I don't watch any of this shit any more and Star Wars practically made me who I am.
Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy did what I thought they could never do.
They broke Excalibur.
They killed the Golden Goose.
Luke throwing that lightsaber over his shoulder at the start of The Last Jedi was a message.
Message received.
'George Lucas didn't fix Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi. WE fixed him because Lucas is an old white man and out of touch with the times because he made these movies in the bad, racist 70s and 80s. Now that we undid everything Luke accomplished in those old movies, we can reshape him into who WE want him to be because he should do better. Also, Stormtroopers are now an allegory for American slavery so all those faceless bad guys that were rampaging across the universe and blowing up planets? They're the victims. And we're Disney. We are simply good and know what's best for you.'
Also in The Last Jedi. An Asian woman (even though there is no Asia in Star Wars) angry about a planet of capitalism.
In a film produced by Disney.
LOL you can't make this shit up. No one would believe it if it wasn't real. Fuck, *I* almost don't believe it and I watched it happen.
The Mandalorian gave me hope that they'd turned a new leaf.
Turns out...not so much.
Corporate culture is to ignore criticism, both internally and externally, directed towards the product and those who produce it. They are either incapable of or unwilling to parse the useful criticism from all the noise.
James M. Ward, a legendary creator for role playing games working for TSR when Lorraine Williams bought the company in a hostile takeover from Gygax (who deserved it because he didn't handle success very well at all) owned the Buck Rogers license. It had been in her family for a long time. She chose to use TSR to produce a line of products and games that had some of the worst marketing possible. Comic books that were also games. Nobody knew how to sell them, where to put them in their stores and they weren't very good after all that.
Jim Ward was at a convention during all of this and a fan asked 'How long are you gonna keep making shitty Buck Rogers stuff?'
His epic response: 'Until you start buying it.'
Pro tip: he hated the Buck Rogers TSR products but he was toeing the company line because he had to.
Another pro tip: The Buck Rogers comic game line was a breach of contract with DC Comics, who were producing the great and excellent Dungeons & Dragaons and Forgotten Realms comics at the time. That led to those comics coming to abrupt ends.
When someone has a plan, they don't want to hear how shitty it is. And they'll engineer their audience to defend it if they can. In Jim Ward's day, it was smiling through your anger. In the age of social media, it's letting the useful idiots and apologists do the work for you.
