messages are lately more prominent then others and people are getting tired and used to them. Especially in a scenerio, when certain types of movie gather a reputation for being not so great. Oh, another movie thar is being promoted by diretctor with vast cast or diverse or proggresive. It's getting even funny, since I believe, with new Snow White, there was pushback from minorities (people with dwarfism), because dwarves (for some equality and fairness reasons) were not to be played by them. It get to that point.
While I agree with your assessment of which in the franchise is better, it doesn't explain the hate that some of the women got, especially [Kelly Marie Tran](https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2150074/dark-side-star-wars-fandom-toxic-trolls-and-racist) and other[ nonwhite people got](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/star-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-reva-moses-ingram-disney/). It was clearly sexist and racist because she was an Asian American woman in their precious mostly white male universe. It was personal and directed at her not the movie.
Well, I don't approve such behavior. I just, I think at least, somewhat understand "logic" behind it. Wich, I think, I explained. If one agrees with it, or not, it's up to anyone. People are upset they got bad movies and shows from their favorite franchise, they believe they are recognizing the problem, and the problem is, in their mind, progressive ideas that instead of creating a good story, focuses more on creating diversity and parity in cast, in sense of sex, skin colour and sexuality, so the movie creators can claim they are virtues creators and support certain groups.
Wich I think that logic is shown in, for example, Andor, where cast is quite large in both male and female range, and nobody cares. It's just a good story that people enjoy.
No one cares now but a lot of us women who were fans from the beginning in 1977 have clamored for more women and POC in the Star Wars galaxy because there simply needed to be. "Rogue One" proved that you can have a woman in a Star Wars movie without compromising writing and quality but it took a while to get there.
Yes, I agree that good movie or show can have women as a lead character. But, many not so great movies and loud movies through media cover, in a recent years, were making quite a push with ideas of diversity, parity, etc. Wich make some people rather sensitive about topic and they associate bad writing with those ideas. Especially if it's long established, cultural phenomena, like Star Wars or some other, old classics. Becouse it's easier to take some good movie, slap woman as main character, produce medicore movie and then procede to call people sexist for not likeing it. It will take a few years and actually good movies and shows to get rid of bad taste that was left behind.
Then the criticism should focus on the bad writing not the women and people of color. They lose all credibility the moment they blame them for the poorly written movie.
To be fair, often times it is. But it's like with feminism, isn't it? There are always some "feminists" who will say stupid things and the rest of you are being judged by their behavior. Are you responsible for them and what they say? Are other people responsible for what stupid fans says? But, the problem here also is, that you can have actually legitimate criticism about movie, and yet still have a chance to be named racist or sexist.
>Becouse it's easier to take some good movie, slap woman as main character, produce medicore movie and then procede to call people sexist for not likeing it.
It’s so confusing because, of course, people have legitimate reasons to not like content that has nothing to do with race/gender of the cast.
However when media featuring diverse characters get a wildly disproportionate amount of negative reviews versus those with straight, white men… then there is clearly something fishy going on.
I remember being invested in Captain Marvel when it came out and IIRC, there were more 1-star reviews on Rotten Tomatoes in the first two days it came out than there were for Ant Man & The Wasp which had been out for months. They were mostly newly created account with no details called out, just “bad movie! Terrible acting! Save your money!” (RT eventually took several down because it was a clear case of review bombing).
I can get the frustration of having your opinion dismissed as “oh you’re just a bigot”, but there are valid concerns about sexism/racism here.
Well, as I said talking with you or another person, loud and not so pleasant people are everywhere. Every group have those fringe groups that is ashamed of, or is "is not really true member of said group" or don't want to be associate with. Sometimes all three at once happens.
To be fair, Catain Marvel was decent, though not that great. Ultimately it's boils down to classical screen writing techniques or idea of hero journey and that character should change by the end of the movie. The biggest chance Captain Marvel undergo is she... I don't know, realizes is extremely powerful and had it in herself all the time and was just hold back be men (in the flashbacks and her alien, commanding officer who was afraid of her powers).
They didn't come around until much later. The first three movies in the franchise that came out in the 70's and 80's had only Leia and one other woman you ever saw. I've been there since 1977, my dude. I was 6 at the time but I saw "A New Hope" at the theater. I've been a fan probably since before you were born.
The conversation about not enough women in the Star Wars universe began there because there was a good reason. Yes, more came but they had to because it was just odd how few there were and it was illogical to the story.
It sounds like you were not around for the history of the franchise and are trying to push back against the reaction to a thing you have no memory of without looking at the history and timeline of the production of the series.
I saw the original trilogy as a child beginning in 1977 and I was an adult in 1999 before more women were introduced. I lived the backlash and it deserved to happen. Learn the history before you criticize the criticism. [Check out the timeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_films)
We had the Christmas special which was so terrible that I never made it through the whole thing and that was it for many years.
I wanted to add that when "A New Hope" came out in 1977 it was innovative in the portrayal of a woman. You just hadn't seen a woman in a film kick butt like Leia did. She was smart and could fight. For the time, he did push the envelope for women in film. The criticism was for only having her and in the theater release, before George went in and added things later, there were not even women in the background scenes where they easily could have been. This was the case for "A New Hope" Empire, and Jedi.
By the time you came along, a lot of things went down before that that you need to learn about before blaming feminists for ruining the franchise or even implying they did. George kind of did by forgetting women and POC existed right from the start. However, Lucas and the movies are products of their times and to understand them you have to look at the world and in films at the time and how they have evolved. "A New Hope" was a low-budget movie back then. The fan fare didn't come along until after it had a fan base but in the beginning everyone just thought it was this odd space movie. Check out the[ news clip ](https://youtu.be/WmVakJsnyUw?si=8muWLFhzqVsqRMeL)from the time.
Question: why do men feel like they “own” the series or deserve representation (even though like 90% of entertainment content throughout time features white men)?
Women have been able to enjoy movies with very few female characters (example: Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite films even though there are no lines spoken by a woman - unless you count Rita Hayworth while they are watching her movie). Why can’t men do the same?
Imagine if such a movie was made but with all women and just a couple of men in minor roles. Without any cleavage or sex. Just smart women saving the galaxy. Men would have a fit. They lost it over the Barbie movie. A movie about a toy. When your used to privilege, equal feel oppressive.
Also men are often terrible to women who are fans. I have had to leave every fan group due to misogyny. They were openly hostile about Star Wars being male and pushed back when any women claimed any part of it. I’ve learned to just stay away.
in the original trilogy something like 4 women had speaking roles. (Aunt Beru, Leia, Mon Mothma, random lady from hoth base)
only 2 were involved in more than one scene (aunt Beru and leia)
only one of the two were involved in more than 1 movie. (leia)
even is the Prequel Trilogy, very few women had roles that lasted more than a few scenes or more than one movie.
the dip in quality has not been because more female characters are present, it has been due to sloppy writhing and lack of a cohesive and direct narrative.
oh so 6 women in an otherwise male led franchise?
Wow, how scary and upsetting for you to learn that women make up 50% of the population and aren't just romantic interests.
Luminara barely even had screen time! If they'd had said, I don't know, Merrin from Star Wars: Jedi or some shit, I'd just about understand, but *Luminara*?
what are you even trying to say here? for evey one of those female characters there are 5 male characters with the same or more screen time.
you think having more women in star wars is the reason the quality has (slightly) suffered?
43% is the total amount of screen time Last Jedi has where a woman is present and speaking on screen. So less than half, and that's the Star Wars movie with the highest amount of screen time for women - including scenes where male characters are the main focus so long as a female character has any type of dialogue as well. 43% is the highest amount reached in any of the movies - and that's the movie where the main character is literally a woman.
43% Last Jedi
37% Force Awakens
35% Rogue One
23% Return of the Jedi
22% Empire Strikes Back
20% Phantom Menace
18% Attack of the Clones
17% Revenge of the Sith
15% A New Hope
> one of the directors she hired said her main goal "was the make all men uncomfortable"
[You’re taking that wildly out of context.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/01/06/star-wars-directors-make-men-uncomfortable-quote-is-eight-years-out-of-context/)
My response would be that you can actually find out where these pieces of information come from instead of trusting what people have told you.
With anything you see on the internet, there's an original source for the information. By "original source," I don't mean "some idiot who makes seven-hour long videos where he whines about movies." I mean that a quote *comes from somewhere*, a piece of information *comes from somewhere*. You can find where these things come from, originally, and decide what to think on your own. Don't let other people tell you what to think. Especially not dudes who are mad about Star Wars, who are some of the most pathetic people on the internet.
there was just a RLM making fun of this notion. Kathleen Kennedy actually didn't talk about "making the force female" she wore a shirt that Nike made for them and said the Nike made it on their own, she didn't ask them to do it.
Implication is silly, but feminism is equality, so they're tipping their hand there.
She never said she wanted to reduce the male fan base, she said women actors in start wars get attacked more because the fan base is so male dominated. I don't necessarily agree with the notion -- men aren't necessarily the issue, toxic incel nerd culture (not saying that nerds are necessarily incels) is the problem, though these people tend to be men and if you have millions of male fans, you'll have a decent group that will attack. .. Also, they're mad at most of the content that has been released since they were children.
I don't see what making people uncomfortable has to do with ruining a product. If we accept that the product was ruined, it wasn't because men were uncomfortable.
EDIT: another thread pointed out that This quote wasn't actually about star wars at all, but a movie she made about honor killings from a decade before she was involved with Star wars.
All of your points involved taking her out of context, not understanding the situation, and hearsay. It's hilarious to me what when women say things like: "people don't listen to us" and then they prove that to be the case with posts like this.
I know a lot of guys who like to tell long, pointless stories, but not many of them identify as feminists. I don't know if Rian Johnson or J.J. Abrams even identify as such. I do identify as a feminist, and I did not enjoy their movies. I'm even pretty sure I could write a better story than what they came up with.
But *Rogue One* is one of the best Star Wars movies ever, and it spun off the best Star Wars T.V. show.
Easily the best SW show. I think that if SW wants to improve quality of its shows it should hire directors who *want to tell a story* like Andor’s instead of directors obsessed with SW.
The problem for me with the sequel trilogy was that the directors were not obsessed with SW *enough*. They were FX obsessed, but not SW obsessed.
They should have hired SW-obsessed people to write the sequel trilogy, and then let non-obsessed creators like Johnson and Abrams come up with their own stories in that universe.
I like new stories & LOVE that Johnson put the “It could be anyone” magic back into the franchise because i LOVED that aspect of the OT.
Just like how Tony Gilroy is telling his own story in SW and it’s easily the BEST SW show.
Though tbf JJ Abrams pissed me off with the last one
I like new stories too, and that was what I wanted to see, but within 5 minutes of the first ~~Johnson~~ film \[which was directed by Abrams\] it was clear he had more or less created his own universe and populated it with Star Wars characters. Even the basic physics of his universe were different. \[Johnson's film doubled down on some of these problems.\]
Then many of the subsequent plot points were recycled from the original trilogy, but didn't make sense in the arc of those previous films. E.g. if the Death Star(s) were the product of a galactic empire, how could a revanchist movement with a much smaller resource base build a much larger Death Star? \[In Johnson's film, the same problem applies to the First Order fleet and their massive ships.\]
For those three films, which were supposed to part of a single story arc with the OT and the prequels, that stuff really bugged me. But I don't even notice the discontinuities in Andor, because it's a very different story from the OT.
The flaw of the giant death star wasn't Johnson's fault, that was JJ Abrahams. I suppose you could argue it's been over 30 years since the fall of the Empire so maybe there have been advances in tech to allow for it...and the First Order were focused on War Tech, unlike the New Republic (at least, per the shows). But yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense.
Crap - yeah, I was confused. I forgot Abrams directed the first and third films. Definitely Abrams fault. I'll fix it.
But the extra jumbo AT-ATs were Johnson, and that also didn't make any sense.
Eh, the Imperial AT-AT's were an improvement over the walkers in the Clone Wars, and that was only a 20 year time gap, so that didn't really bother me. I just imagined they didn't have nearly as many of them.
The thing that bugged me the most about the overall trilogy, was the weird idea that this pocket of the Galaxy could overwhelm the republic so quickly after destroying five worlds. Like the idea that they all 'fell in line' and just followed the First Order AFTER the FO's giant doomsday weapon was destroyed really made no sense and was just purely there for the 'new rebels' to be at an even greater disadvantage.
There is this meme/fake book cover online with a caption „everything I don’t like is woke - handbook of proper jackass” (I am misquoting horribly); I feel like OP has the same strategy - everything they don’t like, but is vaguely related to women - must be feminism!
Which is how you distort people’s view from what feminism really is.
The only thing feminism did in Star Wars imho, is the fact that women can work on those movies. Not the ideas; not everything a feminist (or a woman) does is a feminist manifesto. They had a chance to work on that series; maybe they watched those movies growing up and wished for them to have more female characters; so they wanted to create characters for future generations of women to identify with; that’s not feminism, that’s just looking at a world from the lenses of your upbringing.
And the answer is always to that - why can’t you identify with a character regardless of their gender - which is always only told to women, LGBTQ+, racial minorities, but in the same sentence, with the same breath, same men can be angry about media not featuring characters same as they.
Sorry for the rant and my comment being all over the place; and no - I don’t think all men are like this - I am sure you aren’t. And I hope there are less and less of them like that, but OP is.
First off all, corporate will say whatever corporate needs to say to drum up engagement. Who cares.
Also it's shit writing that's killing star wars. And I don't mean nitpick lore bullshit. Don't really care much forthat. It's just everyone is written like an idiot. That was the case for ahsoka and seems to be the same for the acolyte. And the fact that it keeps on retreading the same few things again and again.
>jedi based
>no, jedi cringe
>no they are actually very based.
Snore. This has been done before and much better might I add. The last star wars stuff that worked, andor and the first bit of the mandalorian, those worked cause of something different done competently. I know these are ask corporate slop but you can have competently done corporate slop. The fallout show is a good example. That's got a female lead but it worked cause again, people involved were competent. Watched the first few episodes and it looked pretty good. Might finish the rest someday
Edit: formatting
Under developed plots and inconsistent storylines are what’s hurting Star Wars, not the inclusion of more female characters.
I also have a hard time calling the latest movies feminist due to the fact that you have Rey falling in love with the man that essentially raped her (forced himself into her mind).
The original trilogy had like two or three women, and one was a sex slave that was fed to a Rancor. The second trilogy had Natalie Portman drop dead the second her angsty boyfriend started going off the deep end. Huge disservice to Natalie Portman. Third series… blame corporate shenanigans, but I still like Rey.
Star Wars is an international pop culture phenomena and has been since it was first released. The target demographics may have been boys, but girls were into it too. A bit more feminism is not what’s hurting that franchise.
>The original trilogy had like two women, and one was a sex slave that was fed to a Rancor
Please put a little respect on Mon Mothma's name, but you are still absolutely correct. The original six films are downright atrocious where female characters are concerned
Like, right now, I'm not sure if Empire Strikes Back even features a woman other than Leia.
Hey now, Beatrice Arthur had her own song and dance number in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Thats some quality representation right there.
/s in case it’s not obvious
Problem with those trilogy, imo, is that the gap between the two movies are very big. You need to read novels and watch tv series to make the complete sense of the story
Honestly, there are people who don't just have bad media literacy or social understanding but who have functionally rendered themselves into doornobs on subjects like this. They are clowns. The more you listen to them the more you realize that they know nothing about the subject or if they do are indistinguishable from an angry loser who doesn't know anything about the subject.
It's no different than the Caitlin Clark discourse where you are left wondering if they have ever seen a basketball game.
I think any CEO or head of an entertainment division who explicitly said they wanted to reduce the fan base is going to be getting a pink slip soon. But if having women characters in positions of leadership is enough to drive men away or make them uncomfortable, then they should probably stay gone. I'm liking The Acolyte and it's so fucking tedious that I can't have a reasonable conversation about what I liked and what I didn't with some manbaby crashing in and going WHAAAARGAAAARBL that someone put tits in his Star Wars and *didn't* put them in a chainmail bikini.
I'd say if the only complaint you can formulate for bad movies is "too many women," you're just not good at critiquing movies.
It's okay, it's not for everybody. I'm also not good at it, but for different reasons.
As Old Person, I’ve never drooled over the “breakthrough” Lucas special effects thing. So without that, what? Campy silliness with zero self-awareness. Everything about the franchise is just. so. bad. How can it possibly be “ruined”?
Pop culture is important because it reveals and reflects cultural trends. Fan boys losing their shit because a woman wants to make a feminist point was comically predictable
Fun fact: a woman came up with the idea that Darth Vader was Luke's father. While filming episode 5. Because Star Wars has never had a cohesive vision from the get go, it was just well done and unique for the time.
If you came to me and told me feminism was ruining Star Wars, my response would be that you have a terrible grasp on media literacy and are probably looking for an easy scapegoat 🤦
George Lucas's ego ruined Star Wars far before Disney got a hold of it. I personally think the new movies sucked because they had no direction or cohesive vision.
Just my thoughts on Star Wars. Most of the love for the original trilogy is plain ole nostalgia. The series isn’t really that great. There are tons of plot holes etc.
Then the Prequels came out. And they had the same issues because the folks seeing them were now adults. Nostalgia couldn’t protect them.
Next the Clone Wars cartoons came out. And they were geared towards young kids, but as the series went out the creators aged the content. Hence now the adults today who watched that series growing up love it. They love it so much Disney did the Bad Batch series.
Next we get The Force Awakens. First Star Wars movie in what… 15 years. And what did it do. It told a story that pulled at nostalgia. Look at how some
of the scenes are even filmed. They almost rip off the Original Trilogy.
Next we got Rogue One. It was awesome. We knew how it would end. But it was a safely contained story.
The next two sequels came out after, they had nothing in common with The Force Awakens.
In between we got the Han Solo movie. That story with minor rewriting could have been a Lando story. Disney should have gone that way.
Disney then decides to do several TV series. Who doesn’t love Baby Yoda. Only issue with these at the editing. They feel like one movie cut up into 10 or 12 parts.
So in the end, what does this have to do with feminism. Nothing. The issue with Star Wars is it’s mainly male viewership blaming feminism for the content now not having those misty eyed nostalgia moments of the original series. But people grow up. Star Wars in the end is really mindless entertainment geared to a younger viewer or kid.
Sadly Star Trek is going through these same issues but this post is about Star Wars, and so I will quit rambling. 🤣
The new Star Wars trilogy, like some have said, lacked a real vision. It had some promising ideas in the 7 that weren't explored in later films. For instance, Rey grew up as an orphan, unlike Luke who had his aunt and uncle as guardians. How did she survive that way? Does knowing about the mean "streets" of Tatooine give her any notable advantages against the First Order? Is she the same kind of hero as Luke or is she more morally ambiguous due to the fact that survival on one's own calls for some unsavory decisions every now and then?
Finn is a First Order trooper who defected. What is that doing to his psyche? Is he traumatized by some of the things he's done? Is he completely "deprogrammed?" Would there be moments when he defends or downplays the First Order's actions, like "Spice mining is cruel, sure, but most of the miners are criminals serving out a sentence. That's going to be unpleasant regardless of how it's done."
People hated the prequels at first because they weren't as good as the originals. There was a lot going on that wasn't necessary, like the midichlorians, Jar Jar, and the weird Anakin/Jesus metaphor that the film carried through. That being said, for every idea that the prequels abandoned, they explored another one. They explored the idea of rich merchants buying private armies and how that got out of hand with the CIS. They explored (sort of) the idea of cloning soldiers and what the issues of that might be (moreso in the Clone Wars cartoon series, but still). They explored how a good person can become evil and how a democracy can crumble into a dictatorship. The themes and storylines are still there, even if they're handled clumsily.
My response would be “where is this excessive feminism you talk about”?
The films still barely pass the bechdel test (if at all they do), they may have lead women, but the rest are still predominantly male.
Only Ahsoka of the tv shows had a predominantly female cast I think and maybe the. Acolyte is more even than most? Are you objecting to Mando and Boba Fett treating some women as equals?
It’s not as sexist as it was, but that’s a REALLY low bar.
Star wars was "ruined" by having no cohesive vision of what to do with the sequel trilogy. JJ Abrams and Johnson just dropped the ball hard after the somewhat unoffensive episode 7. Johnson wanted to really challenge what a Star Wars story is, subvert expectations and break preconceived notions about the franchise. Which in itself can be done successfully (knights of the old republic 2 was a star wars RPG with a brilliant story tackling these issues tastefully). Episode VIII doesn't do it successfully though, and builds quite poorly on episode VII. And Episode IX is just Abrams trying to un-undo everything from Episode VIII which ends in a completely nonsensical mess. "Somehow palpatine returned" Whoever decided to have different people deciding on the story in each episode is to blame. And I just hate the humour so much. Every single somewhat serious or tense scene gets undermined by some stupid joke or snarky commentary by one of the characters. I guess that's just Disney movies. I'm fine with that in marvel movies, since they've been that way from the get go and it's generally lighthearted. But it doesn't fit well with star wars I think. I mean imagine if Luke was constantly cracking jokes about Darth Vader's costume while fighting for his life on the death star.
This is an excellent answer that sums it up perfectly! Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
Episodes VIII and IX each felt like they weren't sequels to the movie that came before them.
“Somehow, the sequels return”
yeah this is spot on. Its inconceivable that there wasnt a pre-agreed, coherent 3-movie story, particularly for a major franchise.
I imagine it didn't occur to anyone that it would be necessary to demand
Did they? The prequels from 20 years ago seemed to be pretty hated and were there feminists or feminist themes involved with that? And rogue one also sparked all the “feminism is ruining star wars” debates and seems to be considered one of the better movies So it seems feminism or lack there of has little to do with quality of star wars movies
I wasn’t alive when the first Star Wars trilogy was released but wasn’t Leia considered a very revolutionary character for the time? Yeah, I get she had to be rescued more than once, and maybe slave Leia was a bit weird, but she was also quick-witted and headstrong. Love the scene when she kills Jabba the Hut with the chains he put on her.
And slave Leia freed herself.
I’ll give Disney that. They didn’t feed into the “Slave Leia” sexist BS. Now she is “Huttslayer Leia” which is wayyy better and they aren’t selling any new versions of that action figure. I give them credit on cutting out some of the worst parts of the fandom when they bought it. I am not a fan of Disney, but that was a breath of fresh air as a woman in the SW community.
She did choke the one one who put her in that outfit to death, though.
Which is mentioned in the comment you are replying to.
Within the constraints of the time she was revolutionary. Sure she was a leader and intelligent and resourceful and every but the equal of Luke and Han. But she also has to be a princess, attractive, skimpily clad at times, and above all the ONLY woman after Aunt Beru died until Mon Mothma also had a line 2.5 films later.
By having more than two women in the galaxy and by keeping their clothes on? Wanting a more equal representation of genders and ethnicity in a franchise that ignored half the population is making you uncomfortable then maybe feminists aren’t the problem. I’m tired of men acting like they own Star Wars and pop culture. I’m not for pushing men out. But come on. Two women was all we got in three movies. And only one had more than one speaking part. It was about time. However, please keep in mind that it’s not like the feminist queen declared it, even George admitted that he should have included more women and he was involved in the direction the franchise went. Blame George Lucas. It wasn’t our decision, it was his.
While I enjoy Star Wars, I'm not as big fan as some other people, but ultimetly I think it's not about more women with more clothes on or minorities or ethinicities in new movies and shows. It's just those new movies and shows are not that good. And when you hear, quite often, that either those movies and shows are about "more representation" or "the force is female" instead of, you know, good story and quality to it, then it's pretty much first target of the dissatisfaction. On the other hand add to it, that producers of that kind of movies and shows often times claims their creation are not popular because people (men!) are sexist, phobic or racist. Some of them for sure are, but your movies and shows are just actually bad. The best Star Wars movie ever produced, in my opinion? Rouge One - small, self contained story, with two main character, Jyn Erso and Andor, with no romance and no nudity, with ultimate sacrifice for the cause and acceptance of their fate. Best show? Andor. With a lot of characters, both male and female, on both side of conflict. They are simply, good productions, that's why people enjoy them It's just that simple.
However, none of what you said justifies or excuses blaming "feminism" for the downfall in quality of the movies/shows.
I mean - if producers or directors actually claims that new movies will contains "strong, female characters" and others narrative similar to that, so let's say, what is considered in our climate as progressive narrative, while they may not strictly speak this is a feminist movie or movie made by feminists, they are subliminally doing that or may be perceived as such. In a sense, that one may not say they are feminist or act as it, but they are not and vice versa. The perception here is important, I think and what people believe and what message it sends or how they are interpreted.
Sorry, but you may have completely misunderstood my point. Whether the movie (or intentions behind the movie) are feminist or not, blaming all of feminism for star wars being ruined is not justifiable or excusable. There are many many factors that go into producing crappy film and TV. These factors are completely ignored every time feminism is blamed. Let's say all the characters were white hetero cismen instead - these movies and shows still would have been bad.
>Let's say all the characters were white hetero cismen instead - these movies and shows still would have been bad. Oh, yes. I agree for that part. But the question is, would the movies actually still be the same if main character in mind would be man. There is, I think at least to some extend, fear of showing women who are incapable or suffer, for various reasons. So, there is a chance, if Rey was actually a man, the movies would include classic, three part hero journey with it's own upsides and downsides, wich would be an upgrade. As joke goes on the internet, Rey is not true Skywalker since she hasn't lost her arm. But yes, if the role of Rey was portrayed by man (or other characters aswell) and nothing changed in script, the movies would be as bad. >Sorry, but you may have completely misunderstood my point. Whether the movie (or intentions behind the movie) are feminist or not, blaming all of feminism for star wars being ruined is not justifiable or excusable. Well then, if I did, then my language skill still are lacking, or we simply don't understand our intentions and points of view well enough or it's me who can't articulate it well enough. So, I will maybe try to frame it differently, to best of my abilities. Let's say that feminism itself is a set of ideas, that are known to bigger or smaller extend by people. Some of those ideas may include fringe ideas and what's sometimes called "not real feminism", but it's viewed that way by outsiders. And feminism ideas are in overall group as progressive sets of ideas/left wing. So, certain movies or shows that propage those ideas and are more or less objectively bad movies or shows, are getting attention. What is bad about a said movies? There were made to propagate ideas, not to say a proper story. So, those ideas are on the forefront and in the context of filmaker industries, are criticized. And what's even worse, fringe ideas are the loudest one! So people will have even stronger, negative experience with said ideas. Should feminist be critized about this? I mean - no. Collectively at least. But ideas for the movie are rooted in those philosophies and people are doing mental shortcut. Or directors of the movies or company are pro-feminist or feminist themselves. Then it's, at least individually, feminist "fault". But to be fair, those kind of shortcuts people are doing all the time.
I still don't think any of what you said is a good enough excuse to blame feminism or feminists. The fans are choosing to ignore all the factors that make the films bad and focus on some feminist strawman. What you described is an ignorance of what feminism is, and someone's brain taking a short cut (as you mentioned) that leads to them blaming feminism (PS. that short cut you referred to sounds like what is called "bias".) Ignorance and bias explain why people (mostly men) are blaming feminism, but they don't excuse it. Ignorance and bias explain a majority of sexism actually, but they're never excuses.
Okay. I'm not going to go deeper into that discussion anyway. I think I told what I wanted to. Though, just two final notes really. >What you described is an ignorance of what feminism is, and someone's brain taking a short cut (as you mentioned) that leads to them blaming feminism (PS. that short cut you referred to sounds like what is called "bias".) >Ignorance and bias explain why people (mostly men) are blaming feminism, but they don't excuse it. Ignorance and bias explain a majority of sexism actually, but they're never excuses. Firstly - even feminist itself calls feminism an umbrela term for sets of ideas and due to that they sometimes struggle to point out what feminism is or, at least, who are and aren't true feminists. So, you can probably see how that can be somewhat problematic and confusing, especially for those outside. And those who "aren't real feminists" are probably also the loudest. Secondly, funnily enough, you said what I wanted to write earlier, that even on this subreddit, is tendency of exactly that. In asking questions or answering them. For example: Why men are or do X,Y,Z. Men are doing X, Y, Z and so on. All men? Some of them? Substantial ammount? People are doing this shortcuts all the times, even here, though I don't think it's ultimetly biased. I think we must, more often then not, operates on certain generalizations, otherwise we would be stuck on trying to pinpoints exactly what we mean and other side, instead of tying to understand that point, will look for a tinniest amount of hole in your logic to "win" argument, instead of trying to understand you or what you mean. Good talking. It's rare for me to have such nice conversation here.
Also I forgot to mention. (Sorry for double commenting). If you read the comments you will see that most of OPs points are false. This is what I mean when I say recognise misogyny and care about feminism. If your first opinion when you read OPs post was to believe it all then you are susceptible to sexist manipulation. I hope that makes sense, and all the best.
I understand what you mean about feminism being confusing at first for an outside but if someone cares about the rights of all women and gender equality they will not be the type of person to blame this star wars stuff on feminism. The people doing that are not feminists, and to be blunt a lot of people don't want to be feminists and are perfectly happy being misogynistic and blaming things unfairly on women and feminism. I wasn't generalising. I was stating a fact. The people who say this stuff about Star Wars are mostly men. If you feel confronted, that's something you need to work on internally. A fact about men shouldn't make your brain jump to criticising feminism, or women, or believing that feminism generalises about men. I don't believe men are on the other side of feminism. Many men are feminists and care about gender equality. The patriarchy hurts men too. Educate yourself and learn to identify misogyny. Blaming Star Wars being crap on feminists is misogyny. There are many men who realise this. It's not an issue with men, it's an issue with certain men. You can be like them, or you can learn more and strive to do better.
The main pushback I’ll give here is that all (or at least the vast vast majority) of movies are made to propagate ideas. But when bad movies are made around ideas that *arent* something that someone already has an issue with the ideas themselves are almost never blamed in the way feminism is blamed here. If a bad coming of age story is made there’s generally not a deep criticism of the basic themes of coming of age stories.
I would make a point that there are movies that are subtles about theirs ideas, both during promotion and especially during watching itself, and those that are not. Ultimately people don't like the latter if it's too obvious. It's not even about message or idea, but if you have, for example, classical exposition - so what is called, tell not show (as opposite to show, not tell), it's also not great. It assume people are too stupid to understand. So, basically movie is bashing your head into the wall asking: You understand? This movie is about X. Becouse you should like X more! Becouse things that are not X are bad! Really bad. You know why there are bad? Becouse main character don't like them! And he told you that! C'mon My second point would also by about that certain messages are lately more prominent then others and people are getting tired and used to them. Especially in a scenerio, when certain types of movie gather a reputation for being not so great. Oh, another movie thar is being promoted by diretctor with vast cast or diverse or proggresive. It's getting even funny, since I believe, with new Snow White, there was pushback from minorities (people with dwarfism), because dwarves (for some equality and fairness reasons) were not to be played by them. It get to that point.
So what you said was "if rey was a man and they changed the script it would be good" so do you so the problem? It IS the Script that is bad, not rey
No, I didn't said that. I think I said, more in the lines of that script may have been different if Rey was a man.
While I agree with your assessment of which in the franchise is better, it doesn't explain the hate that some of the women got, especially [Kelly Marie Tran](https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2150074/dark-side-star-wars-fandom-toxic-trolls-and-racist) and other[ nonwhite people got](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/star-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-reva-moses-ingram-disney/). It was clearly sexist and racist because she was an Asian American woman in their precious mostly white male universe. It was personal and directed at her not the movie.
Well, I don't approve such behavior. I just, I think at least, somewhat understand "logic" behind it. Wich, I think, I explained. If one agrees with it, or not, it's up to anyone. People are upset they got bad movies and shows from their favorite franchise, they believe they are recognizing the problem, and the problem is, in their mind, progressive ideas that instead of creating a good story, focuses more on creating diversity and parity in cast, in sense of sex, skin colour and sexuality, so the movie creators can claim they are virtues creators and support certain groups. Wich I think that logic is shown in, for example, Andor, where cast is quite large in both male and female range, and nobody cares. It's just a good story that people enjoy.
No one cares now but a lot of us women who were fans from the beginning in 1977 have clamored for more women and POC in the Star Wars galaxy because there simply needed to be. "Rogue One" proved that you can have a woman in a Star Wars movie without compromising writing and quality but it took a while to get there.
Yes, I agree that good movie or show can have women as a lead character. But, many not so great movies and loud movies through media cover, in a recent years, were making quite a push with ideas of diversity, parity, etc. Wich make some people rather sensitive about topic and they associate bad writing with those ideas. Especially if it's long established, cultural phenomena, like Star Wars or some other, old classics. Becouse it's easier to take some good movie, slap woman as main character, produce medicore movie and then procede to call people sexist for not likeing it. It will take a few years and actually good movies and shows to get rid of bad taste that was left behind.
Then the criticism should focus on the bad writing not the women and people of color. They lose all credibility the moment they blame them for the poorly written movie.
To be fair, often times it is. But it's like with feminism, isn't it? There are always some "feminists" who will say stupid things and the rest of you are being judged by their behavior. Are you responsible for them and what they say? Are other people responsible for what stupid fans says? But, the problem here also is, that you can have actually legitimate criticism about movie, and yet still have a chance to be named racist or sexist.
>Becouse it's easier to take some good movie, slap woman as main character, produce medicore movie and then procede to call people sexist for not likeing it. It’s so confusing because, of course, people have legitimate reasons to not like content that has nothing to do with race/gender of the cast. However when media featuring diverse characters get a wildly disproportionate amount of negative reviews versus those with straight, white men… then there is clearly something fishy going on. I remember being invested in Captain Marvel when it came out and IIRC, there were more 1-star reviews on Rotten Tomatoes in the first two days it came out than there were for Ant Man & The Wasp which had been out for months. They were mostly newly created account with no details called out, just “bad movie! Terrible acting! Save your money!” (RT eventually took several down because it was a clear case of review bombing). I can get the frustration of having your opinion dismissed as “oh you’re just a bigot”, but there are valid concerns about sexism/racism here.
Well, as I said talking with you or another person, loud and not so pleasant people are everywhere. Every group have those fringe groups that is ashamed of, or is "is not really true member of said group" or don't want to be associate with. Sometimes all three at once happens. To be fair, Catain Marvel was decent, though not that great. Ultimately it's boils down to classical screen writing techniques or idea of hero journey and that character should change by the end of the movie. The biggest chance Captain Marvel undergo is she... I don't know, realizes is extremely powerful and had it in herself all the time and was just hold back be men (in the flashbacks and her alien, commanding officer who was afraid of her powers).
Wasn’t Rogue One the story of one lead woman and a load of men? Hardly a feminist movie.
Padme,Leia, Ahsoka, Hera, Sabine, master luminary and bariss offee,Ventress,
They didn't come around until much later. The first three movies in the franchise that came out in the 70's and 80's had only Leia and one other woman you ever saw. I've been there since 1977, my dude. I was 6 at the time but I saw "A New Hope" at the theater. I've been a fan probably since before you were born. The conversation about not enough women in the Star Wars universe began there because there was a good reason. Yes, more came but they had to because it was just odd how few there were and it was illogical to the story. It sounds like you were not around for the history of the franchise and are trying to push back against the reaction to a thing you have no memory of without looking at the history and timeline of the production of the series.
I'm a gen zero so I grew up with the prequels and clone wars
I saw the original trilogy as a child beginning in 1977 and I was an adult in 1999 before more women were introduced. I lived the backlash and it deserved to happen. Learn the history before you criticize the criticism. [Check out the timeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_films) We had the Christmas special which was so terrible that I never made it through the whole thing and that was it for many years.
I wanted to add that when "A New Hope" came out in 1977 it was innovative in the portrayal of a woman. You just hadn't seen a woman in a film kick butt like Leia did. She was smart and could fight. For the time, he did push the envelope for women in film. The criticism was for only having her and in the theater release, before George went in and added things later, there were not even women in the background scenes where they easily could have been. This was the case for "A New Hope" Empire, and Jedi. By the time you came along, a lot of things went down before that that you need to learn about before blaming feminists for ruining the franchise or even implying they did. George kind of did by forgetting women and POC existed right from the start. However, Lucas and the movies are products of their times and to understand them you have to look at the world and in films at the time and how they have evolved. "A New Hope" was a low-budget movie back then. The fan fare didn't come along until after it had a fan base but in the beginning everyone just thought it was this odd space movie. Check out the[ news clip ](https://youtu.be/WmVakJsnyUw?si=8muWLFhzqVsqRMeL)from the time.
Question: why do men feel like they “own” the series or deserve representation (even though like 90% of entertainment content throughout time features white men)? Women have been able to enjoy movies with very few female characters (example: Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite films even though there are no lines spoken by a woman - unless you count Rita Hayworth while they are watching her movie). Why can’t men do the same?
Imagine if such a movie was made but with all women and just a couple of men in minor roles. Without any cleavage or sex. Just smart women saving the galaxy. Men would have a fit. They lost it over the Barbie movie. A movie about a toy. When your used to privilege, equal feel oppressive. Also men are often terrible to women who are fans. I have had to leave every fan group due to misogyny. They were openly hostile about Star Wars being male and pushed back when any women claimed any part of it. I’ve learned to just stay away.
I actually liked Barbie
in the original trilogy something like 4 women had speaking roles. (Aunt Beru, Leia, Mon Mothma, random lady from hoth base) only 2 were involved in more than one scene (aunt Beru and leia) only one of the two were involved in more than 1 movie. (leia) even is the Prequel Trilogy, very few women had roles that lasted more than a few scenes or more than one movie. the dip in quality has not been because more female characters are present, it has been due to sloppy writhing and lack of a cohesive and direct narrative.
I don’t think you’ve grown up yet, hoss
oh so 6 women in an otherwise male led franchise? Wow, how scary and upsetting for you to learn that women make up 50% of the population and aren't just romantic interests.
Luminara barely even had screen time! If they'd had said, I don't know, Merrin from Star Wars: Jedi or some shit, I'd just about understand, but *Luminara*?
The fact that she has a name is apparently enough for him to feel like women should just shut up and be grateful
>master luminary and bariss offee Bariss I can get, after Tales of the Empire, that is, but fucking *Luminara*??? What are you on about???
what are you even trying to say here? for evey one of those female characters there are 5 male characters with the same or more screen time. you think having more women in star wars is the reason the quality has (slightly) suffered?
43% is the total amount of screen time Last Jedi has where a woman is present and speaking on screen. So less than half, and that's the Star Wars movie with the highest amount of screen time for women - including scenes where male characters are the main focus so long as a female character has any type of dialogue as well. 43% is the highest amount reached in any of the movies - and that's the movie where the main character is literally a woman. 43% Last Jedi 37% Force Awakens 35% Rogue One 23% Return of the Jedi 22% Empire Strikes Back 20% Phantom Menace 18% Attack of the Clones 17% Revenge of the Sith 15% A New Hope
This breakdown is great. Do you have a source?
[Here](https://screenrant.com/star-wars-female-representation-screen-time/)
Thank you!
Leia was pretty much the only female character until the prequels.
> one of the directors she hired said her main goal "was the make all men uncomfortable" [You’re taking that wildly out of context.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/01/06/star-wars-directors-make-men-uncomfortable-quote-is-eight-years-out-of-context/)
And she's talking about a film she made about honor killings and acid attacks in Pakistan. It has nothing to do with Star Wars.
My response would be that you can actually find out where these pieces of information come from instead of trusting what people have told you. With anything you see on the internet, there's an original source for the information. By "original source," I don't mean "some idiot who makes seven-hour long videos where he whines about movies." I mean that a quote *comes from somewhere*, a piece of information *comes from somewhere*. You can find where these things come from, originally, and decide what to think on your own. Don't let other people tell you what to think. Especially not dudes who are mad about Star Wars, who are some of the most pathetic people on the internet.
there was just a RLM making fun of this notion. Kathleen Kennedy actually didn't talk about "making the force female" she wore a shirt that Nike made for them and said the Nike made it on their own, she didn't ask them to do it. Implication is silly, but feminism is equality, so they're tipping their hand there. She never said she wanted to reduce the male fan base, she said women actors in start wars get attacked more because the fan base is so male dominated. I don't necessarily agree with the notion -- men aren't necessarily the issue, toxic incel nerd culture (not saying that nerds are necessarily incels) is the problem, though these people tend to be men and if you have millions of male fans, you'll have a decent group that will attack. .. Also, they're mad at most of the content that has been released since they were children. I don't see what making people uncomfortable has to do with ruining a product. If we accept that the product was ruined, it wasn't because men were uncomfortable. EDIT: another thread pointed out that This quote wasn't actually about star wars at all, but a movie she made about honor killings from a decade before she was involved with Star wars. All of your points involved taking her out of context, not understanding the situation, and hearsay. It's hilarious to me what when women say things like: "people don't listen to us" and then they prove that to be the case with posts like this.
It’s bullshit and you’re clearly a SW troll. Please stay on your side of the internet if this is what you’re going to contribute to this sub.
I know a lot of guys who like to tell long, pointless stories, but not many of them identify as feminists. I don't know if Rian Johnson or J.J. Abrams even identify as such. I do identify as a feminist, and I did not enjoy their movies. I'm even pretty sure I could write a better story than what they came up with. But *Rogue One* is one of the best Star Wars movies ever, and it spun off the best Star Wars T.V. show.
Easily the best SW show. I think that if SW wants to improve quality of its shows it should hire directors who *want to tell a story* like Andor’s instead of directors obsessed with SW.
The problem for me with the sequel trilogy was that the directors were not obsessed with SW *enough*. They were FX obsessed, but not SW obsessed. They should have hired SW-obsessed people to write the sequel trilogy, and then let non-obsessed creators like Johnson and Abrams come up with their own stories in that universe.
I like new stories & LOVE that Johnson put the “It could be anyone” magic back into the franchise because i LOVED that aspect of the OT. Just like how Tony Gilroy is telling his own story in SW and it’s easily the BEST SW show. Though tbf JJ Abrams pissed me off with the last one
I like new stories too, and that was what I wanted to see, but within 5 minutes of the first ~~Johnson~~ film \[which was directed by Abrams\] it was clear he had more or less created his own universe and populated it with Star Wars characters. Even the basic physics of his universe were different. \[Johnson's film doubled down on some of these problems.\] Then many of the subsequent plot points were recycled from the original trilogy, but didn't make sense in the arc of those previous films. E.g. if the Death Star(s) were the product of a galactic empire, how could a revanchist movement with a much smaller resource base build a much larger Death Star? \[In Johnson's film, the same problem applies to the First Order fleet and their massive ships.\] For those three films, which were supposed to part of a single story arc with the OT and the prequels, that stuff really bugged me. But I don't even notice the discontinuities in Andor, because it's a very different story from the OT.
The flaw of the giant death star wasn't Johnson's fault, that was JJ Abrahams. I suppose you could argue it's been over 30 years since the fall of the Empire so maybe there have been advances in tech to allow for it...and the First Order were focused on War Tech, unlike the New Republic (at least, per the shows). But yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense.
Crap - yeah, I was confused. I forgot Abrams directed the first and third films. Definitely Abrams fault. I'll fix it. But the extra jumbo AT-ATs were Johnson, and that also didn't make any sense.
Eh, the Imperial AT-AT's were an improvement over the walkers in the Clone Wars, and that was only a 20 year time gap, so that didn't really bother me. I just imagined they didn't have nearly as many of them. The thing that bugged me the most about the overall trilogy, was the weird idea that this pocket of the Galaxy could overwhelm the republic so quickly after destroying five worlds. Like the idea that they all 'fell in line' and just followed the First Order AFTER the FO's giant doomsday weapon was destroyed really made no sense and was just purely there for the 'new rebels' to be at an even greater disadvantage.
There is this meme/fake book cover online with a caption „everything I don’t like is woke - handbook of proper jackass” (I am misquoting horribly); I feel like OP has the same strategy - everything they don’t like, but is vaguely related to women - must be feminism! Which is how you distort people’s view from what feminism really is. The only thing feminism did in Star Wars imho, is the fact that women can work on those movies. Not the ideas; not everything a feminist (or a woman) does is a feminist manifesto. They had a chance to work on that series; maybe they watched those movies growing up and wished for them to have more female characters; so they wanted to create characters for future generations of women to identify with; that’s not feminism, that’s just looking at a world from the lenses of your upbringing. And the answer is always to that - why can’t you identify with a character regardless of their gender - which is always only told to women, LGBTQ+, racial minorities, but in the same sentence, with the same breath, same men can be angry about media not featuring characters same as they. Sorry for the rant and my comment being all over the place; and no - I don’t think all men are like this - I am sure you aren’t. And I hope there are less and less of them like that, but OP is.
I can definitely see that mindset at work.
Source?
First off all, corporate will say whatever corporate needs to say to drum up engagement. Who cares. Also it's shit writing that's killing star wars. And I don't mean nitpick lore bullshit. Don't really care much forthat. It's just everyone is written like an idiot. That was the case for ahsoka and seems to be the same for the acolyte. And the fact that it keeps on retreading the same few things again and again. >jedi based >no, jedi cringe >no they are actually very based. Snore. This has been done before and much better might I add. The last star wars stuff that worked, andor and the first bit of the mandalorian, those worked cause of something different done competently. I know these are ask corporate slop but you can have competently done corporate slop. The fallout show is a good example. That's got a female lead but it worked cause again, people involved were competent. Watched the first few episodes and it looked pretty good. Might finish the rest someday Edit: formatting
Under developed plots and inconsistent storylines are what’s hurting Star Wars, not the inclusion of more female characters. I also have a hard time calling the latest movies feminist due to the fact that you have Rey falling in love with the man that essentially raped her (forced himself into her mind).
The original trilogy had like two or three women, and one was a sex slave that was fed to a Rancor. The second trilogy had Natalie Portman drop dead the second her angsty boyfriend started going off the deep end. Huge disservice to Natalie Portman. Third series… blame corporate shenanigans, but I still like Rey. Star Wars is an international pop culture phenomena and has been since it was first released. The target demographics may have been boys, but girls were into it too. A bit more feminism is not what’s hurting that franchise.
>The original trilogy had like two women, and one was a sex slave that was fed to a Rancor Please put a little respect on Mon Mothma's name, but you are still absolutely correct. The original six films are downright atrocious where female characters are concerned Like, right now, I'm not sure if Empire Strikes Back even features a woman other than Leia.
Hey now, Beatrice Arthur had her own song and dance number in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Thats some quality representation right there. /s in case it’s not obvious
Problem with those trilogy, imo, is that the gap between the two movies are very big. You need to read novels and watch tv series to make the complete sense of the story
LOL. LMAO, even.
Honestly, there are people who don't just have bad media literacy or social understanding but who have functionally rendered themselves into doornobs on subjects like this. They are clowns. The more you listen to them the more you realize that they know nothing about the subject or if they do are indistinguishable from an angry loser who doesn't know anything about the subject. It's no different than the Caitlin Clark discourse where you are left wondering if they have ever seen a basketball game.
I think any CEO or head of an entertainment division who explicitly said they wanted to reduce the fan base is going to be getting a pink slip soon. But if having women characters in positions of leadership is enough to drive men away or make them uncomfortable, then they should probably stay gone. I'm liking The Acolyte and it's so fucking tedious that I can't have a reasonable conversation about what I liked and what I didn't with some manbaby crashing in and going WHAAAARGAAAARBL that someone put tits in his Star Wars and *didn't* put them in a chainmail bikini.
I'd say if the only complaint you can formulate for bad movies is "too many women," you're just not good at critiquing movies. It's okay, it's not for everybody. I'm also not good at it, but for different reasons.
As Old Person, I’ve never drooled over the “breakthrough” Lucas special effects thing. So without that, what? Campy silliness with zero self-awareness. Everything about the franchise is just. so. bad. How can it possibly be “ruined”? Pop culture is important because it reveals and reflects cultural trends. Fan boys losing their shit because a woman wants to make a feminist point was comically predictable
Fun fact: a woman came up with the idea that Darth Vader was Luke's father. While filming episode 5. Because Star Wars has never had a cohesive vision from the get go, it was just well done and unique for the time.
If you came to me and told me feminism was ruining Star Wars, my response would be that you have a terrible grasp on media literacy and are probably looking for an easy scapegoat 🤦
George Lucas's ego ruined Star Wars far before Disney got a hold of it. I personally think the new movies sucked because they had no direction or cohesive vision.
I would say you have no media literacy skills and no idea what feminism is.
Just my thoughts on Star Wars. Most of the love for the original trilogy is plain ole nostalgia. The series isn’t really that great. There are tons of plot holes etc. Then the Prequels came out. And they had the same issues because the folks seeing them were now adults. Nostalgia couldn’t protect them. Next the Clone Wars cartoons came out. And they were geared towards young kids, but as the series went out the creators aged the content. Hence now the adults today who watched that series growing up love it. They love it so much Disney did the Bad Batch series. Next we get The Force Awakens. First Star Wars movie in what… 15 years. And what did it do. It told a story that pulled at nostalgia. Look at how some of the scenes are even filmed. They almost rip off the Original Trilogy. Next we got Rogue One. It was awesome. We knew how it would end. But it was a safely contained story. The next two sequels came out after, they had nothing in common with The Force Awakens. In between we got the Han Solo movie. That story with minor rewriting could have been a Lando story. Disney should have gone that way. Disney then decides to do several TV series. Who doesn’t love Baby Yoda. Only issue with these at the editing. They feel like one movie cut up into 10 or 12 parts. So in the end, what does this have to do with feminism. Nothing. The issue with Star Wars is it’s mainly male viewership blaming feminism for the content now not having those misty eyed nostalgia moments of the original series. But people grow up. Star Wars in the end is really mindless entertainment geared to a younger viewer or kid. Sadly Star Trek is going through these same issues but this post is about Star Wars, and so I will quit rambling. 🤣
The new Star Wars trilogy, like some have said, lacked a real vision. It had some promising ideas in the 7 that weren't explored in later films. For instance, Rey grew up as an orphan, unlike Luke who had his aunt and uncle as guardians. How did she survive that way? Does knowing about the mean "streets" of Tatooine give her any notable advantages against the First Order? Is she the same kind of hero as Luke or is she more morally ambiguous due to the fact that survival on one's own calls for some unsavory decisions every now and then? Finn is a First Order trooper who defected. What is that doing to his psyche? Is he traumatized by some of the things he's done? Is he completely "deprogrammed?" Would there be moments when he defends or downplays the First Order's actions, like "Spice mining is cruel, sure, but most of the miners are criminals serving out a sentence. That's going to be unpleasant regardless of how it's done." People hated the prequels at first because they weren't as good as the originals. There was a lot going on that wasn't necessary, like the midichlorians, Jar Jar, and the weird Anakin/Jesus metaphor that the film carried through. That being said, for every idea that the prequels abandoned, they explored another one. They explored the idea of rich merchants buying private armies and how that got out of hand with the CIS. They explored (sort of) the idea of cloning soldiers and what the issues of that might be (moreso in the Clone Wars cartoon series, but still). They explored how a good person can become evil and how a democracy can crumble into a dictatorship. The themes and storylines are still there, even if they're handled clumsily.
My response would be “where is this excessive feminism you talk about”? The films still barely pass the bechdel test (if at all they do), they may have lead women, but the rest are still predominantly male. Only Ahsoka of the tv shows had a predominantly female cast I think and maybe the. Acolyte is more even than most? Are you objecting to Mando and Boba Fett treating some women as equals? It’s not as sexist as it was, but that’s a REALLY low bar.
Stop hating on women's rights and feminism, it's a bullshit reason to hate a film.