Disney and those who've been rooting for them more recently, throughout this mess they've made, seem to really stand behind things like "inclusivity", until they decide they don't want that and want "exclusivity". Then it's totally fine because they're right and just and you're wrong and far right.

They also have no problem taking an existing franchise and changing it significantly, to the degree that many past fans won't like it, and yet they will be upset when it fails because the fans didn't like it, to the point at times that they lash out at the fans.

'Best part' is they also seem to stand for "transparency", yet when they decide to be exclusive, they're more than happy to be opaque at times until they've got your money. Then afterwards they'll let you know, 'we didn't make it for you and didn't expect you to like it, but hey, thanks for the cash.'

It's baffling to me why men feel like they're under attack, when someone is just trying to include more people. 

"Remember: Star Wars is primarily for 12-year-old boys." - as far as I can tell this part is the actual quote that was said by George Lucas, and you're arguing that Star Wars was for everyone. 

But suggesting that the Force is Female (in a different context), is dismissive for men.  

That's how it generally feels when these kinds of comments come up. If you specify women, it must be pushing away men. If you specify men, it gets argued it is for everyone.  

Okay, here's the thing, stories targeted to the female demographic (books, TV series, movies, etc) have always been told from a female perspective. Why? because most women relate more to a character from their perspective. There's nothing wrong with that, that is basic nature, everybody understands that. That's why you have never seen men complaining, calling women sexist for watching stories from their perspective, and demanding to have more "representation" in female-targeted stories.

But somehow we got to a point in time where a group of people in charge looked at the things that men were watching and said "Wait a minute! why do men prefer stories told from their perspective? That's wrong!".

And no, they have not simply been "including more people."

1) Star Wars has ALWAYS had female characters. Leia was an important part of the first trilogy, Padme was an important part of the second trilogy. Ahsoka was an important part of the Clone Wars series. And there were many secondary female characters sprinkled in there: Mon Mothma, Shakti, Assaj Ventress, The Night Sisters, etc.

2) But now, they released a mini series with 9 episodes and there was ONE male Jedi in all 9 epidodes, ONE male Jedi in 9 episodes... then they released Tales of The Empire.. 2 arcs, 2 stories told from the female perspective.. then they released The Acolyte.. I don't even want to talk about that one.

And all of that came after the THREE MAIN movies were told from a female perspective.

So NO, they have not simply been "including more people". Star Wars and Marvel already had the right amount of female characters for stories that were supposed to be targetted to men.

Well, one obvious point people in the topic seem to forget is that the people who were young men in 2015 aren't young men in 2025. The former young men, like myself, have seen many reboots of different franchises during the years and are not that interested anymore, while the the Tiktok and Fortnite generation isn't interested in seeing the movies because the films fon't cater to them.

When Endgame became the highest grossing film of all time, there really was only one way to go and it was down. Clearly they thought that in order to keep growing, they need more female audience as the Marvel audience was mostly male. But what happened was that the films became uninteresting to men. Maybe the old fanbase was watching the movies but not new audience. Also because of the high expectations, new films are made with huge budget and when they don't meet the high expectations, the sequels get axed.

Then there's huge difference between male and female psychology. Men think growth is being a good person and to learn skills how to be a better or stronger good person, whereas women think growth is having the the skills already and to learn to use them for good. Anakin spent years of training to learn to use the force and lightsaber whereas Rey just knew how to use them without any training. It took nearly three movies for Thor to reach his power, Captain Marvel had hers right in the first film. Ironman died at the height of his 10-year development in MCU, as he was getting better and better.

Someone pointed out that the first Marvel films weren't that good to begin with and they really weren't. But they were the origin story where the characters were introduced to audience and based on how they reacted, the story and character was written to that direction.

About the politics part, there's a difference between using real life politics or events as a source for your story and making the story about politics. As much as the SW prequel trilogy was about Anakin growing to become Darth Vader, it was about the beginning of the empire and how Palpatine gained power. You need to draw from real life politics in order to make it believable and have touch with reality. We know Nazis gained power in real life much the same way Palpatine did in Star Wars.

Part of the problem Disney has is them following an agenda some people try to push in the internet and elsewhere along with the people in deciding positions being out of touch with the audience. If they want young men to watch their movies, Disney needs to make movies for young men. Many films don't seem to have tragedy anymore, which is good people making bad decisions that lead into something horrible. What I especially liked in Alien Romulus was, that it had good people making many bad decisions that lead into tragic events, you don't usually see that these days anymore. It was kind of loyal to the first films in the franchise.

And here's why I think these debates spend so much time going around in circles - is the problem that trying to appeal to women for these kinds of things is futile in the first place and inherently alienating to men, or is the problem that the attempts have been poorly executed and ended up appealing to no-one?

To use an analogy, Bruce Almighty was a movie that was designed to appeal to Christians first and foremost, but did so with a message - "real change is something that you need to make happen rather than wishing for some divine power to make it so" - that was applicable to people from all walks of life, and did so with an interesting concept about being God for a week, leading to the movie being a big hit. Then its sequel, Evan Almighty came along, made no attempt to appeal to non-Christian audiences and had a plot that was an uninspired rehash of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington by way of The Santa Clause, and the result was a bomb.

So, it's clearly possible to appeal to a certain section of an audience first and foremost without alienating everyone else, even if it's an art that seems to have been lost by studios in recent years (and that applies equally to conservatives; we just don't hear about them as much because their attempts at film-making in recent years mostly seem to just consist of micro-budget God's Not Dead rip-offs that don't even make widespread theatrical release and are basically just two-hour rants about how those disgusting atheists and liberals are persecuting Christians and conservatives).

The problem is not preference. There's nothing wrong with preferring stories told from male perspectives, as a male.  

Acting like it is offensive, when more stories are told from female perspectives is when it starts to be a problem.

When you act like Star Wars is "supposed" to be targeted towards men, that's a problem. 

You can complain that Star Wars doesn't make enough content that is geared towards you, but that isn't the same thing as "Star Wars is *supposed* to be targeted at men. 

There is a difference between having a preference and insisting that something has to be a certain way and getting morally outraged because the universe won't pander to you specifically.  

I'd say it's more of an amusement and profound disappointment than a bother.

Dude. "Having" female characters doesn't make a story interesting for women. Look at the first female characters that come to your mind when you think of Star Wars. Leia and Padme. Two extremely shallow characters whose arcs are always somewhere in between damsel in distress and trophy wife. They're both there just to serve as plot devices for the male heroes. No woman in the world looks up to those characters and goes like "she's awesome, I wanna be like her".

Yeah, Disney took things in the extreme other direction with Rey, by trying so hard to make her look cool that they forgot to write an actual arc for her, so she just spends 3 movies getting everything handed to her for free and never making a mistake. Maybe young girls can look at her and say "she's awesome, I wanna be like her", but anyone who likes good character work and storytelling will only see a boring shallow character.

Ultimately the best female characters in the series, both before and after Disney's takeover, came in spin-offs. Haven't seen Clone Wars stuff but yeah, Ahsoka seems pretty cool. And Jyn was awesome in Rogue One (the one actually good Star Wars film Disney put out).

And about this topic as a whole, it's actually so annoying because I don't even like most things Disney puts out. I think Star Wars has gone down the drain. Marvel had a big slump and lots of shitty movies, and now they seem to have "recovered" into making enjoyable enough but ultimately average movies. They've gotten around to Alien now, one of my favorite franchises, and we're already seeing Alien projects that rely on heavy nostalgia and don't do much to push the series forward in meaningful ways.

I think so many of Disney's projects have poor writing and they rely so heavily on retelling the same old stories in the same old ways, just with a little thing changed here or there. I am critical of them, they've made me stop caring about a number of franchises because the quality has dipped so hard.

But then, consistently, if you ever try to engage in criticism of their stuff, you end up amid this circle of deranged bigots who think the problem is in having female protagonists. Who will literally see a woman on screen and go like "great, they just had to make it political". Brother in christ I think the Disney Star Wars movies are probably the least political Star Wars has been. They're not shit because woman. They're just shit.

I mean, it is their property, so of course they can target it to whoever they want, I will give you that one. BUT if they really want men's money back, then they HAVE TO make content targeted to men, there is no way around that; which again, it is the whole point of this article, them "seeking to win back young men".

And I say that Star Wars is "supposed" to be for men, the same way I say that Frozen is "supposed" to be for women. If they make the next Frozen about a womanizer dude fighting orcs, and featuring a bunch of hot women in bikinis dancing in a brothel, I bet most of its original fans would say "what the heck is this?". And I would support those upset women 100%, even if it is in Disney's right to do whatever the hell they want with their IPs.