I really like The Last Jedi. It's not without problems but the most vocal opponents of it point at problems that aren't there. They're dudes who think it's impossible to be misogynists because their idea of misogyny is based on the guys who picked on them for being nerds before geek culture became bankable. A not insignificant portion seems to not understand Star Wars but I'm gonna have to digress from that claim because I don't want to dig through fanboy Twitter to find examples. I end up maybe too aware of toxic fanfom due to my politics and media interests. Also I accidentally created a Twitter account that's mostly hyperbolic rage fuel and I can't figure out how to fix it even after unfollowing anyone with #resist on their bio. Did you know there's a comicsgate a la gamergate? It started with milkshakes. Actually it started because idiots are protecting their boys club and don't seem to understand that female Thor or black girl Iron Man are marketing stunts and the status quo ALWAYS returns in comic books. Marvel and DC are in the business of selling things and if they can sell things to people who aren't white men then they can sell more things. But the shitlords think it's some NWO conspiracy from the SJWs. Who as far as I can tell are usually in their twenties. Basically I know too much about a segment of trolls and I don't like knowing it
STAR WARS: Robots escape the Empire in search of an ancient ally. They find him and with him, a young warrior in training. The warrior and the ally make it off planet (barely) but end up at a world-killing base. The warrior escapes the base when the ally sacrifices himself and sets an example that the warrior uses to rally the rebels and destroy the base. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: The rebels have been found on an icy planet. They escape after a battle but the warrior diverts to complete his training. While there he learns of his legacy. Meanwhile the rebels escape through an asteroid field to end up at an ally's base only to be betrayed. The empire sets a trap, the warrior shows up and has an epic battle (and his legacy). He escapes, barely, with the help of his friends. RETURN OF THE JEDI: The rebels rally to save a friend. The warrior returns to complete his training only to discover that his master is dying. The rebels must destroy another world-killer with the help of indigenous people and the warrior must save his legacy, his life and the rebels. THE LAST JEDI: A new warrior must be trained by the master, who refuses to do it. The rebels try to take out the empire but they suck. They're on the run but the empire can't quite catch them. So some of them escape to the Casino Planet where they're captured. But they get away on horseback. Where they're rescued by a thief. Who actually turns them in. Meanwhile the rebels are still incongruously on the run. There's a bad warrior and a good warrior and they snapchat a few times. Then they get together and kill the emperor but aren't friends and one of them gets away for some reason. There are wisecracks and puffins that look like BatBoy. Also the Dark Side of the Force lives in a hole that looks disconcertingly like a gaping asshole. I will not mock you for liking The Last Jedi but you can't argue that it's objectively on par with the original trilogy. The movies could be cheap Hong Kong martial arts films and everything after the first two-three movies would still be pale imitations. This is a problem, as I said, that Hollywood is not addressing: movies suck now. Pick your best modern superhero movie (a genre not known for quality) and compare it to Superman 2. It's been downhill for a while now, but it's really hard to deny. Not that everyone isn't trying. I'm aware of ComicsGate. I also witnessed the chairman of DC comics say "by our best guess there are 200,000 comics readers in the United States. Green Lantern has an audience of maybe 7 million. If those 200,000 comics readers object to something we do with Green Lantern, that's a price we'll happily pay." And that was ten years ago. Comics readers are the coal miners of entertainment. They're completely fucking irrelevant to every single aspect of the rest of the industry yet whenever they open their pie holes to whinge about the Human Torch being black we're all required to care for some fucking reason. Comic Book Sunday is every comic book fan in Los Angeles, showing up to hang out with every comic book industry guy in Los Angeles, and on any given Sunday there's like 50 people there. Yeah, sure. There's 24 million "comic book fans" in the United States. If only 50 people can show up for free comics out of a city of 20 million, that number is abject bullshit.
I'm having a hard time with this. EC-era comics had a bigger audience than TV and radio combined. Fuckin' everyone was reading comics. Then in the '50s things got stupid and the comics industry knuckled the fuck under and became the shit landscape of Archie and Batgirl we all know and despise. Frank Miller and Alan Moore dragged that shit out of the gutter but the distance between Miller's Dark Knight and gravel-voiced Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger is three goddamn years and if you were ten when Jack Nicholson played The Joker you're fuckin' 41 now. Fuckin' 81 editions of those four comics. You don't get to pretend you're lone nerds keeping the flame of fandom alight when the fuckin' New York Times reviews your goddamn comic. Comics started incredibly popular. By the time Comics went through their bullshit "I'm so edgy" renaissance they'd been subject to congressional hearings. ComicCon? Fuck off, George Lucas premiered his trailer for Star Wars there in '76. George Reeves is 60 years dead. This idea that comics were ever some pure thing untouched by the creeping tendrils of commercialism is offensively elitist and the fact that Chanistan thinks that somehow shit was cooler on vinyl makes me further question what the fuck you get out of Chanistan.
Frank Miller didn't do anything Dennis O'Neil hadn't done with Batman and Green Arrow a decade before. O'Neil was even his editor on Daredevil, where he started writing and made his reputation. Dark Knight happened because Dick Giordano wanted a Batman comic to wash the Adam West off the perception of Batman and bring it closer to what they'd been doing for years, and Frank Miller was available. The 'bullshit "I'm so edgy" renaissance' was like the Renaissance in the sense that it was 80% hype and 20% changes that had started long before anyone declared a rebirth.
The point that the legitimate criticism is drowned out by the "ZOMG FAT ASIAN WOMEN" criticism is well-taken. But then, if you're a "star wars fan" in this day and age you're basically a simp easily manipulated by commercialism anyway so you might as well be picking sides in the Bud Bowl.