Poll of the Day > Do Star Wars fans deserve their reputation as the worst fanbase?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think Rick and Morty have the worst fanbase. are we so quick to forget the literal riots over that dumb Mcdonalds sauce?

Short answers for why the eagles didn't fly the ring to Mount Doom.

1. The eagles are not mere beasts of burden; they are the divinity, or close to it. They are the personal servants of Manwe Sulimo, who is the chief of the Valar (archangels, basically), and are therefore basically equivalent to Gandalf - himself a divine being - in terms of authority. They would probably have viewed being used as a personal Hobbit taxi service to be an insult.
2. Remember how Gandalf didn't take the ring because he thought its power would corrupt him? The eagles are no more immune to that corruption and they themselves almost assuredly know it. They would probably refuse to bear the ring for the same reasons Gandalf did. One of the reasons why Hobbits were used to carry the ring is that they are remarkably resistant to its corrupting influence (the ring plays off the desires and insecurities of anyone nearby, basically promising them whatever they want in return for giving in to its power; since all most Hobbits want is a strong pint of ale, some weed to smoke, some earth to till, and a peaceful, quiet life, there's nothing the ring can offer them that they don't already have).
3. The whole point of sending a small group of heroes to convey the ring as opposed to, y'know, a massive army was that this was a stealth mission. Sauron was scouring the land for any sign of the ring, and given that Saruman was sending birds on patrol to watch key passages the skies were certainly not safe. If the Council of Elrond had sent the ringbearer to Mordor on the back of an eagle, there would be a bunch of ringwraiths, ballistae, and guards with bows and arrows waiting for them when they got there.

Probably deserved.

Kotenks posted...

Many of the recent products like The Last Jedi, Solo, and Boba Fett have received heavy backlash from fans.

Not for that though. You are allowed to dislike the movies and shows and it's stupid to tell fans they can't. The sequel trilogy in particular is an absolute mess.

They deserve it for the absurd amount of gate keeping and how they treat actors. Like Rose's actress as you mentioned, and the actor for JarJar.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7KZnsvFD88

Wow. This dude is a bitch.

Bligh_with_no_T posted...

The eye of Sauron didn't exist in the books, it was a metaphor.

Probably true. I never finished the whole book.

I thought Rick and Morty had that on lock.

Clone Wars > Rogue One > Sequels > Prequels > Solo

Metalsonic66 posted...

Clone Wars > Rogue One > Sequels > Prequels > Solo

No no no, Clone Wars > Prequels > anything Disney

Nay

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Yeah, that happened to Jar Jar Binks. Also, both Anakins were treated horribly with not great outcomes.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Clone Wars > Rogue One > Sequels > Prequels > Solo

Never seen Clone Wars or Solo, but the rest of this is accurate.

Do Star Wars fans deserve their reputation as the worst fanbase?

...considering that's not even their reputation....

There dozens of worse fandoms.

Kotenks posted...

Many of the recent products like The Last Jedi, Solo, and Boba Fett have received heavy backlash from fans.

Solo was garbage, TLJ was half-awful, etc. Don't blame the fans for the films sucking. Don't pull a Sony by trying to spin a Ghostbusters reboot as the fans sucking.

Kotenks posted...

It's been said by some that the toxic fandom is killing Star Wars and that Star Wars fans are the worst.

Said by nobody, pretty much.

Judgmenl posted...

Don't know why they would be considered the worst fanbase.

Yeah, they wouldn't even be top 25 worst.

Regardless of TLJ's quality the fan response undeniably made RoS a worse film (like, an actual trashfire).

Disney should have the balls to resist fan meltdowns but they haven't had a lot of spine on that front lately.

Bligh_with_no_T posted...

Regardless of TLJ's quality the fan response undeniably made RoS a worse film (like, an actual trashfire).

Bad planning, blind panic, and TLJ is what made RoS a terrible film.

Bligh_with_no_T posted...

Regardless of TLJ's quality the fan response undeniably made RoS a worse film (like, an actual trashfire).

Disney should have the balls to resist fan meltdowns but they haven't had a lot of spine on that front lately.

I don't think it would have been good either way. They decided to do a trilogy with no plan for where it was going to go.

Even the prequels knew where they were going as bad as those were.

Fanbases become exponentially more toxic the larger they are.

This goes for most groups of people really.

So the most toxic fanbase would be the one with the most fans.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Bad planning, blind panic, and TLJ is what made RoS a terrible film.

This. They should have had a plan for their sequel trilogy; changing directors shouldn't have been a problem, the original trilogy had a different director each movie. They never should have let Rian Johnson throw away all the plot points Abrams set up, killing their trilogy with the second movie. TROS is such a pathetic attempt of salvaging the situation that almost literally anything would have been better--maybe even trying to stick to what little Johnson provided them with.

Which is why the prequels are being held in higher regard. Few people are saying they're now good; but we've seen how it can get worse. Lucas had a plan in mind, he failed to execute it well.

Disney thinks Star Wars fans are idiots and will buy whatever keys they jangle in front of our faces. Unfortunately there are way too many of us who buy this shit; and those of us who criticize them are branded as hateful bigots in response.

Star wars should have become public domain. With as much extended universe stuff that gets written, it would have been way better if anyone with enough money could have made a movie.

How awesome would it have been to have dozens upon dozens of different Star wars takes?

Instead we get Disney who now puts out the most boring and safe stories ever. Nothing about what they do seems risky or is trying to appeal to a certain demographic. When you try to appeal to everybody you appeal to nobody.

Collat posted...

I don't think it would have been good either way. They decided to do a trilogy with no plan for where it was going to go.

Even the prequels knew where they were going as bad as those were.

Eh

They needed a cohesive vision for what they were going to be about. They'd didn't necessarily need a plan. Neither the prequels nor the OT had a plan, just a broad outline. The original OT outline is almost unrecognizable from what we ended up with.

But the ST definitely didn't need directors actively fighting against each other. Having the different directors all ship Rey with Poe, Ben and Finn simultaneously is like something you used to see in bad EU novels.

Rotpar posted...

This. They should have had a plan for their sequel trilogy; changing directors shouldn't have been a problem, the original trilogy had a different director each movie.

It's worth remembering that the original trilogy had different directors, but all three movies had the same writer. Sure, there was an extra screenwriter cleaning up Lucas' shitty writing after the fact on Empire and RotJ, but Lucas was the one writing the overall story.

With the sequels, there were five different writers (and there would have been at least a couple more if they'd gone through with having Colin Trevorrow direct the third one like he was supposed to), none of whom were really talking to each other about where things were supposed to be going or to establish any sort of unifying theme.

Even that isn't necessarily an automatic touch of death - the Marvel MCU films managed to succeed in spite of being developed in much the same way. But those primarily work because the overarching story and characterization was overseen by a single producer who was deeply invested in the setting and lore of the universe. Whereas the Star Wars sequels were overseen by a producer who was so hands off it bordered on not giving a shit.

Too many cooks and no single person in charge of the artistic vision tends to result in a terrible mess.



Rotpar posted...

Which is why the prequels are being held in higher regard. Few people are saying they're now good; but we've seen how it can get worse. Lucas had a plan in mind, he failed to execute it well.

The prequels were what you get when there's only one guy in charge, and everyone is too afraid to tell him when his ideas are stupid.

The sequels are what you get when you put multiple people in charge, none of them bother talking to each other, and no one else cares enough to tell them that most of their ideas are stupid.

The original trilogy succeeded mainly because there were constantly people telling Lucas when he was being stupid. Other directors fixed his mistakes. His wife saved the first movie in editing. His original script was mostly storyboarded by bouncing it off his fellow director friends (Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma) and having them point out which ideas were dumb (which Lucas then cut out... only to put a lot of them back in while writing the prequels, after he'd become convinced every idea he ever had was brilliant).

The prequels didn't have that. The sequels didn't have that.

Star Wars has essentially grown too large to actually function properly. There is always more content that needs to be produced, too much money on the line, too much for anyone involved to actually retain a coherent vision or keep things running smoothly. Everything is constantly being rushed through production, and no one is really asking whether or not some of these stories are actually necessary - or if they're even being told well. As long as they can sell enough tickets or get enough subscriptions to Disney+, no one in charge really gives a shit.

Disney wasn't wrong for pruning the EU - it had grown far too overgrown and broken to continue working well. But then they went and spun out something far worse and nearly as huge in only a fraction of the time.

Bligh_with_no_T posted...

But the ST definitely didn't need directors actively fighting against each other. Having the different directors all ship Rey with Poe, Ben and Finn simultaneously is like something you used to see in bad EU novels.

It feels like the original plan was to sort of ship Rey and Finn, but then it turns out China hates black people so they wanted to de-emphasize Finn. Poe was originally supposed to be a minor character who dies early (he wasn't supposed to survive the crash, which is why Finn takes his jacket), but Oscar Isaac is a great actor and people thought Finn and Poe had great chemistry, so they filmed new scenes to change things so he survived... and then they didn't know what to do with him because he wasn't supposed to be there.

Ideally they should just have gone with the Rey/Kylo ship (whether romantic or simply platonic) and kept Poe and Finn mostly together for their budding buddy cop dynamic (and if they were really brave, for potential gay couple vibes). But TLJ made a mess out of pretty much everything, to the point where there was very little left to salvage by the time the third movie came along.

For a franchise that seems to have a massive hard-on for the idea of everything "rhyming" (which is a great excuse to use to justify why you're just recycling all your old ideas), they should have just played off Finn and Poe like the new Luke/Han, with Rey as Leia... except in a version of the story where Leia is basically the main character instead of Luke.

And since the Rey/Kylo dynamic was at least partly lifted straight out of the old EU vis-a-vis Jacen/Jaina, they should have just gone with the idea that Rey literally was a Skywalker. Have her be Kylo's twin or Luke's daughter and you have a way more unified/streamlined cast of characters.

Count_Drachma posted...

Yeah, they wouldn't even be top 25 worst.

I'm curious. I'd say they are in the top 5, but what would be your top 5?