From the article:
"While I’m not going to argue that overseas audiences are drawn to big movies starring women and minorities more than standard white guy “he’s the special” hero’s journeys, they sure don’t seem to find them repelling either."
"Did Solo: A Star Wars Story disappoint because it had a white male lead? Would that it were so simple! You can throw a whole bunch of recent “starring a white male lead” blockbuster releases at me without even dipping into comic book superheroes, like The Revenant, Dunkirk, Kong: Skull Island and Ready Player One."
"Not every film starring a young white male lead is doomed to struggle overseas (Kingsman: The Secret Service). Not every female-led or minority-centric biggie is going to kick butt here (Pacific Rim: Uprising) and abroad (Ghost in the Shell). Yet, there is enough evidence to suggest that it doesn’t hurt to have your movie centered on a racial minority or a woman (of any color)."
"In the end, Solo had little to offer that was fresh and had little to sell beyond being a movie that happened to be part of the Star Wars universe. But in 2018, an event movie featuring a generic white guy in the lead is that much less of an event movie, and merely being a big-budget fantasy spectacle isn’t enough. Giving certain demographics, a still too rare opportunity to root for heroes that look like them can help create demographically-specific event movies. Thus, from a certain point of view, white male movie stars may indeed be box office poison."
In other words, having a white male lead doesn't prevent people from attending a film. However, if you're going to rely on hacky genre fiction where there's no innovation, you really need a selling point beyond "just another sci fi movie" or "just another superhero movie". Can hacks afford not to use identity politics as a selling point?
I have a better idea: maybe audiences don't need to be patronized with hacky writing in the first place. Maybe if a franchise has consistently good storytelling, dialogue, character development and design, people will throw money at you regardless as to what the protagonist looks like. Instead, the asshat who wrote this article is concerned with sustaining a business model that relies on hack writing. His answer? Race bating.
Someone remind me, why do film critics exist in the first place?
