I kept reading but this is where I tuned out. Sorry, I've just become numb to terrified man-children spending the past decade spewing mouth-foaming rage over the "s-jew" bogeyman and poisoning the entire spectrum of genre fandom.
And this right here is a part of the problem.
I can only speak for myself, but my fundamental concern is story and characters. That’s all that matters. As a card-carrying STAR TREK fan, I freely proclaim that diversity and representation are GOOD things. A good story is a good story, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. And I’m not so narcissistic that I believe all characters everywhere should represent me. I LIKE seeing through the other end of the telescope, and being exposed to new ideas.
But the filmmakers and the fans who lap this current stuff up hide behind the “diversity” shield and hurl out all those labels— “manbabies” and “trolls” and “toxic fans” whatnot. Terrible, insulting writing is deflected by all those “isms”: “If you don’t like this film, you’re a racist/sexist/homophobe!”. The ham-fisted politicization of genre fiction is what’s killing it, not “toxic fans”. It’s an irrational, “We’re going to tell you what to like, and if you don’t like it, then go away” mentality. Not the best way to appeal to as wide a customer base as possible. STAR WARS used to be for everyone, and now it very clearly is not. The core fanbase is treated as an impediment to the hip, young fanbase which Disney/LFL is chasing after. Except that changing the core aspects of a product to pander to a hoped-for new fanbase ends only one way. The core fans jump ship, and the new fans never materialize.
I don’t like it because the writing is awful, and the characters are shallow cyphers designed to pander to that young, woke, phantom audience that doesn’t actually care enough to buy the product. And if you don’t see a social agenda at play, here, then you’re not stepping back enough to see the big picture.
Unfortunately, modern-nerd culture has been infected by people who are using the characters and the stories as propaganda and marketing tools rather than telling stories
about the characters. Rey is a Mary Sue, not a three-dimensional character with goals and hopes and a character arc. She’s awesome just because she is, with no need for training or hardship. Her “arc”, such as it is, is being affirmed in her awesomeness. WONDER WOMAN is a solid film with a story and a main character who has an arc. CAPTAIN MARVEL is a mediocre film about a Strong Woman (tm) who was always awesome throwing off the shackles of the evil patriarchy and showing everyone just how awesome she is. Yawn. These days, it’s all about virtue-signaling and affirmation rather than exploring characters with flaws and telling interesting and thematically-rich stories.
THE ORVILLE is great because it did what STAR TREK used to do—use three-dimensional characters to explore social issues from different angles, and then allow the audience to draw its own conclusions. STD is awful because it tells the audience WHAT to think, has terrible writing with no grasp of science or believability, and displays blatant misandry and elitism. An awful show which insults everything STAR TREK once stood for. To say nothing of all the canon inconsistencies.
When all of these great properties are dead and gone, the filmmakers and the few fans who remain will be scratching their heads and wondering what happened, and still blaming “toxic fans” instead of bad, agenda-driven storytelling.
Story and characters come first, always. This is what Lucas understood, and this is why even the prequels are better that the counterfeit sequels.
The sequel trilogy cannot be salvaged. There is literally nothing that can be done to fix it. They blew all of their goodwill and their one opportunity to do it right. It’s over. The only thing left is to see whether Abrams and company triple-down on their shallow, agenda-driven, poorly-written nonsense, or if they desperately try to pander with nostalgia and lure disenfranchised fans back in. Either way, they’ve painted themselves into a corner, and there’s no way out.
And I hope Lucas laughed all the way to the bank.
