Ruin Johnson has gone off the deep end—AGAIN—this time blaming Russian trolls for the attacks against him and The Last Jedi. Seriously.
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Ruin Johnson just can’t seem to stay off Twitter, proving once again that he is a child who has utterly failed to grow up. This time he attacked YouTuber Mike Zeroh for merely asking if rumors are true that Johnson’s trilogy has been cancelled.
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Last night the guys at Midnight’s Edge had me on for one of their live shows. I also did a recording for the regular show.
Tom, Larry, and I discuss a range of topics from cartoon reboots, demolition versus reconstruction, James Gunn, Teen Titans, and much more.
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If you haven’t heard of Skippy the Jedi Droid, you’re probably not alone; the concept appeared in a one-off story in 1999’s Star Wars Tales #1 and was written by Peter David. The narrative centers around a Force-sensitive droid named Skippy, and yes, (spoiler alert) it’s the very same R5-unit with the bad motivator that appeared in the original 1977 Star Wars film. Using its powers to Jedi-mind-trick Uncle Owen into buying it from the Jawas, it has a vision of the horrors likely to take place if it and not R2-D2 and C-3PO is purchased, so it blows out its own motivator and uses the last of its fading consciousness to mind-trick 3PO into suggesting R2 as a replacement, thus saving the galaxy.
This makes Skippy quite clearly a Gary Stu, the “male” (if programmed gender identification may be applied to sexless droid constructs) equivalent of a Mary Sue.
Defenders of the Disney Star Wars movies, Paul Feig’s abominable Ghostbusters adaptation, and CBS’ STD like to resort to the straw man tactic of crying sexism whenever the term ‘Mary Sue’ is used to accurately describe the shallow, one-dimensional concepts their creators try to pass off as well developed characters. The failure in this method of defense, of course, is the existence of aforementioned male equivalent personified in Skippy (as well as The 300’s King Leonidas), but let it not be said that whiny shallow thinkers are willing to grow up long enough to acknowledge the absurdity of their accusations when faced with the cold hard facts.
But this is a problem that is plaguing Hollywood these days: Nobody was willing to be the adult in the room and tell the likes of Steven Moffat, Alex Kurtz-Man, Ruin Johnson, Jar Jar Abrams, Paul Fatigue, and others guilty of inflicting chronic Mary-Sue-ism on unwilling audiences, that they aren’t very good and certainly aren’t half as clever as they obviously think they are. Their twelve-year-old’s writing level is all too often condescending, cynical, contemptuous of the source material, and as a result, insulting to the intelligence of the audience. For all someone like Moffat, for example, claims to be a huge fan of properties such as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, when you take a closer look at his concepts-in-place-of-characters, his version of Holmes is a classic Gary Stu, so perfect in his genius and social imperfections that he doesn’t need to change, learn, or grow.
By contrast, consider that in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes is truly challenged, both on the case he’s working on and in his perceptions of women’s abilities. He’s forced to confront his prejudices about the so-called weaker sex because he has been outsmarted by a woman, and as a result he is compelled to alter his views, to grow and learn as a person. For Victorian era England, this was a refreshingly ballsy move for Doyle and it paid off, in large part because it portrayed Holmes as a deeply flawed character who when challenged grows intellectually and spiritually, even if only somewhat, and that is what any given audience relates to. We cannot relate to or believe in a flawless, unchanging concept because it’s not based in reality. We reject it because we know that nobody is perfect, and therefore we cannot accept it in a narrative because to do so forces us to suspend too much of our disbelief to be able to get involved in the story.
Likewise, with Ma-Rey Sue, we simply cannot believe she can use the Force like a Jedi Master (Mistress?) without having undergone any real training, to defeat someone with ostensibly many years of experience. We reject it because it’s not based in reality, and any good story and character must have some basis in it. Otherwise we cannot get into the story. That’s why, when Ruin Johnson proved just how much of a rank storytelling amateur he is and always has been with his hack job on Disney’s Episode VIII, audiences reacted so harshly. We reject his and Abrams’ baloney for what it is.
And, of course, there are Feigbusters and STD, both of which rely on Mary Sues as the centerpieces of their respective tales.
The common denominator to all these is that they are so unrealistic that they cannot stand on their own. Audience won’t accept them, and on a certain conscious level, their creators know it. But instead of acknowledging their writing flaws and going back to learn how to write proper characters, the preferred tactic is to try to bolster the shallow one-dimensional concepts by tearing down the original source material. After all, they “reason”, if the original is destroyed, audiences will have no choice but to accept our creations. But the opposite effect has instead occurred: we dig our heels in even deeper in our rejection, because instead of responding to mistakes with acknowledgement and corrective action, we are attacked as sexist, racist, homophobic, and so on.
All of this is borne of contempt, and not only for the source material; too many of today’s writers hold their audiences in contempt as well. Steven Moffat even went to the extreme in one episode of Sherlock by going out of his way to ridicule fans for even trying to speculate about how the hero survived a presumably fatal encounter. But Moffat had set up questions to be answered later in the first place, and has no right to blast anyone for daring to try and come up with answers to questions he himself posed. Likewise, Ruin Johnson’s childish digs at Star Wars fans, both in The Last Jedi and on social media, speak to his sheer disdain for any who have the audacity to speculate on even the ham-handed questions Jar Jar Abrams put forth for viewers to answer on their own in The Force Awakens. And this betrays, too, an even deeper pathology: Why even pose questions at all if they’re not meant to be answered, and if you’re just going to mock people for doing what comes naturally when asked a riddle? In the minds of today’s corporate hack writer-directors, answers are irrelevant, and audiences are childish @$$holes for expecting any or trying to come up with their own. Payoff is for losers, nerds, people too dweebish even for nerds higher up in the social pecking order.
Thankfully, there’s a limit as to how much abuse audiences will take before they vent their frustration by refusing to buy the shi**y product being sold. Although media consolidation increases, diminishing the quality of what’s sold, consumers still have the right not to purchase it. And you can’t force someone to buy something no matter how you might try to enforce it under code of law. That’s largely why Obamacare, modeled as it was on Romneycare in Massachusetts, ultimately failed. Instead of restricting prices or coming up with a public alternative, legislators and executive alike tried to force consumers to buy product that is increasingly un-affordably priced and increasingly defective in providing a necessary service. Small wonder it failed. It did so because you can’t respond to diminishing demand for low quality product by saying, “you HAVE to buy it; you have no choice in the matter.”
At some point Hollywood is going to have to grow up and accept the fundamental truth of economics: people buy product only if it’s good, useful, and reasonably priced. If you only ever produce garbage, don’t expect them to plop down money they realize is better spent elsewhere. Cinema, of course, isn’t going away any time soon. But it may be that, tired of chronic Mary/Gary Sue/Stu-ism, audiences will soon force another Renaissance on the industry. This can be done in part by supporting smaller, lower-budget, well written and executed productions. If those make money at the box office, Hollywood will adapt as it did before and produce more of that level of quality, simply in order to compete.
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I wasn’t going to write up another blog entry about Star Wars until the rumors over Kathleen Kennedy’s departure from LucasFilm had been officially confirmed or denied by Disney, but the last few discussions I’ve had with others on social media have driven me to explain my thoughts about the use of identity politics in the franchise, the real reason it’s being exploited, and the impact it’s obviously had.
Now, it’s no secret that establishment media have basically attacked Disney in general and LucasFilm in particular for pushing “liberal” values in the new movies produced under Kennedy’s watch as president of the studio: the “liberal elitists” in Hollywood seem to be waging all-out culture war on “centrists” and conservatives by trying to displace traditionally white male characters and archetypes with females and persons of color.
And to be sure, as The Intercept’s Briahna Gray writes, “many Democrats now bristle at the notion that the Democratic Party should reach out to working class whites all. Understandably fearful that “wooing” white voters might require an appeal to bigotry, it’s now commonly argued that the Democratic Party should concentrate its efforts on nonvoters of color instead.” And we certainly seem to be seeing a similar pattern of pandering to demographics that are predominantly non-white and female, with snarky public statements and remarks appearing to confirm what many critics of the new movies believe.
Gray goes on to write:
Nonwhite and/or female candidates are praised for advancing “identity politics” if they win — regardless of how they campaigned. And efforts to include white voters in one’s coalition are blamed for faltering campaigns — regardless of a candidate’s more substantive failures.
But to subscribe to the notion that Kathleen Kennedy and her merry band of suck-ups are pushing so-called “social justice warriorism” on an unwilling fan base is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of their intentions. Remember that in today’s increasingly corporatized, consolidated media, companies looking to squeeze every last penny out of their product want to sell to as many buyers as possible in order to maximize profits. That means targeting demographics that have been traditionally ignored, or that company executives think have been ignored, so that they can fill as many movie theater seats as they can.
People need to understand that “corporate thinking is short term”: Disney and its subsidiaries are only concerned with making immediate profits. Politics are not immediate; they are long term goals, strategies, tactics, and so on, to be accomplished over a period of years, or even generations. To the extent that corporations and the people who run them have any ideology at all, it’s one of making money. And in that quest to make money, costs have to be cut as much as possible, and product has to be sold to as many consumers as possible.
So you have corporate focus groups trying to figure out how to best pander to various demographic groups, e.g., Millennials. Millennials and later generations are increasingly non-white, and represent many races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and so on. Focus groups try to come up with what they think is the most effective way to play to their wants. “Oh, you don’t think your group was adequately represented in the previous Star Wars trilogies? No problem! Our new, IMPROVED trilogy has something and someone for everybody! We’ve got “strong women”! “Blacks”! “Asians”! “Pansexuals” and “LGBTQ”!
The focus groups decided that the supposedly shrinking white male heterosexual demographic was no longer sufficient to support the Star Wars franchise for Disney, which wants to get a good return on its four billion dollar investment in buying LucasFilm, Ltd. Hence we now have Ma-Rey Sue, Potato Sack Tico, Carrie Poppins, Holdo, Poe, Finn, Pan-do Calrissian, and so on, all created or retooled to have as broad demographic appeal as can be gotten away with.
Of course, it’s a cynical exploitation of identity politics in order to sell toys and movie theater tickets. Why wouldn’t it be? While it is true that politicians, most of whom are either corporate lobbyists or company executives, use corporate talking points to sell themselves on the campaign trail, the reverse is equally as true: corporations exploit politics to their immediate financial gain.
And this, not actually held political beliefs, is what drives the cynical pandering to identity politics. Corporate executives and their stooges are ultimately a nihilistic lot, believing in nothing beyond short term profit. But they are just aware enough to understand that most human beings do have beliefs, and they are not above exploiting those beliefs to sell their product. But the drawback is that people generally know when they’re being pandered to, and they reject it. That’s why Solo: A Star Wars Story has lost money for LucasFilm and Disney. As Gray writes in her article:
Nonwhite and/or female candidates are praised for advancing “identity politics” if they win — regardless of how they campaigned. And efforts to include white voters in one’s coalition are blamed for faltering campaigns — regardless of a candidate’s more substantive failures. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And with a belief that demographics hold the key to unlocking a Democratic victory, Democrats stand poised to ignore the most important lesson of 2016: People turn out for material change.
Thus is explained why Kennedy and her sycophants seem so oblivious to the reasons behind fan reaction to the movies produced under her watch. They don’t want to admit that they screwed up, and so they’re blaming everyone but themselves for having alienated fans to the point that Star Wars has gone from being a property that makes and breaks box office and merchandise sales records, to one that loses money, in just three (really two and a half) short years.
To be sure, the Marvel movies are as guilty of exploiting identity politics to cater to target demographics as much as their sister productions, but not nearly as obviously or as insultingly. And whereas LucasFilm has been either insensitive or outright hostile to the fan base, Marvel understands its own far better and is content to show much more respect, which is why you don’t see much fan anger toward Marvel. It would be one thing if LucasFilm and the people presently running it were properly apologetic and took steps to remedy its mistakes, but instead it is taking the same failed tactic of doubling down on those blunders and them compounding these monumental screw-ups by lashing out, whether directly or through paid media shills (who used to be a lot more reliably honest in critiquing movies).
At the end of the day, LucasFilm needs to publicly acknowledge what it has done, own up to it, apologize, and take corrective measures before it completely destroys Disney’s plans to construct theme parks and hotels based on Star Wars. And maybe Disney will take action where Kennedy will not; after all, over a week has passed since rumors began flying about her impending departure from LucasFilm, and so far there have been no official statements denying them. If she is indeed being pushed out in favor of someone who can handle the franchise far more capably, that is all well and good. But the damage has been done, and if Disney isn’t careful, if it simply replaces one bad egg with another, then Star Wars is pretty much done for at least another generation.
And that would truly be a tragedy.
The rumors are flying over the world wide web that Kathleen Kennedy may be stepping down as head of LucasFilm as early as September. According to Movie Web:
We have to caution right off the bat that this isn’t coming from any official sources, so it should be taken with a massive grain of salt. That said, there are rumors emerging that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy may be stepping down in September. If there is any validity to this at all, it would represent a major shift not just for Kennedy, but for one of the biggest franchises on the planet.
Kennedy has been infamously divisive, and there has been much criticism over her cynical exploitation of identity politics to simultaneously pander to every possible demographic in an effort to fill as many movie theaters seats as possible, and shield the movies made under her watch from public criticism. As well, communication, or rather, lack thereof, has been a serious problem:
While the Star Wars franchise was successfully relaunched under her watch and the four movies released since Disney purchased Lucasfilm have grossed north of $4.5 billion at the box office, there have been issues. Namely, Josh Trank (Boba Fett), Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Solo) and Colin Trevorrow (Star Wars 9) have all been hired and fired on her watch. Kennedy has clearly had issues communicating with directors. The Last Jedi sailed smoothly under Rian Johnson, but that wound up being the most divisive movie in the new batch so far.
This, again, is all speculation because as of this writing Kennedy’s departure from LucasFilm is only a rumor and may ultimately prove untrue. But as I wrote in my last entry, under her watch Star Wars has gone from a record-breaking-and-making profit-generating property, to one that alienates audiences and loses money. You don’t go from one of the biggest relaunches of a franchise in movie history to seriously hurting the company’s bottom line just three years later, and not receive a pink slip. Profits have diminished to the point that it is now extremely difficult to imagine Disney’s plans for exploiting Star Wars continue in present form. Something has to change, and Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger won’t take the fall for Kennedy because none of Disney’s other divisions are experiencing these problems, only LucasFilm, and she’s the one in charge.
I’m going to engage in a bit of baseless speculation here, because right now this is only a rumor and it has yet to be confirmed publicly by Disney. I suspect that Iger has made his decision to replace Kennedy, and the company is trying to prolong the process, both to allow enough time to find a suitable replacement and to save face so that she is not humiliated as badly as she otherwise would be. No one wants to be the one who fired Kathleen Kennedy, who despite her reckless, arrogant incompetence still has a fair amount of pull in Hollywood. Also, firing her publicly would be a tacit admission that Disney screwed up by putting her in charge of LucasFilm in the first place—elites have a curious pathological aversion to admitting error.
Assuming the rumors are true and Kennedy is out at LucasFilm come September, the big question is, who would replace her? Disney needs someone like Marvel’s Kevin Feige, who over ten years has guided the company’s Cinematic Universe to great success. He has the vision and discipline to right the ship if he were to move from Marvel Studios to LucasFilm, but the drawback is that absent his presence, Marvel movies may end up faltering. Gale Anne Hurd, James Cameron’s longtime producer, is another potential replacement, especially with The Walking Dead winding down, but does she want the thankless task of coming in to clean up the mess Kennedy has made of Star Wars, one that might actually be impossible given the level of damage?
So we’ll see if the rumor prove true or not. If it is, and I certainly hope so, it’ll be interesting to see what spin Disney tries to put on it and who will be chosen to take over from Kennedy. Whoever it is will have to be able to alleviate investors’ concerns and restore their confidence in the franchise. That’s a tall order at this point, so it’s important that Iger pick the right person. Otherwise, there likely won’t be another movie after Episode IX and it’ll be at least another generation before we see another attempt to resurrect Star Wars.
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