The LucasFilm Heathers
I was honestly kind of surprised when Brett Cooper spoke up on Leslye Headland’s behalf. It turns out she had worked for Headland on a show called Heathers that Paramount buried for political reasons. It was only loosely based on the 1988 movie. In this TV version, the Heathers are “body-positive queers,” and they are the ones that bully the entire school by simply threatening to destroy anyone who opposes them with accusations both online and IRL. Now that is actually brilliant, and since Paramount is every bit as Woke as Disney it never had a prayer of getting out in the wild except in the most butchered form.
Headland learned her lesson.
I now know how LucasFilm rides roughshod over Disney the way they do. The Woke cancer in that studio is beyond fully metastasized. It is run by its own group of Heathers and the rest of the company is clearly terrified of them.
Amandla Sternberg is a medium-talented actress, a surprisingly elegant violinist, and a top-tier activtress. She is an absolutely stellar Oppression Olympics Athlete. You know name it, she is oppressed by it, despite being from a laughably privileged background, certainly compared to me and 99.9 percent of the human race. Her mother, Karen Brailsford is an African-American spiritual advisor and writer who appears to be of the NK Jemison school. Her father is distressingly caucasian coming straight from Denmark. But good news! Her grandmother is from Greenland, that means she’s part Inuit! Because there are Inuit in Greenland.
Her oppression began in the Hunger Games when she received all kinds of racism from the middle school girls who were wearing their hair in a Katniss Arena Braid that year for playing the barely there character of Rue. She didn’t provide any recipts but surely how she feels about herself is proof enough. Amandla’s public dating history is all women and Jaden Smith, so there’s no reason at all to think she isn’t a genuine lesbian, (not even joking). Which added to her oppression, despite the fact that no one knew who the fuck she was. Amandla herself is supposedly worth $3 million plus. Invested with an eye for income that might get her around $100 K per year, I will grant that’s not a lot to get by on in LA but it is not destitution either.
Honestly, young black women should take note of her success. Look how far she got without a degree in Creative Gender Studies. You don’t need to go into mortgage sized debt to make it big as a parasite with a six-figure income at an NGO. She applied herself to studying her craft as an actress and musician in order to take her innate talents take her as far as they could go. Then she made up for those short comings by being a professional victim.
Ah, the warm blanket of victimhood. There’s nothing quite like it. Nothing is your fault and you still don’t have to do anything about your situation. It’s like a cozy bed on a snowy Saturday morning, no need to get out of it. Just enjoy it. It’s also a very big blanket, lots of friends to be made underneath it.
The Acolyte has had a very peculiar production history. It was pitched very publicly to Kathleen Kennedy right after the news broke that the Bobs (back when they were in synch) had ordered her not to green light any more projects. She allegedly publicly greenlit the show as a demonstration of force. However, it did not appear to have any resources assigned to it, meaning it looked like it was going to be in production hell until it vanished. However, Lesleye Headland learned Tinsel Town politics at the feet of the master, Harvey Weinstein. She went hunting for allies for her orphaned project and found them in the LucasFilm story group. Which is to say, the LucasFilm Heathers. Headland had been in Hollywood long enough to know that your vision is always going to be compromised in some way or another if it is ever to see daylight. The Heathers had their own pet project, the High Republic, since Headland wasn’t that worried about the setting, Star Warsish was as close as she was ever going to get anyway.
And they had their own story they were desperate to tell. They had gotten it off to what they felt was a good start with the Last Jedi. The last Jedi and the last Sith lord were dead by the end of it. Star Wars was no longer going to be a story of good versus evil, it would only be about shades of grey. No real heroism was to be allowed and what there was, wouldn’t be done by any man. The Force would be female from then on.
Except, Mickey the Great and Terrible screamed in outrage when he saw how few Rose Tico dolls were being sold and brought JJ Abrams back in to try and reverse course after the Titanic had plowed stem first into the iceberg. Jon Favreau was brought in to helm a TV series. The LucasFilm storygroup was iced out in general.
That left the Heathers, Headland’s pet projdect. There were persistent rumors that money was getting funneled away from projects like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan to keep The Acolyte moving forward. Which would explain the cheap appearance of all three shows.
About this time Headland acquired the kind of actress Iger’s Disney finds irresistible. Amandla Stenberg could be counted on to declare herself under all manner of oppression at the flick of a switch. It was wondered at the time if this was an under-the-table effort to embarrass Disney into putting resources into the Acolyte.
If so then congrats Leslye it worked well for you.
The Acolyte has been hilariously incompetent in every way available to it and we’re only halfway done. Obi-Wan and Boba Fett were equally incompetent. Yet this one has stood out for one reason. There is no longer any flirting about the edges, this show has dived headfirst into left-wing politics.
This isn’t a terrible idea, It gets half the audience on your side as a matter of principle and that is more than they’ve had for a while. Disney is institutionally incapable of objecting. Which would explain Amandla Stenberg’s “music video.” This was meant to be a clapback to all the “intolerable racism” directed at her. We have to take her word for it because again, no receipts. I feel the most unfair part of her video was where she derides journalists for not “speaking the truth.” Which is to say, not repeating her talking points, and honestly, it’s a little unfair. They are doing that, it’s just that no one pays attention to them anymore so it feels like they are doing nothing so far as she’s concerned.
A stunt like that was the reason she was hired in the first place. She claims to have got it shot, and copyrighted in three days. She also is sending out notices on anyone that uses it on YouTube. This thing was shot in a very bad neighborhood and that means security. The notices mean organization. A YouTube-recognized copyright takes a little time. This thing was planned and probably shot before the Acolyte was first aired.
This is what LucasFilm is reduced to now. They have no hope of actually entertaining people so now it’s pure Leftist politics. Clever. Disney can punish underperformance but not left-wing activism.
