#disney star wars critically

[blackwomeninstarwars]

Aside from its anti-blackness/racism, the general deterioration of Star Wars as a multi-faced story results from people failing to understand the messaging behind characters like the Jedi (and even the Sith). Failing to understand, and desperate to flatten it into something so binary and unfaceted, reactionary viewpoints are the guiding principle.

So, now we've got god-knows-how-many television shows and films (canceled or completed) that problematize the Jedi (and are far too sympathetic/lenient with Sith and Empire ideology) and their philosophy, and people who unironically believe "the Jedi bad, actually" telling those stories.

And, all of this, honestly, started with (non-miniseries) The Clone Wars show, and boiled over with the Sequel Trilogy.

[my-star-war-sblog]

Imma be for real for a moment here, the fandom's and newer Star Wars media's treatment of the Jedi genuinly killed of any interest I had in it. I mean, why should I keep being invested in a media that continuously keeps shitting on my favorite characters and tries to make them worse than they are? What reason do I have to continue interaction with a fandom that's not only toxic as hell but also irrationally hates my favorite characters? And ontop of that keeps harassing anyone who does like them about how "wrong" they are? I used to genuinly enjoy Star Wars, but now? Now it's like this one estranged uncle that used to be cool in your childhood until he fell into some weird politics. All I have left over for the media and his fandom is mild disgust and annoyance. And that sucks! Because I used to really like that stuff. And I'd have loved it if I was able to continue liking it. But with the way it's going right now I really can't.

[dancingmusique]

I’m sure someone will post the actual video clip of Manny speaking about his working relationship with Amandla, but here’s a link where you can see it for yourself✨He’s such a gentleman and clearly enjoyed the time he and Amandla had working on The Acolyte.

[whereserpentswalk]

Someone used "ungood" to describe disney remakes and it's so perfect. "Bad" does not sum up the horrible soulless products created to only fulfil capitalist desires, using artists as tormented vessels, ungood captures it so well.

Artists with passion and vision create bad art. Bad art can have entertaining qualities, and value, and sparks of life inside of them. Teenage fanfic, and b movies, and a young musicians first attempt at smoke on the water are bad, and that's ok. Ungood art does not have the same saving graces as bad art. Ungood art is empty, not just failing at quality but devoid of it.

We need to start using the term ungood. Neither Star Wars episode one, nor Star Was episode nine are good movies, but they don't possess the same lack of quality. The "live action" Lion King movie, and Repo! The Genetic Opera might both be failures at putting musicals on film, but I know which one I'd rather watch, which one still has moments I love, and which one was made to make someone at Disney see a line go up.

[flilisskywalker]

Tony Gilroy: Well, Cinta and Val girlfriends lesbians I think that's the term. I don't know, I was just like, yeah, they are a couple. People fuck in space.

Leslye Headland: Osha and Mae mothers are lesbians, they are very lesbian, you can see the LGBTQIA+ all over that coven. Woman can impregnate other woman with cosmic powers because it's cool as hell.

Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau: I mean... you guys like deepfake Luke Skywalker, right?????? And Grogu? You guys definitely dig Grogu, hmm? Maybe another Order 66 flashback?

[book-stacks]

the acolyte is arguably the coolest star wars show to be released since the mandalorian and y'all had to go fuck it up

[lunarspiral1127]

As someone who did not like the show at all, I'm glad this is canceled.

The Acolyte was badly written, screwing over many likable characters by either killing them off or framing them for all the bad that happened, many plotholes and retcons, and just poorly executed. Plus, the disrespect of the Jedi and how they've been treated compared to the Sith.

[jellybellyblimp]

The Acolyte finally got cancelled and I hope all you bitches who whined and whined about how it destroyed canon or ruined Anakin all step on thumbtacks and never have a warm shower again in your life

First good live action since Andor and you all just said “Fuck anything new. If it’s not stacked with same half dozen characters I’m going to call it boring. If it executes on any CANONICAL concepts I’m just unfamiliar with I’m going to say it breaks the lore. And if it’s got any female or POC or queer characters I’m going to call it woke pandering.”

I hope your alarms all fail to go off and none of your damn cars start you deeply boring fucking losers.

Can’t have any fun in this fuckin fandom. I’m going back to my high republic books. Kick rocks.

[garden-bug]

Not to be a hater BUUUT-

Every time I hear anything abt the Ahsoka series doing ‘well’ I am baffled.

At most it was a little entertaining and some of the designs looked good. The plot and character work and just everything else was abysmal.

Oh yeah and it reminded us that The Clone Wars and Rebels was a show. That was new and really enriched the world of Star Wars.

[cienie-isengardu]

Mini rant about SW Acolyte

I wanted to avoid being negative about Disney Star Wars but oh well... Eventual spoilers ahead.

Despite my discouragement with Disney Star Wars I decided to give the Acolyte TV series a try. I ended on the second episode and have a hard time continuing - all because of the weird logic of the show. First there is a whole argument that the main character was a Jedi once and though she was not fully trained, she still could be dangerous. Especially since she is accused of murdering a Jedi Master(?). Which makes sense, all right. So the Jedi sent a Knight and Padawan to arrest the main character. Fine, right? But then Jedi put the arrested maybe-murderer-maybe-not-but-no-less-Force-sensitive prisoner on a police ship with just droids guarding the arrested criminals? If Jedi bothered to send their own people to deal with the situation, why did the Knight and Padawan not escort the arrested person to Coruscant themselves? Like any responsible person would do? 

This is a small thing, but this logic just killed my will to watch.

[silver-stargarden]

why give disney any sort of direct attention and support when you can watch jenny nicholson's star wars hotel video, defunctland, and every other youtube video dissecting all the reasons why you should never touch their evil shit with a 39 and a half foot pole

[tangents-within-tangents]

The thing about the "Clone Rebellion" show

I've become a lot more critical of The Bad Batch lately and I think I realized that’s because it’s over. 

That means that 1. I can look back on the whole show retrospectively, and 2. any issues or hopes I had no longer have a chance to be addressed or resolved.

I realized I’ve been very caught up in thinking about the missed potential of the show, and a lot of my disappointment/frustration with the direction TBB took (esp in regards to the "reg" clones) is coming from the fact that a Clone Rebellion show does not exist to make up for it. For now this is all we have, and it’s hard for me to just accept TBB for what it is, because I at least have been operating under the assumption that this is all we're going to get, that this fabled spin-off show is just not going to happen. 

Because here’s the thing: We all kinda talk about it as if it's a given, a not if but when, but as far as I can tell the concept came entirely from the fans. Just speculation and wish-fulfillment. I don’t really keep up with news/interviews/behind the scenes stuff, but I’m pretty sure there have never been any mentions from official sources (y'all freaked out about one animation job listing that could be for literally anything). If there's something I’ve missed let me know, but for now at least there have been no announcements or plans or anything.

The only thing really is that the gaps left in TBB feel like intentional setup (we never got an Echo and Rex solo episode like we did with Crosshair and Cody which feels like they are saving it for something else, Echo’s fate was specifically left open-ended by not mentioning him (for better or for worse) in the epilogue, Emerie joins them at the end setting up for a female character to be in the main cast, etc) but that still doesn’t guarantee that we will ever actually get a show. That feels more like leaving the possibility open, not necessarily making plans. Especially since TBB actually puts any potential Clone Rebellion show in a really weird position:

There's a lot of important clone-relevant stuff going on during TBB (like Order 66, Kamino, the stormtrooper bill, Tantiss) but I doubt they would go back and show that again since it would either be repetitive by rehashing TBB’s timeline, or confusing by relying too much on people having watched another show. Yeah most people probably would have, but that still doesn’t work very well narratively if your important beats are just implied and happening offscreen. Like I would kill to see more of Nemec and Fireball but then they would just disappear after being killed off (for pretty much no reason) in another show! Hemlock and Tantiss base were designed specifically to be clone-centered threats, and the underground network were the ones who actually spent time searching for it, but then they weren’t there for the rescue so there would be no resolution. But if we instead pick up at the end of TBB it seems like most clones have already been phased out of the Empire by then anyway. Yes you could still make things work either way and come up with new plots and stuff but it’s still a tight spot to be in and it doesn’t really feel like the writers took that into account.

Whether we do get another show or not, I think it still had a negative impact on TBB though. Like that show already had a cameo problem, but 'setting up potential future show at the expense of the current one' is such an issue in any media (esp Star Wars and Marvel these days). Since we got pieces of both 'important stuff happening to the clones' and 'fun mercenary adventures with the Batch' rather than just committing to one or the other, or equally to both, it just causes issues for both shows. I’ve been working on a full post about the lost potential, but for now I’ll summarize as:

It hurts TBB bc we get these glimpses of a more meaningful story that our main characters, the ones the show decides to dedicate screen time to, choose not to participate in. It’s like that trope/bad writing thing where the story they mention (Budapest, or like the Cullens' backstories) sounds more interesting than the one they are actually showing us. Like it’s okay that the Batch didn’t take the same route as Echo and Rex, but the route they did take should be of equal or greater importance/intrigue, and it just really wasn’t. It was mostly directionless side quests and that made the characters seem selfish and a lot of the plots feel filler-y because there are so many important things going on elsewhere. 

It's just starting to feel unlikely that we'll get TWO post-RotS "clone-centered" shows, so why waste the one we did get avoiding the more important clone-centered storyline? Why not at the least equally divide the time you did have between the Batch and Echo and Rex? Why make an ensemble show if you're not going to try to actually balance all the characters? Why bring back a fan favorite clone just to push him to the sidelines and ignore all his potential? Why focus on the "clones" who aren't affected by/don't care about clone issues?

Believe me, I still want a show focusing on Rex and Echo's efforts to save the clones (I just wish it was the show we got in the first place)! I genuinely hope that we will get this show someday, not just because I love clones and this concept, but because I really see a need for it, there's a lot of gaps and potential to be filled there (which is also why I'm okay waiting bc frankly I don't trust the current state of Star Wars writers to properly handle that potential). But I’m treating it with a more “not until proven otherwise” approach (because we all know what happens when we get our hopes up lolll). So for now this is what we have, and unless that changes, I think we should treat it as such.

A lot of times when I see people mention the idea of a new show it's as a way to fix any issues within TBB. Like ‘this wasn’t resolved that well, maybe in the clone rebellion show…’ ‘Maybe Tech could still come back in the clone rebellion show’ ‘Maybe Crosshair’s character arc could be more complete…’ etc. But again we don’t know for sure if there ever will be another show, and even if there is, TBB should be able to stand on its own. There are some things I think another show could do (like address the plot hole of why the Empire never came back to Pabu, or actually doing something with the CX troopers) but narratively it does not work for major plot arcs or character development like that to be resolved elsewhere (like how a major Mandalorian plot point happened in the middle of TBOBF???). If we do get a Clone Rebellion show I don't think it would make much sense for the Batch to play much of a role in it. TBB ended with a clear send off for those characters, whether that was fully satisfying to you or not, that was the narrative intention. The Batch could show up as cameos, but this wouldn’t be their story anymore, and we know it couldn’t be because they were very intent on retiring and clearly never cared much about the regs or Empire so why would they suddenly change their minds?

A Tech lives plotline would have to be centered on the Batch, that’s his family, but that would just be really out of place in a separate show, especially post-finale (which confirmed that Tech did not come back in canon (at least until Omega joins the rebellion, if you want to be nitpicky ig)). There always could be ways to make it work anyway if you really wanted to, but we saw what retcon battles did to the Sequel Trilogy, and it still wouldn’t really fix any problems in TBB as a show. I’ve said it before, but if the writers were going to bring Tech back then they simply would/should have (they knew season 3 was the final season and they had plenty of time which they spent fighting space gators and whatnot instead).

I'm not saying this to spoil the fun or like dash anyone's hopes or anything. I don't actually know any more than anyone else, I have no impact on what Disney and Lucasfilm do (and clearly they don't really care about making narratively functional choices anyway, get roasted). For all I know this post could age horribly. I just had some thoughts to get off my chest, because I think it’s unproductive to judge TBB based on the idea of an unconfirmed potential other show--that does not (yet?) exist and wouldn't be about them--instead of looking at it for what it is. 

TBB is over. Canon happened, what we have is what we got. We can love it and hate it and critique it and write our au’s and fix-its, but I really think that it’s done. We have to make space for endings, that's an important part of storytelling (which is also why they need to be well-written but whatever). And we also have to make space for other stories to be told. The Batch had their show, they spent the screen time they had on what they did. Those characters got their time and they got a happy ending wrap up, and now it's (hopefully) time to let some other clones take the spotlight.

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

I saw a counterargument of the Wish movie that said something along the lines of, "The movie isn't Citizen Kane, so what?" Imagine typing and posting this absurd ass take and thinking it's a legitimate argument against those who criticize it. Considering that this is an animated movie released on their 100th anniversary, the fact that they delivered a "meh" at best movie should upset you when looking at Disney's movie catalog and their impact on the field of animation. If you don't hold Disney to a higher standard, they will keep putting out mediocre content, but unfortunately, too many Disney fans are sellouts to this company. Y'all wanna get mad at people for being too rough on and critical of modern Disney, but they earned this shit 100%. They became so arrogant and loved the smell of their own butthole a little too much that they did not foresee their inevitable eventual fall at all.

[inquisitor-apologist]

Yo Star Wars. How come the only Black man on the show had his neck snapped in full view of the camera while all the nonblack characters got bloodless lightsaber stabs? How come Black characters always die violently?

[geekynerfherder]

Showcasing art from some of my favourite artists, and those that have attracted my attention, in the field of visual arts, including vintage; pulp; pop culture; books and comics; concert posters; fantastical and imaginative realism; classical; contemporary; new contemporary; pop surrealism; conceptual and illustration.

The art of Natalie Dombois.

[but-a-humble-goon]

There are two reasons I never, EVER want to see Aphra make it into any mainstream Star Wars media. Firstly, I do not trust Disney to do right by her for a single second. They turned Boba Fett into a squeaky clean, toothless, palatable nice guy instead of a ruthless amoral merc. Aphra's moral compass is buried somewhere on a distant moon under a mountain of blood money and that's what makes her great. Palatable she is not. Secondly, the Star Wars fandom does not deserve her and could not withstand her. Can you imagine the same people who started foaming at the mouth and peeling their faces off in rage when they dropped a trailer with a black stormtrooper in it discovering there's a Star Wars character who is Asian, in a lesbian polycule, a gleefully terrible person and who regularly outsmarts and defeats the Original Trilogy cast Darth Vader included? And then from the other side of the aisle we'd have the folks on this hellsite tearing their hair out shrieking "nobody ever told me morally ambiguous characters meant sometimes they'd do bad things! Umm, can you say PROBLEMATIC?!" while hastily covering their screens with their hands hoping nobody sees the 300,000 word Kylo Ren fanfic.