By David Futrelle
Star Wars’ worst fans are losing their shit (once again) at the news that Disney is producing a new “female-centric” Star Wars series with a woman at the helm: Leslye Headland, the co-creator and main force behind Netflix’ also quite female-centric series Russian Doll, an ingenious and surprisingly earthy sci-fi series centered around time loops and alternate universes.
So naturally the nay-sayers are out in force (get it?) to protest against Headland’s hiring because, well, they think it’s all part of some dastardly plot to ruin Star Wars forever, as if George Lucas hadn’t already done with the prequels. As far as these guys are concerned, though, it’s Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy who is destroying the franchise with decisions like this one.
So what in particular is making these fans so angry? I’ve gone through hundreds of tweets on the subject and as far as I can tell, there are really only a few main arguments, if they can be called that. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Reasons to hate the new Star Wars series according to some angry dudes.
Because Headland is feminist, the show will be nothing but propaganda — just like the (shudder) lady version of Ghostbusters.
A “female-centric” show will “exclude” male fans in favor of women, who don’t actually care about Star Wars.
There are already too many women in Star Wars.
Any show with too many women in it will turn all womany like some sort of Lifetime movie.
As someone who has watched Russian Doll (twice!), I can say with some assurance that whatever Headland does with the show it will look nothing like a Lifetime movie.
A female-centric show will by its very nature be “bigoted” against white people and men.
Some of the other, er, arguments against her hiring are a little less coherent.
Something, something WAHMEN.
Something, something CUNT.
The critics can’t decide if this is little more than a “cash grab” by Disney …
… or if the company is actually courting doom because if you “get woke” you “go broke.”
But my favorite of all the haters has to be this self-described “Conservative, Christian Geek” who’s mad that they didn’t hire him instead of the woman who helmed one of the most creative original science-fiction series in recent memory.
My take? Way to go, Disney — but unironically. Russian Doll was brilliant, and I’m eager to see what Headland does with this.
Also, anything that makes these particular baby men cry is a good thing.
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Thanks for the rec, guys! I’ve never been super into Star Wars, but I might watch this series if I get a chance. My strategy is, “if internet misogynists hate it, maybe I’ll like it.”
There aren’t many at all and they don’t do much speaking in most of the films (as explained by one of the manosphere’s least-favorite people):
While my first reaction is to be immediately suspicious given that Disney’s greed is well known (and after The Last Jedi I don’t exactly have much confidence in their ability to tell a story), Ms. Headland may still be able to make something good out of it. Providing that the executive meddling is kept to a minimum of course. I mean, I don’t expect them to resist their urge to make this into another merch factory, but miracles do happen. (Just…you know, not in this reality. Otherwise we wouldn’t have to choose between a probable rapist and a confirmed rapist as President this autumn.) For what it’s worth, I consider myself a Star Wars purist and while I mostly tolerated the prequels due to being young and dense at the time I saw them and my grudging acknowledgement that at least they added something to the whole story arc of Anakin/Darth Vader, I really didn’t see the point in making a new trilogy when they had a perfectly good expanded universe to turn into films instead.
In semi-related news, I never want to see anything with Baby Yoda ever again. It was cute for a while, but they drove it far enough into the ground to breach the Earth’s mantle.
Russian Doll is an amazing work, treating women as if they have not only intelligence but agency. I’m excited to see that same craft and sensibility brought to a Star Wars story.
Good news, gents! The UN has just repealed the treaty that made it illegal for any man on Earth to watch film or television focused on female characters.
Are you trying to imply that The Last Jedi is evidence of Disney’s greed and executive meddling making a potentially good movie bad?
Oh noes, they might put anti-patriarchy in a story that was literally all about fighting an evil father!
Hi, whiny bros! Welcome to capitalism. Every damn thing Disney does is a cash grab because they’re a giant evil corporation.
If they’re so concerned about Disney greed, I sure hope that they’re concerned about the Disney parks workers who are laid off/furloughed and not exactly being generously compensated.
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
If StarWars movies have bit fairly hit or miss from the very first ones to the very last ones, Star Wars seems to have succeeded much more regularly in TV series. I think the type of stories that people expect and want from Star Wars are easier to execute properly in 10-15 hours instead of 2-3. I would be relatively confident in a Star Wars franchise product if it’s for the purpose of television. Even movies like Rise of Skywalker would have been much better stretched for a 10 episode run than a single giant movie that felt very rushed.
@Anonymous
Agree with all of this. I didn’t even watch The Mandalorian but I’ve still seen enough baby Yoda memes and other stuff to last a lifetime.
@Viscaria
Thank the lord. When I was younger (and didn’t know I was a girl yet) it was so annoying that UN peacekeeping forces would bust down my door every time I tried to watch a movie that had women in it.
@WWTH
This is the irony of all the dudebros complaining about companies not producing what they want to see: it’s the free market that they love turning against them.
I’m actually surprised none of them complained that Star Wars already seems to have a vagina dentata in at least a few of the films.
Are you talking about the Sarlacc? Because I’m pretty sure that’s an asshole dentata instead.
Does repeal of the treaty mean my conviction for watching The Descent is going to be expunged?
@Viscaria
That’s great to hear! Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the greatest TV shows ever made, but I haven’t been able to watch the sequel series The Legend of Korra because of that treaty.
Though that show was probably terrible, since being female-led meant that those SJWs Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are trying to ram the feminist agenda where it doesn’t belong, ruining the beautiful world developed by Avatar’s original creators Michale Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko. No doubt it is full of SJW propaganda like “war and prejudice are bad” that had no place in the original.
Doomcock:
…Is it Any Wonder Disney is fighting for its LIFE???
Ten highest grossing films of last year (Disney “only” profited from the bolded ones)
1 Avengers: Endgame $2,797,800,564
2 The Lion King $1,656,943,394
3 Frozen II $1,450,026,933
4 Spider-Man: Far from Home $1,131,927,996
5 Captain Marvel $1,128,274,794
6 Joker $1,074,251,311
7 Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker $1,074,144,248
8 Toy Story 4 $1,073,394,593
9 Aladdin $1,050,693,953
10 Jumanji: The Next Level $796,575,993
@Fenton
IIRC Avengers: Endgame is the highest grossing film of all time. For some reason, the “get woke go broke” crowd was rather silent after that happened.
@Allandrel
To be honest, The Legend of Korra was pretty bad though the Dragon Prince, designed by the same people, is basically SJW central and pretty good once they fixed their animation issue from season 1.
@Naglfar
I still don’t understand why superhero films got so popular so quickly. It feels like they went from being obscure to being all the rage nearly instantaneously to a degree that even Disney’s marketing can’t explain it.
@Naglfar
I guess the free market is only free when it produces what they want to see?
I’m always puzzled by people who complain about things that they don’t think are for them specifically. I can’t fathom what it’s like to live your life being able to expect everything to be catered to your specific preferences.
One of the thing I like about the prequels (who have a lot of problems beside that, granted) is that the prequel show how Palpatines and his cronies are simultaneously threatening and a bunch of losers that need help all the time. It’s easier to say it after the rise of the Drumpf, but the Empire ascension is actually decently realistic, and decently damning for thoses involved.
The original Star Wars is inadvertantly make the fascist Empire look like a bunch of super organized badass lead by admirable men. The prequel tried his darnedest to correct that misconception.
You mean you were in age to see the movie in 1977, and after all this years, you whine about a new serie ? Damn, i was thinking that getting older made you wiser…
@ Anonymous
It wasn’t that quickly. You can trace a 40 year road of hits and misses that led to the popularity of Endgame.
You can start at the Superman movies, starting in 1978 with an arc of good->great->awful->stupid movies and Batman a similar arc of two good movies and two not so good ones in the 90’s. Marvel was mainly relegated to TV for a long time (The Incredible Hulk, various cartoons) and B grade movies ( Captain America with Reb Brown or the Roger Corman helmed Fantastic 4).
Marvel’s first major movie production was based off C-grade character Blade (1998), a surprise hit, but well times since Marvel Comic eclipsed DC in sales during the comic book collector bubble of the late 80’s to mid 90’s.
In the early 2000’s there was an uneven move toward major Marvel movies with some successes (Spider-Man, The X-Men) and some notable failure (The Fantastic 4, Elektra, X-Men3) but it established the genre and taught film makers what will fail or succeed in making a super hero movie.
With the genre established and the lessons learned Disney invested in what was already a mostly safe bet and bought Marvel Comics, which had been hurting since the 90’s comic book bubble popped.
With the solid success of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in 2008 Disney had a 30 year history of what can or can’t work in a superhero film and distilled the formula for the major blockbusters of the 2010’s, starting with a reliable sequel to Iron Man in 2010 and just accelerating into an interconnected series of movies which creates a sort of “investment or entertainment” cycle (you see the movies because they resolve the movies you saw and shall keep you informed abuot events in movies you may see in the future).
@Artemis
They hate you for your freedom.
Is one of these people saying that “wah wah men are awful particularly white men” is a new thing? I don’t want to go all gatekeepy “true fan” on anyone, but would he like to count how many non-white non-male Imperials we see in the original movies? As opposed to the much more diverse Rebel Alliance? And there was that famous line where the one time the Imperials used alien auxiliaries, one of the commanding officers bitterly referred to them as “scum”?
Person, the wokeness was there right from Mon Mothma on day one. The fact that you’re only noticing it now speaks more of you than the source.
“The Earthly patriarchy doesn’t apply to a galaxy far, far away, so the story should naturally be male-centric” is a hell of a take.
“Stop injecting ideas of justice into this epic tale of good versus evil!”
@Cheerful Warthog : what are you talking about ? The true protagonist of the first trilogy have an entirely white, well behaved, obedient workforce. They are governed by wise older man, and the trilogy is the tragedy of their destruction by foolish upstarts.
I only half joke. The Empire look cool and badass in the first trilogy, and a ton of viewers, even among the original 1977 run, rooted for them. It was not the intent, but fascism easily look cool.
For a less tongue-in-cheek analysis, the original Star Wars was filmed with the intent that it’s the heroes that destroy the empire. The rebels are a supporting group, but Lucas show them as depassed, hunted, and not good enough for the task to emphasize how badass the heroes are and how they save the day.
Similarly, despite the joke about stormtrooper accuracy, the Empire is consistently depicted as scarily competent, well organized, and almost impossible to resist. That’s, once again, a movie trick to make the struggle of the heroes look better.
However, the consequence is that the faction with white men governed by corrupted, angry, hateful elders look efficient and powerful, and the faction with a patchwork of ethnicity and technique look weak and pathetic. It’s not supposed to be the message, but it’s also a consistent way to see the movies.
Outside of any bigotry in George Lucas (he had some, and they show painfully at time), the basic concept of Star Wars make it very easy to be a white power propaganda movie. Moviemakers were much more aware of that problems and took steps to avoid that in both the prequel and the disney Star Wars movies.