Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?
- Thread starter Sgt. Sacrament
- Start date
That looks like the intent, but it sure didn't end up that way.
Finn's alleged "complexity" was boiled down to his being a shameful stereotype: NewLFL/Disney spent the life of this new group of Star Wars films screaming about how "socially progressive" they were, yet where the one black male lead was concerned...
1. Finn is a bumbling minstrel with no cause or identity of his own.
2. Finn could not be a defecting trooper with a plot about his reclaiming his identity. Instead, the most backstory ever presented was that he was the Old Hollywood stereotype a buffoonish black sanitation worker. He had to have a "lowly" position of no respect, as registered on the faces of anyone who learned his occupation. Mantan Moreland reborn.
3. The icing on this shameful cake? Like a slave on the run, he is given his new name by Poe, and Finn just accepts it. No protest. No asserting his right to establish his own character / identity. He just accepted "Massa Poe" giving him a name. And before anyone says that was the point, not for one damn minute was a slavery allegory part of what the SW-PTB intended for Finn's past experiences/motives for wanting to defect, as it would have been easy to lay it out--as much as it was for TPM to do it with Anakin. But a story that would have given Finn a chance to escape the physical/psychological bonds of those who captured him in childhood as that did not lend itself to his being a Black Buffoon. They used the demeaning relationship of the slave not being responsible for himself, because he was meant to be pulled along by others. Says it all.
Finn (through NewLFL) were the group sending an undeniably toxic, intended racial message heard around the world.
No external group, toxic fan collective or anyone else forced NewLFL to do that to the Finn character. No excuses.
So many SW moviegoers in the black community recognized that about the ST's and the Finn/Rey situation.
1. Finn is a bumbling minstrel with no cause or identity of his own.
2. Finn could not be a defecting trooper with a plot about his reclaiming his identity. Instead, the most backstory ever presented was that he was the Old Hollywood stereotype a buffoonish black sanitation worker. He had to have a "lowly" position of no respect, as registered on the faces of anyone who learned his occupation. Mantan Moreland reborn.
3. The icing on this shameful cake? Like a slave on the run, he is given his new name by Poe, and Finn just accepts it. No protest. No asserting his right to establish his own character / identity. He just accepted "Massa Poe" giving him a name. And before anyone says that was the point, not for one damn minute was a slavery allegory part of what the SW-PTB intended for Finn's past experiences/motives for wanting to defect, as it would have been easy to lay it out--as much as it was for TPM to do it with Anakin. But a story that would have given Finn a chance to escape the physical/psychological bonds of those who captured him in childhood as that did not lend itself to his being a Black Buffoon. They used the demeaning relationship of the slave not being responsible for himself, because he was meant to be pulled along by others. Says it all.
Finn (through NewLFL) were the group sending an undeniably toxic, intended racial message heard around the world.
No external group, toxic fan collective or anyone else forced NewLFL to do that to the Finn character. No excuses.
So many SW moviegoers in the black community recognized that about the ST's and the Finn/Rey situation.
No, it was just supposed to be Rey as the one hero with each film being about her interacting with other characters. Finn and Poe were intended to be oneshots.
As for Finn's blackness making him a minstrel cliche, the casting was colorblind so that didn't seem to enter the minds of the Producers. Tom Holland said he auditioned for Finn himself, meaning "Black character" wasn't in the minds of the folks running the show.
Not originally, no. Poe was supposed to die, and then he tested well and came back because he looked cool.
And that's probably my biggest frustration with the ST: they were built on a reactive basis, not a story they felt they had to tell in the Star Wars universe. The PT frustrates me for similar reasons but Lucas gets a pass (now).
Didn't the roles of the "Original Trio" shift from ANH to ESB? My impression way back in '77 was Luke was the hero and Han a sidekick. Han kind of took off and eclipsed Luke.Not originally, no. Poe was supposed to die, and then he tested well and came back because he looked cool.
And that's probably my biggest frustration with the ST: they were built on a reactive basis, not a story they felt they had to tell in the Star Wars universe. The PT frustrates me for similar reasons but Lucas gets a pass (now).
Not sure. I just know Luke was never as popular as Han, and treated fairly poorly by the friends of mine as fans. Han was always cooler.
I little more on the death and life of Poe from the horses' mouths
From my read, Poe's survival was because Abrams like Isaacs so much and rewrote the film
Poe was definitely the "coolest" of the three and Oscar Isaac's limitless charm sold the character, even if he was originally designed as a one-off and casualty. I'm glad we got him for all three movies, because as deeply flawed and unsatisfying as they could be we needed every shining facet of a gem we could get our hands on. Poe made all three films better with his scoundrel and tongue-in-cheek presence.
Not originally, no. Poe was supposed to die, and then he tested well and came back because he looked cool.
And that's probably my biggest frustration with the ST: they were built on a reactive basis, not a story they felt they had to tell in the Star Wars universe. The PT frustrates me for similar reasons but Lucas gets a pass (now).
That's kind of the problem, ROTJ wrapped things up so well that there WAS no need to tell further stories. Either featuring the OT characters or new ones. Star Wars wasn't set up to be about more than the battle with the Empire and Palpatine and that battle ended in ROTJ with no room for continuation.
They actually filled in more of what happened to Poe in, strange as it may sound, the LEGO Force Awakens game of all places.
Wrong. Samuel L Jackson actually had to shoot down an interviewer who was making disparaging comments about Jake Lloyd's acting saying "come on man, he was only a child working with a director who doesn't know how to work with actors."
I do not recall their roles shifting when the OT was in theaters.The overwhelming view of the period was Luke was the far-and-away hero of the 1977 film, and once the depth and danger naturally shaped the character in TESB, Luke took on a larger, more mythic and compelling identity for audiences in ways Han could not.
And Harrison didn't want. By ESB he wanted to be killed off to help the other two main characters' stories progress forward. It's hard to imagine Han being more important than he was.
I was just going to bring up Jar Jar.
Now there's a grown man who was treated like the scrapings off somebody's shoe all because he was a CGI comic relief character with a funny accent. Ahmed was treated like a joke for years and it's very rewarding to see his cameo appearance as Kelleran Beq give him the love he deserves.
Yeah, that's not the way I remember it. I remember it was Jar Jar first, and Anakin second in terms of criticism. Maybe it was different in online boards where real fans were debating real merits of the movie, because the way the character was written made it hard for any child actor (you can write this shit, but you sure can't say it). However, outside of online chatboards which were a very niche thing at the time, the backlash against Lloyd and Best was severe and harsh.
I actually thought it was a brilliant movie. Maul was basically a glorified stormtrooper in this movie because the story needed a sabre duel at the end--however, even the title advertised that he was not the main villain of the story--so why waste more time on him than what we got?
Similar threads
