"Get Woke, Go Broke"

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I'm not sure Mary Sue is the right term. That's about the author inserting themselves into the narrative as a near perfect character who is the centre of attention, has all the solutions to every problem, loved by all etc. The term originated from a particular fan fiction story decades ago, it wasn't about female characters in particular.

I suggest you read my post, as it would be a waste of forum space to make the same statements over. In summary, "wokeness" is good for business if your customer base is in favor of "wokeness" and bad for business if your customer base is not in favor of "wokeness." It's not a one-size fits all criteria, and "wokeness" can indeed do some harm to some brands.

... Male "power fantasies" don't get nearly the same amount of criticism that female ones do.

In that case I would consider any of the characters played by the likes of somebody like Arnold Schwarzeneggee to be like a Mary Sue, and yet he isnt hated anywhere as much as Rey from the new Star Wars movie.

On Star Wars... there’s a two minute scene where the characters free some captive animals in The Last Jedi, but other than that they’re no more or less “political” than the originals and much less than the prequels. The accusation of “wokeness” for those films seems to come primarily from the fact that they cast a black man in a leading role and made a woman force sensitive, with some from making a woman a general in The Last Jedi. I don’t think TLJ is a good film, but it isn’t a political one.

Now not every brand has the potential to expand, but elasticity of audience is real in general terms and shouldn’t be underestimated.

I don’t think it is quite right. For one thing, I’d say Captain Marvel and Black Panther were very much part of an established franchise. But they managed to attract far more viewers. I don’t quite understand why CM was quite so successful but ten years ago you’d probably have agreed with Ike Perlmutter that audiences just don’t want to see women superheroes. The audience is elastic and is rarely the biggest it could be. “The Avengers” was a huge success with an all-white team and one woman. The Infinity films were even bigger successes. I don’t think that’s entirely down to BP/CM but I’d be surprised if none of it is.

Rey is probably one of the better uses of it

as she does master the force very quickly... but so does Luke Skywalker, who is also inexplicably an amazing pilot.

Definitely. It's so bad they should consider renaming the trope after her.

http://www.castaliahouse.com/rey-sue-th ... rson-ever/

When first she meets another primary character, Rey saves both their lives, even in the face of his bumbling machismo which threatens to get them both killed. Then she flies a starship for the very first time (completely untrained) and—though a rank amateur—she pulls off several maneuvers Han Solo would have had trouble duplicating even on his very best day as a pilot. Then her and Finn spend an entire hour gushing over how awesome she is. Then she goes to repair the ship—no mention how an untutored scavenger from the back of the back of beyond knows how to service a damned starship, much less the Millennium Falcon, a ship which gave even an astromech droid (MADE for starship repair) the fits—and gets to yell at Finn because he’s so damn incompetent. And she speaks droid, AND she speaks Wookie. And she releases monsters to kill bad guys (which she thought was the wrong thing to do, but turns out she was mistaken as the monsters eat up all the bad guys. (This is the only time she’s ever wrong, in the entire movie.)) With the tough, criminal bad guys dead or running, Rey saves Finn, Han, and Chewie from certain death at the hands of the monsters she released. And she deftly repairs the Millennium Falcon—AGAIN. Finn wants to flee like a coward, Rey wants to stand like a hero. She’s suddenly able to read people’s mind with The Force, as well as do that funky Jedi Mind Trick, all with absolutely no training. She gets captured once, and taken to the BIGGEST MILITARY BASE IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY, but before the menfolk can rescue her, Rey rescues herself. And then free-climbs an infinitely high wall without a HINT of vertigo or hesitation. And then bypasses the security system of the Planet-sized Interstellar Planet Killing Secret Base Death Machine, prompting Han to say “Girl knows her stuff because she’s awesomesauce and coolicious and brilliantatious like that. Word to your mother, my woolly Wookie homie.” (What did Luke get in a similar situation? “Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.”) And then she defeats the super-evil, super-competent, been-training-in-The-Force-for-over-ten-years evil Sith dude in a lightsaber battle.



I didn't recall dear old Luke being much of one, so I actually went and looked this up. He's a good pilot due to spending most of his youth flying around - this is briefly mentioned by other characters in the first film and Luke himself talks about shooting down womp rats in a T-16 (a ship). Regarding the force, however quickly he may have picked it up (it's debatable how long he was actually training with Yoda), at the very least he had to be trained to be anything more than useless. Not so for Rey...

Luke has a lot of inexplicable skills for a farm boy whose pilot skills are limited to hunting wombrats in a T-16.

Yes, you're missing a lot.

For a start, your examples seem to be pretty dodgy. Ascribing the cancellation of one of the Game of Thrones prequels to "identity politics" seems unsubstantiated, as well as bizarre given GoT is utterly full of that stuff and hugely successful. Plus another GoT prequel was also ordered. Sometimes TV shows don't get past pilot. It happens.

Terminator, also, seems like a weird example. The franchise has been dying for a long time now, but Dark Fate made slightly more than Genisys in its opening domestic weekend, and has been praised for the quality of the action - audiences just aren't interested in the Terminator any more.

Let's look at some other examples:

- The Marvel films. Marvel executive Ike Perlmutter blocked the development of "Black Panther" and "Captain Marvel", and advised DC not to make "Wonder Woman", because he thought films led by black people or women would not succeed. When Perlmutter lost control following the takeover of Disney by Marvel, those two films were fast-tracked and both made over $1bn - more than any of the solo Captain America or Thor films. The recent Avengers: Endgame has a cringeworthy "girl power" sequence but still became the bestselling film of all time.
- DC films - DC/Warner Bros ignored Perlmutter's advice and made "Wonder Woman" anyway. It made over $700m, not a huge success but a big profit and more money than "Man of Steel", their most recent Superman film.
- Harry Potter - the franchise itself is very progressive, but its big moment of controversy was the play that cast a black woman as Hermione. The play has been a huge success. The New York showing grossed over $2.5m in a single week, the record for a play.
- Star Trek - the franchise itself is very progressive and that has continued through to the modern day.
- Doctor Who - both throughout its history and then specifically with the casting of the Thirteenth Doctor, which increased viewing figures despite a decline in storytelling quality.
- Avatar - the formerly most successful film of all time is about deforestation and colonialism
- The Alien franchise - famously used gender-blind casting and still launched a very successful film franchise
- Star Wars - the three protagonists of the Star Wars sequels are a woman, a black man, and a Latino man. Still made more money than the original trilogy or prequels (though I suspect less than the originals when you adjust for inflation).
- The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Attwood's best-selling book, adapted into a hugely popular TV show and now a sequel. Clearly Attwood's biggest financial success.
- Stranger Things - Netflix's most popular TV show has only got more popular as it has introduced more female characters, and now a gay character.
- Society as a whole. Society has outlawed racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry, and nearly every business will have HR policies forbidding those things and stating their commitment to diversity and inclusion, and yet the economy has continued to grow.

In short - I find no good evidence for the phrase "get woke, go broke". There are "woke" brands that have failed, yes, but there are also "non-woke" brands that have failed. Brands fail. If anything, it seems that "getting woke" is a good money-maker, but at worst it does no harm.