[xiphias2]

I saw some improvement in the Netflix movies getting less extreme over time. Emily in Paris was the first movie where the woke Netflix made fun of itself using French people / culture as props. Disney and Netflix had to lose billions of dollars to understand that the loudest voices may not represent the majority of the people.

[wskinner]

Can you be more specific about what happened with Disney?

[staticman2]

There's a small cottage industry of Youtubers making up "fake" news about how Star Wars movies and Star Trek shows are all getting cancelled and going out of business for "being too woke" and losing the audience. These Youtubers invent secret inside scoops about how the executives at Disney and other companies are constantly in turmoil and losing money.

My guess is the person you replied to doesn't realize these shows are fiction and doesn't' realize he or she is in a information bubble. However I know nothing about that poster so could easily be mistaken.

[fastball]

Hmm, how do you figure this narrative is fiction? I'm not exactly sure one can be objective about this sort of thing, as obviously the success of a film is hugely multivariate. But I think a good place to start is box office from the new trilogy and subsequent films.

SW VII (2015) – $2,068,223,624

SW VIII (2017) – $1,332,539,889 <-- loud complaints by "YouTubers"

SW IX (2019) – $1,074,144,248

The downward trend is honestly pretty extreme. Of course you can blame this on fatigue, yet if you do the same analysis with the Marvel Avengers films (which have not had the same "too PC" criticism directed at them), you will see the opposite trend towards the story's climax.

You can also look at the Star Wars films that are not part of the new trilogy: Rogue One and Solo.

Rogue One came out in 2016, after VII and before VIII. VIII was widely considered (especially by the YouTubers you refer to) to be the most egregious re-writing of Star Wars lore, establishing (as the argument goes) the main character as a clear "Mary Sue" (ridiculously over-powered character with no flaws) and otherwise shitting all over established canon in the name of "subverting expectations" (in the director's own words). Meanwhile, Solo came out after Episode VIII, and focused on (I would say) the male-favorite character in all of Star Wars, devilish rogue Han Solo. So I think the reasonable expectation before the release of either film was that Solo would be the more likely to succeed. But again, Solo came out fresh off the heels of Episode VIII, the main film that received most of the backlash you claim is "fake". I will let their respective Box Office numbers speak for themselves.

Rogue One (2016): $1,056,057,273

Solo (2018): $393,151,347

[bombcar]

For all the moaning and complaining out there - for me it can down to this: I saw 7 and it was meh but I gave 8 a chance. I’ve never seen 9. They needed to write a compelling story and at least make it entertaining - the prequels had faults but they were fun to watch.

[asiachick]

Agreed. It's not about anything "woke" in the movies. It's about they were horrible movies or so enough people thought so they avoided or told their friends to avoid or didn't see more than once.

For me personally, I saw EP9 on opening day and with my brain off I managed to enjoy the spectacle while constantly having tell myself to just ignore all the issues and enjoy the ride. But on immediate reflection once it was over it was impossible to ignore all the issues.

I tried to watch it again 6-8 months later and had to turn it off after about 10 minutes it was just so much nonsense.

[fastball]

I think the claim here though is that part of the reason the story is incoherent and that you have a lot of the other problems is because they weren't focused on making a good Star Wars trilogy. If you listen to basically anything the head honcho for these films (Kathleen Kennedy) has said, you get the distinct feeling that she had a different objective than "make good cinema".

As noted, this also seemed to be Rian Johnson's goal as well. It was not "make a compelling story within the Star Wars universe", it was "subvert expectations". Which in the end basically meant turning all the male characters into whinging losers / arrogant assholes while turning all the women into wise sages / over-powered wunderkinds who need no training and make no mistakes, even when they literally do: Leia and Holdo were the ones in charge when literally the entire rebel fleet was destroyed except for one ship with like 10 people on it, and the script gives them zero flack for this. And then of course you have the script letting said terrible leader become an awesome and amazing martyr by single-handedly destroying the huge and menacing enemy flagship in a way that was visually stunning (loved it in the cinema) but broke Star Wars canon in honestly a pretty staggering way (realized once my brain caught up with my eyes).

This actually seems to rhyme a bit with the OP – you can't point out what terrible leaders they were in VIII because the leaders in question happened to be women (I say "happened to be", but it is also clear that the decision to put leadership of the good guys in the hands of women while leaving the leadership of the bad guys in the hands of men was a pretty deliberate move).

Contrast this with The Mandalorian, which has strong and compelling female characters and is adored by audiences of all genders. Why? Because the agenda was not "subvert expectations", it was "make a good Star Wars story".

[staticman2]

There had not been a Star Wars movie starring Harrison Ford, Carie Fisher, Mark Hamil and the rest for over 30 years. Perhaps people were excited at seeing these characters again and not so exited about every movie being about killing them off?

It doesn't have much to do with wokeness, though, killing parent figures (Uncle Ben, Obie Wan, Yoda, etc.) is what the original trilogy did too. It just wasn't very original.

[MrFlynn]

I feel like the simpler explanation here is that these movies did not have a coherent story and had poor character development, not that they were the victims of "being too woke" or whatever the current most popular explanation that said internet reactionaries like to claim.

[fastball]

Yes, but the question is why didn't they have a coherent story?

Is it really just "some movies have coherent stories, and some don't ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

I think if you listen to Kathleen Kennedy talk about her vision for Star Wars, it becomes pretty clear that her goal was not "make good cinema", it was "push (racial and gender) diversity-for-the-sake-of-diversity agenda".

I mean, her contribution to The Mandalorian (which luckily was entirely conceived outside of her influence) was:

> In March 2018. Kennedy added that the series was an opportunity for a diverse group of writers and directors to be hired to create Star Wars stories, after the franchise's films had been criticized for being written and directed by only white men.

[xiphias2]

As far as I heared (from youtube ,,conspiracy theorists'') the companies hired outside advisors whose whole role was to see if the movies / series were politically correct, or needed some change. When the pandemic hit, it was a loss quarter for Disney: both the films flopped, and Disney-land had to be closed at the same time. There's a story that the leads got together on a video conference call and decided that it's time to kick out the advisor, and I saw Netflix's stance change at the same time.

I was really sorry about Mulan for example, because it's one of my favourite cartoons, and I was really really looking for the movie remake. They made it politically correct for the US and cut out all the sex scenes and humor because of the Chinese government. I think it's one of the worst remakes of all time at this point.

[ErikVandeWater]

The new Mulan is also much less feminist than the previous. The last one had a great lesson: It is thought only men can be warriors, but it turns out that through hard work and wit, a woman can be the best warrior.

The new lesson: If you're a woman with magic powers you can overcome sexism and become great.

[PoignardAzur]

Kiiind of annoying as a french person though.

Seriously, Paris is never that clean.

[xiphias2]

I really laughed at the peeing station and thought it as a joke that goes too far until I Googled it and realized that it is real :)