The opinion argues that after Disney’s 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy’s rise to lead the franchise, Star Wars discourse shifted from movie chatter into a cycle of gendered harassment—placing actresses such as Daisy Ridley, Kelly Marie Tran, Mo
When someone casually brings up “Star Wars,” the conversation can still feel like it’s supposed to be light. For the writer of this piece, it hasn’t been light in a long time. “I don’t even want to get into it.”
The drain, the argument goes, isn’t about one particular criticism of Disney’s sci-fi franchise. It’s about how, over time, “Star Wars” talk has slipped into an exhausting, not-always-clear game—often landing on embattled “Star Wars” heroine Rey, played by Daisy Ridley.
The piece traces how the franchise’s modern era helped produce the conditions for that shift. linking it to more than a decade of “widely underwhelming creative leadership” under former Lucasfilm Ltd. president Kathleen Kennedy, who stepped down in January. From there. the author points to a widening gap between what some fans say they mean when they criticize Disney and what many women associated with the franchise experience online.
By 2026. the writer describes a moment when the discourse doesn’t feel family-friendly—whether they’re in the lobby of a local AMC or waiting backstage at an awards show. If someone says Disney ruined “Star Wars. ” the author says they brace themselves. uncertain whether the complaint is about creative choices or something harsher.
The article lays out several possible angles people might be raising: artistic clashes between J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson. the director structure used across the sequel trilogy; frustrations about narrative planning across roughly a dozen “Star Wars” TV shows debuted on Disney+ since it launched in 2019; and broader objections to how the sequel era developed characters and mythology.
But the piece insists that, too often, the conversation curves toward one specific target: the women—framed as somehow responsible for “everything.”
The most recognizable warning signs. according to the author. include extreme hostility toward Daisy Ridley; the use of the word “woke”; and referring to women and girls as “females.” The writer also invokes a deliberately pointed example about Princess Leia—specifically referencing “Princess Leia slave bikini”—to underline how online fandom can become cruel and gleeful rather than focused on film craft.
The argument then zooms out to how Kennedy came to lead the franchise. After Disney purchased Lucasfilm in a landmark 2012 deal that valued the studio at more than $4 billion. Kennedy took over “Star Wars” from George Lucas. The author says Kennedy came up through Hollywood as a producer working with Steven Spielberg on crowd-pleasers including “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” Lucas selected her as his successor.
The piece also recalls Kennedy’s early success: 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” clinched the all-time domestic box office record in North America—a title it says still holds today.
Then comes the pivot point. In 2017. Abrams handed creative control of the sequel trilogy over to Johnson for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” The author describes how that second film did remarkably well with critics. even as longstanding “Star Wars” fans erupted with rage. Many objected. the piece says. to the film’s inconsistent mythology. weak character development. fundamental changes to Luke Skywalker’s persona (with Mark Hamill). and an overall lack of coherent world-building across Abrams and Johnson’s two installments.
Financially, “The Last Jedi” remained a major success, but the backlash, the piece argues, eventually impacted Disney’s bottom line. In 2018. “Solo: A Star Wars Story. ” directed by Ron Howard. became the franchise’s first-ever box office disappointment. losing money amid a troubled production and growing audience exhaustion with the “Star Wars” brand. Then. when Abrams returned to close out the sequel trilogy. 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” made over $1 billion worldwide—described here as still a sharp commercial comedown for a tentpole that had seemed invincible.
In the author’s telling, Kennedy faced both scrutiny and fan pushback while attempting to assert “Star Wars” as more openly inclusive and politically aware.
The piece argues that this is where a human cost starts to become visible. Across the sequel films, Daisy Ridley’s Rey absorbed oceans of harassment and scapegoating for the trilogy’s perceived failures. The author places those attacks in a larger moment—by the late 2010s. when. in the piece’s view. internet fandom transformed disappointment into a political identity and fed into the “manosphere” era.
Women associated with popular movies. shows. and video games. the writer says. became symbolic stand-ins for broader anxieties about power and social change. Ridley. who the article says was 23 years old when “The Force Awakens” launched her into global stardom. was left carrying both the weight of a beloved franchise and the frustrations around Kennedy’s stewardship.
That cultural instability, the piece continues, deepened as Kennedy and Disney pushed “Star Wars” further into streaming during the pandemic. The author describes a shift from a mostly theatrical event into a digital content ecosystem that fans had to access online. In that environment, anonymity and anger—according to the writer—tend to distort opinions.
As the franchise expanded. more women associated with it became targets of fallout from Kennedy’s “tumultuous takeover.” The article lists actresses including Kelly Marie Tran. Moses Ingram. and Laura Dern. and also mentions the voice of Phoebe Waller-Bridge in “Solo.” The writer notes that Waller-Bridge’s liberation politics “became unexpectedly controversial.”.
It also points to Disney+ showrunners facing hostile reactions tied to “artistic choices made by women behind the scenes.” The piece names Leslye Headland (“The Acolyte”) and Deborah Chow (“Obi-Wan Kenobi”). The author emphasizes that some criticism was thoughtful and warranted—reflecting Kennedy’s strategic missteps—while other “Star Wars” discourse curdled into overtly racist and sexist harassment.
Trolls, the article says, were especially vicious toward women of color, and both Tran and Ingram spoke publicly about the psychological toll of sustained attacks online.
The author then widens the lens again, arguing that the franchise’s problems didn’t invent radicalization on the internet. Instead, Disney and Kennedy, in this view, created the perfect conditions for U.S. culture wars to invade a property already loaded with meaning.
Here, “Star Wars” is framed as once representing something close to a shared moral language in American cinema. The piece points back to 1977’s “Star Wars: A New Hope. ” arriving in a time when the West was “as tired as we are now. ” with the Vietnam War and Watergate fueling distrust. In this telling, the film dared to ask what if good was still good and evil was still legible. The author credits Lucas with combining emotions audiences were desperate to reconcile—optimism and anxiety. nostalgia and futurism. order and spectacle.
The article argues that in a pop culture landscape that served as a counterbalance to fear. “A New Hope” offered a rare shared universe where people were. at least theoretically. on the same side. It describes the original trilogy as foundational for Gen X fans. and it describes the Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader conflict as an escape route pre-internet.
It also draws a contrast: the warmth of earlier debates—particularly between millennials and Gen X fans about Lucas’ prequel trilogy—didn’t feel as fractured as it does under Disney.
Then the piece moves to the women who. it argues. helped “transform sci-fi into a lived-in subculture.” The author says fan fiction. role-play. and participatory audience practices were inherited from female “Star Trek” fans. and describes how women lined up for screenings. made costumes for conventions. and helped build core structures for modern “Star Wars” clubs. events. and engagement. In that description, women are “always” positioned as Jedi.
Princess Leia is described as central to that equation. The author points to the late Carrie Fisher’s portrayal as sarcastic, politically outspoken, armed, and constantly irritated by the men around her, describing her energy as unusually feminist for a heroine then.
With that groundwork laid. the article makes a specific link to the present: the writer discusses Disney sending “The Mandalorian and Grogu” into theaters now. noting that Sigourney Weaver is joining the franchise as Colonel Ward. For decades. the author says. Weaver’s Ellen Ripley in 1979’s “Alien” represented the kind of female authority figure sci-fi fandom embraced.
But the piece argues that in a fragmented modern culture. even Weaver’s arrival can expose too much about the present moment. It says Kennedy’s time at “Star Wars” foregrounded women’s involvement as an ideological event rather than an artistic one—so even a literal living legend risks feeling like a test of the era rather than a triumph on its own.
The author concludes that the lingering impression hurts almost everyone in the global “Star Wars” audience. Representation for women and girls in sci-fi remains critically important. the piece argues. but it also says ensuring “Star Wars” felt hospitable for everyone was extraordinarily difficult—and Kennedy’s 14-year attempt. as described here. made it impossible.
From there. the article shifts into a sharper lived experience: it says women and girls are welcomed as Disney consumers. while select “assholes” on the audience side say they aren’t real “Star Wars” fans. It argues that celebrity women of “Star Wars” remain hyper-visible representations of the franchise’s decline. and that they continue to take unjustified heat for a cultural collapse that. in the author’s view. started coming undone the minute Lucas sold it.
The author says discussions about “Star Wars” can feel radioactive even among otherwise normal cinephiles, because the franchise can become a conduit for fighting about gender, politics, consumer culture, media nostalgia, late-stage capitalism, or the precarious state of democracy itself.
The piece describes the underlying tension in recent conversations as a stranger demanding their chance to explain exactly who ruined what and why—ending, it says, with the universal takeaway that the franchise was flattened into generic IP maintenance.
The final movement returns to the women who end up inheriting the exhausted versions of experiences that should have been wonderful. The author frames “The Mandalorian and Grogu” as still tracking for a solid opening weekend at the box office. and notes the discomfort of seeing Weaver on posters while. in the writer’s view. the best contemporary “Star Wars” offers female audiences yet another film helmed by a man.
The article closes with a personal accounting. The author compares the experience to arriving at a big party too late—after the cantina lights have already come on. It says the viral joy of “Baby Yoda” in 2019 feels impossibly far away now. For the writer, the energy isn’t there to talk about it anymore.
And with that uncertainty—about what someone truly means when they say Disney ruined “Star Wars”—the piece ends where it started: “I don’t even want to get into it.”
The article also notes: “Disney’s ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is in theaters now.”
Star Wars Disney Kathleen Kennedy Daisy Ridley Rey Daisy Ridley harassment Kelly Marie Tran Moses Ingram Laura Dern Phoebe Waller-Bridge Leslye Headland Deborah Chow The Acolyte Obi-Wan Kenobi The Mandalorian and Grogu Sigourney Weaver culture wars