It was only a matter of time before the DEI shield that Hollywood had been hiding behind would start to shatter. Failure after failure has been the pattern for Hollywood as wokefied after wokefied movies and TV shows inevitably fail. Disney Star Wars, Paramount’s Star Trek, BBC’s Doctor Who, Netflix’s The Witcher, Marvel’s MCU, and Amazon’s The Rings of Power are just some of the woke adaptations that are failing, or have already failed, due to DEI which doubled as a selling point to the ignorant masses who didn’t care about these franchises and was a shield used to protect the studios from valid criticism by both critics, who had a spine, and fans.
A shield that companies such as Disney, Amazon, Paramount, the BBC, Netflix, and others hid behind while swinging their cudgels declaring the fandoms racist, sexist, misogynist, and especially the umbrella term “toxic.” Launching ad hominems that were gleefully parroted by mainstream media and journalists who also delighted in the deliberate undermining of great franchises and demonizing not just the fandoms, but their own base as a result. But these terms were especially weaponized to fight back against reviews.
In the case of Star Wars, it didn’t matter that Star Wars fans made legitimate criticisms about Star Wars’ Rey Palpatine who was a poorly constructed Mary Sue. Simply implying that she was a Mary Sue was sexist in and of itself according to actress Daisy Ridley. Those who spoke out were misogynists for criticizing this strong, empowered female lead that led the franchise downwards with ever-decreasing box office returns because her character was poorly written – as were the movies overall. The fandom was racist even though they defended John Boyega’s character saying that the movies should have made him a Jedi and lead character while Disney hid him on their movie posters for their Chinese overlords. Racist for declaring that Disney’s latest failure, The Acolyte, was a horribly-written production that spat on canon.
Trek fans weren’t allowed to point out that Star Trek Discovery’s character, Michael Burnham, wasn’t Spock’s sister because he never had one according to canon. Yet Paramount, Jar Trekkers, and mainstream media declared that fans were just being racist, sexist, and misogynistic. To say that this was just lazy writing, a cheap selling tactic to wokies, and ignorance of Star Trek in general battered against the DEI shield. However, eventually the writers “solution” to the canon problem was that Starfleet made it a crime to talk about the existence of Michael Burnham and its non-canonical tech: the spore drive. Talentless writers who certainly had no respect for Gene Roddenberry as proven by a scene involving a janitor named Gene being ridiculed by a Starfleet officer (which is contrary to how Starfleet should comport themselves).
We saw the BBC demonize and lambaste Whovians that dared to not watch Doctor Karen ( the 13th Doctor) and her retcon of the show’s canon in which the first Doctor wasn’t an old white man, but a strong black woman. But it didn’t stop there! They also changed the fact that the Doctor wasn’t a Timelord, but an alien the Timelords experimented on and stole their ability to regenerate. Then the writers went on to make the Doctor gay ( the15th Doctor), further alienating a fanbase that grew up with a character who was one of the more intriguing role models for young boys.
Netflix’s The Witcher certainly took fans to task as it race-swapped characters and tried to justify it. Meanwhile, the writing continued to get worse so that, as a result, the prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin bombed and the Netflix series itself has lost a lot of viewers and barely any interest in Season 4 which is still being developed.
As one of the latest companies to enter the fray, Amazon immediately went to war against fans of Tolkien as the company sought to hide behind the DEI shield as it produced The Rings of Power. A show that is so badly written that it completely ignores canon, disrespects Tolkien, fails to capture Tolkien’s voice, ignores Middle-earth history to include elves of color and color-washed characters such as Miriel , and is on track to be the most expensive lesson in bad writing at a whopping $1 billion. Of course, they have another shield to hide behind, the fact that The Rings of Power doesn’t have access to the source materials for the Second Age which the Faulkiens desperately bring up as a defense for the show.
Of course, we certainly can’t ignore Disney Marvel, which has suffered from its M-She-U era that no one was allowed to criticize for its horrific writing and failure to produce a good movie or series since Avengers Endgame. The M-She-U that has resulted in the company losing $900 million dollars due to underperforming movies and an estimated $4 billion in streaming losses from failure after failure putting out both Star Wars and Marvel series that didn’t appeal to fans or the general audience. It took the Deadpool and Wolverine movie to breathe some life back into Disney Marvel but, whether or not they course correct, has yet to be seen.
So what do all of these companies and IPs have in common?
It is all spearheaded by talentless writers who have no respect for the franchises they have attempted to usurp and bend to their views and values. Writing that doesn’t appeal to the general audience and was written for a “modern audience” that barely exists from writers arrogant enough to say things such as write “the novel Tolkien never wrote.”
Yet, who could have foreseen that the fandoms of these beloved franchises would keep trying to fight back? That they would stop being afraid to criticize for fear of being falsely labeled a racist, sexist, and misogynist? Who could have foreseen that the “fan bases” which congealed and undulated around this corporate slop would be so few in number, and unwilling to spend their money and their time, to replace the fans lost to corporate demonization?
Now, the same media outlets and journalists who demonized the fanbases of those franchises are scrambling to get back into their good graces. Why? Because the writing for these woke shows and movies are so bad that even the journalists can’t shill for them anymore. That trust in the media is the lowest it has ever been. Not just the media, but even actors pulling back a bit such as STD’s Sonequa Martin-Green and Star Wars Daisey Ridley who both walked back their initial statements about fans. You also have The Rings of Power writers trying to be more diplomatic by saying they are “happy” to have those who react negatively to their work.
More importantly, these companies are losing this long, protracted war that has cost them money and poisoned these once-lucrative franchises. Paramount, which owns Star Trek, was bought out by Skydance for $8 billion. The Witcher Season 4 will most likely bomb when it is finally released based on the controversy surrounding it. BBC’s Doctor Who has reported the lowest viewership numbers in the show’s history and may not renew Season 3 for the 15th Doctor. Amazon’s The Rings of Power viewership numbers drastically declined for Season 2 and Season 3 has yet to be confirmed.
As for Star Wars and Marvel, Disney appears to be making some major shakeups in the company. Though the verdict is still out on which direction that takes them. But their current trajectory brought Disney’s stock down to $97 from $197 over the past four years.
The fans of these franchises are not toxic. Hollywood and these writers are. And fans need to, not only, keep doing what they are doing, but increase their voices. Continue to point out the ludicrous stories, plot points, characters, etc that are being created. Continue to mock the writers and companies behind these mediocre woke caricatures of great franchises. Continue to make these woke ventures money pits for anyone foolish enough to undertake them. Criticize, lambaste, mock them, and demonize them for the garbage they have released.
The DEI shield is breaking.
Keep the pressure up.
These companies went woke, now they are going broke.
And we are seeing a similar shift happening to the video game industry. But that is a topic for another time.
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