'Last Jedi' director strikes back at Star Wars 'manbabies'
It is a period of civil war in Star Wars fandom.
We're nearly seven months on from the release of The Last Jedi, and a certain very vocal minority of fans -- you know, the kind who think a film can ruin their childhood -- just can't let it go. And now the director is striking back.
The catalyst for this fresh round of warfare is the fact that Kelly Marie Tran, who played Resistance mechanic Rose Tico, mysteriously deleted all her Instagram posts this week. Tran has not explained why she did this; Mashable has reached out to her publicist for comment.
Rightly or wrongly, Star Wars fans are assuming the reason is the same thorn that has been in this particular fandom's side for some time: harassment. In a GQ interview earlier this year, Tran mentioned "really acidic, misogynistic, racist comments" she'd received regarding her casting in Last Jedi.
And she isn't alone. Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, received similar treatment at the hands of a hardcore minority of haters before she quit social media in 2016. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has also been the target of multiple death threats.
On Tuesday, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson -- the honey badger of Star Wars -- hit back with a subtweet calling out the kind of fans who would indulge in such dickish behavior. He called them "manbabies" ...
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... and quickly followed up to point out that the vast majority of Star Wars fans are kind and friendly even in disagreement. Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill concurred.
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Meanwhile more than 20,000 fans added their retweets to a message of support for Tran, explicitly designed to "drown out the manbabies."
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Of course, Johnson's mentions were replete with people apparently eager to prove his epithet was accurate.
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Other Star Wars creatives chimed in. Claudia Gray, author of the well-received Star Wars novels Lost Stars and Leia, Princess of Alderaan, pointed out that hatred ran counter to the principles of the franchise itself.
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Or, as Yoda put it in a movie that spurred its own share of controversy: "Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
The little green guy may never have traveled in the more toxic realms of Twitter. But he would surely recognize many manbabies who have fallen, Anakin-like, to the Dark Side.
Topics Star Wars
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
