The Only Winner Of The Star Wars Culture War Is Disney

Before anyone starts reaching for their keyboard, I’d like to clarify that this isn’t some sort of love-in for the modern era of Star Wars or a tepid defense of Disney.

Star Wars is clearly hurting as a franchise, and Disney bears all of the blame for making that happen. However, when Star Wars fans resort to arbitrary culture war arguments, they effectively let Disney off the hook and even ensure more garbage content in the future.

Obviously, I can’t dive into this topic without talking about The Acolyte, the latest Star Wars spinoff from Disney that seems to be driving certain fans completely insane. To put my own Sabacc cards on the table, my verdict of The Acolyte, five episodes in, is that it’s…adequate.

I’ve enjoyed some of the mystery elements (where’s my Law & Order in space show, you cowards?!), and the fighting in Episode 5 was entertaining and brutal, but I also feel like this is yet another tepid Star Wars show on Disney+ that would have been better as a movie than a stretched-out series.

It’s quite possible to criticize the series like any other TV series, but some of the weirder elements of the fandom didn’t get that memo. There are Star Wars fans out there who will look you in the eye and say Disney ruined the franchise by changing such stupid details as when Ki-Adi-Mundi was born. However, perhaps the strangest and most consistent criticism of The Acolyte is that the show was made with some kind of “forced diversity” in mind and that this has somehow hurt the story.

That’s a criticism that is insane in and of itself…anyone with two brain cells to rub together or who doesn’t get all their genre opinions from screaming YouTubers knows that “forced diversity” is a real dog whistle phrase (mysteriously, it only comes out when the lead is Black, female, or both). Nonetheless, many fans are claiming that series like The Acolyte might have been better without “forced diversity,” and some have gone so far as to count the main characters and complain about the lack of white males.

Now, those are some of the salvos in the current Star Wars culture war, but how does this add up to Disney somehow winning? To understand, all you have to do is look back at The Phantom Menace. While that movie has some serious fans now, it was torn apart by critics and fans alike back in the day, and the sheer volume of that criticism encouraged George Lucas to make the subsequent prequel films better (admittedly not that hard a task).

The Phantom Menace was pretty much the opposite of The Acolyte in terms of diversity, but nobody ever blamed the mostly-white cast for that film’s failure. And the lack of platforms like Rotten Tomatoes meant that fans couldn’t review bomb it before it ever came out (probably because YouTube didn’t exist and nobody could complain that Samuel L. Jackson was part of the film’s “forced diversity”). As such, it was judged solely by its merits as a film, and those genuine complaints helped make the subsequent films better.

Now, the Star Wars fans filtering all their anti-Disney arguments through a culture wars lens are effectively allowing the company to bury or otherwise ignore all real criticism of shows like The Acolyte. Criticisms about the pacing, acting, special effects, and so much more get buried in the review bombing, allowing Disney to pretend that every genuine critique is really just another hater whining for clout.

When the loudest critics of the show are just screaming that it’s “woke,” it actually poisons the geek culture to the point that the average fan can’t express a real criticism without getting associated with racist and misogynistic YouTubers.

The end result of all this Star Wars drama is that Disney always wins: they can pretend that their worst films and shows are beloved and that everyone saying otherwise is just part of an online mob with an axe to grind. Speaking of online mobs, the fact that everyone assumes critics of Disney are just as bad as these review-bombers who didn’t watch the show completely chills any of the internet criticism that could make future shows better. 

George Lucas took the criticism to heart and made Attack of the Clones better than The Phantom Menace. However, Disney gets to dodge all criticism, which is why most of the Star Wars TV shows are just as bad as most of the sequels. That’s the real problem with garbage culture war arguments: all they do is make your favorite YouTube grifter a little richer while signaling to Disney that they can safely ignore anyone calling for them to create something better.

Again, this isn’t meant to keep anyone from tearing Star Wars shows like The Acolyte apart, and God knows this isn’t meant to keep you from criticizing Disney (they are about the closest thing we have to the Empire in real life).

However, there is no time like the present to shut off YouTube, stop review-bombing, and use real criticism (not dumb dog whistle terms like “forced diversity”) to discuss the actual problems with Star Wars. Until that happens, the franchise won’t get any better, and like the rise of Palpatine, all fans are doing is helping Disney consolidate its stranglehold on this franchise.