Gavin McInnes of Rebel Media shares my foreboding of Star Wars: Rogue One.
Dear Hollywood: Please stop shoving social justice “homework” into movies and TV.
The forced diversity in every new show and film is just fake.
Women don’t fantasize about being “badass,” and casting token black guys is just embarrassing.
I predicted the all-female “Ghostbusters” would fail and I was right. So I also predict that the new “Star Wars” movie “Rogue One” will bomb for the same reason.
McInnes is right. I’m not only saying that because I made the same predictions. The failure of Ghostbusters 2016 was a clear bellwether of audience revolt, and Hollywood’s doubling down on their roundly rejected propagandizing proves their incompetence, their malice, or both.
But there was another warning sign that Disney in particular should have seen–the minor yet significant backlash against Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Now, it should be noted that the definition of “bomb” is relative. Consider the Ang Lee and Ed Norton Hulk films which, adjusted for inflation, made about the same amount of money, yet only the first is said to have bombed.
I don’t think the Star Wars brand is tarnished enough yet to make Rogue One a Ghostbusters-level flop. It will probably turn a profit. However, that profit will be much smaller than expected. Unless the major Hollywood studios either emerge from their ideological bubble or are bought out by parties more interested in entertaining audiences than lecturing them, then the last brand capable of drawing audiences on the strength of its name alone is in danger of going the way of Ghostbusters.
As usual, Miles (I mean Gavin, not the evil twin) is right.
I cannot even talk about The Force Awakens without cringing. Not only did they annihilate what was so powerful about the novels, but their characters were ridiculous.
Rey was no where near a "strong female character". She was legitimately a wimp and the lightsaber fight at the end also showed that Kylo Ren, this guy who was supposed to be the next brutal consul figure to be the dictator's right hand man was even worse! He was a sissy!
It's almost as if it is TRYING to introduce characters who are complete and total wimps. There's no leadership like there was in the original trilogy.
This new one, I am appalled at. It is simply FUELING the rebellious, aggressive, attitude common to our modernist culture. It almost makes me cheer when Darth Vader shows up on scene in the trailers to show the pitiful insurgency their proper place in the food chain (at the bottom).
"It's almost as if it is TRYING to introduce characters who are complete and total wimps. There's no leadership like there was in the original trilogy."
They are.
The worst thing to society though is that people see people such as Darth Vader who stands for order in the new movie (and it isn't even implicit any more that the Empire has always been the force for good in the galaxy despite its own flaws) yet what they celebrate is this "femininely"-led image when all it is is someone completely rebelling and creating terrorism against their government, is a complete crook, and they guise it as "defending freedom".
The entire Star Wars franchise started out somewhat disgusting, the pre-quels made it so that we SYMPATHISED with the Sith and the Empire, the sequels and this new one has made the entire Star Wars franchise completely disgusting. The UN will say that the rebellion is standing for human rights. Reality says that the rebellion is the biggest threat to human rights.
Guess I'm not that invested, because I found the TFA fairly entertaining. Finn was OK. Po was boring. Rey was pretty cool in the ancient Warrior Princess mold. Ren was a male emo goth chick. But stuff blowed up good! And there were a few snippets of entertaining dialogue.
I was mostly appalled at how lame the plot was – you're dropping a couple hundred million, and can't throw a few grand at some working sci fi writers who could, in a 30 minute brainstorming session, come up with something better than 'lets do the first movie AGAIN, but bigger and with chicks!' Really?
This is not to say I'm eager to see what they do with Rogue 1. But, look, if we're honest, we must admit the suck began with RotJ – ewoks? The larval form of Jar Jar. So, really, we're going on *2* great movies, and 5 that run from annoying to horrible. This next one would be somewhere in that range even if they didn't social justice it up.
The "suck" began when lying Leia told Darth Vader Alderaan was innocent and the rebels launched a terrorist attack led by Luke Skywalker [Osama bin Laden] on the Empire's number one base.
Disney bought Star Wars because they specifically wanted to target the male audience, specifically boys.
They haven't been doing a particularly good job of that.
Boys like to play as Han, Luke, or Vader. Or to add other franchises, they like to be Indy, Robocop, Aragorn, Inigo Montoya, Corporal Hicks, or the Terminator. Exactly who in these movies would fill those roles for them?
Gavin was right. Those commercials don't understand their audiences at all. At this rate, like wondering why boys don't read, we'll soon be hearing reports that boys don't watch movies anymore, and they still won't get why.
"At this rate…we'll soon be hearing reports that boys don't watch movies anymore, and they still won't get why."
I'm already getting these reports from people I know. Remember: the plural of "anecdote" is "data".
I have a 9-year-old daughter and we went to watch "The Force Awakens" last year. She enjoyed it and I was mildly entertained by the visuals. We will probably go see "Rogue One" and I love that my daughter is crazy about the franchise. I love the original Star Wars. Not so much the new ones, though. I can't seem to find good movies these days. Long gone are the days of warriors, of strong men conquering evil with awesome badassery. There is no hero I can identify with in the new Star Wars movies and I find the same problem with other movies, too. Which means I don't watch that many movies anymore. I either write or I read.
"I can't seem to find a good movie."
"I'll probably go see this movie."
There's a remote causal relationship here.
Not really if you consider the context of my comment.
On second thought, I think it's dumb statement to say "I can't seem to find a good movie" because there are still good ones out there. They are just not as plentiful. I just saw the trailer for the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie and it looks awesome. I enjoyed the first one, too.
I already am a man who doesn't watch movies. They all suck these days and most of the books I read are translations into English from other segments of old-school literature (Russian, French, Medieval, Classical) or English literature.
Further, these movie analysts talk about "strong female characters" and what they end up doing is they make them much more "mannish". If you want to make their style of a "strong female", Charlotte Bronte had it right when she had Shirley literally play the role of a man and call herself, "Captain Keeldar, Esquire".
For a better example of what I'm referring to, there's this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4
The video is two years old and only talks about schools, and yet things have only gotten worse.
Can't imagine boys not attending college is considered a negative anymore though.
Nice video, but Based Mom's list of steps to reverse the feminization of the education system implies that schools haven't been feminized on purpose.
Here's my counter-proposal:
1. Destroy the Dept. of Education.
2. Home-school.
By the way, Justin: if you're reading this, I've got your pirate battles right here 🙂
Yes, yes, what a disaster Rogue One is for Disney. 450 million domestically, 830 million worldwide…and countring. Soon to be the top movie release of 2016; how will Star Wars ever recover!
For a Star Wars movie, failing to snag the top spot is underperforming. Losing to a fish cartoon is an embarrassment.
If you're gonna shill for multibillion dollar corporations, at least get on the same page. Even Disney called R1's opening a disappointment.