[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]

The goal is never to make good cinema because the companies are not owned or run by filmakers, they are owned by MBA types.

It isn't some startling gotcha to point that out. "Good cinema" is subjective and meaningless, money can be quantified and is objectively reported as a number.

Anyone claiming the goal is something other than money is projecting.

I didn't like The Last Jedi but it got good reviews which shows how meaningless it is to argue about what is a "good Star Wars story" from a business perspective. Audience exit polls were also positive.

As far as I can tell the goal was to make Star Wars stuff as quickly as possible, presumably set by the Disney CEO not Kennedy. Presumably because he cared more about showing he was making back the money buying Lucasfilm than quality.

So they hired three writer directors and had them start banging out scripts immediately, instead of hiring a writer to outline movies in advance.

And the movies (except Solo) made a ton of money and 2 out of 3 had good reviews and good exit polls. So they are "good" by any "objective" metric.

I guess they've also been "good" for reactionary youtubers so the money trickles down.

None of us know what Kathleen Kennedy's involvement was in private office meetings or what notes she gave. The Youtubers version of Kathleen Kennedy is a fictional character. People are projecting meaning into PR statements about diversity.

[fastball]

This is what Kathleen Kennedy had to say about the production of the Mandalorian, of which (thankfully) she played very little part in:

> 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.

You don't need closed-room meeting comments to just look at her public comments and infer the motivations from there. Literally, go and look at any public comments she has made.

[staticman2]

By that logic I guess if an Apple executive states they are hiring a diverse group of people and improving their hiring practices in response to criticism (I bet they have stated this?) your conclusion is Apple doesn't want to make good phones.

You might unpack why you see hiring a diverse group of people as the opposite of "making good product" but the long and short answer is you are the sort of reactionary I was talking about.

Never mind the fact that all Star Wars directors so far have been white men, or facts at all, you are angry and upset because someone told you to feel that way and told you that article should make you angry.

[timeslip1523]

But they failed at making money. The box office revenue went down. Just because you can't easily quantify 'good cinema' doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and is correlated with monetary success.

[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.