MovieChat Forums > Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) Discussion > I realize the female lead is PC panderin...

I realize the female lead is PC pandering, but is it really so terrible?


Why are some of you guys so uncomfortable watching good-looking women kick ass for a couple of hours? Do you just not like women? ("Not that there's anything wrong with that...")

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The only ass-kicking by a female lead was by Rei in the throne room. Even then she struggled against a load of non-force combatants.

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Because the hero is usually the underdog that grows into a bad ass by the end of the film. In this film we have ray a white woman (british at that) beating up on a black guy(how often does that happen) when we first meet her. Its like come on could these feminist narratives be any more contrived. A little more subtlety with their feminist message and it would have been more effective. This in your face feminism just causes a bunch of eye rolling in the audience.

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Feminism is about equality for all. Is that a bad thing? Don’t subscribe to the far right’s antiberal ideology. They want you to remain pissed off, insecure and fearful so you’ll keep voting for the likes of Trump and all the other Republicans.

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If feminism had stopped there I'd be all for it but I've grown tired of the pandering that breaks belief such as a 90 pound woman beating the shit out of trained men that surround here during attack. This is so unrealistic its not entertaining. And we aren't pissed off were just rolling our eyes. Its the left thats always pissed off.

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I don't completely disagree with you, but you should study some of the theories of some of the Martial Arts. It teaches one who may be a smaller in size how to use their opponents power and strength against them. Momentum, leverage, agility. It evens the playing field.

I will say that some feminism becomes counterproductive when it relies on simplistic vilification of males and portraying all females as victims. Women do the most work raising children into adulthood, and have some responsibility on the people we become. The picture some paint of victimization is just denial of some responsibility.

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I don't completely disagree with you, but you should study some of the theories of some of the Martial Arts. It teaches one who may be a smaller in size how to use their opponents power and strength against them. Momentum, leverage, agility. It evens the playing field.

Yea yea I get it martial arts is about focusing your energy and using against your opponents center of mass by rotating them via fulcrum etc. Thats using their mass. You can't really use their strength against them unless your reffering to their general lack of flexability due to their strength. Honestly if you have the strength to pick up a 115 pound girl and chuck her into a wall marshall arts isn't going to help you. Don't get me wrong. Their are some bone heads that will make a full of them selves when rellying on brute strength but in general woman suck at physical defense. Thats why guys are expected to defend them when their being attacked regardless of who started the fight.



"I will say that some feminism becomes counterproductive when it relies on simplistic vilification of males and portraying all females as victims. Women do the most work raising children into adulthood, and have some responsibility on the people we become. The picture some paint of victimization is just denial of some responsibility."

This is a new kind of feminism. All Males are villians yet all females are untouchable(not victims).

Lucy, Ghost in the shell, Avengers(Black widow). WTF I just realized all those movies are with scarlet johanson. Starting to see a pattern. Another Lucy lu movie comes to mind. Something about orphan class fighters from china but the name of the movie escapes me.

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Only it's not though, is it? Feminism (in its current incarnation at least) is about ensuring women are viewed as victims and men are villains. The only equal thing about it is that it is harmful to both genders and Pro tip, if you really want to create an ideology that aims to establish equality of the sexes, don't name it after only one of them.

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Equality? Don't make me laugh. 50 years ago feminism meant something, these days it is just whiny women want preferential treatment in every possible way.

How Finn and Luke are portrayed in the movie is a disgrace, showing feminism is nothing more than men hating.

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right, shallow feminism at that - for kids and nit wits. this isn't the only movie with feminist themes, plenty out there probably, the Edge of Tomorrow, Alien(s), GI Jane for gods sakes, are all better feminist type stories that have and build strong female characters. Hell I could probably argue more growth, feminist wise, in Frozen than the TLJ.

TLJ is a charicature of feminism, a fake, glossy image that turned out to be trash no one wants to buy. Rey could have been a badass, but she simply isn't. Finn could have been a great character - a stormtrooper that crossed sides and maybe grew, rose, fought, and a person of color no less, but we got nothing but a joke of a side character.

I could go on, but yeah, it is terribly pandering in the case of TLJ. Disney failed to realize the audience for SW is not just 8 year old girls.

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Nobody is 'uncomfortable' with any thing, people just prefer their characters to have a little, you know, character to them. As had been said approximately 1 billion times now nobody took issue with Ripley, Sarah Connor, Vasquez, Furiosa etc as they were all well written and fleshed out characters.

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No we have a problem with Rey having unrealistically good abilities with no explanation. It's a result of bad writing.

As in the case with Vice Admiral Gender Studies vs. Poe what pisses me off is the movie wants us to believe that Poe was in the wrong when in reality he did the right thing considering the information he had. Vice Admiral Gender Studies was a complete and total idiot, all she had to do was just tell Poe the plan and the entire mutiny wouldn't have happened. That and the fact that the trip to the casino was completely pointless other than just giving us some ham fisted message about animal rights.

In the case of Rose she is equally stupid, I was starting to get behind Finn who was willing to bravely sacrifice himself for the resistance but Rose had to step in and wave her finger at him with that stupid speech about how they were going to win the war with the power of love, and what happened as a result of her actions? The First Order blew the door down, yeah Rose put all of her friends in more danger.

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They set up Poe and Finn as buddies yet they were only on the screen together for a short time. TLJ should have been 1) Rey and Luke 2) Finn and Poe 3) Leia, Holdo etc. That's it. Lumpy Asian Chick served no purpose here at all.

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They kind of disappointed the small group of people that really want a gay character in Star Wars with TLJ because some people were thinking Finn and Poe were going to get together because they hugged in the previous film.

To be honest, I think Holdo should have been replaced with a Ackbar, get rid of a questionable character with a known one that some people have a preexisting attachment too. Also I would rewrite the Admiral/Poe dynamic that did little good for either character.

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They kind of disappointed the small group of people that really want a gay character in Star Wars

What 2.5% of the audience?

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I have no issue with female leads, unlike some people on here I used to watch them before it became cool too. Films really were made before 2015, its not just a rumor or fake news ;)

I think the issue comes that a film typically suffers when you force an agenda onto it, this is particularly a problem for a pre existing universe like this one. While you can get away with it occasionally, most times you don't because an agenda usually has a negative effect on the creative process. I think for Star Wars, its hurting the story for this trilogy..just my thoughts on it.

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I never had a problem with Leia, Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley, why? Because they were well written, it has nothing to do with their gender.

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But they already had the main lead (lead lead?) Rey "training" with Luke and facing Kylo\Snoke, and another setting where Leia was the lead with Holdo having a key support role. Why couldn't they give one story line to Finn and Poe? Let them do a mission and become pals like Han and Luke did. Lumpy Asian Girl displaced both Finn and Poe to a degree. If they insisted on having a female character in that storyline too, they should have made it a minor role, maybe a sarcastic comic relief thing like NegasonicTW in Deadpool.

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Rose is an example of what I am talking about, she exist for Rose to be a prominent Asian Female character...and that is it. The subplot she is in is garbage and drags the film down, her actions with Finn later were beyond stupid. However that is not the point, she didn't have to be a good character, she just had be Asian.

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Which I have no problem with, if it serves the story. Put in a dozen Asian actors, as long as you're not f***ing up the story to do it. Believe me, if I was a filmmaker I would be very mindful of the Chinese market. I want their money and if casting more Chinese actors is going to get it for me, I would do it.

But it all starts and ends with The Story. The biggest problem of the sequel trilogy is that they really don't have one, and it shows.

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I have no problem with it either..there is no reason you can't hire Asian actors for any human characters because it doesn't matter in the Star Wars universe. But in Rose's case she isn't a character that I believe was a well written character that they happened to hire an Asian actress for. I think its a character shoehorned into the film for the sole purpose of displaying a diversity character. That is bad writing caused by a preconceived agenda.

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I think Rose was put in for Asian market, she was not entirely necessary. But in the end the movie did badly in China, worse than all other star wars movies before.

Feminism is really getting in the way of making money, I guess Disney is very much devoted to political agenda.

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And in fact two of the most famous Chinese actors played central characters in Rogue One and it worked well because they did an awesome job and the plot made sense.

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Yes, they were awesome. I really hope they bring back Donnie Yen to play a Jedi in a future movie.

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I don't have a problem with female lead, but destroying Luke as a character for the sake of feminism (what other reason is there?) I think is why most fans hate this movies.

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What they did to Luke was the most contemptible of all the creative decisions in the post-Lucas world.

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To lesser extend, Snoke too. Snoke was actually interesting, we want to know the origin of Snoke, how he became so powerful and where he was when the empower was in power. But Snoke is male and all father figures need to be weak and die.

Leia of course has inhuman capabilities and can survive in space.

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I don't object to strong female heroines, it's when they put down the males that it bothers me. It's like: Poe can't be a hero and Holdo can, and Finn can't be a hero and Rose can.

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The portrayal of Finn is actually quite disturbing even in TFA. The only black man in the movie is a janitor, coward and liar. In this movie he continues along these lines, no redemption for him. These white feminists not only put down men, they put down male minorities in much more degrading ways.

Poe in TFA was portrayed at least in positive lights, in this movie he was a hothead and a problem.

In this movie all men are put down, no exception, they no longer discriminate among men, I guess that is progress.

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Truly is horrible when you think about it.

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and Finn can't be a hero and Rose can.

By crashing into his ship no less. Like how'd she expect they'd both survive that? Other then the script demanded they did.

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Finn was downgraded from the sidekick of Rey to the sidekick of Rose, kind of demotion.

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its like c3po is the side kick in the original star wars who has R2D2 as his own side kick,

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90's Lara Croft and Buffy Summers were huge hits........ this new star wars crap is something completely different

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For starters, Lara and Buffy were both depicted as HUMAN rather than super human as Rey is. Lara and Buffy were both shown with a large array of strengths and weaknesses and were far from perfect. Plus, any "agenda" that may have existed with their characters was cursory and never got in the way of their respective story-lines.

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Um, of course Rey isn't human, she's from an extremely distant galaxy. Technically, she's an ALIEN. They ALL are, in the Star Wars franchise.

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