Is Entertainment Media’s Coverage of Star Wars Evolving?
Entertainment media looks like it’s in a bit of a tailspin right now. Perhaps they’re shell-shocked in the wake of so many failures they were convinced would be monster hits, realizing that their protected studios’ critics are much more numerous than they thought. They’re likely also dazed from the dawning realization that they’re not as influential as they thought, not able to control narratives, shape public opinion, or shame their dissenters into shutting up. That leaves them with a conundrum: do they state the obvious and try to salvage some dignity, or do they continue being good little servants and maintain the lies? Yesterday, two articles were released, one from Variety and one from The Hollywood Reporter, and the narratives couldn’t be more different.
The Variety piece is called “Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out for Blood’ — From Social Media Boot Camps to Superfan Focus Groups.” It’s essentially the same article you’ve seen a dozen times whenever a new show or movie that isn’t popular with fans of whatever franchise it’s inevitably denigrating is released. The charges are all present and accounted for: review bombing, racism, caring about the lore of a particular property (which means just being a fan of something is toxic), calling things woke, etc. They still insist it’s a small subset of the fandoms, but they don’t explain how groups so few in number are causing so many franchises to collapse, especially when “casual fans” don’t care about the same things. For that matter, if it’s such a small number of fans, how is review bombing possible? Wouldn’t the vast majority of casual fans who like anything their benevolent Hollywood betters throw at them drown out the toxic fans? See, the possibility that these shows and movies are bad, or at least not pleasing to fans, is never mentioned. It’s everyone else’s fault, and now, studios are being forced to lower themselves to trying to make additions to franchises that fans of said franchises will enjoy via test groups and the like. Surely, U2 is planning a benefit concert for them as we speak.
Here’s where it gets interesting. On the same day, The Hollywood Reporter ran an article called “Is Disney Bad at Star Wars? An Analysis.” This is longer and discusses each entry in the Star Wars universe since Disney bought Lucasfilm, and while there are still some digs at fans (if you didn’t like The Acolyte, you’re either a racist or pathetically trying to convince people you aren’t) and a little shade thrown at Gina Carano (without mentioning her name, of course), it’s surprisingly honest about Disney’s shortcomings as the modern Star Wars steward. It goes soft here and there, doing what it can to give Disney as much credit as possible while making the point that their Star Wars content has been on a downward trend, and they’ve pretty much botched both their theatrical and Disney+ sections of the franchise. (They revived “a dormant franchise;” yeah, and Frankenstein brought a bunch of dead body parts back to life, but the result was a monster.) But the admissions The Hollywood Reporter makes in this piece – like that the sequel trilogy made less money with each film or that The Mandalorian and Grogu, even if it’s successful, is still a two-hour-long episode of a TV show – are impressive, something it appeared the entertainment media was not capable of doing. They even throw fans a bone when they say we have every right to have trepidation about new Star Wars content given Disney’s track record and general sense of discord. Is this the beginning of a trend? It’s hard to say; it could be an outlier they can tout to save face when they defend Disney’s next debacle. But maybe they’re tired of looking like idiots for a company that appears to have no qualms about embarrassing them. If that’s the case, Disney and the rest of Hollywood should be worried, because it’ll be hard to point the finger elsewhere when they’ve lost the press.
Let us know what you think of entertainment media’s possibly evolving stance in the comments!
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Comments (1)
The allegation and charge of being a “racist,” is something Zoomers and Millenials have faced their entire lives,, even without any actual criminal records. How many lives have been hindered over the worry and fear of the label of “racist?”
It goes even further, when you see normal hapless people on the right labeled as “Nazis” or “Hitler.” Just anyone with conservative views is labeled that and laughed at, but some people may end up actually digging and looking into why.
This whole mentality that people who are NOT in authority, but instead, are just fans of a franchise, that fans are “racist, nazi, Hitlers” is EXACTLY why the ratings are falling. This is how the privileged think of the fans and of the public and the views can see the disdain for them and the disrespect for them, and they start watching their smart peers who make videos talking about it instead. Smart peers that really know their lore and know what made these things fun at one time and can explain how it changed.
I still like the real fans and CosPlayers and readers and gamers. They are the only ones keeping Star Wars alive. The actual company of Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel are in freefall. What they’ve put out for years has hit…ZERO notes. The woke diversity rainbow angle has become a carbon copy version of spam that they just toss on every show and it looks plastic and artificial. It lacks soul or spark. It lacks authenticity. The actors are not qualified to play the characters and it shows.
They are all so wooden and stiff and again, probably have to attend DEI lectures their entire lives before shooting and talk about how everyone is racist except them because they are just so special. Full of snobby arrogance, but devoid of the actual substance.
All the carpet walks and cameras, but very little talent. Would say Leslye Headland and Amandla Stenberg are near perfect examples of this. Especially Stenberg, because there are so many good black dramatic actors out there and she just isn’t one.
The forced attitudes Blackrock DEI and ESG firewall is the very thing preventing Disney and Lucasfilm from making good content. Good Star Wars content comes from the fan and the dreamer who put in hours of imagination and recorded their thoughts on camera. Real Star Wars is The Rebellion and The Force and The Jedi and real Star Wars will always be a blue collar underground thing and never a Corporate bankster empire thing. Despite being too slow, out of them all, Andor somewhat tapped into that, but it lacked the thrill seeking adventure, excitement and fun that Luke and Han had. Han was a smuggler for crying out loud. If Han Solo was real, he’d be rescuing folks from Hurricane Helene right now and getting them to rebel bases.