Or they borrowed a PR trick from politics, and try to paint all criticism of their products as evidence of 'racism, sexism, bigotry, or all of the above' as a way to avoid addressing any criticism.
And they do that trick by finding a few comments from assholes online and frame everyone who doesn't love their products as of that ilk.
They even blamed the backlash for The Last Jedi on Russian bots, after an entire year of the media insinuating Trump won the 2016 election with the help of Russian bots.
https://reclaimthenet.org/last-jedi-russian-bots-myth/
Yes I don't disagree with this, I think Hollywood very much picked up on the same kind of PR that a lot of the democrate establishment and attendant media had been running with, I would imagine there is a good deal of cross pollination going on there with people working in the the news media.
You could argue as well it wasn't only right leaning criticism either, the whole Holdo sub plot to me felt very much like the "Bernie bro" angle of attack on Sanders support.
You're really reaching here.
Condescendingly obvious progressive agendas piss everyone off, with the exception of progressives because they like their media, and the media everyone else watches, to be soaked in propaganda.
It pissed the fanbase off so badly they didn't bother going to see Solo, released 6 months later, leading it to be the FIRST Star Wars movie to ever LOSE money.
It caused LucasFilm to adjust their plans to have a new Star Wars movie released every year.
I don't think I am reaching really, I don't think these films were made with the intention of being especially progressive or changing anyones mind, they were made with the attension of being marketed as such and again I think certain elements seemed to be clearly baiting alt rightish people.
As I pointed out a lot of elements to the films are actually quite backward, you have a black co lead but he's a bumbling fool ex janitor and ends up in the white female leads friend zone. When someone like JJ "Kirk oogling Carol Marcus in her underwear for no reason at all" Abrams involved thats really not supprising, he's about as far from a politically relevant film maker as you could hope to find.
The whole situation with Kelly Tran as well I found pretty distasteful from their end, that character seemed to be created specifically to rattle the cages of alt right "alphas" so it wasnt exactly supprising when she got a load of online abuse. The equivalent of wrapping someone in bacon and pushing them into a lion enclosure then throwing your arms up in the air when there eaten alive. When they couldnt get cheap PR out of her anymore of course and felt it might hurt business the character was dumped, again no real political principles there just marketing.
So Disney bought the world's most popular SciFi franchise for 4 billion dollars and the woman they put in charge had no idea how passionate the fanbase was?
That's not suprising whatsoever because that woman is Kathleen Kennedy.
To be fair I can see how the error was made though, especially if you look back to the climate of the early 2010's when Abrams was hired.
There was I think a strong "anti geek" movement around this time, basically pushing the idea that what had gone wrong with franchises like Star Trek and Starwars was that they'd taken themselves too seriously and pandered to the fanbase too much. I mean with Trek I think you can certainly argue there was quite a lot of truth to this, especially the TNG films did feel like they were failing back to pandering to the fanbase as an easy alternative to making good cinema.
The bigger problem was I'd say though that the alternative to this became the idea that all you needed to do in order to make these franchises a sucess was to keep to some simple standards of blockbuster entertainment. Youtube was full of videos around this era from people thinking that the most simplistic screewritting 101 analysis was the key to great blockbuster cinema.
Abrams Trek film I think became the poster boy for that approach so again I'm not at all supprised Disney/Lucasfilm turned to him and basically asked him to do the same for Starwars. What they failed to see though IMHO that was already there were rumblings of discontent from the Trek franchise, that Abrams style was really more of a one shot deal that could exploit pent up demand and nostalgia for one film but not sustain a franchise. Meanwhile you saw Marvel starting to take itself increasingly seriously with films like The Winter Solider to great sucess.
Someone like Kennedy who has most likely always been focused on the business side not seeing this isnt that supprising IMHO. I mean look at the incompetence at Sony, WB and Fox when non creative execs are running things meanwhile franchise fan Feige inherits the earth.
