Just say no, kids.
Edit (1/10/2020): I missed an incomplete sentence and a small detail in the Kelly Marie Tran portion. Fixed!
I have a confession to make. I did not bother to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. After the unmitigated horror show that was The Last Jedi and the seemingly endless smears of the rapidly emerging franchise, I was all but done with a previously hallowed franchise that I first became a fan of all the way back in 1995. With the release of The Rise of Skywalker, the insane shouting match has become worse than ever before, partly because of the choices of the filmmakers, the influence of the mainstream entertainment press, and the SJW mob that attached itself to these movies.
With that in mind and spoilers unmarked, let’s start by asking a simple question.
Where Did It All Go Wrong?
For most of us, it was right about here, but there’s more to it than that.
All the way back in 2015, J.J. Abrams and the gang at Bad Robot got virtually all of us to be interested in seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After all, it had been ten years since the premiere of one of my favorites, Revenge of the Sith, and two generations of fans somehow managed to turn George Lucas’ six-film epic into a piece of American mythology. The possibilities seemed endless, and the re-emergence of the Original Trilogy trio gave the series a chance to go anywhere.
Instead, we got a carbon copy of A New Hope. Initially, I didn’t mind it that much, but another deep and resounding flaw emerged that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Two years later, The Last Jedi forced me to confront the matter head-on even as the creative team ripped off other parts of the Original Trilogy, shat all over Luke Skywalker, and flat out lied about the history of the franchise in a quest to subvert expectations.
Why was I asking questions about the story that ventured outside of the ones that might get me excited for the next one?
I suspect that this question and many others propelled a part of the negative response to the Disney Trilogy, but the backlash to the backlash turned the rumblings over an awful movie into a full-scale branch of the culture war.
And yes, one could easily tie it all back to geopolitical events like Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump.
Yeah. We’re Going There.
Help! A painfully mediocre president is literally the reincarnation of a fictional character who can kill people with lightning!
Prior to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, most forms of critique focused on the merits of a given work and whether or not a general audience might like to experience it. Sure, there was quite a bit of propaganda out there, but it usually stayed under the radar as staples like Siskel & Ebert gave way to online commentaries like this one. No matter how you felt about a piece of pop culture, you could probably find a site or a group where people agreed, disagreed, or found a nice balance between the two extremes.
And then, Social Justice Warriors rolled a bomb into the proverbial building and blew it all up.
You see, the election of a blah President of the United States didn’t just send shockwaves across Washington. It also elicited shock and horror from a bunch of pampered brats who had never been outside of the New York/Los Angeles entertainment and press bubble. Some people might have seen the dress rehearsals for this moment in Gamergate and Ghostbusters: All-Women Edition, but the election of an alleged Hitler forced the entertainment industry to pull out the biggest guns in their arsenal.
And oddly enough, they came from a toned-down version of the propaganda toolbox.
Let The Past Die. Kill It, If You Have To.
You know you screwed up when random storytellers managed to do a better job than you at a fraction of the cost… and that was 20 years ago!
To illustrate my point, let’s consider a question: Who are the two women in the picture above?
Fans of the now defunct Expanded Universe will know who they are, of course, but I’ll make it easy for the unfamiliar and the brain-damaged idiots in the entertainment press. On the right, we have a female Jedi who was (and still is) quite beloved. On the left, one can see a seemingly Asian mechanic, pilot, and spy, who also became a fan favorite even though her role is more supportive.
Of coI’m obviously drawing comparisons, but these two characters also serve an important purpose. They turn the mainstream media’s narrative about racism and sexism in the Star Wars fandom into a bunk and junk meme.
After all, why would the SJWs think that such a problem exists if Timothy Zahn, George Lucas, and company could introduce the aforementioned characters in the 1990s to acclaim? To keep a long story short, they have an agenda to push. It’s not enough to introduce a female character, have her bloom organically, and maybe put a love story into her arc. No, the creative team has to systematically destroy the first six films and every male character’s arc while making sure that every female character is supposedly pure, wonderful, and immune from the temptations of the Dark Side.
…but don’t you dare criticize these people! It’s a woke new age, you bigots!
I know that some detractors might point toward the supposed harassment campaign against Kelly Marie Tran, which should be addressed. While one definitely shouldn’t harass people, it’s also important to note that we don’t have any evidence of a sustained negativity against her outside of some Instagram comments, a Facebook post that was screenshotted five minutes after the fact, and a racist Wookieepedia edit. While a casual observer could rightfully state that the Instagram comments could have been done by anyone, the latter two examples are suspiciously tied with Jason Ward of makingstarwars.net.
Why do I say this? In June of 2018, Jason reported on the supposed Facebook harassment with the very screenshot that I posted above, which is extremely unlikely unless he just so happened to already be on the page in question. On top of that, one of the site’s studios is located in Anaheim, California, which is a little under ten miles from the supposed origin of the Wookieepedia vandalism.
It’s certainly possible that someone might have used a proxy for the wiki hit, but two coincidences are a bit much, don’t you think?
If you have ninety minutes to kill, Itchy Bacca put out an in-depth documentary on the subject that lays out even more evidence. I just did the lazy version of an investigation because it should have taken the mainstream media ten minutes to debunk this nonsense, but they didn’t even bother with that.
Conclusion.
“Luke, I just killed the Emperor and overloaded the Death Star at no risk to myself. The war is over… but it was a good friend.”
We’ve all misspoken or forgotten about crucial facts, but there’s a world of difference between doing that and using a movie to smear entire groups of people as evil for no good reason. However, I wouldn’t expect much from Hollywood or the mainstream media because they have far too much invested in pushing an agenda, and it’s incredibly easy to create an enemy out of thin air. If normal fans and creators are not vigilant and ready to push back against this mess, it’ll happen again and again and again until the culture shatters into pieces.
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