Originally Posted by
godisawesome
I do hope you realize the “political agenda” of the ST wound up being “forget about the female main character and the black male lead, we’ve got sad, self-centered white guys to worship!” and not some bullshit about “Waaaa! They pushed diversity in my sci-fi that was already progressive and anti-fascist Waaaaa!”
The hypocrisy was going “Whoa, wait! Stop liking this black guy playing an escaped slave soldier and this actress playing a victim of violation and torture, and start paying attention to how the most prominent white guy in the younger cast is pretty!... Even if that means giving the literal Space Neo-Nazi special treatment.”
Now, you want to point out that TLJ also seems to dislike outright heroic white dudes as well, that’s fair, but that’s because it hates heroic characters, period, and wants selfish bastards. It’s pretentious film-making that screwed up the ST;honestly, they could have actually used more diversity like in TFA or Rogue One instead.
Otherwise, you’re just going to be saying the same stuff that some Disney exec would use to justify fucking over John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, while pretending that you disagree with him.
Didn’t tank is correct, but it definitely damaged a lot of the Star Wars brand specific to the ST and the movies (along with Solo).
TFA broke records, so that’s a success in every measure. Rogue One was shockingly good, and has an excellent spin-off, so that’s a success by every measure.
TLJ and TROS made a massive profit, but TLJ almost deliberately undercut and sabotaged the young heroes and villains and blasted apart much of Luke, Han and Leia’s post-OT potential as it currently stands, and drive off half the ST’s audience while killing interest in the surviving ST characters.
Solo drove far fewer people away, but proved that Star Wars fans aren’t going to religiously watch everything with a huge budget in the franchise, and with TLJ helped kill off the movie development... especially since (somewhat ironically) TLJ depended partially on poo-pooing it’s own franchise and most of the characters from the Saga stories to justify its own jaded fan base - who of course weren’t going to replace in embittered old school fans to watch a fun throwback Star Wars story.
The Disney+ shows have salvaged much of the brand on one hand and launched new avenues on another, but not fucking up with TLJ might have prevented them from having to shutter the film’s for several years, or struggle to produce new shows, movies, or games featuring Saga characters.
In some ways, the Disney+ shows have succeeded because they mostly don’t touch the ST related stuff. And we still don’t know if LFL really has it in them to salvage Rey and Finn; they have to admit they screwed them over first. Likewise with Luke; admitting that “Sad Midlife Crisis Man” is boring and shackles the character to limited story ideas is the quickest way to start telling stories with him again by ignoring the spirit and letter of TLJ’s stories.