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When faced with substandard storytelling, criminally failing to bring together much-loved legacy characters, and dramatically short-changing new ones, Star Wars fans quite understandably have a lot to say about their franchise, and this amplifies as a new installment like The Acolyte approaches. Predictably for modern Hollywood, every time they do, then the pushback is always that they are “toxic fandom”.
Attacking your core customer base seems a strange way to run a railroad, but we are where we are.
In a feature piece in the The New York Times, Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy has now claimed a gender bias towards Star Wars creatives. She was interviewed in detail alongside Leslye Headland, the showrunner of The Acolyte.
Kennedy says female creatives with the franchise have struggled with fan backlash to their respective film and TV franchise installments:
“Operating within these giant franchises now, with social media and the level of expectation – it’s terrifying. I think Leslye has struggled a little bit with it. I think a lot of the women who step into Star Wars struggle with this a bit more. Because of the fan base being so male-dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal.”
Addressing the criticism of The Acolyte that it seems to follow the tick-box methodology of diverse casting, rather than for storytelling purposes, she said:
“My belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people. That’s an easy decision for me.”
Tony Gilroy doesn’t get this kind of criticism, and his show Andor features a Hispanic lead, and a Puerto Rican co-star, with female actors and people of color as Imperial officers. There is also a sub-plot including an interracial lesbian couple including an Indian actress. Maybe it is because it’s a damn good show featuring tight writing?
Likewise, even the much-hailed saviors of Star Wars Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni were savaged over The Mandalorian Season 3 and The Book Of Boba Fett. Filoni was then declared very much not the Messiah, but a very naughty boy, for Ahsoka.
It’s almost as if fans just don’t like shit, isn’t it?
The Acolyte arrives on June 4th via Disney+.
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