There are a lot of different complaints about The Last Jedi floating around. Not enough character development, no one liked the casino scene, Luke acting out of character – the list goes on. Around the dark corners of the internet, one particular gripe prompted action from a men’s rights activist with video editing software: there are simply too many women in Star Wars.
In order to remedy this, he cut every single female character from the film, according to Pedestrian. Entitled “The Last Jedi: De-feminized Fanedit,” the anonymous uploader admitted that the edit was “not ideal” but “had to be done.” The edit of a cam recording with subtitles is 46 minutes long and consists of what the fans really want—only men. General Leia, Rey, Rose, Admiral Holdo, and anyone who could be identified as female is absent from this cut. This also means that the majority of the movie is missing, notably the most plot and memorable lines.
Image from Pedestrian
But this hack job makes it so that this angry fanboy and his one friend don’t have to suffer through “Leia’s nitpicking” or her disrespect toward Poe (who is a man – meaning that a woman questioning him is unforgivable) and will no longer be exposed to “female fighters/pilots and female officers commanding people around/having ideas.”
When this little project was brought to light by Twitter user Pricilla Page, some spoke out in favor of the cut.
There were also some even less nice replies, but the theme of The Last Jedi actually being social justice warrior (SJW) propaganda persists throughout. This is nothing new. When Rey was first revealed in The Force Awakens, there was an outcry from the Internet that Disney was trying too hard to be politically correct and was therefore ruining their beloved series that was all about the men they loved. And Leia, I guess.
The Last Jedi is the first Star Wars film to pass the Bechdel Test, which is the lowest bar possible when it comes to the inclusion of female characters. All that’s required to pass the Bechdel Test is for two women who have names to talk about something other than another male character. This is fulfilled easily by General Leia and Admiral Holdo.
Before I get to Admiral Holdo and the unadulterated rage certain fanboys have for her, just consider that The Force Awakens, with Rey as it’s principle character, did not pass the Bechdel Test. This is also a film attacked for being too politically correct because Rey is too perfect “because she is a woman.” Somehow her being female does not allow her to fail.
Extensive scenes with General Leia, Admiral Holdo, and other female Resistance fighters are included as a kind of liberal virtue signaling, showing that women are here and ready to fight the patriarchy.
And Admiral Holdo, who everyone universally hates, is meant to be a wink to Tumblr girls with her signature purple hair.
At least this is what The Telegraph’s Martin Daubney claims.
Others take offense to the notable diversity The Last Jedi exhibits in not only featuring several female characters, but one of them who is Asian. It is this inclusion and the SJW influence over the film that ultimately ruined it and made China drop the film after three weeks in theaters.
Apparently.
All of the previously mentioned vitriol is kind of indicative of how badly some of these people want to be oppressed by some kind of liberal agenda that dares to act like men and women can hold equal roles. I understand the attachment to a series, and the pain that comes when it goes in a direction you personally do not agree with, but these accounts crying “SJW takeover” are delusional.
The perception that female characters have taken over when they occupy an equal amount of screen time as male characters just highlights a willingness to accept the norm that one token female character is enough – that tokenism is appropriate or even preferable. It’s confusing that these audiences will accept Ewoks and Mon Calamari from distant planets, but it is somehow a leftist stretch for the film to feature people with Asian-coded features or characters who are black like Finn. We’re running around with lightsabers and droids, but this diverse casting for our favorite science fiction fantasy is just too unrealistic.
In the end, there’s very little that can be done to rationalize the thought process of people who are blind enough to think that any member of The Last Jedi cast isn’t attractive or actually believe that the film was female for the sake of being female. Therefore, I recommend doing what Rian Johnson, John Boyega, and Mark Hamill himself did in response.
Laugh at them.
Sources: Return of Kings, bechdeltest.com, Quora, Telegraph, Squawker, Pedestrian
Images: Twitter, Pedestrian, StarWars.com
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