Summary
Yes, some uncalled for comments have occurred. A plethora of perfectly reasonable ones have also occurred, and Disney is showing every indication of lumping them all together. They tried making a pr statement, and when the reasonable folks got upset, they called ewan to make a video instead. Disney knows how to be better at pr than this; a sliver of a minority of people making offensive comments exists for literally every form of media and nearly every sompany in existence. If you as a company don’t know how to handle that without slighting the majority of your followers, you are a bad company.
To be perfectly clear, I have no problem with the actress or the character’s description in the scripts. But like with any film, book, or other form of media, prowess in a character must be earned or at the minimum proved. She simply can, no matter the topic, and there’s no answer outside of what Racie already mentioned. Disney pulling this maneuver in the way they did makes it really look like they’ve pushed every critique of the character under the blanket of anti-racism, and the people getting slighted now have to respond to Ewan Mcgregor taking the pressure off his coworker/the writers. Again, this is horrible pr if it is a miscommunication, but a 90 yr old entertainment company would probably know better than to do it twice in a row on the same issue.
As for me, I just want my star war to shoot the bad guys and have the characters’ flaws first and foremost - make them work for that sweet, sweet character development.
Well, I get your point, but this seems to swing too far in the other direction. There’s basically no stakes here outside of Joe’s personal involvement with his company, employment status, and life. Without some kind of rogueoneelement, you have a completely serious version of The Office, which in a franchise all about hyping things up to an absurd degree will leave many people scratching their heads as to why it got made.
Like, that’s something not exactly promising rolls of cash in return. Known characters returning and high stakes is a guarantee for an investment return on the scale of billions of dollars. I think that’s more an issue with modern media than star wars, though; rebooting an old franchise for some quick cash is a way more financially safe option than a risky new idea that might completely alienate people. If done right, it could be fantastic, but uh, Star Wars hasn’t exactly done a lot of things right lately.
I’m still waiting for Gonk: A Star Wars Story