I mean, all of these franchises clearly have an agenda behind them.
Um, not really.
Take the Wheel of Time as an example. Every publicity article I read about the Wheel of TIme pushed the series as a feminist fantasy series. It was so bad that the Guardian ended up doing an article pointing out that the books aren't actually all that feminist.
Was that from the creatives themselves, or the writers of the articles projecting?
You get bad writing when you put politics ahead of plot and positive representation ahead of interesting characters.
I agree, except WoT DOES have interesting characters, and IS well written. Season 1 was excellent. So if you're correct about there being an "agenda," it apparently turned into a really good product.
What's funny about this is that the Wheel of Time novels have a lot of very powerful female characters, both good and evil. They really didn't need to push any agenda of "girl power" because the books themselves are already like that.
Again, who was pushing it? The closest thing I can recall was the statement that Moiraine was going to be the main character. And while some would disagree with me, watching season 1...she isn't. Not really.
Not feminist, because feminist tends to down play the male characters or make them look like morons. Which isn't the case. The male characters are definitely still important and the series does revolve around a single male character.
What they've done with the show, is fucked all that to make the womyn the most important aspect of the show and that's not the case.
Except they haven't. I don't know what version of the show you watched, but that isn't the case. Maybe if you include men's inability to channel without going mad, but that was in the books already.
The new star wars trilogy.
Um, where?
I can list flaws of the sequel trilogy till the twin suns of Tatooine set, but none of the issues with it are particuarly "feminist." Rey, maybe, I'll grant you, given how absurdedly powered she is, but that's about it.
Look at the Charlie's Angel's reboot, the 2016 Ghostbusters, new SW trilogy, Batwoman and Supergirl on CW. These very feministic driven pieces of media are always dogshit because they are poorly written rushed feeling products clearly designed to try and engage a niche feminist group, and then the people behind the failure say shit like, "Toxic masculinity ruined any chance of success". There is no awareness that they made a piece of shit that nobody was interested in in the first place.
What?
Okay, let's go through this piece by piece.
Charlie's Angels: Can't comment, maybe you're right.
Batwoman: Haven't seen, but if you're referring to the "I'm a woman" trailer for season 1, then yes, that was cringe as hell.
-Sequel Trilogy: No. Just no. The only possible claim it has to being feminist is Rey being overpowered. I'd also like to remind you that for a 'feminist' trilogy, Rise of Skywalker did a good job of sidelining Rose, to the extent that Charlie from Lost gets more lines than her. 0_0
Also, the sequel trilogy didn't "fail" in an objective sense. Much as I disliked it, looking at critical and commercial success, for the most part, it succeeded.
-Ghostbusters 2016: You can call this "feminist" only if you equate that with "girls who do things and are competent." Certainly I think it's a good movie, but that aside, how many times is gender brought up? I can think of two instances, and both are insults from the antagonist.
-Supergirl: So, I've seen the first two seasons only, so maybe things get worse later on, but while I agree that the first two seasons have feminist elements in them, and sometimes it's to the detriment of the plot, these are specific moments, not some overall trend. Also, didn't the show have six seasons? I'm not sure how that counts as "failing."
Edit: There's also seemingly a weird double standard going on here, the idea that bad writing can't simply be, well, "bad writing."
For Star Wars, let's take the prequel vs. sequel trilogy. The prequels have more politics in them then the other trilogies combined, yet it's the sequel trilogy that's called "political" because of "feminism." Both trilogies have their writing problems (for what it's worth, I go Original>Prequel>Sequel), but to simply say the sequels are bad because "feminism" is such a superficial reading as to what went wrong and why. It's like me saying the prequel trilogy is bad because of "toxic masculinity" for Anakin. That...no. Just, no. It reminds me of the arguments against Chibnall's run on DW. I detest it, but it isn't because of "feminism" or "forced diversity." Replace Thirteen with a man, replace her companions with straight white males, and the problems would still remain.
Also, for the CW's Arrowverse shows, the worst season I've ever seen is Flash Season 7. I've gone into length as to why it was terrible on this very sight. Spoilers, it's not due to "feminism." There's any number of reasons why writing can be bad, it's a cop-out to say "X is Y because (reason)."
But to claim that women got equal rights in the late 70's, and therefore no longer have any room to ask for more, is just ludicrous to me.
Alright, in the year 2022, in the societies we live in, what actual rights do men have that women don't?
The reason I say this is not because of games like the Last of Us or whatever, that's the developer's choice I don't like it but at the end of the day it's not my art, it is because if Lara Croft's next game had her in her traditional tank top and short shorts people would throw a shitfit about her being designed to appeal to the male gaze or whatever. They want women to loook as ugly and frumpy as them and anything that is too hyper attractive is viewed as a sexist problem.
Except Lara's more attractive now than she's ever been, so...
I get it, beauty's in the eye of the beholder, but this is making a mountain out of a molehill at best.
I mean, look at your avatar. Is Aerith more or less attractive now? I don't know, but there was an outrage about Tifa's boobs being shrunk, so it's hard for me to take the attractiveness argument seriously.