is nothing that crap-eating “wokeness” won’t kill. The Indiana Jones franchise is now a weak and insufferable parody of itself.
Here’s the iron rule: Didacticism utterly destroys whatever art it infects.
That is NOT to say that there can’t be moral or persuasive art–there can be. It’s just that in that case the didacticism is greatly secondary to the artistic expression itself–it is an organic outgrowth of the artist’s way of being in the world, not a ham-handed “lesson.”
How is it that these people don’t know this LONG understood issue? Even something as non-crucial as Greedo being altered so he shoots first. Scene ruined. And Han Solo’s character arc was hugely diminished.
JK Rowling famously did the same thing to the end of the final “Harry Potter” book, and it was jarringly discordant with the story arc. The result? The ending of the last book was a loser and that ineptitude infected the entire second half of the book. It was lame. It was hectoring, it was not being true to the characters. She couldn’t stick the landing. Therefore, many people just pretend that the last one was not written–at least the second half.
It’s a hazardous path. When an author or other artist crams an unruly character to fit into the Procrustean bed of his or her socio-political belief system, the work virtually always ceases to be compelling.
The work becomes a lesson from an old ruler-wielding schoolmarm, not art.