• BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    14 days ago

    I hate the constant toxicity and “woke” arguments. It takes away from genuine criticism.

    The problem with Disney Star Wars isn’t “wokeness”. It’s not diversity, it’s not politics, it’s simply awful writing and directing.

    But because of all the dumbasses whining about “Star Wars went woke”, Disney gets to call all their critics racist/sexist/-phobic and avoid accountability for the actual issues at hand.

    Andor is fire tho. Hope they don’t fuck up season two.

    • Bricktamland29@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      I also hate that it hurts the argument for inclusion. When they write a half-assed script, shoe horn some minority character into it, and crap out something everyone hates. The people who don’t like that minority, are going to blame the minority for ruining what they love. All the while disney gets to pat themselves on the back because they helped out that community, it’s just the world needs to catch up to their progressiveness.

      • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyz
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        13 days ago

        Yeah, no-one is calling Alien woke for having a badass woman as the only survivor, and as the protagonist of the 2nd film. Because they’re good movies.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Rose could have been fine if they didn’t write her character as basically a cop during the introduction, a Mary Sue that figures out the weakness of tech where the start of the conversation was “that tech is impossible” (plus the weakness itself is completely out of left field), spend half of their field trip whining instead of doing their kinda urgent mission, and then the biggest thing she does is prevents a sacrifice that might have actually redeemed the movie somewhat, in a way that would have been physically impossible, given the scene leading up to it (ordered to retreat, she obeys, Finn ignores it and speeds at top speed towards the thing they were retreating from, then she somehow intercepts him from the side and both walk away).

        The people that harassed the actor that played her are massive pieces of shit and this by no means justifies their response, but Rose seems like a character designed to draw hate.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            It was bad writing pretty much across the board. Poe, Rey, Finn, and Leia got a pass from me mostly based on not being introduced as a barrier to the other characters and having got shit done previously. I felt as negatively about Luke as I did about Rose or Holdo in that movie, worse even because he could have been and done so much more, despite his past (or maybe because of it, ep 8 Luke was just a disappointment compared to his previous versions, like they took his only negative trait from the earlier films, his whining, and made that his main trait, despite him being mostly over it in ep 6).

            And I agree that Rose wasn’t a Mary Sue, but figuring out the weakness of hyperspeed tracking based on nothing at all was a Mary Sue moment (and Finn looked just as stupid for enthusiastically guessing where her mind was headed).

            And some differences between Poe’s and Holdo’s plans were a) the audience was informed of Poe’s plan (which sounded a lot like a typical Star Wars plan similar to their infiltration of the death star in ep 4) and for all we knew, Holdo had no plan but slowly let her ships get picked off as they ran out of fuel, and b) Poe’s plan made the chase that made up most of the movie more interesting while Holdo’s was a stall and run, which might have been a better plan but was so underwhelming after so much of the movie focused on that stupid chase.

            And yeah, misogyny certainly played a role in the vehemence of the reaction and the bullying of the actors. Incels and other flavours of hate have a higher representation than average in a lot of nerdy niches. I just think that the producers chased that controversy rather than it falling upon them and resent that they did that to those actors even knowing how “fans” had reacted to kid Anakin and Jar Jar.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        13 days ago

        Almost all the discourse around episodes 7 and 8 when they were new was “Ray is a woke Mary Sue character”, and later “Rose and Finn were just diversity inclusions”. Complete with death threats sent to the actors.

        Rose and Finn’s episode 8 scenes could have cut entirely and you’d immediately have a better movie. That wasn’t because they were diversity inclusions, but because it was terrible writing.

        • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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          13 days ago

          The bombing run against the star destroyers being the slowest and least exciting star wars space dogfight is the biggest isolated sin of ep 8 in my opinion.

            • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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              13 days ago

              That happens across several different scenes of the movie, so not an “isolated” sin, but a very thorough trashing. There’s the green milk, the total 180 in his personality for no reason, the attempt to kill his sleeping nephew and probably other things I’ve forgotten.

              While the scene where he fights Kylo looks cool, that happening because “it was a force ghost/projection all along” felt like a litmus test of how much bullshit people were willing to swallow. Sure, the force is basically space magic, but physically clashing sabers one minute and being completely holographic the next? Funnily enough, if the fight was entirely Luke dodging Kylo, that would’ve worked so much better.

      • PahassaPaikassa@sopuli.xyz
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        14 days ago

        I dont pay luch attention to these things but even I heard lots of weird anti-woke takes after that lady was kicked off of the Mandalorian.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        13 days ago

        Where do you see people citing wokeness for star wars?

        Youtube mostly. My guesstimate is that roughly 66% of videos criticizing disney star wars will blame the wokeness for all the failures, instead of Bob Eiger and the really fucking stupid and shitty writing they’re giving the green light all around

  • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    The thing is, Disney is every time the one that starts the flames, years in advance, probably as a vector for what they know will be a disastrous product…

    Taking the Acolyte as an example: They had the Cast make derogatory remarks about the fans and Star Wars in general (“Star Wars does not have strong women” conveniently forgot about Leia?) full years before any part of the Acolyte was finished. … why??

    They even had cast members who clearly did not know anything about Star Wars (“Anakin blew up the Death Star”) proclaim their “wisdom” as stated fact. (“Star Wars has no good and evil”)

    Why are fans not allowed to be angry?

    Fans don’t care about diverse lesbian witch covens, they shrug it off, SW is filled with all kinds of aliens, it’s Disney that keeps pointing it out, look! Look! Look upon our glorious lesbian witches, they are what Star Wars is now!

    What we do care about is atrocious writing, writing so bad it looks like an 11 year old’s fanfic, writing stuff that does not fit in the SW universe… but we need to swallow the stinking mess and smile because it is written by a lgbtq person who claims to know better than George Lucas…

    $180M worth of wasted potential that may not be criticized or you’ll be declared a toxic fan.

    “The force is female”, strange, no one declared it to be male, it never had a gender, why suddenly this gendered labeling? Quite weird that protesting against such sexist remarks is considered toxic…

    Another small example, one of the high republic books from a few years ago had, in all seriousness, a chunk of inanimate rock as a “jedi navigator/pilot”. And fans are not allowed to be angry about that?

    Concluding, it’s not the fans who are toxic, the toxicity originated each time from within Disney’s Lucasfilm.

    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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      13 days ago

      Another small example, one of the high republic books from a few years ago had, in all seriousness, a chunk of inanimate rock as a “jedi navigator/pilot”. And fans are not allowed to be angry about that?

      Like the living planet from Green Lantern? Awesome.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        14 days ago

        Not just lesbians, space communist witch lesbians!

        I haven’t watched the show, but that “power of one, power of two, power of many” looks cringe as fuck.

        Also, if we’re being honest, the only things SW fans enjoyed from Disney thus far is Mando S1-2 and Andor.

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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          14 days ago

          the only things SW fans enjoyed from Disney thus far is Mando S1-2 and Andor.

          Those are all I can recommend, but I hear a lot of people liked Rogue One.

          • Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyz
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            14 days ago

            Andor and Rogue One are top tier! Imo the problem with Acolyte is that Andor exists and shows what Disney could be doing if they wanted to make Star Wars good. It’s an actually well-written story that keeps multiple storylines running at the same time without feeling confusing or boring. I have mixed feelings about season 2 because I’m scared to see Disney ruin yet another thing.

          • riwo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            14 days ago

            i think star wars rebels is a pretty good star wars show. it was actually able to make me interested in star wars again, when manadalorian failed to do so.

  • sarge@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    There is so much toxicity around the acolyte my concern is it’s drowning out the real problem.

    It’s just badly made TV. Episode 3 was awfully written. I’ll keep watching to see where it goes but man it’s not good at all.

    • riwo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 days ago

      i think the star wars fandom is a great case study of how right poppulism works.

      star wars fans have always been hating on new stuff and in many cases the negative feelings are semi justified (looking at the prequels, clone wars, christmas special, …)

      but blaming capitalism is complicated, and while the quality of star wars media hasnt changed much, it now has a diverse cast and scapegoating disliked minorities is easy.

      “get rid of the foreigners, get rid of jewish people, get rid of the queers, get rid of women and it will fix everything”

      • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        It’s more that when anything is bad for any reason, right wingers blame the scapegoat instead of trying to understand things. You’d think that’d be relaxing, but it actually makes things scarier and more stressful.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        14 days ago

        Did you just say criticism is justified…because of Clone Wars‽ That’s like…the one thing outside of episodes IV and V that is universally beloved.

        • riwo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          13 days ago

          im sorry, but the clone wars movie is rubbish and so are any of the episodes in the first few seasons that i warched.

          i dont doubt that clone wars has better episodes and arcs later on but you cant change my mind that people only like the first seasons because of nostalgia for a time when they didnt know yet whats good.

          • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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            13 days ago

            I only first watched Clone Wars as an adult, because when I was younger I refused to watch it because I liked the 2d animated Clone Wars cartoon and was upset that the 3d animated show was out of canon with it.

            The movie is widely regarded as pretty poor, and there are a fair few bad episodes, especially early on. And it’s a deliberate character choice to make Ahsoka annoying at first as part of her character arc.

            But the show is really, really good. It highlights a number of things the movies were never able to properly emphasise, like the corruption of the Republic and especially the failing dogmatic strictness of the Jedi order.

            Someone produced this guide as to which episodes to watch:

            The place I saw it linked from also said the first 4 and last 4 episodes of season 6 (which wasn’t out when this guide was produced).

            From a quick look at the guide, I’d say most of the “honourable mentions” are also worth a watch.

  • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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    13 days ago

    George Lucas ruined Star Wars when he made Darth Vader Luke’s father in The Empire Strikes Back.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      13 days ago

      Unironically this. It was a great movie moment, but the domino effects throughout the franchise didn’t make for good storytelling.

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        13 days ago

        Star Wars is supposed to be about how anyone can be a hero, and the key to power is wisdom that anyone can learn. But the Vader retcon destroyed this core theme by making Luke born special. The whole point of Luke and why he’s a good character is that he wasn’t born special. Lucas ruined Luke, and that ruined Star Wars. Now we’ve got midichlorians and force sensitivity and Jedi royalty and Rey Palpatine. Nobody would have cared who Rey’s parents are if Lucas hadn’t retconned Luke’s parents into being special.

        • reminiscensdeus@lemm.ee
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          13 days ago

          Star Wars is supposed to be about how anyone can be a hero

          I mean Luke was always the son of a Jedi and Leia a princess. Is your basis for the the original point of the movie simply Han Solo?

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            13 days ago

            Luke was the son of some random Jedi who went down like a punk to Darth Vader. If Luke had been the son of someone like Ky Narec, it wouldn’t have been a big deal and wouldn’t have lead to the Rey Palpatine drama. And hopefully it wouldn’t have resulted in “force sensitivity” being made canon. Force sensitivity is bullshit.

  • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    I read somewhere that the most toxic substance known to man (or the lowest LD50, at least) is botulinum toxin (botox) and a teaspoon of pure botox it is enough to kill literally all of humanity.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    13 days ago

    You could replace that with just about any other fandom based around a TV/movie franchise and I guarantee it’ll probably be the exact same. I am thankful every day that I don’t join specific communities based around individual show/movie franchises because of how toxic they can get.

    Point out to certain fandoms either some major flaw or the fact you don’t like the show and some groups will act like you just committed a 9/11 style terrorist attack on their show. Same thing even goes for creators of the show sometimes. We really need to end fandom culture.

    • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 days ago

      I didn’t want to say anything because I already felt posting this was going to get me flamed, but you’re totally right about the right wingers. For every coiple posts I see complaining about modern Star Wars, there’s another one or two people commenting some “go woke go broke” bullshit.