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The problem isn't female leads, it' trash-tier writing. Like introducing a self-conscious stormtrooper and then having him unemotionally kill his mates pretty much immediately. Or introducing a nobody and then make her the child of a somehow™️ returned supervillain. Or having your minor villain and your female lead fall in love and then having them pretty much just revert back to where they were before. Or replacing the Death Star with an intergalactic Death Shotgun. The list goes on
It was lack of common direction through the trilogy. JJ set up his signature mystery boxes in the first movie, only for Rian to ignore those and leave nothing to work with for the next one.
I believe the reason why Palpatine somehow returned was because Rian killed off Snoke, and they really needed some big baddie Kylo and Rey could team up against so Kylo could have his redemption arc.
i much prefer where rian johnson was going, even though the main plot was meh. he left so many open plot threads that tied into the old eu that they could have used, but then jj went back to his first idea.
only for Rian to ignore those and leave nothing to work with for the next one.
JJ choosing to ignore the second movie doesn't mean "nothing was left". Baring the bizarre casino, TLJ was the most interesting SW story since RotS. Episode IX could've been an amazing finale coming out of that, but JJ did what JJ always does and absolutely failed to deliver.
*Also, I feel it's important to point out the "Mystery Box" was and is bullshit, lazy writing. Yes, it's important to leave things in a story for the audience to wonder about and anticipate. That's not a valid excuse to throw esoteric shit at the wall and call it a day. The audience doesn't need to know where the plot is going, but the fucking writer should. JJ left Rian with hollow shell of "intrigue" with nothing substantial, got pissy when Rian did what he wanted with that, then shit out a boring finale trying to reverse everything back.
The problem isn’t female leads, it’ trash-tier writing.
Worst part about the sequels was the compulsive need to regurgitate elements of the prior series.
There's so much lore from the books and the games and the toys and the cutting room floor of the original movies. And they had a ton of good ideas at the outset. A storm trooper who defects? A six foot tall super trooper in mirror armor? A Sith Lord who isn't stoic and morose, but hot headed and self-destructive? These are cool good ideas!
Shame they got drowned out in Disney fueled nostalgia.
A thousand times this. People hate bad female actors not because they are female but because they are bad actors.
Kal el no
Sometimes, but more often bad writing can make a great actress look like a bad female actor.
Natalie Portman can act, but those prequels were rough on her reputation. The camp value od the prequels wasn't immediately apparent and it was rough on her.
I remember someone saying that they thought Ewan McGregor and Liam Neesan were great, and the response was 'yeah, in Trainspotting and Schindlers list.'
Some people just hate women and they suck, but often the something with a female lead just sucks. It sucks that the former complicates the latter.
Wasn't the woman from the Twilight movies accused of being a terrible actress and it nearly ruined her career, until she started getting other roles and her reputation turned right around. She even commented on it saying "Yeaaaah.. Bella was a garbage nothing of a character. I did everything they asked of me, she's just that terrible."
Kristen Stewart I think her name was?
Or having a beloved character die off screen
Or faking a death and undoing the fakeout within a couple of minutes.
The other problem is that there were 2 death stars in the original trilogy and another one in the sequels. Like, think of something new, will you?
I'm honestly not even mad at that. What broke my immersion was how everyone was just flat out stunned that they would try it a third time, and with no defensive countermeasures whatsoever. They were caught off guard a third time
And that third time they figured out how to bend space lasers to hit every planet at once and auto win
Come on
This would be a better comic if they chose a franchise that hadn't been enshittified to the nth degree.
Star Wars comes to mind immediately.
What's funny is I liked Rey as a character and the first movie was fine, but it quickly went downhill with the next two and I haven't watched any of them since.
But I've probably watched Rogue One about a dozen times so far and it's one of the best modern Star Wars movie we've had.
A crap movie is a crap movie. Just sucks to get tossed in the incel pile because incels hate a specific movie too.
Star Wars comes to mind immediately.
I wonder if that's because the comic is about Star Wars...
and I haven't watched any of them since.
No one has, since they don't exist.
You need to watch Andor if you haven't already.
I mean the sequels deserve a majority of the criticism they received. They were safe, retreaded what the original trilogy did, and have no lasting cultural impact.
Rouge One always had a female lead and was fantastic. Actually added something into the series in a meaningful way and is beloved by fans.
Rogue one was the peak
Andor, especially season 2.
Check their she hulk reviews for their baromoter. That was when I lost my patience with Den of Nerds.
I’m a big Maslany fan after Orphan Black but that show wasn’t good. Episodes felt weirdly short and nothing really happened.
Could one issue be that professional writers, on average, give female leads worse scripts to work with? Not always intentionally.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreMale
I feel like this is a pattern in Star Wars. Not just with Rey, but Ahsoka and The Acolyte too.
As for why this is a tragedy, I would cite the A/B examples of AC: Odyssey and Cyberpunk 2077 where, given the literally identical gender neutral writing, the women VAs utterly nail their scripts.
I wonder what’d happen if TV got the same treatment.
And cyberpunk shows they can still include unnecessary softcore porn in their stories, regardless of gender. Tv writers love that shit.
So we can't admit a bad movie is bad because itnhappens to have a female lead?
Ep 7 was ok, but it relied too much on nostalgia. Ep 8 was a clusterfuck of terrible decisions. I didn't watch Ep 9 and I'm happy with that.
Nobody hates Star Wars more than a Star Wars fan.
The sequels had such a good opportunity but wasted it with over correcting.
I really enjoyed the point in Episode 8 that Rey was unimportant, I thought it could have opened up the whole universe. Instead we had to be angry about everything and the on the nose fan service in Episode 9 went way too far the other direction.
Star wars had a fantastic extended universe from novels, comics and games. They threw it all away to make a trilogy where they didn't even have a complete story. As a fan, it felt like someone swapped my chocolate for cat turds.
I have definitely watched shows and movies and have either liked or disliked it only to listen to a podcast that has pointed things out I didn’t realize and has changed my opinion of the content. It’s definitely more common for me to dislike it than end up liking it.
The sequel trilogy was bad. Get over it. You want a good female lead in Star Wars? Look at Old Republic video game.
why you pluralize
I don't know, man. Without watching any reviews or commentaries I could have listed numerous issues with the sequel trilogy right after watching the individual movies. Sure, there were some I missed that only added oil to the fire, but it was still extremely obvious that the movies are horrendous.
Some people, perhaps a good number, do in fact blindly follow influencers' opinions and hate what they hate. This, however, in no capacity affects the fact that those movies are pieces of garbage. Whether you've come to this conclusion yourself, or you learned about it from someone else, the simple fact remains.
There's also another point to consider. Movie reviews and analyses are very common. Name any movie and there's nearly a guarantee that there are at least a few people analyzing their details and posting the findings on YouTube or elsewhere. There's nothing wrong with watching those videos and having them affect your opinion on the movie.
Personally, I've watched many different reviews, critiques and analyses of various movies, including Star Wars. In many cases, my opinion of the movies was improved due to broader context, technical details such as how VFX were made, plot elements I might have missed or other valuable information that may or may not have been obvious to me when first watching. I think this is a perfectly natural phenomenon. You like something, so you dive deeper to learn more, leading to you liking it more or less in the process.
However, in the case of most recent Star Wars movies, there's usually no additional context or details to learn, other than "the director changed 8 times and none of those 8 people knew what they were doing". You wouldn't know that from watching the movie, and personally, I think it's perfectly acceptable to give extra criticism to the company, based on external information.
At the end of the day, it's another corporation ruining what people love and this sole fact is enough to feel angry and spread negative sentiment towards that company. They 100% deserve it. Just make sure to hate the company and not other fans.
Havent seen anything newer than episode 7, but that one was kinda mid so I didnt even care to watch the newer ones.
The media literacy of the general public is surprisingly low. I wouldn’t be shocked if some people actually think like this.