Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?

[Kai "the spy"]

Boyega's well-covered issues with Star Wars had a great deal to do with his justified belief that LFL/Disney mistreated and marginalized him (as actor and character) in the ST and its advertising due to his race. It was not toxic fans that left him bitter at his Star Wars experience, but the allegedly progressive PTB at Disney/LFL.

His was literally the first face in the first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens.

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The first full trailer not only put him in the place of the male lead, but also heavily suggested he'd be the new Jedi for this trilogy (the Han Solo narration literally saying "the Jedi" over footage of Boyega, the trailer ending with him holding the blue lightsaber).

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I suggest you take a look at that marketing material for that movie again, because initially, Boyega was put front and center of the marketing for that movie. And even the movie itself, while the Jedi thing was a fake-out, was told largely from his perspective and he was very much the co-lead with Daisy Ridley's Rey.

So it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the downplaying of Boyega in the subsequent films and marketing was a reaction to the online hate he got for the first movie.

 

[Set Harth]

Asking the studios for protection is fucking laughable. Just ask Kelly Marie Tran how much they helped her out in the wake of The Last Jedi.

But they did help her. Trolls were chasing her down the street with baseball bats. But then the studio ninjas showed up. I'm not gonna say what happened next, but think Kill Bill.

 

[The Wormhole]

Never mind the racist comments around stormtroopers not able to be black,

The irony about those complaints is that in the Disney era a majority of the stormtroopers (or characters established to be former stormtroopers) are played by black actors. Indeed, though I'm not 100% certain, I think the only stormtroopers to be played by non-black actors in the Disney era are Gwendoline Christie and the various celebrity stormtrooper cameos like Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Prince William, Prince Harry and Ed Sheeran.

 

[Forbin]

I think most people would absolutely acknowledge (and be glad) that people like you exist. But under the circumstances, it's hard to see you as even remotely representative of the current Republican party or to see that party as even remotely representative of you. And it's not really unreasonable to describe the situation as self-selected when Republican voters keep voting for more and more extremist politicians pretty much all over the country and usually with massive majorities.

Well, we've got only two choices in any election. We all have to pick the one that is LEAST opposed to our most personally important individual preferences. As both parties move more and more toward their extremes, it gets more and more distasteful for those of us near the middle. But here we are.

 

[Set Harth]

Read above. Certain moderators on Reddit and other boards love to show off their ban-hammer powers unless you tow the exact line they want you to.

It's toe the line, not tow the line. You're stepping up to the line, not dragging it away.

 

[Starkers]

The irony about those complaints is that in the Disney era a majority of the stormtroopers (or characters established to be former stormtroopers) are played by black actors. Indeed, though I'm not 100% certain, I think the only stormtroopers to be played by non-black actors in the Disney era are Gwendoline Christie and the various celebrity stormtrooper cameos like Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Prince William, Prince Harry and Ed Sheeran.

There's also the further irony that by the time of, Rogue One I think, a lot of the same people were complaining that the evil Imperials were all white!

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, that ship sailed in 1977. White AND mostly British.

It's almost a meme at this point that Imperial officers in the service of Emperor Palpatine are all pasty white British men. Yeah, Motti, Valin Hess, Dedra Meero and a handful of others are standout exceptions, but let's face it - for a lot of us growing up the Empire had a British accent.

 

[Forbin]

My memory of the reaction to Boyega (at least among my friends) was "Wait a minnit, I though storm troopers were all clones of Jango Fett." So I chalk that up to casual fans not keeping up with the mythology. Partially, at least.

 

[UssGlenn]

Yeah, that ship sailed in 1977. White AND mostly British.

It's almost a meme at this point that Imperial officers in the service of Emperor Palpatine are all pasty white British men. Yeah, Motti, Valin Hess, Dedra Meero and a handful of others are standout exceptions, but let's face it - for a lot of us growing up the Empire had a British accent.

I can't fault Lucas for that. At the time England was 95% white. I am curious what the Empire would have looked like if they filmed in California.

 

[cooleddie74]

I'm actually surprised Richard LeParmentier made it into the top tier of Imperials in the original film. It was entertaining that Valin Hess in Season 2 of The Mandalorian has a Southern drawl, but a welcome change of pace from forty-five years of a stereotype.

 

[BillJ]

Link: https://deadline.com/2024/03/mother...th-quit-acting-the-phantom-menace-1235856879/

Excerpt:
“It would have happened anyway,” Lisa said, noting the medical history of schizophrenia on Jake’s father’s side of the family. “I believe that it was genetic. And his psychiatrist also agrees that Jake was going to become schizophrenic.
She continued, “I protected him from the backlash. He was just riding his bike outside, playing with his friends. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. Everybody makes such a big deal about that. And it’s rather annoying to me because Jake was a little kid when that came out, and he didn’t really feel all that stuff because I didn’t let him online.”
Lisa also clarified that Jake didn’t quit acting due to Star Wars as “it had to do with our family. And we were going through divorce.”
Although Lisa doesn’t see Jake returning to the Star Wars universe, she does recall he “loved filming Star Wars. He had so much fun.”
--
For years the media reported it was the toxic fanbase that led Lloyd down his path but that wasn't the case. Sometimes the lies are repeated so much that they feel like the truth.
Similarly in 2014 nobody of note gave Boyega or Ridley any hard times about their characters, fandom turned on Disney Star Wars because of stupid decisions made by Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams post TLJ/RoS.

So this excuses people acting like pricks to a child, over a movie?

 

[cooleddie74]

Some people like their convenient narratives. "It's never ME or US, it's their own fault."

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

His was literally the first face in the first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens.

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The first full trailer not only put him in the place of the male lead, but also heavily suggested he'd be the new Jedi for this trilogy (the Han Solo narration literally saying "the Jedi" over footage of Boyega, the trailer ending with him holding the blue lightsaber).

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I suggest you take a look at that marketing material for that movie again, because initially, Boyega was put front and center of the marketing for that movie. And even the movie itself, while the Jedi thing was a fake-out, was told largely from his perspective and he was very much the co-lead with Daisy Ridley's Rey.

So it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the downplaying of Boyega in the subsequent films and marketing was a reaction to the online hate he got for the first movie.

Boyega is the only voice of truth in his situation regarding LFL. From his GQ interview:

“You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything. [But] what I would say to Disney is do not bring out a black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.” He is talking about himself here – about the character of Finn, the former Stormtrooper who wielded a lightsaber in the first film before being somewhat nudged to the periphery. But he is also talking about other people of colour in the cast – Naomi Ackie and Kelly Marie Tran and even Oscar Isaac (“a brother from Guatemala”) – who he feels suffered the same treatment; he is acknowledging that some people will say he’s “crazy” or “making it up”, but the reordered character hierarchy of The Last Jedi was particularly hard to take.

“Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver,” he says. “You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience...’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience. They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.”

Boyega exposed LFL as the source of his bad experience. This multi-billion dollar-generating production company was not bending to a few propagandists on social media platforms, nor is there evidence that this was the case in relation to the company's mistreatment of Boyega. The PTB behind the Sequel Trilogy purposely marginalized Boyega / Finn with each new episode, while doing the opposite--as Boyega revealed--for Ridley and Driver as actors, and their characters.

Companies have agendas. This is not news, and when they make decisions with a century-plus history in the film business such as marginalizing black actors and characters, said history (tendencies) informs recent history, specifically the Boyega case. That did not just pop into existence due to social media hate mongers.

 

[StarTrek1701]

So this excuses people acting like pricks to a child, over a movie?

I never said that. Just pointing out the false narrative that fan backlash caused Jake Lloyd to be suicidal, which was not the case.
And nobody was picking on Lloyd, that was made up by the media.
People were upset that TPM was a talky movie with that useless podracing scene, and that Darth Maul was cut down with very little screentime.
Edited to add: midichlorians were the most hated addition to SW lore than anything else in TPM.

 

[UssGlenn]

Boyega exposed LFL as the source of his bad experience. This multi-billion dollar company was not bending to a few propagandists on social media platforms, nor is there evidence that this was the case in relation to the company's mistreatment of Boyega. The PTB behind the Sequel Trilogy purposely marginalized Boyega / Finn with each new episode, while doing the opposite--as Boyega revealed--for Ridley and Driver.

Companies have agendas. This is not news, and when they make decisions with a century-plus history in the film business such as marginalizing black actors and characters, said history (tendencies) informs recent history, specifically the Boyega case. That did not just pop into existence due to social media hate mongers.

Finn never recovered as a character after they had him comically flopping around in a leaky bacta suit.

Disney definitely did rework Finn for the worse. I think that had more to do with trying to salvage the Chinese Box Office than placate nasty American online fans. (The poster change speaks volumes). You'll notice things like the Acolite aren't being "conservative" in casting, and it's not available in China, and isn't ever planned to be.

 

[BillJ]

I never said that. Just pointing out the false narrative that fan backlash caused Jake Lloyd to be suicidal, which was not the case.
And nobody was picking on Lloyd, that was made up by the media.
People were upset that TPM was a talky movie with that useless podracing scene, and that Darth Maul was cut down with very little screentime.
Edited to add: midichlorians were the most hated addition to SW lore than anything else in TPM.

Dude, I’m 53. I was around for The Phantom Menace , and the backlash towards Jake Lloyd was brutal. It was fucking brutal, towards a child.

I wish I knew then that this is what most fandom devolves into, I could’ve saved myself some heartache.

 

[StarTrek1701]

Dude, I’m 53. I was around for The Phantom Menace , and the backlash towards Jake Lloyd was brutal. It was fucking brutal, towards a child.

I wish I knew then that this is what most fandom devolves into, I could’ve saved myself some heartache.

I am 44, I was around then too and I was terminally online back then.
The backlash was most on the movie as a whole and very little on Lloyd himself.

 

[BillJ]

The backlash was most on the movie as a whole and very little on Lloyd himself.

Bullshit.

 

[cooleddie74]

Grown adults in 1999 eviscerated Jake Lloyd for being a terrible child actor who helped ruin the character of Anakin Skywalker. I was there, I remember the "this kid sucks and he can't act" comments and how Jake ruined Darth Vader for them. Some aspects of Episode I got the worst treatment, Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best being at or near the top of the list of targets.

Both Lloyd and Best were treated like outcasts or even pariahs who had besmirched the Star Wars franchise, and that wasn't lost on a whole lot of us.

 

[BillJ]

Ron Howard came to the defense of Jake Lloyd after the Phantom Menace backlash

Howard was well into his directing career at that point, but he still remembered being under the microscope as a child star.

www.metv.com