Disney's first film with LGBTQ+ lead bombs at box office – and fans have thoughts (gay fans accuse Disney of purposely trying to sabotage the movie through lack or marketing to justify lack of gay representation in future movies)

submitted by Alienhunter糞大名 from pinknews.co.uk

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[–]ClassroomPast6178 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

Disney did kill the marketing because they knew that it was going to bomb from what happened with Lightyear. Marketing these films can double the budget, and they were already looking at losing $100m+ on it, so apparently they decided to let it bomb rather than lose even more money.

Doesn’t help that the film itself is an absolute mess, it’s preachy, it lacks a decent story and characters. It was almost certainly made by committee, with a checklist (gay character, mixed race character, inter-racial relationship, etc).

Disney needs to learn some harsh lessons from this, but I doubt they will.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名[S] 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (15 children)

I've yet to see it and I won't bother probably until it's on streaming and I'm really bored. Seemed utterly bland and disinteresting from the trailer.

Definitely makes sense not to market a movie they think is gonna do terrible. The gay conspiracy theorists are doing the whole "Disney is purposely trying to make the gay movie fail" thing so they can pretend to themselves that anything with rainbows is automatically good and =$$$$ probably so they can keep the grift going a bit longer before people realize they have nothing to offer the writing departments besides "what if X character was gay, a lemur, a retarded bisexual wheelchair" line of immature ADHD riddled brainstorming rather than actually making coherent well thought out scripts.

Of course if there was some shadowy gay bashing cabal of homophobic executives they'd just nix the gay outright rather than jump through the expensive hoops of actually spending millions of dollars to make the movie then purposely have it fail to pull a "see gay movies don't make money". Rather than just, use normal focus group shit.

Ask a bunch of San Francisco 30 something tweenny boppers if they want more rainbows and bisexual interracial wheelchairs and they'll sat golly gee yes sirree, and go pirate the movie anyway.

Ask a bunch of hardline conservative christian types what they want and they'll consistently just add Jesus to every movie.

There's money to be made by targeting both groups but not with these crappy multimillion dollar Hollywood spectacles since they need to be as mass market as possible, which is why you've got the stupid checklists of mandatory diversity.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (14 children)

Hollywood has massively misjudged what matters to the majority of their customers, and we are seeing it with the massive flops of Bros, She Said, Lightyear, Don’t Worry Darling, Amsterdam. Even Marvel films and TV series are flopping, Black Panther 2:Wakandan Boogaloo, is struggling to break even. Avatar 2 is set to be the biggest flop in history, needing $2b to just break even. Star Wars is a dead IP, Star Trek is dead, Lord of the Rings, although not Disney is potentially suffering the same fate, could be too if the animated Rohirrim film flops next year and Indiana Jones is looking to be that way ahead of Indy 5 next year. James Bond is looking very much like the producers want to diversify him, and lose everything that made him enjoyable. It’s hard to understand how this has all happened other than by the toxic effects of social media and the critical social justice cult.

Hollywood is in big trouble and it was them that killed the golden goose in service to their current year ideology.

The other disaster for Hollywood has been JJ Abrams and his coterie of directors, writers and producers. He talked up his “mystery box” style of writing and now it is being used everywhere, the trouble is that it’s not a tactic that works with existing IPs. Combine JJ Abrams with ideologically-driven productions and you explain the disastrous Star Wars sequels and series, the destruction of Star Trek both in theatres and TV and the shite that was Rings of Power (the show runners, never having had a producer credit before, got given the gig for the most expensive TV show in history on Abrams recommendation and they wrote it in Abrams style).

[–]SolidSnek 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

Excellent point about JJ Abrams. Rian johnson is by no means innocent but it really is JJ that killed star wars.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

It is Kathleen Kennedy who is ultimately responsible for the death of Star Wars and the upcoming death of Indiana Jones. She decided that they should abandon the plan George Lucas had for sequels and turn over the reins to Abrams and that they should go into a trilogy with no overall idea of how the story should play out.

How Star Wars got fucked up is such a massive topic, but at its heart it has Kennedy and the pandering to the social justice cause. Abrams just brought his incompetence to the table like a glacé turd.

[–]SolidSnek 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

KK sucks too but JJ is the one who chose to make force awakens into a bland remake of new hope as well as the fever dream that is ROS.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the og Lucas plan. Lucas was going to do the same things to Luke as RJ did.

That all aside I really think our views are closer than it might sound. My anger with KK is a close second with JJ.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

The first, I want to say half of force awakens was quite good, they start introducing the new characters which are pretty likable, the secret plans in the droid plot is a repeat but if that was the end of it they could have still managed to have it be an homage rather than a carbon copy, but once Han Solo shows up it starts going downhill fast. And a third even bigger death start that's even easier to blow up than the last two. Please how could you be that stupid to reuse the death star again. Like Jesus where can you scale up from planet destroying weapons? Is the next movie going to have a whole fleet of deathstars that they need to blow up? (A lo it came to pass the next one he made had a whole fleet of deathstars they needed to blow up).

Kennedy is mostly to blame for her not making sure there was some overarching plot. But 2/3rds of that crappy triology was Abrams doing.

Much as it pains me to say, for as shit as Last Jedi is, it's the only one of the sequel trilogy that even attempts as doing something original even if what it does is woefully stupid.

[–]Wanderingthehalls 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I liked the plot point of Rey just being some nobody who happens to have the force. I could see a story thread of her growing up hearing legends about Luke Skywalker who discovered that the evil Darth Vader was his father and turned him back to light side. Then when she realised she was force sensitive being convinced that she must be a Skywalker and as such her destiny is to save her cousin/brother Kylo by returning him to the light. Then failing miserably, realising her parents were just nobodies who abandoned her for no noble reason and maybe even ending the second movie falling to the dark side in her misery.

When I watched TLJ, I really felt like there were the bones of a good story in there with another 20 edits of the script.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

There are really echos of something good, unfortunately it's diminished by gotcha moments and then Abrams back tracks it again in Star Wars IX: Return of Goku.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The way they killed Han, didn’t reunite Han, Leia and Luke, making Han a deadbeat dad (backtracking on his character development in the OT), having Leia hug Rey, who she had just met, instead of Chewie, having Rey beat Kylo in a lightsaber duel and then resist his mind probe, having Finn be a Stormtrooper Janitor…the list could go on. Rey piloting the Falcon better than Han despite never having left the planet and having no clear reason to know how to fly at all (she was essentially a homeless desert scavenger working for scraps of food), Rey fixing the Falcon better than Han/Chewie.

The way that Abrams works with IPs is that, in addition to employing mystery boxes, he makes a checklist of all the big events/plot points of previous versions/episodes/instalments and then incorporates them into his script but BIGGER or BETTER! So we end up with a Death Star but BIGGER! We have Luke but BETTER! (Rey). Etc etc. it’s shit. Add that to Kennedy’s insistence on inclusion and diversity regardless of story implications (the fascist regime is remarkably gender and ethnically diverse) and you have a charmless shitefest that pleases no one except boxtickers and the slackjawed.

[–]Vulptexghost fox girl ^w^ 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Star Wars XXX: Cory Baxter and Shaggy and Scooby Strike Back. With only 0.00000000000000000001% of their power.

[–]Vulptexghost fox girl ^w^ 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I also don't like how they added midichlorians halfway through ROTJ (Luke implies their existence to Leia). When Luke told Obi-Wan he wanted to be a Jedi there was no test to see if he was magic or whatever. It kind of ruins Han Solo's character too, because there was great irony in his disbelief in the force despite clearly relying on it in combat. Now that's impossible and he was just that impossibly lucky this whole time. Even R2-D2 has a little bit of this. Not C-3PO, although he has a massive slave fetish and refuses to go "against his programming" and pretends he doesn't remember anything before his supposed memory erase despite frequently having Freudian slips, so I could see him disavowing any semblance of the force. He reminds me of Waylon Smithers in that way. This is not normal droid behavior, other droids can completely change their function after going so long without a memory erase, so this is his own problem.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The moment that really broke Force Awakens for me was when the gold stormtrooper lady just disables the shield without a fight the instant they pull a gun on her.

You expect me to believe that your brainwashed soldier raised from childhood to be a soldier is just going to give up without a fight and do what two guys with a gun say? Please.

Then in the second movie turns out her armor is laser proof anyway. So fucking stupid.

[–]jet199 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Who says they are brainwashed?

Would you want the likes of Finn and Rey running your galaxy?

[–]Alienhunter糞大名[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In a blink and you'll miss it rare instance of sequel trilogy world building it's said somewhere the new stormtroopers are kidnapped as children and raised in the service, hence they are brainwashed from birth to be loyal soldiers essentially. Do you train your loyal soldiers , especially your top generals, to follow the 7/11 part time employee guide of what to do when a gun is pulled on you?

As for Finn and Rey, they'd probably destroy the galactic economy within a few days but it's ok because they have "the force" and would be able to Deus ex machina out some kind of joint galactic economic stimulus recovery. Oh wait sorry I was thinking of the prequels. Um. Pew pew space laser boooooooom hooray!