Given Lucas never fully planned stuff out (AOTC being an extremely famous example) I imagine Kennedy thought she could do the same.
Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?
- Thread starter Sgt. Sacrament
- Start date
Kathleen Kennedy isn't even involved in the creative side of Star Wars, she strictly handles the business side, so I fail to see why we're always laying blame for the story related issues in the franchise with her.
Wrong. Hidden familial relationships is as old a civilization and an archetype of classical storytelling, fantasy in particular.
No, just inject inferior plots and largely empty shell characters into a once-great film series, hence the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.
George Lucas had no obligation to produce any post-ROTJ material for addicted fanboys who wanted more, more, more, more. As far as he was concerned in the early 90s, Star Wars as a film narrative beyond ROTJ was not happening. If Disney/Kennedy/JJ, et al., could not create their own post-ROTJ stories in any creatively satisfying manner, then that is glaring evidence of their ineptitude.
The weakest, least intriguing characters for a Star Wars movie, and that was a splendid choice on some inverted world..
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First Order didn't bother me. Because, as we've found out in the real world, Nazi's never die.
I really liked the first episode. The second bored me to such a degree that I haven't been back. I will finish it, at some point. Probably after it is done running new episodes.
Freedom is only one generation from extinction.
To bring this back to toxic fans ruining things, the Godzilla fandom is experiencing its own version of GamerGate right now.
Alyssa Charpentier used to be a Godzilla YouTuber until about a year ago, and has recently revealed on Twitter why she stepped away from the fandom. Surprise, it was male fans creeping on her (beginning when she was still a minor) and being harrassed when she said she didn't like the MonsterVerse movies.
In the aftermath, others have come out and shared their experiences of how sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and otherwise bigotted a lot of Godzilla fans can be, including at the big G-Fest convention.
And finally, Alyssa did another video on the matter:
As both a Godzilla fan, but even just in general as a human being, it pisses me off to no end that people are subjected to the described behaviour. It makes me angry, and it makes me sad. Mostly on an empathic level, feeling for the victims, but also, to a lesser degree, to have to associate this kind of thing with something I love.
Alyssa Charpentier used to be a Godzilla YouTuber until about a year ago, and has recently revealed on Twitter why she stepped away from the fandom. Surprise, it was male fans creeping on her (beginning when she was still a minor) and being harrassed when she said she didn't like the MonsterVerse movies.
In the aftermath, others have come out and shared their experiences of how sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and otherwise bigotted a lot of Godzilla fans can be, including at the big G-Fest convention.
And finally, Alyssa did another video on the matter:
As both a Godzilla fan, but even just in general as a human being, it pisses me off to no end that people are subjected to the described behaviour. It makes me angry, and it makes me sad. Mostly on an empathic level, feeling for the victims, but also, to a lesser degree, to have to associate this kind of thing with something I love.
^It's sad that assholes keep overrunning the fandoms of so many franchises, it's frustrating to part of groups that include people like that.
I'm glad to see someone else recognize this, it's been driving me crazy since The Force Awakens came out. Personally, I've had no problems with what's been happening in the franchise under her leadership, but I could see where people who are unhappy could argue she could be hiring better people. But it's ridiculous to blame her personally for creative decisions, since she had nothing to do with them.
People just need someone to hate
I don't know if I want to drive traffic to Collider, but they have an article that's been making the rounds:
Star Wars' Biggest Problem Is the Fans
Star Wars' Biggest Problem Is the Fans
I'd say the biggest problem is how risk adverse studios have become (not just Disney). So we just get the greatest hits over and over again.
That's the point of the article--that studios need to keep working at promoting diversity and inclusion in the face of toxic fandom.
Someone needs to explain to "toxic fans": It used to be, if people didn't like a show for whatever reason, they stopped watching it. Now they "hate watch" it and kvetch about it on the internet. Hollywood doesn't care why you watch something, only that you do. If you don't like a show, don't watch it and stop talking about it. Promote what you like, not what you don't.
Do they really watch it though? It seems to me people start complaining and review bombing before the product even comes out, or much too quickly after it comes out to have watched. I think it is more like the Project 2025 group that immediately reacts to inappropriate content without ever bothering to examine the actual content.
Viewers might work that way, but fandoms?
I don’t think they ever have. They’re the ones left after everyone else gives up.
My own view is that if you're going to criticize something, you should have at least tried to read or watch it, or be able to cite what it is that you're criticizing if you're going by previews and trailers. Don't just say you hate something because someone else said it was bad.
I used to run a Dune forum, and even though I loathe the nuDune books, I've at least read some of them. Kevin J. Anderson and I had a correspondence going for a short while, years ago when MySpace was still a viable site for people to interact conversationally. I'd told him that he wasn't winning any OH (Orthodox Herbertarian) fans over by calling his critics "Talifans" and that we didn't all dislike his books for the same reason. I also made it clear that nuDune fans were welcome on my forum and I didn't tolerate any bullying directed at them.
His response was to ask me if I hated the books so much, why did I continue to read them? I told him I kept hoping they'd get better. As it turned out, they did manage to create a character I liked... but promptly killed him off before the end of the book and kept the characters I didn't like. Oh, well. I finally gave up on the nuDune books. There's some decent fanfic out there, though, that does a much better job of exploring the Scattering and the Famine Times.
Anyway, there are some Original Dune fans who criticize the nuDune books without having read one word of it. They just parrot what they've seen other people say, and that's annoying. They should find their own reasons, which might be different. Or they might actually like it. People criticize Brian Herbert, and while I don't like the nuDune novels, I did find his biography of his father to be interesting. So he can write. He just doesn't understand Dune.
A more recent example of people not being familiar with what they're complaining about is The Handmaid's Tale, both book and series. I used to frequent a bunch of review channels on YT, and finally quit the ones run by women. They basically turned into screechfests and complaining about "How DARE anyone write a book or make a TV show about white women suffering or being enslaved, and EVERY character who dies is black!!!!"
Well, first off, that's not what either the book or the show is about, and there were plenty of white characters who were killed off, some of them in pretty gruesome ways. The TV show is much more diverse than the novel; would they have preferred an all-white cast?
But the real problem was that so many of those complaining in the YT comments sections made sure to state that they HADN'T read the book, HADN'T watched the show, HADN'T even heard of the 1990 movie, and were only going by what they read in reviews, other YT comments, or what they heard a friend, neighbor, or stranger say. They were convinced that the show was about Trump, and wouldn't listen to those of us who pointed out that the book had been published in 1985, the author was Canadian, and who in Canada knew or gave a nanosecond's worth of a damn about Trump in 1985?
But nope, they continued to cling to their own version of reality that wasn't based on reading so much of a page of the source material or watching even 5 minutes of the show. Even the reviewers themselves kept complaining they were "confused." I told them that if they'd read the novel, they'd gain a better understanding, because some things are more easily explained in prose.
Nope again. It's like
to get through to such people. At least the male-run review channels tended to be more balanced, less screechy, and valued viewers' explanations. Though one of them carried on a rant about "those evil Canadians" in the last couple of episodes of the last season. I did try to explain to him that a huge influx of asylum seekers from countries with hostile governments - who bring that violence with them - isn't just a problem in the show, it's actually going on in real life and what the Canadians in that episode did was understandable (not nice, definitely illegal, but the hostility and frustration are at least understandable to Canadian viewers).And it went whooshing over his head.
I can't even remember if the book included references to ethnicity or skin color TBH. You probably already know this as you seem well versed on the book, but in case some people don't, Atwood intentionally only wrote about atrocities that have been committed in the real world, or rather versions of them. In both the series and the books, the things that happen, have happened somewhere in the world. (Of course, you need to change the 'window dressing'.) The scene with the Canadians and the Gilead refugees, to me, was reminiscent of what was/is happening in Europe and we've seen very similar acts in the news. Remember the refugees walking across Eastern Europe a few years back?
Trump was around in 1985ish--and he was generally mocked, at least where I came from. But I agree that he would not have been an inspiration for the book. The book is based on Ronald Reagan's tenure as present and the rise of the Christian Right in the US. Serena Joy and Commander Fred are based on televangelists of the the day-- in fact, at some point I remember reading that many of the characters were directly based on real world people of the day.
Here is a pretty good and relatively short article that details some of the inspirations for the story:
Why The Handmaid’s Tale is so relevant today
Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel drew on real-life politics but has never been more prescient, writes Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.
www.bbc.com
The book made it very clear that the Sons of Jacob only wanted white people in the Republic of Gilead. Everyone else was either deported or shipped off to prison camps in the middle of nowhere.
There aren't many clips of the 1990 movie around anymore, but here's the trailer. The movie does have a different ending from the book, which had an ambiguous ending. If I'd been editing the movie, I know where I'd have stopped it. Leave it ambiguous, so it makes the audience wonder and think.
Awhile after this movie came out, I started a Sliders/Handmaid's Tale fanfic story. I wanted to explore what had happened with the first Offred (the Offred of the novel, movie, and TV series isn't the Waterfords' first Handmaid). Trying to juggle two sets of Sliders characters, plus Atwood's characters, and write dialogue in two distinct styles in the same story is one hell of a challenge. I've been working on this thing on and off for 30 years. It'll be finished some day, though.
One thing that bothers me about both the movie and TV series, though, is the fact that when we meet Offred, she's starting her posting with the Waterfords - and it's made clear in the dialogue that they are not her first posting as a Handmaid. In the TV series they're her second, and in the novel they're her third. So we should not be seeing her react with the same degree of shock and horror to some of what goes on, because she's already been part of this new society for over three years. It's not new to her.
There aren't many clips of the 1990 movie around anymore, but here's the trailer. The movie does have a different ending from the book, which had an ambiguous ending. If I'd been editing the movie, I know where I'd have stopped it. Leave it ambiguous, so it makes the audience wonder and think.
Awhile after this movie came out, I started a Sliders/Handmaid's Tale fanfic story. I wanted to explore what had happened with the first Offred (the Offred of the novel, movie, and TV series isn't the Waterfords' first Handmaid). Trying to juggle two sets of Sliders characters, plus Atwood's characters, and write dialogue in two distinct styles in the same story is one hell of a challenge. I've been working on this thing on and off for 30 years. It'll be finished some day, though.
One thing that bothers me about both the movie and TV series, though, is the fact that when we meet Offred, she's starting her posting with the Waterfords - and it's made clear in the dialogue that they are not her first posting as a Handmaid. In the TV series they're her second, and in the novel they're her third. So we should not be seeing her react with the same degree of shock and horror to some of what goes on, because she's already been part of this new society for over three years. It's not new to her.
I think it's legitimate to take a position that, based on a trailer or review, that you don't have an interest in something, or think it sounds like a bad idea, but otherwise generally agree.
That sounds familiar--thank you. It has been many years since I read the book.
I think the difference is saying something like "I don't think I'd enjoy seeing that" and saying it is a product of Satan that should be banned or destroyed.
These days I have pretty much given up on all what I used to like.
I see very little made in the western part of the world, either the writing is daft and badly executed, or the political stuff is just way out there stomping out a black and white "reality".
Very little is worth ones time these days.
It is depressing as hell.
Nothing is nuanced any more, no discussions or thoughts are being processed.
It is depressingly crazy all of it!
"We have the truth, no we are the ones with the real truth".
Well then you are: Namecalling is activated and ears are closed!
The retort from the other part is just as "insightful".
Why anybody want to deal with that is beyond me!!!
They can go and feck themselves is what I think about it all!!
It is the same everywhere!
Either you have this correct way of writing or talking, if not so...instant freeze out activated.
It is going on all over in every little box of a strange reality.
Hmm one could make a series or movie, perhaps a book of this shaite!!
It is that deranged to watch!
Nah would not watch it...too depressing as it is the reality that I wanted to escape from!
Nothing made today makes me want ponder over this life in a creative way.
It is all being hammered in with huge bloody nails!
No room for thinking and getting your own little take on it.
No only that way or the other way!
Nothing else is of any importance.
Everybody wants to control you in some way!
No thanks!
Go feck yourselves and bugger off.
It is all a poison being fed into our minds and our everyday life.
Hope things will even out at some point.
This shaite is just not worth the time in any way.
I see very little made in the western part of the world, either the writing is daft and badly executed, or the political stuff is just way out there stomping out a black and white "reality".
Very little is worth ones time these days.
It is depressing as hell.
Nothing is nuanced any more, no discussions or thoughts are being processed.
It is depressingly crazy all of it!
"We have the truth, no we are the ones with the real truth".
Well then you are: Namecalling is activated and ears are closed!
The retort from the other part is just as "insightful".
Why anybody want to deal with that is beyond me!!!
They can go and feck themselves is what I think about it all!!
It is the same everywhere!
Either you have this correct way of writing or talking, if not so...instant freeze out activated.
It is going on all over in every little box of a strange reality.
Hmm one could make a series or movie, perhaps a book of this shaite!!
It is that deranged to watch!
Nah would not watch it...too depressing as it is the reality that I wanted to escape from!
Nothing made today makes me want ponder over this life in a creative way.
It is all being hammered in with huge bloody nails!
No room for thinking and getting your own little take on it.
No only that way or the other way!
Nothing else is of any importance.
Everybody wants to control you in some way!
No thanks!
Go feck yourselves and bugger off.
It is all a poison being fed into our minds and our everyday life.
Hope things will even out at some point.
This shaite is just not worth the time in any way.
