Social media sites are places for people to come together and like/dislike shared news and cultural touchstones of the day. Sometimes, social media sites expose bigots and other ignoramuses by allowing them to publicly expound upon their fear-based misgivings. If you hadn’t heard, back in December a new Star Wars film was released. Its release garnered good reviews from critics, but very mixed reviews from fans. A big part of the dissent in responses surrounded the treatment of beloved older characters like Luke Skywalker, and the continuing prominence of female characters.
To be clear, there is a discussion to be had about the merits of the film and the story and the treatment of characters; however, there are also a lot of “fanboys” pissed off that they have to acknowledge there are girls in the sandbox now. One such boy decided to create an edit of the film that did away with all of those women characters. The film, which runs almost two-and-a-half hours long now, was cut down to 46 minutes by this genius. Writer and film-reviewer Priscilla Page tweeted out this response.
Page was also responding to the many butt hurt tweets around the internet lamenting Star Wars and how it had cooties now. Funny enough. But then something special happened. The director of the film, Rian Johnson, tweeted this.
Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill added:
John Boyega who plays Finn in the new films responded:
This has got to sting. A lot of men/boys are trying to get their masculinity in order these days and they keep finding out that all of the men they looked up to as kids are not interested in staying in a sexist and misogynistic past. Instead of realizing that maybe they misunderstood what it means to be a “man,” and possibly reevaluating their personal tenets of masculinity, they dig deeper into the past in the hopes of returning to a time that doesn’t exist for a reason. Of course, maybe they can go back to the source material for original masculinity as evidenced in the documentary footage below.