Is Toxic "Star Wars" Fandom Imploding?

[Grendelsbayne]

^
I really don't think you can call it 'agency' at all. She was completely powerless to protect Alderaan.

And while you can't necessarily compare one kind of attack/disaster to another, there is a difference between losing a handful of loved ones to varying war related situations and watching your entire planet blow up in an instant, including your whole family and probably eighty percent of all the people you've ever met, plus the enture culture/society you grew up in and all the physical places from your childhood.

Luke's experience is tragic and devastating but well within the bounds of known human experience from which a great many people have ultimately recovered. Leia's is beyond anything that's ever happened to anyone anywhere. Even the victims of Hiroshima still had surrounding communities that survived intact and were very close culturally and where people already had acquaintences, friends or family.

If we're talking about realistic responses, Luke should be grieving heavily. Leia should probably be either insane or catatonic.

 

[jaime]

^
I really don't think you can call it 'agency' at all. She was completely powerless to protect Alderaan.

And while you can't necessarily compare one kind of attack/disaster to another, there is a difference between losing a handful of loved ones to varying war related situations and watching your entire planet blow up in an instant, including your whole family and probably eighty percent of all the people you've ever met, plus the enture culture/society you grew up in and all the physical places from your childhood.

Luke's experience is tragic and devastating but well within the bounds of known human experience from which a great many people have ultimately recovered. Leia's is beyond anything that's ever happened to anyone anywhere. Even the victims of Hiroshima still had surrounding communities that survived intact and were very close culturally and where people already had acquaintences, friends or family.

If we're talking about realistic responses, Luke should be grieving heavily. Leia should probably be either insane or catatonic.

Nah. Alderaan was an instant. Luke still has the smell of his burning guardians in his clothes. He grew up in harsh conditions, Leia had a life of privilege she voluntarily gave up. They’re both gonna be catatonic gibberish wrecks rocking int he corner of Hans hold, and he’s gonna be needing a stiff drink for being first on the scene of a destroyed planet. Leia might get treatment and help with her resources and friends in the rebellion, Luke will get that if they are feeling kind...or he will just be dumped back in the desert and left to be the crazy at the back of the cantina. But this is fantasy, we start throwing too much realism it gets silly.
I stand by my original statement, because you are indeed putting a ranking for personal tragedy in place, which I don’t think is true, nor would it ever be. They are both orphans twice over, and that’s part of their story.

 

[GNDN18]

Krull rules.

Great soundtrack.

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[SPCTRE]

 

[Mach5]

Nah, I'm kinda tired of this fallacy, tbh. The actual boycott was insignificant compared to all the people who were never interested in a Han Solo origin story in the first place. Solo flopped due to a combination of factors, but the "boycott" isn't one of them.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Nah. Alderaan was an instant. Luke still has the smell of his burning guardians in his clothes. He grew up in harsh conditions, Leia had a life of privilege she voluntarily gave up. They’re both gonna be catatonic gibberish wrecks rocking int he corner of Hans hold, and he’s gonna be needing a stiff drink for being first on the scene of a destroyed planet. Leia might get treatment and help with her resources and friends in the rebellion, Luke will get that if they are feeling kind...or he will just be dumped back in the desert and left to be the crazy at the back of the cantina. But this is fantasy, we start throwing too much realism it gets silly.
I stand by my original statement, because you are indeed putting a ranking for personal tragedy in place, which I don’t think is true, nor would it ever be. They are both orphans twice over, and that’s part of their story.

You can't neatly or accurately try to rank most average people's grief. There are wide ranges to deal and different responses from different people. But there are broad strokes that can be seen following generally identifiable factors. The death of a beloved pet by natural causes is never going to be comparable to seeing your whole family murdered. It just isn't.

Leia's loss is on a scale borderline incomprehensible to the human mind and the fact that it happened in an instant makes it even worse because it means having to deal with the insignificance of human existence in a way most people are never confronted with. It's like having god show up and snap his fingers and erase your family from existence.

And nobody is saying the movie should've been realistic about it. It's just an amusingly questionable moment getting memed. That's what memes are for.

 

[mos6507]

George Lucas himself said Star Wars was politically influenced, even comparing to the Ewoks beating the Empire to the Vietnam war. And as Spot pointed out, the Empire is clearly heavily inspired by the Nazis.

I knew you'd go there. In the recent interviews Lucas said that the Empire was the US, not Nazis.

You've got to understand that Lucas is speaking in the present about what his inspiration may have been 40+ years ago. His recollections are colored by all of the cultural change that has taken place between then and now and he also would probably like to take credit for SW being more "woke" than it really was. So much of SW was just Lucas regurgitating his likes (like Kurusawa Hidden Fortress or the Dam Busters).

You also should remember what the early reviews of Star Wars said about it. They mocked it for how old-fashioned it was, for how out-of-touch it was compared to some edgy adult fare like MASH or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So you just can't look at it as "progressive" cinema. The politics are very very tame.

Also, the audience (which included me) at the time did not look at it as a political screed. It was more of a spiritual message, which is why Lucas got anointed in the same pantheon as JRR Tolkien when he participated in Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth in the 80s. That's what set the stage for him being branded a dream-killer when the prequels came out and the Emperor was shown to have no clothes.

It's just that now people want to retroactively tie the new (more overtly political) films back to the OT to make it seem like it was always thus. Not the case.

she quits being a damsel after the first movie

She was still a damsel and she still got carried by Luke on that rope swing like something out of an old Errol Flynn movie.

I'm not saying there aren't refreshing elements about Leia, but she's no Ripley or Lara Croft. Her "spunky" qualities were along the same lines as Lois Lane in Superman. It was more of a throwback to Katherine Hepburn screwball comedies.

Nostalgia is a huge part of Lucas' outlook on life. What do you think American Graffiti was about? As much as Lucas was a product of 60s counter-culture, he still had a fondness of the time BEFORE JFK, Vietnam, Kent State, etc... Star Wars' purpose is to be a refuge from politics, similar to how (IMHO) Middle-Earth was a refuge from Tolkien's WWI war trauma.

And need I venture into the Christian themes of Star Wars? Self-sacrifice and redemption and forgiveness and monastic ascetism and impulse-control? How does that jive in today's narcissistic and hedonistic era? Is that "progressive"?

Star Wars is taking traditional fairy tale tropes, but interpreting for modern audiences at the time.

Lucas said he made Star Wars specifically for 12 year old boys. Yes, boys.

That it has crossover appeal probably has more to do with the influence of others around him, but his target demo wasn't anything broader or less conventional than the people making 1930s Flash Gordon.

So you can cherry-pick all you want but the fact is SW plays it both ways, and pound for pound is more on the tradcon end of the spectrum.

It's why people study film.

I have a BFA in film production so please don't presume.

The problem I have with your analysis is you're starting form a conclusion (SW is progressive) and cherry-picking to prove your point while ignoring any data-points that contradict.

 

[dahj]

He didn’t even want to leave home

He spends quite a bit of time and dialogue wishing he was off to the Academy and complaining he has to stay another year on the farm for someone who doesn't wanna leave...

 

[SPCTRE]

Nah, I'm kinda tired of this fallacy, tbh. The actual boycott was insignificant compared to all the people who were never interested in a Han Solo origin story in the first place. Solo flopped due to a combination of factors, but the "boycott" isn't one of them.

I thought "the next film" referred to IX?

 

[jaime]

He spends quite a bit of time and dialogue wishing he was off to the Academy and complaining he has to stay another year on the farm for someone who doesn't wanna leave...

And when Obi Wan asks him to?
Basically Luke talks a good game and has fantasies, then they hit home. And a few Jawas. That’s the character stuff...Leia is already in the fight, has been for years probably. Luke gets kind of pulled into it overnight.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Comments from Kelly Marie Tran.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/movies/kelly-marie-tran.html

 

[Mach5]

I thought "the next film" referred to IX?

No one's gonna boycott IX.

 

[SPCTRE]

No one's gonna boycott IX.

in that case I don’t get the reference to a boycott

 

[Mach5]

in that case I don’t get the reference to a boycott

There was a Solo boycott. The mention of "bombing" implied the comment was about Solo, not Episode IX. Now, there's a narrative according to which Solo bombed because of the disgruntled fan base, TLJ backlash and so forth, but in reality, no one BUT the fans showed up for Solo.

Dissatisfaction with TLJ may have had some effect, but mostly people just weren't interested.

 

[Tuskin38]

There was a Solo boycott

It wasn't a boycott. People were just burned out.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I saw it and liked it, but I wasn’t excited for it. I was more excited for Infinity War. I wish they had held it until Dec and just promoted it for a year.

 

[jaime]

Comments from Kelly Marie Tran.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/movies/kelly-marie-tran.html

I hope she keeps her Vietnamese name.

 

[Qonundrum]

It wasn't a boycott. People were just burned out.

I still maintain a few core facts:
1. Who's the target audience of the movie?

a. casual fans
b. new fans wanting to see daddy Han's swingin' past as a kid (despite him having been in three full movies already but Han's fully grown in those)
c. Han Solo fans (who would expect a lot, perhaps too much for one movie)
d. any wino off the street (since movie theaters now sell liquor in-house to make those 10:45PM Friday and Saturday showings even more "special", especially my ex who liked to scream he had no drinking problem...)​

2. What was made new in the movie that wasn't told adequately in episodes IV-VI?
3. Was anything made new told believably? Most people laughed at how Solo got his surname, for example. I'd forgotten all the talk people made of "The Kessel Run", which is good since I still told myself I'd buy and watch the thing to make up my own mind. It had better be good or else that alone would keep away viewers in general. Not "franchise fatigue" in of itself, though people were expecting a new movie every year - "Solo" came out a handful of months after TLJ. Still technically "every year" but perhaps people were conditioned to believe "end of each year".

Nah, I'm kinda tired of this fallacy, tbh. The actual boycott was insignificant compared to all the people who were never interested in a Han Solo origin story in the first place. Solo flopped due to a combination of factors, but the "boycott" isn't one of them.

^^this

No one's gonna boycott IX.

Agreed, it will rack up big sales because - f nothing else - IX is part of the "main series" and not one of these pointless one-offs. Right now, the "leaked" photos and prop-up articles are nothing more than hollow stunts as a feeble form of "damage control" over all the inconsequential reasons since the main players in boycott's participants are an insignificant number. Especially as the main movies have clearly racked up big sales. There's also no such thing as bad publicity.

 

[Tuskin38]

Right now, the "leaked" photos and prop-up articles are nothing more than hollow stunts as a feeble form of "damage control" over all the inconsequential reasons

What leaks? I haven’t seen anything.

And I doubt LucasFilm or Disney is doing damage control.

 

[suarezguy]

George Lucas himself said Star Wars was politically influenced, even comparing to the Ewoks beating the Empire to the Vietnam war. And as Spot pointed out, the Empire is clearly heavily inspired by the Nazis. It's impossible to not pick up on that, where do you think the term "stormtrooper" comes from.

Yes the Empire was inspired by both the Nazis and the British-but those influences seem to make the Rebels implicitly Americans and thus politically moderate so the idea that the Empire is also based on America and the allies Ewoks represent Vietnamese Communists, even though that was Lucas's intentions, seems a big stretch and pretty not-conveyed by the films.