[sphinx]

The road not taken: Rey is a cute girl and seems to be a likeable person. She would have made a fine Jedi … had Disney been willing to invest in a 20 year storyline involving highly disciplined training and apprenticeship under whatever motley collection of old Jedi survivors could be assembled in the context of the story to date. Rey would also have simply been the first, as additional new Jedi would be slowly identified and added to the group. This would have led to the slow recovery of the Jedi, beginning as a fugitive, underground order. The basic story line would be that of Alfred the Great, starting from his refuge in the marshes. Rey's victory would come three or four movies down the road, when she emerges as a tough survivor.

Instead, Disney opted to make Rey a millennial chick with superpowers, which makes a farce of the force.

[Captain Rhino]

Your road not taken post is a good summation of where the next generation reboot of the franchise under Disney went off of the rails: Rey’s character is all wrong based on the story line and details concerning the nature of the Force and training of Jedi built up in the six Stars Wars movies that preceded her introduction. You cannot trash all that and have the dedicated fans not be disheartened.

However, let’s look at this from a business standpoint. This franchise started in 1977. I took the future Mrs. Rhino to see it on our second date. Forty one years later, the franchise is still making Billions. But the original fan base is aging out of the population and the millennial generation is raising families. The fan base to sustain the franchise into the mid-century is the post-millennial and subsequent generations. Those fans have had the SJW/LGBTQxyz agenda shoved at them relentlessly since elementary school. And all the heroes and villains in all the other CGI-heavy movies they watch have magical superpowers and abilities. So the new Stars Wars ensemble of heroes and villains needs to be adjusted to fit the new social “reality.”

E voila! Rey is a millennial chick of yet to be determined sexuality with superpowers. And, twenty to thirty years from now, assuming Disney finds the audience sweet spot and keeps the franchise going, it will change again.

So, in one sense, Kennedy is right. The older male fan base is not the future of the franchise.

What she fails to realize is the subversive power of AI-based custom content creation. Going to the movie theater will be supplanted by individualized versions of movies populated with characters whose attributes reflect the viewer’s preferences. All gay characters? No problem. Pornographic sexual interludes? Sure. Graphic violence? In slow motion? and lots of light saber action? All Black actors and actresses? All Asian? All Muslim? Happy to oblige. Include some now dead actors and actresses? Certainly. We will just summon them from their avatar minicomputers in the studio network. They are happy to continue acting (and making money for their estates) even after they pass away. (For some, thanks to AI, death might not be the end after all.)(This could create new branches of law!)

The “movie” will become a shell that all this changing detail is fitted into similar to how a written play is just a scaffolding that the actual presentation is built upon. Except, no two person’s versions of the movie will be exactly the same. Multiple versions of the movie, all equally valid, will be in circulation.

Water cooler discussions of the latest Star Wars movie will get complex.

Welcome to the future.