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The first time I remember agreeing with something this person posted. People really need to grow up and stop whining in all these star wars threads all these years. I don't like the MCU movies but I don't spend all my time in the mcu threads whining about how all the movie suck and Kevin ruined my childhood. I don't spend time writing out long entitled posts telling how Disney should listed to me a random person on the internet with zero movie making experience on how to "fix" the mcu universe. The sad part is the old people are the ones whining. Imagine the types of whiny kids they raised? Things are not going to get better. The whiny kids will just move on to whining about different things.
Maybe one day the moderators will do their Jobs and stop those people from submerging so many star wars thread into a sad pit of endless crying.
Star Wars is… unique. There’s nothing else like it, for better and for worse.
And Star Wars backlash and negativity goes back a long way, predating the internet by decades. ESB was divisive for its time, and that big Vader twist split fans for many years. ROTJ had a lot of pushback for the entire teddy-bear merch-driven Ewok stuff and the slapdash Leia twin twist. The prequels need no introduction - from Jar Jar to midichlorians to wooden acting to overreliance on CG to wasted characters. The ST has its major problems too.
It’s not comparable to the MCU, really, because despite the impressive 25+ films and shows, the whole universe is relatively young, just over 13 years old. Star Wars has been around over 45 years, spanning several generations that identify strongly with the films and characters of their time. Marvel itself has an older history, but unlike Star Wars, we have DOZENS of unique takes on Spider-man to gravitate to.
The Spider-man we talk about in the MCU is “Spider-man”, but he’s not the same character as the other movies, or the cartoons, or the games, or the comics.
Disney insists that EVERY character in Star Wars in ALL appearance is the same character. That the Obi-Wan in the upcoming show is the same as the one in the cartoons, the games, the comics, and the old movies. That Han in the Solo movie is the same guy we’ve known for years. That the Bantha-loving, respect-driven heroic Boba Fett struggling to be a noble crime lord is the same guy from the original films.
Trying to be rigid and consistent across decades and make everything canon all the time means stuff fans dislike doesn’t go away. If you don’t like a bad James Bond film, they’ll reboot it all every decade or so. Don’t like the last Batman movie? We got three other guys playing Bruce Wayne right now. Oops, we screwed up Terminator/Halloween/Ninja Turtles? A new, fresh take on them is in the works. Star Wars is immutable.
The “mistakes” of the prequels are still bothersome, and people STILL drag them for their faults - along with every annoying “Special Editions” addition. But at least the themes and character arcs worked on a basic level. The ST undoes almost all the hard-earned victories and character-growth from those films, making it much harder to ignore. They angered fans of BOTH original trilogies and failed to justify themselves as a coherent trilogy itself, so this backlash is very hard to just move on from since it colors every last single movie and character in the whole franchise… and even many dreading the parts where Mandalorian or BOBF try and bridge these bad ideas together.
Long rant aside, I’m not really a Star Wars fan. But I am fascinated by how fans respond to each new film series, how they cope with the constant disappointments and cling to the amazing successes. I love to analyze and study it.
As a figure collector, though, I simply just love many of the designs and artistry that goes into making a memorable sci-fi character. If that character ends up being a good, fleshed out character, even better. I am openly not a fan of what they did with Rey or how they wrote her. It frustrates me. But I would be lying if I didn’t think the visual design of a space scavenger in rags salvaging scraps of rusted warships who is dragged into a greater galactic fight isn’t something that spurred my curiosity and grabbed my attention.
I still like the idea of heroes with truly lowly origins, struggling to get by, and not being tied to Skywalkers or Palpatine legacies. That everyday common people can become movers and shakers on a galactic level.
At least, that’s the potential. As a kid, I safely took these kind of characters and made up my own stories. No reason I can’t as an adult, even if Disney says they aren’t canon.
