Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I wonder if there is anything particular and common in the Star Wars and Marvel cinematic universes that made them such an easy prey of the woke vanguard. It's sort of fascinating in a bizarre way how easily both were captured.
Ownership by Disney? Lucasfilm was acquired in 2012. Marvel was acquired in 2009. I tend to like the theory that Iger then tried to use Disney to springboard into a political career by hiring politically active people. If the sole owner wants to do something with a property it's pretty hard for outside pressure to resist it.
When Lucas sold off SW to Disney, he famously compared it to selling off a daughter to white slavers. He obviously had to walk back that comment publicly but I expect he was simply speaking his honest view at the time. On the other hand he has voiced considerable support for Bob Iger.
If your point here is that Iger is looking for political clout points I am not sure I agree, but then I also don't see this kind of businessman as an ideologue. Lucas says "no one knows Disney better" than Iger, whatever that is supposed to mean (I bet I know at least three Japanese young women who know Disney better than Lucas or Iger, but probably not in the way Lucas meant).
I can't speak to @Botond173 's query on the wokeification of Marvel properties but I think one of the tides that has risen all media boats has been the regulatory decision to promote DEI in filmmaking. Disney was recently outed by Musk but Warner, Paramount, Netflix, Sony Universal, etc. have all to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly far from firsthand) implemented similar policies. I am surprised to discover it was only five years ago that the actress Frances McDormand chastened Hollywood with the cryptic term inclusion rider.
What happens then is what I'll call a Procrustean approach to storytelling, where whatever one starts with has to be hacked up to fit a particular standard. This is not always bad, mind you, and talented artists can often do their best work under restrictions. Robert Frost, according to my poetry teacher long ago, likened free verse to playing tennis without a net. Unfortunately when no one has any historical perspective nor gives a rat's ass about anything but current progressive epiphanies, bizarrely tone deaf films like The Eternals get made. If there is any test of Time I don't expect that film to pass it. Of course I've been wrong before.
On a side note, the cancellation of The Acolyte SE2 and the licking of collective chops at this kind of ironically makes me want to go back and watch it now. My very red tribe buddy back home, who watched it and found it benignly viewable, asked me to watch it and explain what the anger is all about.
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If you just watch it, absent any knowledge of the context or milieu it's bad - just mostly bad in the way that most popular entertainment is bad. Inoffensively and boringly so.
Someone who is truly red tribe is unlikely to hit the common fail states. Someone from that background is probably used to just passively consuming TV (and is therefore unlikely to not notice or care about bad/inconsistent writing, poor cinematography and so on*). They also probably don't know that Star Wars has a rule about having no white male primary protagonists. They don't know about the interviews ranting about Star Wars fans, men, red tribers, etc.
It's entirely possible to watch a season of Star Trek Discovery and not notice that their were no straight white men with a speaking role who weren't fascists but once you start noticing its hard to go back.
Your friend probably hasn't gone through that process, and if he's a real red triber he's probably in a supportive environment. Grey tribe and questioning blue tribe people feel like they are in a hostile environment and are far more likely to notice and get upset about these kinds of things.
Lastly: given the way that Disney cancels projects, especially ones with political correlates like this one (typically they just.....keep saying they are working on it until everyone forgets) the fact that they actually cancelled it tells you how bad it must have been in a watch-metrics sense.
*Compare: some people watched The Last Jedi and walked out of the theater when Admiral Purple Hair turned her ship into a KKV because it fundamentally invalidates decades of writing and world building. Lots of people went "oooooh pretty." The latter isn't invalid but a lot of Star Wars fans were the former type of person.
Edit: let me give a plot example. Here's the season summary: the Jedi were evil AND incompetent, and lesbian space witches were the true power of the force. You can see why this may upset someone with investment in the rest of Star Wars.
Have you actually seen it? Your post here offers a compelling view but I have read similar though probably intentionally vague critiques online, particularly the scathing Forbes reviews. I passed on reading all of them because it's too easy to let reviewers chisel pre-formed opinions before one watches.
You seem to be (though I could me misconstruing) making a lot of assumptions about what I would suggest are considerably varied backgrounds and environments of red tribe folks, but to clarify he's a 56-year-old welder, former cop, who grew up as I did on Star Wars and hasn't really enjoyed any of the shows since ESB, though like me he is a fan of both Rogue One and Andor. White guy. Republican voter. Probably more rightwing than he lets on to me--he would consider me relatively left of himself. No stranger to what you and others have termed "noticing," but, similar to myself, doesn't let himself get sidetracked if the story is good Usually only really annoyed when the plot points veer too far from the understandings we all had of the *lore when coming up. (C3P0 as Anakin's droid for example, does not sit welI.) I once asked him, as an ex-cop, if he got annoyed when women were presented as martially capable, physical badasses. He said it didn't bother him; he knew plenty of good female cops (and has always been a fan of Gina Carano.)
Anyway thanks for the response, throwaway number 5.
*I could discuss at length the Holdo Maneuver, as it was eventually called. I would suggest that that scene didn't undue any previously established canonical point. Many other parts of the sequels did really irk me but that wasn't one of them.
Cards on the table? I haven't seen it. I don't want to give them my watch dollars - however I've watched over twice the length of the show in review and complaint shows (because I throw them on at two times speed while I'm cooking, working out etc).
For a different sort of experience, say something by Lynch or something complicated or with a lot of texture like Better Call Saul or The Wire I'd say that means reduced validity of the complaint (even though again, I've seen a looooot of clips) but the thrust of my complaint is stuff like the content being offensive (in a culture war sense) or the plot is ridiculous. These things don't change having seen it or not and it's the kind of product that's going to be the high art that requires experiential engagement and also - the people who are historical Star Wars "fans" generally care about these things, including consistency of established canon and not rewriting the feelings or associated with the themes (like the Jedi now suddenly being deeply questionable at best).
With respect to my Red Tribe commentary what I'm angling for is that there seems to be a certain slice of person who is less offended by/struggles to notice some of the culture war trends. Red tribe people who are well settled in life, older big business democrats, they tend to be more likely to say things like "oh yeah I guess there are no men in this show. Weird. I guess maybe it's the women's turn?" A young guy who feels like he doesn't have a lot of media product to engage with and is being held back in society because of his sex (and likely politics). People who feel like society is working for them get much less upset and find it harder to Notice.
Doesn't apply to everyone though. My dad was one of those for years and is now watching the Critical fucking Drinker somehow.
It's certainly possible for someone to be a Red, like Andor, and to have no problem with this one (and be an noticer).......but I'm absolutely shocked to hear it and haven't really seen that demographic elsewhere. It's not one of the standard buckets for sure lol.
An additional dimension is the lagging tail of people being done with Kathleen Kennedy's bullshit. At this point she's legitimately racist/sexist if you want to use those terms.
With respect to the Holdo Maneuver - if hyperspace interacts with real space in a concrete enough way that you have access to relativistic kill vehicles then you need to explain why they aren't used elsewhere. It's the perfect answer to the plot of most of the movies (any of them involving the super weapons, including Rogue One). Load up an expendable ship and crash it. Death Star done. Go home.
If that's your only objection, I'd suggest piracy.
I mean why though? The only reason I'd watch it at this point is so that I can say I've seen it. I know I won't like it, it appears by some objective measures to be even worse than Ahsoka, Obi-wan, and The Book of Boba Fett all of which I pirated and were awful.
This way I don't even show up on piracy statistics if they have those (although I guess I am supporting hate watching YouTube commentary so not entirely disengaged).
Piracy statistics don't give watch dollars.
And yeah, I did say "if that's your only objection"; wanting to avoid watching shit is indeed a separate objection.
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