Gender bias in MPQ

entrailbucket

Counterpoint: Black Panther was about as "woke" as it gets, had a basically all-black cast, and made 1.3 billion dollars and is still one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Captain Marvel etc didn't bomb because they had women or minorities in them, they bombed because the movies were bad.

dxanders

@WilliamK1983 said:
Ocarina of Time, Halo, Red Dead Redemption, and Assassins Creed off the top of my head.

I'm not saying "are there video games with good stories?" I'm saying "Since when is narrative the leading factor in whether games sell?"

Because the history of video games is a history that (at least in the west) treated quality storytelling as a low priority at best and a liability at worst. Historically, the goal with games was to shovel out product marketed at teenage boys, as reflected in the glut of story-absent platformers and gray-brown shooters that followed. Do we really want to act like Halo pushed the units it pushed based on the quality of the story and not on the quality of 4-player split screen dorm room deathmatch?

And when narrative managed to push itself to its place as a legitimate component of a game's development, it was frequently due to women managing to muscle their way into traditionally male-dominated spaces. To a huge extent, we can thank Roberta Williams for pioneering storytelling in games decades before it became a major thing. Amy Hennig for bringing us Soul Reaver. The Assassin's Creed series touted Jade Raymond and their multicultural staff practically from the jump, and Bioware was carving out niches for queer characters as far back as KotOR. Representation matters because a broad range of experiences on behalf of creators brings us a broad range of experiences on the screen.

Diversity has been at the heart of quality narratives in video games since the jump, but to act like bad narratives are killing video games is laughable when you look at how narrative has been traditionally deprioritized in gaming and evaluating a modern landscape dominated by narrative-free live service games and sandboxes like Roblox and Minecraft. And the narrative games that most succeed (BG3, Hades, Last of Us) are dripping with those scourged "identity politics". If narrative games are flagging, it's not because of some identity agenda. It's because massive corporations realize they can make a lot more money hawking new cosmetics for their shooter than paying for the increasingly expensive and bespoke content of a single player narrative-driven-game. And the truth is despite there being some outliers of quality storytelling in games, strong narrative is the exception rather than the rule.

Scofie

@Alfje17 said:

@Scofie said:
I wasn't even aware the forums existed when this thread was started - just got my 7th anniversary anniversary badge in the last week or so - so we have 3 options:

@pepitedechocolat said:
I vote for 4 : remove all new comments, martial law the bot llm account that did the necro out of the forums forever

@Scofie I agree with @pepitedechocolat, any reason why that bot account is allowed to stay on this site? Every post he's made has included a possible scam link (including an online casino and a NSFW-site!), some have been removed, but several are still there.

Thanks for flagging this @Alfje17 - I have removed those posts.

It is an odd thing - their posts on the MtGPQ site do not have suspicious links and posting is very infrequent. It is definitely against forum rules though so will take the appropriate action.

dxanders

@dianetics said:

@dxanders said:
Please tell me more about this historically great storytelling in video games.

Final Fantasy 6, 7, and 9. Chrono Trigger. Earthbound.
Planescape Torment.
Halo 1 and 2.
Knights of the Old Republic.
Baldur's Gate.
Grim Fandango. Day of the Tentacle. The Monkey Island Series.
Silent Hill 2.
Fallout 1 and 2.
Warcraft 2 and 3.
Max Payne 1 and 2.
GTA Vice City and San Andreas.
Arx Fatalis. Freedom Fighters.
God of War 1 and 2.

Have you been living under a rock?

Mostly great games, sure, and games that cover an exceedingly broad period of time. But that's just the point isn't it? There have always been games with great stories, and they've always stood apart in a sea of narrative mediocrity. It's easy to point out the gems and just as easy to disregard the countless other games that weren't narrative showstoppers. And games with great narratives are still being released. Off the top of my head, Remedy 's dropped two legit bangers in the past few years. There's Pentiment and Baldur's Gate 3. Disco Elysium. I've already mentioned Last of Us 2 and Hades (with another sequel in the pipeline). Citizen Sleeper (and it's sequel)!

The point is that there's never been a halcyon age where stories were widely phenomenal. It's always been a case of creatives pushing back against corporate pressures to monetize above all else, and the gold continues to happen in spite of those conflicting forces. There's no woke agenda forcing games to have bad stories. There's as many good stories in games as there's ever been. There are definitely issues with the creative-business push and pull. But go on blaming "identity politics" rather than corporate mismanagement, microtransaction-driven greed, and a c-suite-driven push for live service golden geese.

Zarqa

I care about representation. You certainly don’t speak for me.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:
Counterpoint: Black Panther was about as "woke" as it gets, had a basically all-black cast, and made 1.3 billion dollars and is still one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Captain Marvel etc didn't bomb because they had women or minorities in them, they bombed because the movies were bad.

Actually Captain Marvel made over $1.1 billion world wide. Bizarrely, at least in my opinion, it isn't anywhere near as good as the sequel which did bomb badly. Difficult to explain this one, especially as Ms Marvel who co-starred seems to have been received fairly well even if Brie Larson had her share of haters. Where did everybody go?

Edit: Oh wait...there was the Infinity War after scene credit which sort of set up CM wasn't there (even though it didn't really as CM set in past)? So I guess that helped pump up CM numbers a bit but still, the drop-off is still straight off a cliff.

dxanders

@dianetics said:

@dxanders said:
Mostly great games, sure, and games that cover an exceedingly broad period of time. But that's just the point isn't it? There have always been games with great stories, and they've always stood apart in a sea of narrative mediocrity. It's easy to point out the gems and just as easy to disregard the countless other games that weren't narrative showstoppers. And games with great narratives are still being released. Off the top of my head, Remedy 's dropped two legit bangers in the past few years. There's Pentiment and Baldur's Gate 3. Disco Elysium. I've already mentioned Last of Us 2 and Hades (with another sequel in the pipeline). Citizen Sleeper (and it's sequel)!

The point is that there's never been a halcyon age where stories were widely phenomenal. It's always been a case of creatives pushing back against corporate pressures to monetize above all else, and the gold continues to happen in spite of those conflicting forces. There's no woke agenda forcing games to have bad stories. There's as many good stories in games as there's ever been. There are definitely issues with the creative-business push and pull. But go on blaming "identity politics" rather than corporate mismanagement, microtransaction-driven greed, and a c-suite-driven push for live service golden geese.

You asked me to tell you about the historically great storytelling in videogaming. I did.

I would say 97-2001 would be defined as a historically great era of videogame writing. Go through the lists and look at all the single player story driven classics that were released during that period.
Comparing that period to 2020-2024 there are far more gems than turds.

Identity politics makes stories feel inauthentic, because with the majority of games and media today the "diverse" characters are Mary Sue's. People don't resonate with characters like that.

With the list you provided you proved my point. People don't care about representation they care about good stories with quality character development.

@dianetics said:

@dxanders said:
Mostly great games, sure, and games that cover an exceedingly broad period of time. But that's just the point isn't it? There have always been games with great stories, and they've always stood apart in a sea of narrative mediocrity. It's easy to point out the gems and just as easy to disregard the countless other games that weren't narrative showstoppers. And games with great narratives are still being released. Off the top of my head, Remedy 's dropped two legit bangers in the past few years. There's Pentiment and Baldur's Gate 3. Disco Elysium. I've already mentioned Last of Us 2 and Hades (with another sequel in the pipeline). Citizen Sleeper (and it's sequel)!

The point is that there's never been a halcyon age where stories were widely phenomenal. It's always been a case of creatives pushing back against corporate pressures to monetize above all else, and the gold continues to happen in spite of those conflicting forces. There's no woke agenda forcing games to have bad stories. There's as many good stories in games as there's ever been. There are definitely issues with the creative-business push and pull. But go on blaming "identity politics" rather than corporate mismanagement, microtransaction-driven greed, and a c-suite-driven push for live service golden geese.

You asked me to tell you about the historically great storytelling in videogaming. I did.

I would say 97-2001 would be defined as a historically great era of videogame writing. Go through the lists and look at all the single player story driven classics that were released during that period.
Comparing that period to 2020-2024 there are far more gems than turds.

Identity politics makes stories feel inauthentic, because with the majority of games and media today the "diverse" characters are Mary Sue's. People don't resonate with characters like that.

With the list you provided you proved my point. People don't care about representation they care about good stories with quality character development.

I'm sorry, I have? Remedy's two recent games have a chosen one female protagonist and plop a deuteragonist into the story of the white male lead. Hades is aggressively queer. Ditto BG3. Disco Elysium is basically "leftists fighting on Facebook: the game", and CS is effectively a socialist manifesto on corporate greed with painstaking diversity in its characters. I suspect the creators of any of these games would laugh in your face if you told them diversity doesn't matter.

Some stories are good, some stories are less so, but diversity helps open those stories to a broader range of perspectives. And without it, we wouldn't have stories like The Wire or Flowers of the Blood Moon. We wouldn't have Milestone Comics or the films of the L.A. rebellion. We wouldn't have Reservation Dogs. But clowns like you want to cherry pick stories you don't like and identify "forced representation" as the root cause. It's never anything more than a dog whistle.

entrailbucket

@dianetics you're just arguing against tokenism. Cramming some black or trans character into a story where they obviously don't belong is not representation, and nobody thinks that besides cynical corporate suits. Of course a game or movie or whatever succeeds because it's good or bad, and not because it happens to star a woman or a black person -- again, absolutely nobody thinks the opposite. No one thinks pandering is good and no one thinks it's representation.

Can you cite some examples of things that failed because they did what you describe? The problem is that your argument gets used by folks with...other...agendas, who regard any example of a female or minority character as tokenism or pandering.

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics you're just arguing against tokenism. Cramming some black or trans character into a story where they obviously don't belong is not representation, and nobody thinks that besides cynical corporate suits. Of course a game or movie or whatever succeeds because it's good or bad, and not because it happens to star a woman or a black person -- again, absolutely nobody thinks the opposite. No one thinks pandering is good and no one thinks it's representation.

Can you cite some examples of things that failed because they did what you describe? The problem is that your argument gets used by folks with...other...agendas, who regard any example of a female or minority character as tokenism or pandering.

I don't care about race, gender, sexuality, or any of these other things as long as the character is written well and has a place within the story. Characters who are explicitly shown to have those characteristics and those characteristics being core to their identity fall flat.

There are plenty of current modern examples of the sort of representation I'm talking about.

I guess the most on the nose would be The Acolyte. It was such a difficult slog.
You can compare Rings of Power and House of the Dragon and see the differences.
In gaming, Veilguard is exceptionally bad at it.

You may want to be more specific when making this sort of argument in the future. I'm not actually familiar with any of the things you're citing, but again, it very much sounds like you are not opposed to authentic representation, you're opposed to corporate pandering.

Representation matters when it's authentic. All those little kids who went to see Black Panther and saw a hero who looked like them...that matters.

I think @dxanders is replying so forcefully because many of the same arguments you're making are used by others to argue that we shouldn't tell stories like Black Panther at all.

Wyntre

No person has ever explained why representation matters.

Googling why representation matters gets over 600 million hits. The basic gist: if people see other people like themselves in stories, they broaden their perspectives of what they can be. Seeing people from other groups in stories reminds us to broaden our own expectations of others. But this is basic 101 college stuff.

But on the off chance that you're genuinely open to hearing why representation matters, read or listen to this interview with Nichelle Nichols: https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter Pay special attention to her conversations with MLK Jr. and Whoopi Goldberg.

Zarqa

Many people have explained why representation matters.

There’s plenty of solid research literature on how an increase in lesbian and gay representation in American TV shows starting in the late 90s played a crucial role in broader acceptance of lesbian and gay people in US society.

dxanders

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics you're just arguing against tokenism. Cramming some black or trans character into a story where they obviously don't belong is not representation, and nobody thinks that besides cynical corporate suits. Of course a game or movie or whatever succeeds because it's good or bad, and not because it happens to star a woman or a black person -- again, absolutely nobody thinks the opposite. No one thinks pandering is good and no one thinks it's representation.

Can you cite some examples of things that failed because they did what you describe? The problem is that your argument gets used by folks with...other...agendas, who regard any example of a female or minority character as tokenism or pandering.

I don't care about race, gender, sexuality, or any of these other things as long as the character is written well and has a place within the story. Characters who are explicitly shown to have those characteristics and those characteristics being core to their identity fall flat.

There are plenty of current modern examples of the sort of representation I'm talking about.

I guess the most on the nose would be The Acolyte. It was such a difficult slog.
You can compare Rings of Power and House of the Dragon and see the differences.
In gaming, Veilguard is exceptionally bad at it.

It sounds like you care a lot about those things, because we can both recognize that there are always bad stories, but you seem hellbent on marking good stories with diversity as not actually interested in representation and bad stories with diversity as bad because of the diversity. When, in all likelihood, they're just bad stories that happen to be diverse. and the evidence of why these stories are actually bad is generally already out there. Veilguard is a game known for its torturous production history in a series that's gotten criticism about narrative since the second entry, and the evidence of poor management and executive fiat is exhaustively documented. But of course those factors couldn't be to blame. It's DEI.

And I don't think that "I don't care about gender/race/sexuality" is the flex you think it is. Because what that sounds like is "I'm not curious to learn how other people's experiences are different from mine".

I'm similarly puzzled at the premise that representation isn't a critical component of the DNA for The Whale or Euphoria. In the former, the main character's trauma is absolutely related to his experience as a gay man (and is reflected in the real life story it's based on). In Euphoria, they cast a trans woman and brought in a trans consultant to accurately reflect the experience of a trans high school student. In both instances, representation is a major part of the package. Stories, at least good ones, don't come from nothing. Compelling characterization and an interesting journey is critical to them, but they're primarily an attempt for someone to share their lived experience or to reflect the lives experience of someone they find interesting or underrepresented. Diversity matters because it gives the audience a perspective into experiences they otherwise wouldn't be privy too. And bringing in actual people who have experienced different perspectives lends authenticity to those stories. Diversity is variety, and I like variety in my stories. But I think there's a media literacy gap at play here, and I really don't want to keep beating this same drum.

BriMan2222

@dxanders said:

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics you're just arguing against tokenism. Cramming some black or trans character into a story where they obviously don't belong is not representation, and nobody thinks that besides cynical corporate suits. Of course a game or movie or whatever succeeds because it's good or bad, and not because it happens to star a woman or a black person -- again, absolutely nobody thinks the opposite. No one thinks pandering is good and no one thinks it's representation.

Can you cite some examples of things that failed because they did what you describe? The problem is that your argument gets used by folks with...other...agendas, who regard any example of a female or minority character as tokenism or pandering.

I don't care about race, gender, sexuality, or any of these other things as long as the character is written well and has a place within the story. Characters who are explicitly shown to have those characteristics and those characteristics being core to their identity fall flat.

There are plenty of current modern examples of the sort of representation I'm talking about.

I guess the most on the nose would be The Acolyte. It was such a difficult slog.
You can compare Rings of Power and House of the Dragon and see the differences.
In gaming, Veilguard is exceptionally bad at it.

It sounds like you care a lot about those things, because we can both recognize that there are always bad stories, but you seem hellbent on marking good stories with diversity as not actually interested in representation and bad stories with diversity as bad because of the diversity. When, in all likelihood, they're just bad stories that happen to be diverse. and the evidence of why these stories are actually bad is generally already out there. Veilguard is a game known for its torturous production history in a series that's gotten criticism about narrative since the second entry, and the evidence of poor management and executive fiat is exhaustively documented. But of course those factors couldn't be to blame. It's DEI.

And I don't think that "I don't care about gender/race/sexuality" is the flex you think it is. Because what that sounds like is "I'm not curious to learn how other people's experiences are different from mine".

I'm similarly puzzled at the premise that representation isn't a critical component of the DNA for The Whale or Euphoria. In the former, the main character's trauma is absolutely related to his experience as a gay man (and is reflected in the real life story it's based on). In Euphoria, they cast a trans woman and brought in a trans consultant to accurately reflect the experience of a trans high school student. In both instances, representation is a major part of the package. Stories, at least good ones, don't come from nothing. Compelling characterization and an interesting journey is critical to them, but they're primarily an attempt for someone to share their lived experience or to reflect the lives experience of someone they find interesting or underrepresented. Diversity matters because it gives the audience a perspective into experiences they otherwise wouldn't be privy too. And bringing in actual people who have experienced different perspectives lends authenticity to those stories. Diversity is variety, and I like variety in my stories. But I think there's a media literacy gap at play here, and I really don't want to keep beating this same drum.

I didn't read what @dianetics wrote as "good stories with diversity don't care about representation", but rather good stories with representation focus on telling a good story first and use representation when it makes sense to do so and bad stories with representation focus on that aspect of the characters and force it in when it makes no sense to do so and the story seems like an after thought, such as Dragon Age the veil guard Or the TV series House of the Dragon (being an example of good use of diversity with good story telling) vs The Rings of Power (being the opposite).

Scofie

I agree almost entirely with @dxanders here (apart from the unnecessary insult - please maintain a level of respect whether you agree with people or not).

Representation absolutely matters. It helps to ensure different voices are heard and that there is exposure to diverse views and experiences.

I find the argument that representation is the cause of bad films to be a really odd perspective. It's like saying "if that character were a straight white man, this film would be so much better". Nobody has ever said "that character is only in this film because he's a straight white guy" because there is a pervasive idea that straight white men have a right to be everywhere without question. If their characters are badly written, or 2 dimensional, it's not automatically assumed that the only reason they're there is because they are straight and white and male. That privilege is rarely given to any other category of people.

entrailbucket

Franchises are dying because they should never have existed anyway, at least not in their current form. All these long-running comics series stay fresh by switching out authors, artists, etc over the years.

The X-Men in comics have been so many different things, and will be so many more different things, because every creator puts their own spin on them. James Bond adapts with the times. Sherlock Holmes gets reimagined in all sorts of ways.

But Star Wars can't be that. The MCU can't be that. Why? Because they have to cater to a fandom. When Disney bought Star Wars, I'm sure they thought they were buying a license to print unlimited money. What they were actually buying was a fan base that's unhealthily obsessed with 3 movies from 40+ years ago, and wants to be served the same regurgitated garbage over and over again so they can feel like kids forever.

The hardcore fans don't want new characters or new stories, they want a 3 hour deep dive into the backstory of that one alien who played the flute in the cantina in Episode IV, which of course will culminate in an epic lightsaber duel between AI Darth Vader and de-aged Luke Skywalker, as the audience cheers.

And the problem is that there's only hardcore fans left! These companies have spent so long isolating casuals -- shoveling out more product than anybody normal could ever watch and stuffing it chock full of completely nonsensical fan service -- that the only people still excited about the latest 18-epsode Disney Plus series are single adult men who sleep inside a plush tauntaun. And they hate anything that isn't Mark Hamill as Luke, dueling Darth Vader on the Death Star!

So let this stuff die. Star Wars was a rotting corpse before Lucas finished with it. The MCU is on the way. Support original storytelling and stop letting corporations exploit your nostalgia.

dxanders

@entrailbucket said:
Franchises are dying because they should never have existed anyway, at least not in their current form. All these long-running comics series stay fresh by switching out authors, artists, etc over the years.

The X-Men in comics have been so many different things, and will be so many more different things, because every creator puts their own spin on them. James Bond adapts with the times. Sherlock Holmes gets reimagined in all sorts of ways.

But Star Wars can't be that. The MCU can't be that. Why? Because they have to cater to a fandom. When Disney bought Star Wars, I'm sure they thought they were buying a license to print unlimited money. What they were actually buying was a fan base that's unhealthily obsessed with 3 movies from 40+ years ago, and wants to be served the same regurgitated garbage over and over again so they can feel like kids forever.

The hardcore fans don't want new characters or new stories, they want a 3 hour deep dive into the backstory of that one alien who played the flute in the cantina in Episode IV, which of course will culminate in an epic lightsaber duel between AI Darth Vader and de-aged Luke Skywalker, as the audience cheers.

And the problem is that there's only hardcore fans left! These companies have spent so long isolating casuals -- shoveling out more product than anybody normal could ever watch and stuffing it chock full of completely nonsensical fan service -- that the only people still excited about the latest 18-epsode Disney Plus series are single adult men who sleep inside a plush tauntaun. And they hate anything that isn't Mark Hamill as Luke, dueling Darth Vader on the Death Star!

So let this stuff die. Star Wars was a rotting corpse before Lucas finished with it. The MCU is on the way. Support original storytelling and stop letting corporations exploit your nostalgia.

Hear hear. When I first got back into comics as a young adult, I picked up on the maxim "follow creators, not content". I'll watch something like Andor because it's Tony Gilroy, and something like Agatha All Along because I like a lot of the cast and the premise. And that new Alien show looks dope, not because Alien is a foolproof franchise but because show runner Noah Hawley has spun gold so far. And if a show or a movie or an album doesn't appeal to me a little ways in, I'll bail.

Being a fan of a franchise is a mug's game, and getting wound up because some franchise is churning out a story with a premise you don't like is a futile effort. These companies that hold IP rights into perpetuity aren't beneficient curators. They're content mills.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
The hardcore fans don't want new characters or new stories, they want a 3 hour deep dive into the backstory of that one alien who played the flute in the cantina in Episode IV, which of course will culminate in an epic lightsaber duel between AI Darth Vader and de-aged Luke Skywalker, as the audience cheers.

I laughed so hard at the whole post. But this point is especially poignant because it 100% describes the 'Book of Boba Fett' spin off series. 7 hrs devoted to a character who had less than 20 words of dialog and 5 minutes of screen time in the first 3 movies. By the time they filmed the spin off series I wonder how many of those 'hard core fans' realized that Boba Fett now had more screen time (7-8 hrs) than Luke Skywalker (6-7 across 3 1/2 movies)!

KGB

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:
Franchises are dying because they should never have existed anyway, at least not in their current form. All these long-running comics series stay fresh by switching out authors, artists, etc over the years.

The X-Men in comics have been so many different things, and will be so many more different things, because every creator puts their own spin on them. James Bond adapts with the times. Sherlock Holmes gets reimagined in all sorts of ways.

But Star Wars can't be that. The MCU can't be that. Why? Because they have to cater to a fandom. When Disney bought Star Wars, I'm sure they thought they were buying a license to print unlimited money. What they were actually buying was a fan base that's unhealthily obsessed with 3 movies from 40+ years ago, and wants to be served the same regurgitated garbage over and over again so they can feel like kids forever.

The hardcore fans don't want new characters or new stories, they want a 3 hour deep dive into the backstory of that one alien who played the flute in the cantina in Episode IV, which of course will culminate in an epic lightsaber duel between AI Darth Vader and de-aged Luke Skywalker, as the audience cheers.

And the problem is that there's only hardcore fans left! These companies have spent so long isolating casuals -- shoveling out more product than anybody normal could ever watch and stuffing it chock full of completely nonsensical fan service -- that the only people still excited about the latest 18-epsode Disney Plus series are single adult men who sleep inside a plush tauntaun. And they hate anything that isn't Mark Hamill as Luke, dueling Darth Vader on the Death Star!

So let this stuff die. Star Wars was a rotting corpse before Lucas finished with it. The MCU is on the way. Support original storytelling and stop letting corporations exploit your nostalgia.

This is exactly it with Star Wars. Star Wars had an ending back in 1983. Then they dug it up and dragged the corpse around the block. It was never meant to be an ongoing soap opera like comic books have been. Darth Vader is one of the most two dimensional villains in history but that was fine, he had his redemption arc, story over. But no.

The MCU might become this but it still has a few tricks up its sleeve but eventually, it too will be nothing but an empty husk for entitled fanboys.

LavaManLee

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:
Franchises are dying because they should never have existed anyway, at least not in their current form. All these long-running comics series stay fresh by switching out authors, artists, etc over the years.

The X-Men in comics have been so many different things, and will be so many more different things, because every creator puts their own spin on them. James Bond adapts with the times. Sherlock Holmes gets reimagined in all sorts of ways.

But Star Wars can't be that. The MCU can't be that. Why? Because they have to cater to a fandom. When Disney bought Star Wars, I'm sure they thought they were buying a license to print unlimited money. What they were actually buying was a fan base that's unhealthily obsessed with 3 movies from 40+ years ago, and wants to be served the same regurgitated garbage over and over again so they can feel like kids forever.

The hardcore fans don't want new characters or new stories, they want a 3 hour deep dive into the backstory of that one alien who played the flute in the cantina in Episode IV, which of course will culminate in an epic lightsaber duel between AI Darth Vader and de-aged Luke Skywalker, as the audience cheers.

And the problem is that there's only hardcore fans left! These companies have spent so long isolating casuals -- shoveling out more product than anybody normal could ever watch and stuffing it chock full of completely nonsensical fan service -- that the only people still excited about the latest 18-epsode Disney Plus series are single adult men who sleep inside a plush tauntaun. And they hate anything that isn't Mark Hamill as Luke, dueling Darth Vader on the Death Star!

So let this stuff die. Star Wars was a rotting corpse before Lucas finished with it. The MCU is on the way. Support original storytelling and stop letting corporations exploit your nostalgia.

This is exactly it with Star Wars. Star Wars had an ending back in 1983. Then they dug it up and dragged the corpse around the block. It was never meant to be an ongoing soap opera like comic books have been. Darth Vader is one of the most two dimensional villains in history but that was fine, he had his redemption arc, story over. But no.

The MCU might become this but it still has a few tricks up its sleeve but eventually, it too will be nothing but an empty husk for entitled fanboys.

To be fair, nobody dug up a corpse and dragged it around the block. George Lucas had always wanted both prequels and sequels. Now, were the prequels and sequels good or even needed? That is certainly debatable. But it definitely was Lucas' intent to have them.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-george-lucas-prequel-trilogies-plan-revealed/

KGB

@LavaManLee said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:
Franchises are dying because they should never have existed anyway, at least not in their current form. All these long-running comics series stay fresh by switching out authors, artists, etc over the years.

The X-Men in comics have been so many different things, and will be so many more different things, because every creator puts their own spin on them. James Bond adapts with the times. Sherlock Holmes gets reimagined in all sorts of ways.

But Star Wars can't be that. The MCU can't be that. Why? Because they have to cater to a fandom. When Disney bought Star Wars, I'm sure they thought they were buying a license to print unlimited money. What they were actually buying was a fan base that's unhealthily obsessed with 3 movies from 40+ years ago, and wants to be served the same regurgitated garbage over and over again so they can feel like kids forever.

The hardcore fans don't want new characters or new stories, they want a 3 hour deep dive into the backstory of that one alien who played the flute in the cantina in Episode IV, which of course will culminate in an epic lightsaber duel between AI Darth Vader and de-aged Luke Skywalker, as the audience cheers.

And the problem is that there's only hardcore fans left! These companies have spent so long isolating casuals -- shoveling out more product than anybody normal could ever watch and stuffing it chock full of completely nonsensical fan service -- that the only people still excited about the latest 18-epsode Disney Plus series are single adult men who sleep inside a plush tauntaun. And they hate anything that isn't Mark Hamill as Luke, dueling Darth Vader on the Death Star!

So let this stuff die. Star Wars was a rotting corpse before Lucas finished with it. The MCU is on the way. Support original storytelling and stop letting corporations exploit your nostalgia.

This is exactly it with Star Wars. Star Wars had an ending back in 1983. Then they dug it up and dragged the corpse around the block. It was never meant to be an ongoing soap opera like comic books have been. Darth Vader is one of the most two dimensional villains in history but that was fine, he had his redemption arc, story over. But no.

The MCU might become this but it still has a few tricks up its sleeve but eventually, it too will be nothing but an empty husk for entitled fanboys.

To be fair, nobody dug up a corpse and dragged it around the block. George Lucas had always wanted both prequels and sequels. Now, were the prequels and sequels good or even needed? That is certainly debatable. But it definitely was Lucas' intent to have them.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-george-lucas-prequel-trilogies-plan-revealed/

Based on how the 1st (and clearly most beloved) movie was filmed, I (and many others) call **** on that regardless of what George claims (esp since he stole so much of Star Wars from Hidden Fortress a Japanese movie). The original movie was very much filmed as a standalone one off movie. There is just no way there would have been all those romantic undertones between Luke/Leia if it was already known they were brother and sister. A big part of what made that movie was arguing over who would have ended up with her (Luke or Han) based on whether you liked bad boys or goody two shoes. It's obvious it was reconned in much later (3rd movie) that they were brother and sister.

KGB