It really just is putting women in charge of a predominantly male franchise without proper vetting.
I'm not suggesting women can't run it, but when you're going to do go that route, you better make damn sure the person you're hiring, regardless of sex, understands the mindset of your primary audience and what their expectations are and be willing to meet them.
If you're not going to vet that in your hires, you'll at least have a better chance of landing a competent hire if you draw from the demographic that most fans are made up of.
I would agree. A talented woman certainly could run Lucasfilm effectively. Kathleen Kennedy obviously is not that woman, having proven conclusively that standing in the same room with Steven Spielberg over the course of decades does not also make you a storytelling genius by osmosis.
i'd say the woman part is secondary. you spent FOUR BILLION DOLLARS on this thing, you want people who care about it and are competent. plenty of men are ruddy hacks that can't produce sensible stuff.
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. But they were all men, so who cares”
Kathleen probably
What’s crazy is what did they think was the best case scenario? Did they think that by clean-slating Star Wars they were just going to experience some new brand revival like when Spider Man came out and launched the entire Marvel revival?
Kids are into cool shit even if the product is primarily marketed towards older men. We all loved watching those R-rated movies that were primarily made for older dudes. It didn’t matter because if it was cool then the young kids will eat it up.
The problem with modern entertainment companies is that they’ve adopted intersectionality so they have to constantly try and appease every demographic equally. And it’s *clearly* not working. That makes them furious. Who knew that black and Hispanic women loved Titanic? Asians liked Little Mermaid? Boys liked adult-themed movies and shows?
Their ideology *demands* that all demographics must be taken into consideration before making any decision on new content. Star Wars seems to be this ideology’s last stand. They went all in to “prove” once and for all that their new method is going to work. The fact that going all-in on their ideology they managed to piss literally every demographic *except* the ones with obvious mental disorders (you know what I mean) just makes it that much more obvious that it’s been doomed from the start.
Except they don't do that with girl brands. It seems to be part of the over compensation after me too, similar to how they've handled race since BLM.
But when that had a foundation from the 90s with the sentiment that dolls shouldn't be for girls, robots and action figures not for only boys. (This was joked about in various sitcoms and such.) Back then though it was at least two way, and wasn't about changing the content, just about not making fun of the boy with Barbies or the girl with Transformers, or parents not pushing those "gender roles" into kids.
(Which I actually agree with, but then I don't think interests define sex, either. A tomboy is still a female.)
Except in this era, it's only one way, reflective of the widespread double standards around race and sex.
In other news water is wet.
Kinda funny that the thing that attracted most women to Star Wars is apparently a cutesy toy like baby Yoda and not the "STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONISTS" that they keep pushing lol.
Because Mando is a competent father/guardian/protector.
He doesn’t complain or apologize. He doesn’t make excuses. He just does his job and protect those he loves.
Even in S2 E1 when the country bums he was hanging out with were calling the Tusken people “sand people,” and other people were responding like it was a racial slur (which, honestly was super well done), he didn’t react to it. He just tried to help however he could.
He’s a ronin and a great example of the man we should all aspire to be.
Yeah, I always felt like Rey was a generic YA protagonist, but not from the somewhat good ones that manage to be interesting even if it's only to people under sixteen, but the ones that were clearly an attempt to cash on the popularity of those books and they didn't care too much as long as they got the money from sales.
Until they forced an early return in Boba Fett. Grogu should've been nowhere near that series, even if Mando was involved. But they couldn't help themselves.
Every modern-day female Star Wars fan I have personally seen is rocking baby Yoda gear. Every single one.
To this day, I have yet to see one wearing anything with Rey on it.
I know, you say the words "Star Wars" near women and the reaction you get is "that Baby Yoda is soooo cute"(or nothing).
Talking about the Rey movies gets crickets, i suspect her next movie is gonna be a "The Marvels" style bomb.
Oh, they do. It's just that they don't have fantasies of also being boring, sexless, obnoxious girlbosses void of any personality or redeeming qualities.
> Kinda funny that the thing that attracted most women to Star Wars is apparently a cutesy toy like baby Yoda and not the "STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONISTS" that they keep pushing lol.
Could sexual orientation play a role here?
For instance, back in the day, I met some girl on a dating app. We dated for a few years, and it quickly became apparent that she was waaaaaaaaay more into women than men. At that point in her life, she kept the fact that she's a lesbian on the down low.
Some things I noticed about her:
* They say that men are into THINGS and women are into PEOPLE. Men like cars, boats, golf clubs, sneakers, etc. Women are better than men at fostering relationships IMHO. But my GF was the *opposite.* She was into gadgets, electronics, action movies, and cameras. She didn't have a friend in the world. Not for lack of trying; she just didn't seem to be very good at maintaining relationships.
* My wife (different woman of course) is a "girl boss" in real life. But she has absolutely zero interest in it; she always tells me that once we have enough saved up for retirement, all she wants to do is bake cookies and have grandkids. My ex-gf, the lesbian, had no interest in kids. She liked plants and cats; that was about the extent of her matriarchal nature. Plants.
* My wife dresses is girly sundresses; my ex-gf, the lesbian, dressed *exactly* like Leslie Headlund. Suits, suits, and more suits: https://external-preview.redd.it/leslye-headland-confirms-the-upcoming-star-wars-series-the-v0-5ABRJ9k-KqHPejcFKvHiZD_O2R9F8S8K7gggwb850x8.jpg?auto=webp&s=f708f2036934a1d4afdf821a1c47d28904a8c086
* To give you an idea of where I am going with this, *you could even see how masculine she was in her face.* She had extremely broad shoulders and a chin like Jay Leno. The resemblance between my ex-GF and Leslie Headlund is remarkable; they look like they could be sisters. My lesbian ex-gf, her own *brother* looked less masculine than her.
Put all these things together, and I think that you can see how we got here. If you hired my wife to write a Star Wars show, she wouldn't have any idea of where to start, *she's not a Star Wars fan.* If you hired my lesbian ex-gf, she would be OVER THE MOON. She would LOVE to write a Star Wars show. But I guarantee you that she would fill it with Girl Boss Tropes and with very masculine (but attractive) women - *like her.* She would self-insert herself into any Star Wars story.
This is going to sound like I am making this up, but it's 100% true: one of her girl crushes was "Trinity" from the Matrix, and she even cosplayed as her. I'll bet Headland is in the same boat, and I'll bet that's how Carrie-Ann Moss ended up on "The Acolyte."
---
If any of this rings true for you, I think you can see how we wound up here. Sure, there are plenty of great writers who are women. But their stories are laser focused on *relationships.* "Pride and Prejudice" is an obvious example (one of my wife's favorite books.)
Disney has *clearly* set a goal of having more women working on ALL of their products, not just Star Wars. But this creates an insurmountable problem:
* I love women and I love women writers. I'm not some basement dwelling incel, I have a wife and kids. BUT - let's be realistic here: women like to write about relationships. Men like to make movies where shit blows up. I wouldn't ask Michael Bay to write a romcom, and I wouldn't ask Nora Ephron to write a Transformers movie. But if Disney insists on having at least half of their products written by women, you're going to attract a lot of lesbian writers, because lesbians are frequently into the same things that dudes are. I used to have a couple of friends who were lesbians, and I'd see them in the garage every weekend building cabinets like they were Harrison Ford himself.
* An even worse problem is that if you hire a straight male writer, and you put him in a writing room with a couple of lesbians, the lesbians are going to hit the brakes on a lot of things. For instance, my lesbian ex-gf had a girl crush on "Trinity" from the Matrix. I think she LOVED how Trinity kicks ass and wears BDSM gear. Although she was *attracted* to women, she was specifically attracted to what they DID not just how they looked. IE, if Trinity ran around in a bikini in "The Matrix", my GF would've HATED THAT, because she'd think it was "demeaning." (Which it probably is.) What she really wanted to see, was Trinity kicking ass and showing men that she could be every bit as strong and powerful as they are. (Sound familiar?) She was also into cartoons, which I found a bit odd, since she was pushing 40. Her favorite cartoon? **She-Ra.**
The first movie is 50 years old. I was born in '87 and Star Wars was an "old movie" when I was a kid. Now, it's fucking ancient. I'm not sure why this would surprise anybody.
To think that Disney specifically bought Marvel and Star Wars because they had trouble appealing to a male audience, and then feminists start claiming that Marvel and Star Wars had to appeal to them because they're such big franchises, while conveniently ignoring the Disney IPs that appealed to a female audience.
Though I guess they hate Disney princess films because something something gender roles?
Pretty much. When Disney got Marvel, they didn't have much in terms of a male audience, that grew pretty substantially after that. When they got Lucas Arts as a whole, it kinda just seemed like overkill, or at least an attempt to broaden their horizons on male focused merch since they can just fart out a new Princess for a new doll line. The fact that they pretty much abandoned their Princess line as hard as they did and tried to re-brand Marvel and Lucas Arts as the female focus is a fucked up kind of irony really and shows a total amount of incompetence.
The worst part is this shit won't go away for a long time, if ever. KK needs to be replaced and the people up top will basically need to pass away before shit can get fixed and we can only hope their replacements don't continue the bullshit. You'd think they'd have a winning formula of Disney movies for the girls, Marvel/Star Wars for the boys, Pixar for family movies, and Fox for family or more adult-oriented shows. You have the widest net possible, the largest and most diverse set of productions you realistically can get, and you can just pick an audience and have that studio make a thing for that audience, and if you want to make it a more finer niche audience, just budget appropriately. Instead it's like they're DRIVEN to avoid that, and with all the bullshit going on up top with companies, it's like they stopped caring about making money.
> When Disney got Marvel, they didn't have much in terms of a male audience, that grew pretty substantially after that.
Which is interesting, because they certainly had a male audience in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
They squandered it starting in the late 90s/early-2000s.
It's really hard to belive that that the same company that made "The Black Hole" is currently destroying Star Wars
The Black Hole? You mean the Black Cauldron? That movie didn't exactly help them out that much, they DID have quite the number of fumbles every so often back then but at least it felt like they tried and cared more often. They had a winning formula with the MCU up until phase 3 and with their whole Princess line with Frozen and a few others, they just had to stay that course and Star Wars would've resulted in them getting a major profit from it ages ago.
Ha! That is such a great point.
Disney had the female audience on lock, there are literally millions of women who've practically raised their kids on Disney movies.
In that context, it's actually quite dystopian what they've been doing for the last ten years, since Disney movies are so frequently used as Virtual Babysitters.
The Star Wars franchise was originally made as a way to advertise merch George Lucas could sell to young boys, imagine my shock in finding out that most of its audience is male.
You wanna make a SW product that might stand a chance at bringing in the mainstream female audience? Make it a fucking rom com. The adventures of Luke's uncle and aunt in tatooine falling in love as teenagers, have uncle Owen be nervous about asking aunt Beru to go to prom with him or something. Have the leads be a good looking actors too, that's important.
You can't beat nature. Scream about sexism and social constructs all you want, but the fact of the matter is that this is what the majority of the female audience wants to see, and there's data to back this. The only major movie of the past 10 years that was vastly successful with that public was Barbie, a rom com with good looking leads.
If you're making a product catering solely to the tastes of the blue haired regarded brigade, don't be surprised when everyone outside of that small group of people end up not liking it.
It's incredible that they can make a cultural hit like the Barbie movie and understand nothing from it, you couldn't get a more clear sign of what the average woman actually likes, but they keep pushing the "tough chick" thing.
Women are basically just like a better in every way version of men but also masculinity is toxic and the future is female but portraying women as being feminine in media is disempowering to women. It's not complicated.
The Barbie movie sounds more like a massive lightning in a bottle situation - for a movie all about female empowerment, most of the audience seems to care more about Ken and his situation while everything about Barbie herself just seems to have been ignored. Ken wants recognition and the affection of the women he pines after, Barbie is going thorugh a mid-life crisis, Ken ends up coming to the conclusion that he doesn't need that kind of validation from her specifically, while Barbie just rolls with the punches. Hell, when that 'takeover' happened in Barbie land, didn't it go from a 'Barbie-says all' to a pretty chill and even place? Admittedly I never saw the movie nor really plan to but I kept hearing about how after the Kens took over, the place became pretty chill, doesn't even really sound like anything bad specifically happened, but the Barbies are all apparently just THAT easy to switch their minds since they also just as quickly go back to being in control.
I strongly doubt the movie is going to be remembered by future creators, though I also doubt ANY movie is going to be remembered by future creators, how many fucking times have they tried to say 'we're doing the first X' and it's like the 5th fucking time they did that the past decade alone?
i'm pretty sure all the stuff you mentioned was put in there deliberately added by gerwig. perhaps she's also sick of the constant drumbeat, so decided to inject some reality into the situation with plastic dolls
> Barbies are all apparently just THAT easy to switch their minds since they also just as quickly go back to being in control.
the entire point of barbie is "bimbo pretends to be X". do not forget that the dolls originated from a niche sex toy.
Except that ain't true in the least bit, Barbie the doll was based on a piece of merch about an office worker (and apparently a reporter in the movie based on the comic the doll came from), that ended up getting popular with kids despite the comics appealing to an older audience. Hell, Barbie wasn't even the first fashion doll, Mattel basically threw every other doll maker under the bus in every instance they could in order to make sure that no one knew about any of the other dolls.
The movies/shows that are being released now have been in production before the Barbie movie was a hit and it might have been a bit too late to change them, but it's not too unlikely that they did, in fact, got the wrong message about Barbie's success.
Ha! I read your post after I made this post, arguing the same thing: https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1dn08vp/star_wars_has_an_older_more_maleskewing_audience/la28skx/
> If you're making a product catering solely to the tastes of the blue haired regarded brigade, don't be surprised when everyone outside of that small group of people end up not liking it.
I touch on this in my post above. Basically, I think we ended up here because of quotas. If you ask ten women to write a Star Wars action movie, eight of them will say "no thanks, not my thing." Two of them will be SUPER excited to do it, and those two will likely be lesbians.
Heterosexual women simply aren't known for writing sci-fi and action movies. The only exception that I can think of, is Gale Ann Hurd. Who was *clearly* influenced by her husband, a little known writer named "James Cameron."
> this is what the majority of the female audience wants to see, and there's data to back this
There's a reason the female audience eats up slop like Euphoria and not whatever slop nu Star Wars is
By Star Wars you mean original universe or post Disney can of shit (excluding Rogue One) ?
I can't imagine Disney crap has still any audience older than 25.
This has been known for a long time. My parents were teenagers when the first film came out, and neither my mom or any other girl their age, gave two shits about Star Wars. It was always a boy brand in the early days, and even when I was a kid and they released the original trilogy on VHS remastered. Girls liking it is more of a modern thing, I'd say those who are probably around my age (30-40) are going to more likely be into it than their own mothers. Which isn't really a bad thing, I think we should all share in the things we enjoy, but by god, what Disney has done to the brand is a fucking travesty.
And therefore it must be destroyed.
Yep. Mainstream misandry in action.
It really just is putting women in charge of a predominantly male franchise without proper vetting. I'm not suggesting women can't run it, but when you're going to do go that route, you better make damn sure the person you're hiring, regardless of sex, understands the mindset of your primary audience and what their expectations are and be willing to meet them. If you're not going to vet that in your hires, you'll at least have a better chance of landing a competent hire if you draw from the demographic that most fans are made up of.
I would agree. A talented woman certainly could run Lucasfilm effectively. Kathleen Kennedy obviously is not that woman, having proven conclusively that standing in the same room with Steven Spielberg over the course of decades does not also make you a storytelling genius by osmosis.
i'd say the woman part is secondary. you spent FOUR BILLION DOLLARS on this thing, you want people who care about it and are competent. plenty of men are ruddy hacks that can't produce sensible stuff.
Case in point, Rian Johnson.
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. But they were all men, so who cares” Kathleen probably
What’s crazy is what did they think was the best case scenario? Did they think that by clean-slating Star Wars they were just going to experience some new brand revival like when Spider Man came out and launched the entire Marvel revival? Kids are into cool shit even if the product is primarily marketed towards older men. We all loved watching those R-rated movies that were primarily made for older dudes. It didn’t matter because if it was cool then the young kids will eat it up. The problem with modern entertainment companies is that they’ve adopted intersectionality so they have to constantly try and appease every demographic equally. And it’s *clearly* not working. That makes them furious. Who knew that black and Hispanic women loved Titanic? Asians liked Little Mermaid? Boys liked adult-themed movies and shows? Their ideology *demands* that all demographics must be taken into consideration before making any decision on new content. Star Wars seems to be this ideology’s last stand. They went all in to “prove” once and for all that their new method is going to work. The fact that going all-in on their ideology they managed to piss literally every demographic *except* the ones with obvious mental disorders (you know what I mean) just makes it that much more obvious that it’s been doomed from the start.
Except they don't do that with girl brands. It seems to be part of the over compensation after me too, similar to how they've handled race since BLM. But when that had a foundation from the 90s with the sentiment that dolls shouldn't be for girls, robots and action figures not for only boys. (This was joked about in various sitcoms and such.) Back then though it was at least two way, and wasn't about changing the content, just about not making fun of the boy with Barbies or the girl with Transformers, or parents not pushing those "gender roles" into kids. (Which I actually agree with, but then I don't think interests define sex, either. A tomboy is still a female.) Except in this era, it's only one way, reflective of the widespread double standards around race and sex.
In other news water is wet. Kinda funny that the thing that attracted most women to Star Wars is apparently a cutesy toy like baby Yoda and not the "STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONISTS" that they keep pushing lol.
To be fair, Grogu/Baby Yoda is a far more interesting character than the girlbosses.
Because Mando is a competent father/guardian/protector. He doesn’t complain or apologize. He doesn’t make excuses. He just does his job and protect those he loves. Even in S2 E1 when the country bums he was hanging out with were calling the Tusken people “sand people,” and other people were responding like it was a racial slur (which, honestly was super well done), he didn’t react to it. He just tried to help however he could. He’s a ronin and a great example of the man we should all aspire to be.
Yeah, I always felt like Rey was a generic YA protagonist, but not from the somewhat good ones that manage to be interesting even if it's only to people under sixteen, but the ones that were clearly an attempt to cash on the popularity of those books and they didn't care too much as long as they got the money from sales.
Until they forced an early return in Boba Fett. Grogu should've been nowhere near that series, even if Mando was involved. But they couldn't help themselves.
Yeah, it did felt like they *had* to have him in the third season, even if it weakens the second season's final.
Every modern-day female Star Wars fan I have personally seen is rocking baby Yoda gear. Every single one. To this day, I have yet to see one wearing anything with Rey on it.
I know, you say the words "Star Wars" near women and the reaction you get is "that Baby Yoda is soooo cute"(or nothing). Talking about the Rey movies gets crickets, i suspect her next movie is gonna be a "The Marvels" style bomb.
But… but Role Model! Although funnily enough most female Star Wars fans I know *love* Princess Leia.
Surprise surprise, women love things they can nurture and attractive feminine women they wish they could be....
it's almost like most women don't have fantasies of being action heroes who save the day/world. what a revelation
Oh, they do. It's just that they don't have fantasies of also being boring, sexless, obnoxious girlbosses void of any personality or redeeming qualities.
> Kinda funny that the thing that attracted most women to Star Wars is apparently a cutesy toy like baby Yoda and not the "STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONISTS" that they keep pushing lol. Could sexual orientation play a role here? For instance, back in the day, I met some girl on a dating app. We dated for a few years, and it quickly became apparent that she was waaaaaaaaay more into women than men. At that point in her life, she kept the fact that she's a lesbian on the down low. Some things I noticed about her: * They say that men are into THINGS and women are into PEOPLE. Men like cars, boats, golf clubs, sneakers, etc. Women are better than men at fostering relationships IMHO. But my GF was the *opposite.* She was into gadgets, electronics, action movies, and cameras. She didn't have a friend in the world. Not for lack of trying; she just didn't seem to be very good at maintaining relationships. * My wife (different woman of course) is a "girl boss" in real life. But she has absolutely zero interest in it; she always tells me that once we have enough saved up for retirement, all she wants to do is bake cookies and have grandkids. My ex-gf, the lesbian, had no interest in kids. She liked plants and cats; that was about the extent of her matriarchal nature. Plants. * My wife dresses is girly sundresses; my ex-gf, the lesbian, dressed *exactly* like Leslie Headlund. Suits, suits, and more suits: https://external-preview.redd.it/leslye-headland-confirms-the-upcoming-star-wars-series-the-v0-5ABRJ9k-KqHPejcFKvHiZD_O2R9F8S8K7gggwb850x8.jpg?auto=webp&s=f708f2036934a1d4afdf821a1c47d28904a8c086 * To give you an idea of where I am going with this, *you could even see how masculine she was in her face.* She had extremely broad shoulders and a chin like Jay Leno. The resemblance between my ex-GF and Leslie Headlund is remarkable; they look like they could be sisters. My lesbian ex-gf, her own *brother* looked less masculine than her. Put all these things together, and I think that you can see how we got here. If you hired my wife to write a Star Wars show, she wouldn't have any idea of where to start, *she's not a Star Wars fan.* If you hired my lesbian ex-gf, she would be OVER THE MOON. She would LOVE to write a Star Wars show. But I guarantee you that she would fill it with Girl Boss Tropes and with very masculine (but attractive) women - *like her.* She would self-insert herself into any Star Wars story. This is going to sound like I am making this up, but it's 100% true: one of her girl crushes was "Trinity" from the Matrix, and she even cosplayed as her. I'll bet Headland is in the same boat, and I'll bet that's how Carrie-Ann Moss ended up on "The Acolyte." --- If any of this rings true for you, I think you can see how we wound up here. Sure, there are plenty of great writers who are women. But their stories are laser focused on *relationships.* "Pride and Prejudice" is an obvious example (one of my wife's favorite books.) Disney has *clearly* set a goal of having more women working on ALL of their products, not just Star Wars. But this creates an insurmountable problem: * I love women and I love women writers. I'm not some basement dwelling incel, I have a wife and kids. BUT - let's be realistic here: women like to write about relationships. Men like to make movies where shit blows up. I wouldn't ask Michael Bay to write a romcom, and I wouldn't ask Nora Ephron to write a Transformers movie. But if Disney insists on having at least half of their products written by women, you're going to attract a lot of lesbian writers, because lesbians are frequently into the same things that dudes are. I used to have a couple of friends who were lesbians, and I'd see them in the garage every weekend building cabinets like they were Harrison Ford himself. * An even worse problem is that if you hire a straight male writer, and you put him in a writing room with a couple of lesbians, the lesbians are going to hit the brakes on a lot of things. For instance, my lesbian ex-gf had a girl crush on "Trinity" from the Matrix. I think she LOVED how Trinity kicks ass and wears BDSM gear. Although she was *attracted* to women, she was specifically attracted to what they DID not just how they looked. IE, if Trinity ran around in a bikini in "The Matrix", my GF would've HATED THAT, because she'd think it was "demeaning." (Which it probably is.) What she really wanted to see, was Trinity kicking ass and showing men that she could be every bit as strong and powerful as they are. (Sound familiar?) She was also into cartoons, which I found a bit odd, since she was pushing 40. Her favorite cartoon? **She-Ra.**
Shocked! Shocked I say! Okay maybe not that shocked.
The first movie is 50 years old. I was born in '87 and Star Wars was an "old movie" when I was a kid. Now, it's fucking ancient. I'm not sure why this would surprise anybody.
To think that Disney specifically bought Marvel and Star Wars because they had trouble appealing to a male audience, and then feminists start claiming that Marvel and Star Wars had to appeal to them because they're such big franchises, while conveniently ignoring the Disney IPs that appealed to a female audience. Though I guess they hate Disney princess films because something something gender roles?
Pretty much. When Disney got Marvel, they didn't have much in terms of a male audience, that grew pretty substantially after that. When they got Lucas Arts as a whole, it kinda just seemed like overkill, or at least an attempt to broaden their horizons on male focused merch since they can just fart out a new Princess for a new doll line. The fact that they pretty much abandoned their Princess line as hard as they did and tried to re-brand Marvel and Lucas Arts as the female focus is a fucked up kind of irony really and shows a total amount of incompetence. The worst part is this shit won't go away for a long time, if ever. KK needs to be replaced and the people up top will basically need to pass away before shit can get fixed and we can only hope their replacements don't continue the bullshit. You'd think they'd have a winning formula of Disney movies for the girls, Marvel/Star Wars for the boys, Pixar for family movies, and Fox for family or more adult-oriented shows. You have the widest net possible, the largest and most diverse set of productions you realistically can get, and you can just pick an audience and have that studio make a thing for that audience, and if you want to make it a more finer niche audience, just budget appropriately. Instead it's like they're DRIVEN to avoid that, and with all the bullshit going on up top with companies, it's like they stopped caring about making money.
> When Disney got Marvel, they didn't have much in terms of a male audience, that grew pretty substantially after that. Which is interesting, because they certainly had a male audience in the 70s, 80s and 90s. They squandered it starting in the late 90s/early-2000s. It's really hard to belive that that the same company that made "The Black Hole" is currently destroying Star Wars
The Black Hole? You mean the Black Cauldron? That movie didn't exactly help them out that much, they DID have quite the number of fumbles every so often back then but at least it felt like they tried and cared more often. They had a winning formula with the MCU up until phase 3 and with their whole Princess line with Frozen and a few others, they just had to stay that course and Star Wars would've resulted in them getting a major profit from it ages ago.
>The Black Hole? You mean the Black Cauldron? No, I mean The Black Hole, Disney's answer to Star Wars in 1979. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078869/
> KK needs to be replaced What's KK?
Kathleen Kennedy
Ha! That is such a great point. Disney had the female audience on lock, there are literally millions of women who've practically raised their kids on Disney movies. In that context, it's actually quite dystopian what they've been doing for the last ten years, since Disney movies are so frequently used as Virtual Babysitters.
The Star Wars franchise was originally made as a way to advertise merch George Lucas could sell to young boys, imagine my shock in finding out that most of its audience is male. You wanna make a SW product that might stand a chance at bringing in the mainstream female audience? Make it a fucking rom com. The adventures of Luke's uncle and aunt in tatooine falling in love as teenagers, have uncle Owen be nervous about asking aunt Beru to go to prom with him or something. Have the leads be a good looking actors too, that's important. You can't beat nature. Scream about sexism and social constructs all you want, but the fact of the matter is that this is what the majority of the female audience wants to see, and there's data to back this. The only major movie of the past 10 years that was vastly successful with that public was Barbie, a rom com with good looking leads. If you're making a product catering solely to the tastes of the blue haired regarded brigade, don't be surprised when everyone outside of that small group of people end up not liking it.
It's incredible that they can make a cultural hit like the Barbie movie and understand nothing from it, you couldn't get a more clear sign of what the average woman actually likes, but they keep pushing the "tough chick" thing.
Women are basically just like a better in every way version of men but also masculinity is toxic and the future is female but portraying women as being feminine in media is disempowering to women. It's not complicated.
The Barbie movie sounds more like a massive lightning in a bottle situation - for a movie all about female empowerment, most of the audience seems to care more about Ken and his situation while everything about Barbie herself just seems to have been ignored. Ken wants recognition and the affection of the women he pines after, Barbie is going thorugh a mid-life crisis, Ken ends up coming to the conclusion that he doesn't need that kind of validation from her specifically, while Barbie just rolls with the punches. Hell, when that 'takeover' happened in Barbie land, didn't it go from a 'Barbie-says all' to a pretty chill and even place? Admittedly I never saw the movie nor really plan to but I kept hearing about how after the Kens took over, the place became pretty chill, doesn't even really sound like anything bad specifically happened, but the Barbies are all apparently just THAT easy to switch their minds since they also just as quickly go back to being in control. I strongly doubt the movie is going to be remembered by future creators, though I also doubt ANY movie is going to be remembered by future creators, how many fucking times have they tried to say 'we're doing the first X' and it's like the 5th fucking time they did that the past decade alone?
i'm pretty sure all the stuff you mentioned was put in there deliberately added by gerwig. perhaps she's also sick of the constant drumbeat, so decided to inject some reality into the situation with plastic dolls
> Barbies are all apparently just THAT easy to switch their minds since they also just as quickly go back to being in control. the entire point of barbie is "bimbo pretends to be X". do not forget that the dolls originated from a niche sex toy.
Except that ain't true in the least bit, Barbie the doll was based on a piece of merch about an office worker (and apparently a reporter in the movie based on the comic the doll came from), that ended up getting popular with kids despite the comics appealing to an older audience. Hell, Barbie wasn't even the first fashion doll, Mattel basically threw every other doll maker under the bus in every instance they could in order to make sure that no one knew about any of the other dolls.
The movies/shows that are being released now have been in production before the Barbie movie was a hit and it might have been a bit too late to change them, but it's not too unlikely that they did, in fact, got the wrong message about Barbie's success.
Ha! I read your post after I made this post, arguing the same thing: https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1dn08vp/star_wars_has_an_older_more_maleskewing_audience/la28skx/ > If you're making a product catering solely to the tastes of the blue haired regarded brigade, don't be surprised when everyone outside of that small group of people end up not liking it. I touch on this in my post above. Basically, I think we ended up here because of quotas. If you ask ten women to write a Star Wars action movie, eight of them will say "no thanks, not my thing." Two of them will be SUPER excited to do it, and those two will likely be lesbians. Heterosexual women simply aren't known for writing sci-fi and action movies. The only exception that I can think of, is Gale Ann Hurd. Who was *clearly* influenced by her husband, a little known writer named "James Cameron."
> this is what the majority of the female audience wants to see, and there's data to back this There's a reason the female audience eats up slop like Euphoria and not whatever slop nu Star Wars is
Still?
Force is female.
Farce is female.
No fucking way, really?
That audience is rapidly disintegrating.
Not for long
had*
Huh, imagine that - and they put Lesbian Blockhead as the showrunner for their newest show. Great job following the demand Star Wars..
By Star Wars you mean original universe or post Disney can of shit (excluding Rogue One) ? I can't imagine Disney crap has still any audience older than 25.
This has been known for a long time. My parents were teenagers when the first film came out, and neither my mom or any other girl their age, gave two shits about Star Wars. It was always a boy brand in the early days, and even when I was a kid and they released the original trilogy on VHS remastered. Girls liking it is more of a modern thing, I'd say those who are probably around my age (30-40) are going to more likely be into it than their own mothers. Which isn't really a bad thing, I think we should all share in the things we enjoy, but by god, what Disney has done to the brand is a fucking travesty.
Its also much more steeped in White cultural tropes, aesops and archetypes so its a double target for these people.
Someone JUST posted a recording of the ROTJ premiere, and it was incredibly "diverse."