A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a man named Rian Johnson directed a Star Wars movie.
The Last Jedi was the much-anticipated sequel to 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and depending on who you ask, it either revolutionized or utterly destroyed everything fans have come to know and love about Star Wars.
Since the release of the film, Johnson has been flooded with a deluge of angry messages from a certain subset of Star Wars fans on Twitter. They range from the garden variety criticism of his work to personal attacks to even the odd death threat every now and then.
Johnson to his credit has been handling the situation quite well; he has been standing his ground with regards to his vision, offering explanations where necessary, sarcasm where appropriate, and blocking those who take it too far.
However, if the harassment of Star Wars actress Kelly Marie Tran which prompted her to leave Instagram is anything to go by, the hatred and vitriol of these types of Star Wars fans are far-reaching.
The most recent development in the terrible saga of hate involves Mission Impossible: Fallout director, Chris McQuarrie.
McQuarrie’s Twitter feed used to be a rather quirky one where the director would talk about filmmaking and writing in a humorous, self-deprecating style.
That all changed when Johnson recommended it on his feed to anyone who wanted to learn more about their craft.
Lots of people on twitter give writing/filmmaking advice. My only advice: follow @chrismcquarrie.
— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) July 2, 2018
The conversation was hijacked by the type of fans who caused the whole thing to devolve into a convoluted mess of anger, personal insults, and pointless arguments, with poor McQuarrie along for the ride.
The whole debacle ended with McQuarrie addressing Johnson directly and saying that while he would have liked to direct a Star Wars movie one day, he has since been “cured” of this desire.
My friend, After five minutes of this, I don’t know why you’re still on Twitter.
I would have loved to make a Star Wars film someday. I’m cured.
— Christopher McQuarrie (@chrismcquarrie) June 29, 2018
He then went on to express a lack of interest in directing a superhero film as well, adding that he considered himself first and foremost, an entertainer.
“I work for the audience. Tonight I found people I could never work for.” He concluded.
While on the surface, this story amounts to Twitter drama, the deeper implications of what happened need to be considered.
Are we reaching a point where the anger and vitriol of entitled fan communities and vitriol is so high that it is beginning to affect the desirability of those projects for creatives?
Who would take a look at the stream abuse Johnson, Tran, J. J. Abrams, John Boyega, and every other non-white (often non-male) member of the cast went through and willingly sign on for it?
How long before Star Wars become associated with too much toxic behavior for filmmakers to want to touch it?
Once upon a time, angry fans and the creators of content had many degrees of separation between them, but not today.
Today, the distance between a fan and the guy who made the movie they hated is just one tweet away.
P/S: The writer of this article would like to emphasize that the Star Wars fans mentioned in this article dare not every Star Wars fan, but a vocal and angry subset of them.
Header source image from here.
