Agreed! For example: why is Han and Leia’s son named Ben?

Han didn’t know Ben Kenobi very well, and they didn’t really get along during their brief acquaintance. Leia never even met the guy, and only knew him as Obi-Wan and a friend of her dad’s. Ben meant a lot to Luke. If Luke had a son, he would name him Ben. (And…

I think Star Wars could’ve been safe and boring, or it could’ve subverted expectations, but it just needed to be consistent and have the same people in charge of all 3 films.

“You’ve got sugar in my motor oil!” “You’ve got motor oil in my sugar!”

As I recall, Robert Jordan once said that he started making changes while writing The Wheel of Time because fans were getting too smart and starting to figure things out.

Have to say that I completely agree.

I will say he had some decent ideas, but the tone of the film was so all over the place. It leans into Marvel humor when even Marvel realized they went too far and dialed it back. The middle of most stories is when the characters are at their lowest, which I guess does happen in this film, but they still seem somewhat…

I keep seeing people make this comment and it feels more like generalized anger at superhero films rather than a salient criticism of Endgame. The heroes kill off the primary antagonist anticlimactically within the first thirty minutes of the film. The movie then jumps five years into the future and never goes back.…

Perhaps neither Abrams nor Johnson should have been hired to direct a Star Wars film.

So is “subverting expectations” just to subvert expectations. His film was sloppy and pointless in service of just trying to be different. He didn’t have a vision, and it showed. 

“Needs more horsedog liberation and slapstick sight gags! Maybe throw some Broadway-style theatrical orphans with decoder rings in there.”

I’m willing to cut Johnson a little slack for being less than nuanced in his approach to fan criticism at the time. People were bombarding his co-workers with racist and sexist vitriol and harassing them off social media. I imagine he was pretty furious on their behalf. In the circumstances, I can’t blame him for…

It would be interesting to see some analysis of what fandoms are most known for vitriol and from that what features most encourage toxicity. The common factors that frequently show up in hobby drama lore (with quite a bit of overlap) are:

Apologies for misgendering, I get “he” a lot too. We literally just interacted yesterday over baby yoda, and most people around here know me a bit— I wasn’t asking in bad faith, which is why I premised it with “honest question”. I’d still be interested in the answer if you have one.

knives out, like coming out, like they’re gay or something?? isn’t that just forced diversity why can’t we have straight knives anymore???

Criticism is a thoughtful analysis of a text, oriented around a particular thesis, drawing on a particular artistic tradition or interpretive theory. It’s a valuable intellectual tool that allows us to better appreciate our shared cultural heritage.

Good for you. This article isn’t about you then.

On the one hand, I like the films of Rian Johnson, all of which I’ve seen. I think he has a great eye, an excellence grasp of pacing and structure, but his plotting and dialogue aren’t the best. And I liked TLJ as well, although it’s the least of what I’ve seen from him. But I also get why some people hate it; it…

Oh I’m not disputing that there are awful Star Wars fans out there, and that misogyny and racism weren’t a part of the vocal and toxic criticism of TLJ. I was addressing the virtually total denial on Johnson’s(and Kennedy’s) part that fans had legitimate criticisms of TLJ and the active shutting down of those fan…

You aren’t. I thought it was...fine...overall. I didn’t like some of his choices.

He says there are bad people and that it’s something “every type of fandom is dealing with,” but “95 percent” of the people he interacts with online are “lovely and thoughtful and engaged” even when they don’t like his work.