Ever since Disney and Lucasfilm released Star Wars: The Last Jedi and a number of fans appropriately criticized the Rian Johnson story, media outlets and creators can’t stop talking about the “toxic” element of Star Wars fandom. Instead of looking at the criticism and interacting with fans in positive manner, they’ve begun attacking them and hurling insults left and right. Anyone who has been following the world of comics in recent years has seen this all too well, but it’s now bleeding over into Star Wars.

The mentality of these creators reminds me of a meme featuring the Simpsons Principle Seymour Skinner. It perfectly encapsulates how intensely isolated many of these creators are.

Skinner meme

The latest creator to go on a rant against Star Wars fans is comic book writer and Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig.

Wendig didn’t hold on any punches in his attack against Star Wars fans as he called them many names and accused them of being everything from MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) to incels (involuntary celibates). Of course, a rant wouldn’t be complete without also calling them white supremacists.

Because nothing says unhinged like calling everyone you don’t agree with a white supremacist. Now, what promoted this barrage of odd behavior?

How did Chuck Wendig get to accusing Star Wars fans of being white supremacists? Well according to the author it all began in a place far far away, and a time long ago. Apparently, the author happened upon a Twitter discussion where a number of fans were planning to boycott his upcoming Star Wars Darth Vader annual and were talking about the failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

In a wildly bizarre series of Tweets, Wendig decides to take out his anger on the people who might have supported him and bought his books. I’m not sure they will after this.

While it is true that Solo had the fourth largest opening of 2018 so far, it’s been a major bomb based off box totals and the estimated production budget of the film. In fact, the film lost 65% in its second week. In fact, Deadpool 2 almost beat the film domestically in its third week.

In a moment of obliviousness, Chuck doesn’t realize that fans who love a franchise can be happy that a film they consider to be subpar or even bad is doing poor at the box office. It’s more than likely these fans want the film to do poor because it will send a message to Disney that there is something wrong with the stories they are telling with their Star Wars franchise. It doesn’t mean they don’t love Star Wars. They just don’t love these particular Star Wars stories.


It’s not like “rooting” for your child to fail. It’s more like expecting better from them, knowing that they have both the talent and ability to do so.

He would go on to make a similar argument with The Last Jedi, not understanding that people might have gone back one or two times to see The Last Jedi in order to find something redeeming about the film. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is pretty telling though that most fans weren’t happy with the film.

Another explanation as to why The Last Jedi still had strong numbers is because people wanted to find out what was going to happen after The Force Awakens, but once they find out they were unimpressed with the current Star Wars direction and decided to forgo forthcoming movies.

But of course Chuck Wendig wasn’t done there. He began to rave about “SJWs” and “identity politics.” He dismissed the criticisms with a wave of his hand by lumping them all together. He attempted to label his critics as the other, to demonize them. But he like many others know that fans aren’t revolting in some bid to toxify the fandom. There are actual complaints about his own work and the work Disney has produced since they purchased Lucasfilm and Star Wars.

Did you catch that? Wendig went from defending Solo and scoffing at the idea that the film was tanking because it still had the fourth largest opening of the year to admitting that the film is “underperforming!” And then at the same time as reporting on a boycott of the film, he believes it isn’t having any effect. But he admits the film is doing subpar compared to its expectations.  This is some next level mental gymnastics.

He then decided to go after YouTubers and other non-traditional critics who criticize his work and the current Disney Star Wars films for lazy writing, logical flaws, and other issues that have become all too common in the Star Wars films.

In fact, you can almost see the hate and derision he feels for these non-sanctioned critics who don’t toe the line and shower praise on everything Star Wars no matter what.

Something tells me the white boogeymen should pop out.

Ha, I was right! Wendig basically brings out an SJW checklist of all the “bad” things in the world.

And then he goes on to lump anyone who provides a different opinion from the radical, progressive social justice warriors into one group. He groups MRAs, Incels, Gamer Gaters, and Comics Gate folks all into one giant group because apparently they are all the same. Who knew?  I mean it’s not like these are all different groups of different people with different ideas right?

Then Wendig shows his true hand. His disgust with fans who are not interested in seeing identity politics inserted into their fandoms. He even goes so far as to claim that you aren’t a “fan” if you disagree with identity politics being inserted into Star Wars.

But what happened next is still baffling me. After OneAngryGamer exposed Chuck’s hateful view of many Star Wars fans he went on an even more crazy Twitter rant.

He even tried to go after Google News because he didn’t like seeing the truth about his own words.

But most of it is just nonsensical.

What’s really interesting is that it appears the terrible practices that many Marvel Comics freelancers and employees have expressed towards customers and fans is bleeding over into Disney’s Star Wars freelancers.

This is not a good look at all and it’s a terrible business practice as Marvel sales took a huge hit last year and are still struggling to recover. Not only that, their brand has been diminished significantly among many who used to be lifelong Marvel supporters.

Can Disney and their shareholders afford this type of behavior in a much larger medium where they hope to make millions even billions of dollars off of Star Wars?

If Marvel Comics freelancers and employee behavior has taught us anything it is that the company that acts this way will take a hit in sale. Not only that, but new competitors will emerge to take away their market share like Ethan Van Sciver, Diversity & Comics, Jon Malin, Brett R. Smith and others have done in the past month in the comics industry.

Given how creators like Chuck Wendig are responding to fan and customer criticism by attacking them and labeling them as “white supremacists” it does not bode well for Star Wars and Disney at large.

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    About The Author

    Jorge Arenas
    Jorge Arenas
    Resident Star Trek Specialist/ Writer

    If Starfleet were real his career would be in a much different place. Currently, he specializes in all things Star Trek. He loves DC but has a soft spot for Deadpool.