this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
761 points (87.9% liked)
Comic Strips
20557 readers
2930 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- AI-generated comics aren't allowed.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The problem isn't female leads, it' trash-tier writing. Like introducing a self-conscious stormtrooper and then having him unemotionally kill his mates pretty much immediately. Or introducing a nobody and then make her the child of a somehow™️ returned supervillain. Or having your minor villain and your female lead fall in love and then having them pretty much just revert back to where they were before. Or replacing the Death Star with an intergalactic Death Shotgun. The list goes on
Worst part about the sequels was the compulsive need to regurgitate elements of the prior series.
There's so much lore from the books and the games and the toys and the cutting room floor of the original movies. And they had a ton of good ideas at the outset. A storm trooper who defects? A six foot tall super trooper in mirror armor? A Sith Lord who isn't stoic and morose, but hot headed and self-destructive? These are cool good ideas!
Shame they got drowned out in Disney fueled nostalgia.
South park has an entire season about this. They basically tried to make the new Star Wars as nostalgic as possible to people who liked the original trilogy.
Wait you mean rebels are gone and the empire too? Let’s do resistance vs first order then. Let’s make a planet that’s almost the same as tatooine. A villain that’s almost the same as Vader, with a similar ending. And the list goes on. Hell let’s even bring a quick force heal (previously unheard of/impossible) from someone who’s totally untrained. That’ll teach em.
But imo the most frustrating part was when Rey at the end decided that she was a Skywalker. Like, what??? They could have made it end with “Rey who? Just Rey” to mean that we aren’t defined by out family’s actions, but instead she decided she belonged to someone’s family she hardly knows.
It was lack of common direction through the trilogy. JJ set up his signature mystery boxes in the first movie, only for Rian to ignore those and leave nothing to work with for the next one.
I believe the reason why Palpatine somehow returned was because Rian killed off Snoke, and they really needed some big baddie Kylo and Rey could team up against so Kylo could have his redemption arc.
i much prefer where rian johnson was going, even though the main plot was meh. he left so many open plot threads that tied into the old eu that they could have used, but then jj went back to his first idea.
What plot threads? People keep repeating that TLJ opened possibilities but no one can explain what possibilities it actually opened.
You wanted Rey and Kylo Ren to kiss in the next movie? We saw that happen and it sucked. What other possibilities did it open?
the main thing was that while jj leaned heavily on the ot, johnson took things from the prequels. say what you want about them but at least they continued the story rather than rehashing it. of the top of my head, the most interesting thing they weave into the narrative is the possibility that the jedi and sith balance thing was based on a complete misunderstanding of the force. this ties back to not only the eu but also episodes 1-3, and opens up the gray jedi and force-witch paths again, not to mention that it basically retcons midichlorians. they also tried getting rid of the prophecy crap, which didn't make sense to begin with.
I thought it would have been cool if rey fell to the dark side and that this pushed kylo ren back into the light.
Like, he was clearly struggling to even UTILIZE the dark side. He was begging for guidance from the totem of Anakin's mask, and Anakin wasn't even fallen anymore.
Rey, meanwhile, seemed to demonstrate clear dark side aptitude and compatibility. While kylo had to STRIVE to act out and push himself for emotional volatility and it turned out kind of pathetic, Rey just easily slipped right into emotional impulsivity.
If Kylo watched Rey descend, attain what he thought he'd wanted, only to discover that it's horrifying and painful, and that he doesn't like what it does to her... That could have not only scared him straight, but also driven him to try to save her.
There were relatively few people left in the galaxy who were still even receptive to the force after decades of Anakin slaughtering every force sensitive individual the empire could find AND THEN Luke's little failed attempt at reviving the Jedi order turned into a honey trap that lured the ones that remained into one place where they were all murdered right under his nose
Rey and Kylo were two of the only few people in the galaxy left who were force sensitive and ALL THAT POWER was trying to flow through them. Kylo struggled to overcome his inner good, what with the training he HAD received having been focused on the light side and therefore interfering with the dark's influence. Rey on the other hand was just raw unfiltered potential, a big ole unregulated CRACK in the dam--as perfect a tool for the dark side to possess and manipulate as there could have ever been.
Kylo had family who loved him and were still alive, he had a home, he had a future, and not only did he have to struggle to throw that all away, his parents KEPT trying to reach out to him, right up to the moment just before killing his father lamenting that he WAS indeed struggling. Killing Han didn't even measurably empower him in any way for fucks sake--he went on to LOSE a saber battle against a literal nobody!
Rey meanwhile had had EVERYTHING TAKEN FROM HER. she was isolated, lost, questioning, unguided, no prospects, and nothing to lose. Even Luke saw how she didn't resist the dark side at all.
It still feels like how these films turned out was just a bad dream and part of me is still waiting to wake up and find out things were going to head in a more meaningful direction. Instead, everything that COULD have happened inverted completely.
At the end of TLJ, on top of all the other pointless house shit that happened in that movie, REY AND KYLO SHOULD HAVE DISAPPEARED TOGETHER because it would have opened up possibilities that would have been very satisfying
HUX seizing the power vacuum of the first order instead of literally the opposite, which was becoming even more of a sniveling nitwit liability
Finn, Poe, and the other members of the resistance crew would be in a position to actually be fucking USEFUL instead of mere comic relief--i especially despite how TLJ did them all dirty. Kelly Marie Tran's character Rose Tico could have been a fantastic every~~man~~person POV where she grows in competency, agency, initiative, and leadership...
Instead of palpatine we could have had something actually interesting as a bigger bad behind the scenes.
Now I know this is controversial but ... While most people only joke about the concept of a Darth Jar Jar, i think it could have been a worthwhile twist. Without that stupid childish vocal affect and dopey weaponized pretend-incompetence, he could have been legitimately sinister. Imagine the way the temperature drops in a room when a cynical sociopathic manipulator discards their charade and shows their true colors.
... oh well. It's just going to suck forever now. Just gotta accept it, live with it.
right, that's what i'm saying. what they did with the blurring of lines in tlj could have gone even further. what if there is no "light side", it's all just puritanical bullshit by a bunch of dried-up space monks that unilaterally decide what's good or evil. they're basically thought police.
i love seeing others ask that same question!
one possibility i particularly like to consider, though...
is what if the force is all dark-side?
What if the so-called "light side" and all the jedi teachings exist solely as mechanisms of internal defense against a phenomenon that is inherently ontologically evil and absolutely would take any opportunity whatsoever to corrupt anyone it can?
I like to imagine that the force is, on the whole, a weapon. The way it fucks with probability on the quantum scale and can even rest an elbow on the scales of free will... look at all the technology we see in star wars: despite all its incredible capabilities, it's all chonky, thicc, and analog. I for one think that digital microcomputing as we know it in our galaxy would be rendered impossible by the interference of the force... on purpose. my wacky zany headcanon proposes The Force was created to render a 'grey goo' nanite swarm inert and incapable of functioning wherever it is present, because it ruins the deterministic phenomena upon which nanoscale computational systems rely.
anyway, outside of that, even if it WEREN'T like that, i'm rather a fan of morality being something that sapient minds manufacture. Not to say that it isn't real or valid or useful, but that the universe--or at least the living beings within it--benefit from the imposition of this abstract framework of right and wrong. it's not intrinsic, but rather the gift that sapience delivers upon the causal volume within which it lives. the meaning of life being to create meaning, to put it another way. And when we take that abstraction too far into absolute/fundamentalist/puritanical extents, that TOO is an overwhelming imbalance that causes harm. Exploring the boundaries of benefit and harm in this environment we've created is itself a compelling narrative hook.
i do prefer the theory that it's just a fifth fundamental force, with no inherent good or evil built in. which is why i like johnson's nod to the fact that anyone can pick it up by themselves, rather than being trained for years. you'd still probably need training to focus properly but it's not about "powers", more about reading the world. less harry potter magic, more discworld magic.
there are certainly moral and immoral uses of a power like that, just like there are moral and immoral uses of... magnetism.
as for the more hard sci-fi stuff... eh. star wars doesn't hold up to scrutiny like that. it's a pulp space opera, sword and sorcery in space. a lot of the eu tried reeeeeally hard to lean into the science fiction aspect, but it really doesn't work imo. i was really enthusiastic about shit like the space ship layout as a kid, still have all the "essential guide" books, but the fact is that nobody thought about that stuff when creating the world like in 90s trek, it's all just rule of cool. once i realised that my interest sort of waned.
JJ choosing to ignore the second movie doesn't mean "nothing was left". Baring the bizarre casino, TLJ was the most interesting SW story since RotS. Episode IX could've been an amazing finale coming out of that, but JJ did what JJ always does and absolutely failed to deliver.
*Also, I feel it's important to point out the "Mystery Box" was and is bullshit, lazy writing. Yes, it's important to leave things in a story for the audience to wonder about and anticipate. That's not a valid excuse to throw esoteric shit at the wall and call it a day. The audience doesn't need to know where the plot is going, but the fucking writer should. JJ left Rian with hollow shell of "intrigue" with nothing substantial, got pissy when Rian did what he wanted with that, then shit out a boring finale trying to reverse everything back.
The Last Jedi wasn't interesting. It was one piece of wasted potential after another.
We got what looked like the start of what could've been the best buddy friendship in The Force Awakens, only for The Last Jedi to completely ignore that potential.
It turned Finn into a coward, then forced a character he had no chemistry with onto him.
The casino arc was this attempt at rolling in some sort of... Message...? As if we don't already know about neutral profiteers like The Banking Clan. And then it still only pays minor lip service to this message.
Captain Phasma was completely useless. Snoke was completely useless. Luke Skywalker could've been an interesting direction, but nothing was done with him and then he died after one cool moment.
It had scenes and direction that made absolutely no logical sense, even internally. Such as slow as shit bombers getting completely wasted when only one was actually needed. A complete lack in competent leadership causing a mutiny, which would've been interesting if it was meant that way, but it's not. Deus Ex Rose dooming her comrades.
Its how they do the female leads. They still have to be "hot," of course. And in order to be "strong?" Well obviously masculinity is the strong gender, and OBVIOUSLY masculinity is toxic. So a "strong female character" is either just toxic masculinity with a pretty face pasted on, or a beige parody of stoicism.
A thousand times this. People hate bad female actors not because they are female but because they are bad actors.
Kal el no
Sometimes, but more often bad writing can make a great actress look like a bad female actor.
Natalie Portman can act, but those prequels were rough on her reputation. The camp value od the prequels wasn't immediately apparent and it was rough on her.
I remember someone saying that they thought Ewan McGregor and Liam Neesan were great, and the response was 'yeah, in Trainspotting and Schindlers list.'
Some people just hate women and they suck, but often the something with a female lead just sucks. It sucks that the former complicates the latter.
I'll note that the exact same thing happened to Hayden Christensen. His reputation took a big hit for being the guy who portrayed Anakin Skywalker. He was in the same boat Natalie Portman was and weathered the same storm. The older actors were able to weather it better because they'd had successful projects prior, the younger actors didn't have that.
Here's the problem with the Strong Female Character^(R)^: They are never found in movies made out of genuine creative vision. A Strong Female Character^(R)^ is always the lead character in a movie whose production has been authorized for the purposes of monetizing an intellectual property the studio has rights to that polling data shows would be popular among the 18-24 demographic within the next 16 months, and the writers and casting directors are hereby ordered to pander to the attached list of races, genders and sexual orientations as per the company Never Offend Anyone Ever policy.
Movies that were made to bring a cool idea to life tend to have better characters in them, because their characteristics are story telling devices and not business decisions. Stunt casting is ALWAYS a business decision.
Wasn't the woman from the Twilight movies accused of being a terrible actress and it nearly ruined her career, until she started getting other roles and her reputation turned right around. She even commented on it saying "Yeaaaah.. Bella was a garbage nothing of a character. I did everything they asked of me, she's just that terrible."
Kristen Stewart I think her name was?
Both the leads had that problem.
True but it was a bigger problem for her because when a woman is seen as doing something wrong, it is seen as ten times as bad as what a man does.
Unless it's a sex crime, in which case she's largely ignored....
Or abuse
All modern societies were built on the understanding that women are inherently inferior to men.
Once you understand that, so much begins to make sense.
Male domestic abuse victims are laughed at because to our patriarchy, a woman is not a person but a thing to be conquered. If a man is abused by a woman, it means he failed to "conquer her" and should be mocked for his inability.
Feminism is not the solution to this problem for it is an inherently misandrist and transphobic principle. Feminism is predicated on the idea that men are not people, but predators, vicious animals who prey on women. It teaches that the man must be tamed and kept away from women at all costs for her safety.
This is why feminists hate transpeople for it sees transwomen as not fellow sisters, but the male predator using mimicry to blend in with its prey.
Only true egalitarianism will work, and that is a society that lifts women out of oppression without demonizing men. A system that allows transpeople to be who we say we are.
I just got banned from r/menslib a leftist sub about mens issues. While I feel you do paint to broad of a picture of feminism as there are many who support trans and take mens issues seriously cannot disagree with you on how the way we talk about gender being absolutely toxic and damaging to its own cause. It treats all other liberal mens subs like the enemy and feminist subs that absolutely hate it as allies.
And when you, as a man, try to explain what pushes boys away from the left they just shrug and say patriarchy/entitlement/capitalism instead of really talking it. And when they acutaly do talk about stuff like male abuse victims its often about how it makes men more dangerous.
I swear that sub would support Noam over Mamdani
Lemmy could probably do it better. But I not the person to do it.
We will not win men back to the left until we admit that young men are guilty until proven innocent... but young men will be assumed guilty until proven innocent as long as women feel unsafe around them...
So both problems need to be solved at once.
I am not heartless or believe that women don't have reason to fear men.
I mean men think that being friend zoned is a tragedy? How must that poor woman feel thinking that she had just made a valued friend and all along he only saw her as a hole.
We cannot get Egalitarianism until we solve the problem of men and women not feeling safe around one another. And I don't know how to fix that.
Men are scared they'll be labeled monsters if a social interaction goes badly women are scared that they are being seen as a living fucktoy with no other purpose but to be fucked... and it's hard to convince either group they're wrong because neither one is.
And the worst part is as a trans woman. I have the worst of both worlds, am I going to be seen as a fuck, a felon, a freak, or a friend? Because I legit cannot tell how another person sees me.
The other problem is that there were 2 death stars in the original trilogy and another one in the sequels. Like, think of something new, will you?
I'm honestly not even mad at that. What broke my immersion was how everyone was just flat out stunned that they would try it a third time, and with no defensive countermeasures whatsoever. They were caught off guard a third time
And that third time they figured out how to bend space lasers to hit every planet at once and auto win
Come on
They basically turned a planet into a death star and no one noticed or worse, they did and allowed it to happen.
Sir, another death star has hit the big screens.
Or having a beloved character die off screen
Or faking a death and undoing the fakeout within a couple of minutes.