I love Star Wars, I’ve loved it since I was a kid and I will continue to love it until I’m 80 and we’ve seen the 50th episode in the film franchise. I consider myself a Star Wars fanatic and it pains me to be associated with one of the hateful, spiteful, and ungrateful groups on this planet.
Am I going to sit here and say that Star Wars is a franchise that is nothing but perfection? No. There have been some choices that I found myself tilting my head from or disagreeing with. Having an opinion and critiquing something is only human of us but like everything, there’s always someone who takes a concept and goes to the extreme. Sadly, it happens more often with Star Wars fans than it should.
So let me be clear here: I believe every person’s opinion is valid so don’t take what I have to say as me stating that “anybody who dislikes something Star Wars-related is wrong.” That is not the case. However, I will be taking the time to discuss why this fanbase needs to change.
THE FANDOM MENACE
Let’s go back to 1980. The first Star Wars was a mega-sensation so fans were excited about the sequel. The Empire Strikes Back was released and most people think the movie was immediately considered the all-time classic that it is today. Wrong. Many accused it of being too dark, too different from the first movie, and it leaves off on a massively disappointing cliffhanger. Hmm…
In 1983, fans called Return Of The Jedi a weak third entry that had too many plotlines and appealed too much to kids with things like the Ewoks. Didn’t we just get done talking about how Empire is too dark? Interesting.
In the early 2000s, the prequels graced cinema and those who grew up on the original trilogy instantly hated them. They were too different than what they expected, there was too much CGI, and they claimed that George Lucas had lost his way. Meanwhile, people that grew up with the prequels would go on to hold them close as their own classics alongside the original trilogy.
Finally, in the 2010s, Lucasfilm created the sequel trilogy. Guess what? They too were criticized. They tried too hard to honor the original trilogy, the practical effects were considered too much nostalgia bait, the characters were weak, there were not enough prequel-era references, and they disgraced George Lucas’ legacy. Oh, and The Last Jedi was terrible because it was too dark, too different from the last movie, and it leaves off on a massively disappointing cliffhanger. Boy, that sounds familiar.
Do you see the glaring issue with all three eras? It’s that Star Wars fans are hypocritical and have no clue what they want.
They say that the prequels are a problem because of the overuse of CGI and going in a different direction. But yet, when the sequels go for a lot more practicality and embrace the style of the original trilogy: they are considered unoriginal and trash. Hmm. Interesting. Okay, so the Disney+ series like The Mandalorian must be a problem too? Actually no, the same people that would nitpick the sequels would end up praising this series for nearly all of the same reasons they hated the sequels. The Mandalorian focuses more on new characters, has similar plot elements to the original trilogy, relies a lot on entertaining audiences through nostalgia, and characters from the original trilogy have even less of a role in the sequel movies.
Then in The Book Of Boba Fett, Star Wars fans go crazy over how the series tributes the prequel era and The Clone Wars. Wait, I thought the prequel era was bad? Now it’s considered a classic trilogy? Well, that’s great I guess since I grew up a fan of both trilogies.
But I could have sworn that the prequel trilogy was completely maligned…I remember this because I grew up only to learn that fans attacked people from those movies and they never stopped.
BULLYING, SEXISM, AND RACISM
Oh yes, we’re going there.
In The Phantom Menace, fans were given Jake Lloyd as the child version of Anakin Skywalker, the child who was destined to become Darth Vader. Now, was Jake Lloyd on the same level as Haley Joel Osment or Abigail Breslin? No. The performance of young Anakin was not great but hey, he’s a kid, right? Well, not in the eyes of Star Wars fans.
Fans all over mocked and berated Jake Lloyd, calling him one of the worst actors to exist in the acting world. Saying that he ruined the Star Wars franchise with his performance. Do you know what happened to this young boy? He was bullied. Bullied to ridiculous degrees. As a result of constant harassment from Star Wars fans and his peers, Jake Lloyd retired from acting in 2001 and his life went downhill to the point that he was submitted to a psychiatric facility in 2015.
Jake Lloyd was terrorized so badly that Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker himself) called people out on it. It was why he never let his children get into the acting business. So when actors are afraid for their children’s mental and emotional health, isn’t that a sign that maybe something is wrong with Star Wars fans? Oh, but it gets even worse.
Let’s talk about Hayden Christensen, the other actor to play Anakin. This man was given just as poor of reception as Jake Lloyd but he had to put up with it for two movies. I personally find the actor charming: he seems like a nice guy, I like most of his movies, and despite some questionable dialogue from the script, Hayden did his job as a young Darth Vader in both Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith.
Unfortunately, because the character was written to be a rash, emotional, and over-zealous young man, “fans” seemed to think that was Hayden’s fault. So once again, an actor was attacked mercilessly by the fanbase. I’ve even seen comments saying that Hayden deserved to die for his performance.
- What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? He’s an ACTOR. He was doing his job. Why attack him for a character that he did not write?
- Why were people so upset by how this character was written? This is meant to be the man who betrays and causes the death of the Jedi Order. He’s not meant to be some perfect hero. He was a flawed man with a lot of emotional problems that were brought about because of the manipulation of an evil Sith lord and the cold and calculated ways of the Jedi. If anybody was going to snap and turn evil, it was going to be Anakin.
- Yes, the dialogue sometimes wasn’t the best but every writer has their off day. I write for a living and sometimes I hate what I write but because of my quota, sometimes I gotta leave it as it is. But again, this has nothing to do with Hayden.
- Wishing for someone’s death over a character? Seriously? How low can someone get?
That’s why it makes me laugh when the Obi-Wan Kenobi series is announced and it’s revealed that Hayden is going to return, this time as Darth Vader himself: everyone reacted like when they saw Harrison Ford return to Han Solo in The Force Awakens. Cheers and celebrations all around. This is where the fun begins, right?
Then the Obi-Wan series is released and Hayden is given nothing but love for his Darth Vader performance. I adored seeing this reception because I too was excited to see Hayden again and I adored his and James Earl Jones’ combined version of Vader. It reminded me of the Darth Vader comics where he is this fast-paced tank who will destroy anything in his path.
However, I can’t help but be annoyed. The same fanbase that mocked Hayden for over a decade was suddenly welcoming him back with open arms and saying his performance in Obi-Wan Kenobi was stellar. Yeah, I agree but I also say that Hayden was equally as impressive of an actor in the prequels. So, the hypocrisy returned and it was so frustrating.
Still, it’s great that Hayden Christensen made such a powerful return to the series and that he was not bullied for his performance………..but other actors were.
Now when I write, I try not to let my emotions get the better of me. However, this is one time where I must speak freely and say that anyone who sent racist remarks to Moses Ingram because of her performance as the Third Sister and cruel comments to Vivien Lyra Blair as young Leia? You’re vile and inhuman.
Did we literally learn nothing from the prequels? Because this exact situation happened before. As mentioned prior, Jake Lloyd was bullied into mental illness and actor Ahmed Best was endless ridiculed and sent racist remarks for his performance as Jar-Jar Binks. Fucking why? Why are the fans like this?
History repeats itself and Moses Ingram and Vivien Lyra Blair were also attacked. You have Grace Randolph dedicating an entire portion of a video breaking down why Vivien, an innocent young child, is a terrible actress and a disgrace to Leia. There were a ton of social media comments mocking her take on the character when she was giving a performance that I absolutely adored. She echoed so much of Carrie Fisher but all fans can do is whine about how she’s bratty…which Leia always was.
But we have to talk about Moses Ingram. Now if by the finale, someone genuinely dislikes the character of Reva the Third Sister? That’s fair. However, these childish “humans” who decided to fill Moses’ social media DMs with dozens upon dozens of racist comments and insults because of her performance as a Sith Inquisitor? I would have them all shipped to live on an island alone if I could. It’s disgusting what level these so-called fans will stoop down to when something doesn’t go 100% their way. It makes me sick and I was so happy when Star Wars started fighting back.
Not only did official Star Wars social media pages fire back against these people but Ewan McGregor himself actually posted a video calling out these cruel and racist fans, saying that they are not real Star Wars fans in his eyes. THANK YOU! This is something I have been begging for all filmmakers and studios to start doing. Fight back against toxic fans who do nothing but cause problems. Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Middle-Earth, and even Pixar all just let whiny fans just walk all over them when they need to stand up for themselves and tell these people to simply “shut the hell up.”
And it makes me laugh that certain content creators such as Geeks + Gamers have tried to claim that THEY are the victims in this situation. That Disney and Lucasfilm are being bullies to their fans. Funny, the typical bullies are the ones who claim to be victims the moment someone calls out their wrongdoings.
Unfortunately, it took Lucasfilm over 20 years to finally do this. When the first trailer for The Force Awakens arrived, fans boycotted the film the moment they saw a man of color as a Stormtrooper. John Boyega was given so much hatred before the movie, it was insane but thankfully, he was actually treated kindly, for the most part, when it came to the reception of the movie itself. Sadly, Lucasfilm did nothing to help John Boyega and they even removed him from one of the international posters.
The Last Jedi was even worse. Kelly Marie Tran was introduced as Rose Tica and, I’ll be honest, she was my least favorite character in the film. Now I didn’t have this raging hatred for her like so many others did but yeah, she was the weakest CHARACTER in The Last Jedi. Never once did I think Kelly Marie Tran was a problem but guess what? Star Wars fans did. In a nearly identical situation as Moses Ingram, Kelly Marie Tran was the victim of a mass social media attack that included racial slurs, body-shaming, and sexist insults. I would not even DARE to try and repeat what they said because the comments were that disgusting and it forced the actress to close her social media. As did Daisy Ridley, who was also being sent a bunch of hate over either being a woman in Star Wars or because fans didn’t care for Rey.
In a galaxy that has displayed hundreds if not thousands of different races and species living amongst each other, why is it suddenly a sin to have people of color in Star Wars? Why is it suddenly a problem if a character happens to be a woman? Short answer: it’s not and anyone who does think it’s a problem does not deserve the air that they breathe.
Think we’re done? Oh, no. I’m not even close to being done with these people.
INCONSISTENCY STRIKES BACK
Why don’t we bring up some more hypocrisy? I mentioned Rey earlier and overall, disliking the character is a fair opinion. I personally really enjoyed her but there were some comments made that I have to bring up. Fans said that she was too nice, too perfect and that she was too much of a Mary Sue.
I find that kinda ironic. Remember when you all were complaining that Anakin was too mean, too loud, too power-hungry, and he was too impulsive? So when a character comes about that is kind, caring, smart, a fighter, and overall a great person, she’s a poor character.
As for being a Mary Sue because she has a natural affinity for the Force. I would just like to point out that Luke Skywalker and Ezra Bridger both learned how to use the Force quickly. In his first movie, Luke Skywalker used the Force to guide a torpedo into the exhaust vent that destroyed the Death Star thus boosting the Rebels to have an edge over the Empire. Ezra Bridger learned to become a Jedi in one season of Star Wars Rebels under a master who never even became a Jedi Knight.
Now you could make the argument that Luke has his father’s genes. Fair point but…Rey is a Palpatine. It’s in her genes too. And before the revelation of her being a Palpatine, she was a nobody with non-Force Sensitive parents which is exactly what Ezra was. Combined with the accusations that Rey was “pushing woke agendas” on fans, pretty much calls out that most of these toxic fans are sexist.
Do I think they could have handled some things about Rey better? Yeah, but I’m not going to attack Daisy Ridley or call her a Mary Sue just because things don’t go the way I expected. This continues to show the consistent issue that Star Wars fans are ungrateful and don’t know what they want from this franchise.
It becomes especially frustrating when you have fans with more recognition like Star Wars Theory who goes off on a tirade that we shouldn’t be happy that we’re getting Star Wars content and that “it has to be perfect.” Oh boy. We’re getting to THAT side of the Fandom Menace. The spoiled little brats who think that every single piece of Star Wars material has to follow their little headcanons or they set their expectations so high that absolutely nothing will ever please them.
As for “perfection” this is something that has been an issue with toxic fans of all franchises. It’s gotten to the point where if something is not a 10/10 ultra-fantastic masterpiece, it’s a 1/10 horrible disgrace to mankind. There is no in-between anymore. The 2-9 are non-existent and if something doesn’t meet the standard of perfection, it’s awful. I would just like to point out that the Nazi regime had a similar mentality…
ATTACK OF THE OVERLY HIGH EXPECTATIONS
This isn’t just a problem with Star Wars fans. Ever since Avengers: Endgame came out, fans of all kinds of franchises put these hyper-unrealistic expectations on any big-budget film that comes out. This happened with Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, where fans seemed to be under the impression that the movie was going to transform into Doctor Strange And The Illuminati V The Scarlet Witch: Dawn Of Cameos. People were expecting Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, all of the X-Men, Ghost Rider, and so many other people to show up that they got mad when a movie called Doctor Strange remained a Doctor Strange movie that has a few cameos in it.
Yes, I loved Avengers: Endgame and I adored Spider-Man: No Way Home but people need to understand that those kinds of movies that bring together these massive crossovers? They happen very, very rarely. This same mentality has been plaguing the Star Wars fanbase for years.
With the sequels, fans were expecting Luke, Han, and Leia to be these superheroes who were gonna tear the First Order apart. Would that have been cool? Yeah, totally but Harrison Ford was 72 years old in The Force Awakens. He broke his ankle making just that movie. Carrie Fisher was far from being in shape to be some Jedi or blaster-toting commando for the Resistance. Oh, but wait, The Last Jedi had Leia use the Force to save herself from death but that was considered too much and too powerful. Wait, what?
Mark Hamill, though he did kick ass in The Last Jedi, was never going to be pulling off anything like the fighting in the prequels. This is not me discrediting the three actors, I love those three, and I love what they brought to the sequel era but there is no denying that they were much older and fans put too many expectations on them.
In The Rise Of Skywalker, fans set high expectations that every Jedi we ever knew was going to appear to help Rey fight Palpatine in some “Avengers Assemble”-like moment. Even though J.J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, and the cast never promised that.
The same thing happened with Obi-Wan Kenobi. The series began with Obi-Wan living as a hermit on Tatooine with PTSD after the Purge. That makes sense, right? Obi-Wan did have to sever his best friend’s limbs, lose his entire Order and everything he cared about, watched the love of his best friend die from childbirth, and see the Republic be corrupted into the Empire. Plus he’s been living for ten years in hiding, cut off from the Force due to his PTSD and lack of regular training.
Did fans understand this? Nope. They called Obi-Wan Kenobi terrible because the titular hero was not the swashbuckling hero shouting out one-liners and snappy comebacks. No, instead it was a more personal story of Obi-Wan grieving after everything that happened and being forced to become a Jedi again.
Fans also kept whining because there were no flashback sequences to the Clone Wars. This is another example of putting unreal expectations on the creators because never once, ever, even for a second did Lucasfilm, Deborah Chow, or the cast hint at there being flashbacks to the Clone Wars in this show. That was just conjured up in their heads because they saw that Hayden Christensen returning and that somehow meant that we were going to get flashbacks.
What makes it even funnier is the fact that we DID get a flashback to pre-Attack Of The Clones which is a period that we have never seen before. That was a great surprise and for the most part, everyone loved it. That was what they wanted but of course, it’s never enough. “Fandom Menace always want more, more, more, and more.” Like little Veruca Salts that are in desperate need of a garbage chute.
Here’s an idea. If you want to see Obi-Wan and Anakin working together during the Clone Wars………….go watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars. There are many seasons of it and there are quite a few episodes where they work together. There ya go. Now I would have screamed if we got to see Hayden and Ewan wearing their Clone Wars armor and fighting a bunch of battle droids but I honestly don’t NEED to see it.
So, now we have these fans who NEEDED to see it and so now they think the Obi-Wan series is bad because it didn’t meet their absurdly high expectations that were never promised in the first place.
REVENGE OF THE SENSIBLE
My favorite fanatics are the ones who immediately need to find a scapegoat is they have an issue with something. One little problem with the Obi-Wan Kenobi series? Suddenly, Deborah Chow is the enemy and Lucasfilm should never hire her again for anything. Rian Johnson directs The Last Jedi and that man suddenly is crucified and is one of the worst directors in the industry despite his films Brick, Looper, and Knives Out showing that he’s massively talented. But no….he ruined Star Wars. Kathleen Kennedy ruined Star Wars. Robert Rodriguez ruined Star Wars. Everyone ruined Star Wars.
No. In the oh-so-perfectly delivered words of Obi-Wan Kenobi: “You have done that yourself.” This is to all of the Fandom Menace who have been plaguing us for decades:
- You ruined Star Wars by bullying others.
- You ruined Star Wars by being racist.
- You ruined Star Wars by spewing out hateful unconstructive bile at filmmakers, actors, and even other fans.
- You ruined Star Wars by being spoiled brats with overly high expectations
- You ruined Star Wars by being so consumed with hate.
- You ruined Star Wars by being so loud and in everyone’s faces that you created the false image that every Star Wars fan is this rude, obnoxious, cruel, racist, sexist, narcissistic egomaniac who is going to do nothing but attack storytellers.
- You ruined Star Wars for everyone. Either learn to be a decent human being again or go. the hell. away.
To all my fellow fans and content creators who are equally frustrated by the Fandom Menace as I am: fight back. Disney? Lucasfilm? Continue to fight back. The real fans simply want to see more content and the expansion of this universe, despite any flaws that we may or may not have. These toxic fanatics don’t know what they want yet they demand perfection even though they wouldn’t know what perfection was even if it flew passed their face in the form of an N-1 Starfighter. And I could go on and on about all of the different things they did such as boycotting Solo: A Star Wars Story because the main actor didn’t look 100% like Harrison Ford even though Ewan McGregor doesn’t look anything like Alec Guinness but everyone loved him.
They act as if they own this franchise and they deserve whatever demand: they are not owed anything and they don’t deserve anything except maybe a 4K copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
I know this one was a long one but this has been a long time coming. I hope you all enjoyed this little article and are inspired to keep fighting against toxicity. This has gone on long enough and it’s time people actually fought back. From here on out, can we just be sensible? Having an opinion is one thing but being a bully is so not necessary.
You’re all SO SWEET for making it this far and I hope you all enjoyed this article! I write about anything geek-related, especially comic book-related stuff so if you want to stay up to date with all the reviews, news breakdowns, and lists I do, make sure to follow this blog or follow me on Twitter @MelodyMacReady where I am much more active! Love you all!
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