Politixia
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Recently, Red Letter Media released a video in which fictional curmudgeon Mr. Plinkett (who notoriously hosted the channel’s breakout video essay deconstructing The Phantom Menace) decries the modern state of Star Wars. And while it wasn’t the intent, this vid effectively proved why this longtime space franchise is doomed. That’s because the response to the video has proven that Star Wars fans ultimately care more about fake purity tests than helping Disney fix their $4 billion dollar mess.
To be clear, the recent Red Letter Media video was not intended to simply bash Star Wars, like so much of the rage-bait content littering the YouTube landscape. Instead, it was an honest critique about where the franchise went wrong and how even its biggest fans don’t understand what they really want. That part really resonated with me because I have long argued that the Star Wars fandom is splintered across so many different generations (like those who grew up with the Original Trilogy and those who grew up with the Prequel Trilogy) that it’s impossible for Disney to figure out what the average fan actually wants.
Ironically, the one thing almost all these different fans can agree on is that Disney needs to do a better job of making Star Wars movies and TV shows. But that’s where things get interesting: while the video provided plenty of constructive criticism, many fans were offended by the presentation of any criticism at all. And this led to minor social media tempest on X (formerly Twitter) where many users claimed that Red Letter Media had become reactionaries or even rightwing talking heads.
This was mostly in reaction to Mr. Plinkett speculating that the creative forces behind the Star Wars sequels focused more on diversity than good storytelling. For those who don’t regularly watch the channel, or who have a chip on their shoulder, Mr. Plinkett’s criticisms (which are meant to poke fun at Disney’s hollow gesturing toward a diversity they don’t really care about) may seem like a right-wing attack on diversity itself. This bad-faith reading spread far and wide, and my timeline was soon filled with movie lovers clutching their pearls (presumably taken from a Krayt dragon) at the prospect that Red Letter Media had suddenly become anti-woke grifters.
Now, I’m not here to defend RLM: they don’t need me to do so, and anyone who has actually watched their content (including a surprising defense of The Acolyte in this very video) knows these guys aren’t exactly right-wingers. Stick around for more than a cherry-picked clip of Mr. Plinkett and you’ll see RLM mercilessly mocking such angry streamers specifically because they have nothing to offer but empty ragebait about franchises they claim to love. But as I watched the vicious discourse developing around this video, I realized Star Wars is doomed because the same fans who know how bad Disney has messed this franchise up are waiting to pounce on anyone who dares criticize this megacorporation’s creative decisions.
Red Letter Media built its success on a video essay about The Phantom Menace in which Mr. Plinkett did much more than gripe: he noted the film’s lack of a protagonist, complete lack of character development, baffling plot, and more. They were salient criticisms of how Star Wars could do better, and the latest video is more of the same. But this time around, fans didn’t react with praise for the unique critique; instead, far too many of them reacted with sheer annoyance that somebody (even a fictional character) would deign to say Star Wars is anything less than perfect:
That’s the real state of modern Star Wars: fans can’t agree on what they want, but they can agree to hate anyone who wants to improve a dying franchise. This effectively dooms future movies and TV shows because Disney will keep throwing slop against the wall to see what sticks, and fans will focus their anger on whoever is brave enough to declare that the slop isn’t steak. The only one winning here is George Lucas, the man smart enough to take a huge payout that made the world’s biggest sci-fi franchise someone else’s problem right before its fandom went completely insane.
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