When the Star Wars Twitter account helps you slime your own fans, you know you’ve picked the wrong bedfellows for growing a franchise.
Before reading this article, you need to realize how the media works. As you follow along with my opinion, consider how many fantasy games have allowed players to choose whatever skin tone they wished for their characters. Have you ever heard of any backlash? Have you ever heard of any racism in regards to the thousands of fantasy properties that allow players to be anything they want? Consider that as you watch the strategy coming out of Rings of Power.
It’s like clockwork. When a poorly managed property begins to fail these days, the studios behind it and the incompetent people who run them will find the scapegoat nearly every single time. Why, it’s the fans who are to blame. And “the fans” are racist, homophobic, bigoted chauvinists who grunt and growl for every day parlance. It definitely, 100%, no-way-at-all can be the fault of the studio or the distributor who greenlit something received poorly.
In the case of Rings of Power, everyone could see it coming. We all knew they would do this. It doesn’t help them, it only makes their property sink faster, but there’s simply no way they can escape their carnal desires. They’re out and about “standing together” and “standing in solidarity” against a racist backlash that probably just doesn’t exist. But it’s easier that way. It’s easier to say that your project you worked on for years and years was taken down because society is a backwards ugly place. It’s much harder to admit you had the biggest budget in the world and you produced something that isn’t popular with it.
We stand in solidarity with our cast. #YouAreAllWelcomeHere pic.twitter.com/HLIQdyqLmr
— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) September 7, 2022
“You are all welcome here” they say. You have to love it. It’s the vaporous cry of superiority they make when they have utterly failed. People aren’t turning away from your program because it features diversity. They’re turning away from your program because it’s dull, boring and it strays from the original ideas of the man who created the fantasy world they love. As far as racial issues are concerned, taking a fantasy story that is all about the mythos of Europe and having it be reflective of the world at large is a bit like making Wakanda no longer be about people of African descent. But I’m sure there’s a way to make it highly successful in doing so — but you’d have to make something that is good in order for that to happen.
Luckily, Rings of Power has great company.
From Middle-earth to a galaxy far, far away… #YouAreAllWelcomeHere
— Star Wars (@starwars) September 8, 2022
When you’re being ballyhooed by a studio that can’t get a movie on the big screen anymore, has falling ratings, and has a collapsed merchandise ecosystem, that’s when you know you’ve picked the right strategy. Did we mention Star Wars just had a project at Disneyland Paris cancelled and the larping hotel is running under capacity?
Listen, studios, let me explain this to you in words simple enough that you can understand:
Treat your fans and your critics in the best way possible. Listen to feedback and adjust if you’ve made a mistake. Respect source material and find ways to naturally include diversity when the source material is either written exclusively with one racial background in mind, is region-locked or is from a time when diversity was sadly not a consideration. For big properties with big audiences, probably stay away from modern politics, ideologies and fads. If all your men are dunderheads and all your women are beast-mode warriors, that’s one foot into parody territory.
Or, if all of that is too hard for you, waste your investors’ money, burn your IP to the ground, and then call the fans who hate you for it a bunch of isms. You’ll make plenty of friends that way.
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