7/03/2018

Toxic Fandom Has Killed Christopher McQuarrie's Desire To Direct A 'Star Wars' Movie

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It's a sad reality that some extremely vocal "fans" get off on ruining things for other people. The worst are the Star Wars fans, who have grown so toxic over the years they accomplished the seemingly impossible act of running George Lucas and others away from the beloved franchise. With the reaction to Star Wars: The Last Jedi they've become even worse, recently driving star Kelly Marie Tran off social media. And now it appears they've done the same to Mission: Impossible-Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie, and he isn't even part of the franchise yet.

We don't know if McQuarrie ever would have directed a Star Wars movie, but his name has certainly been out there. But if it were ever going to happen it's not anymore, as a bizarre Twitter exchange with beleaguered The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has seemingly cured him of any desire to direct one. And who can blame him?

It all started when Johnson innocently steered aspiring filmmakers to follow McQuarrie because of the helpful writing/storytelling tips he offers on Twitter. That led to a discussion of The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling on the anniversary of his death, and one fan took offense to the "social justice warrior" stuff that he thinks should be removed from all fiction. That's ridiculous in itself, but it soon led to Johnson and McQuarrie becoming the targets of online attacks of a personal nature. Johnson may have been used to it after dealing with this kind of crap for months, but for McQuarrie it was too much.

I posted the essential tweet below, plus one of the more outrageous comments by a supposed "fan", but if you want to see how quickly these things can get out of control just check out McQuarrie's feed. Homeboy got the full dose of Haterade and he didn't even direct The Last Jedi! Johnson knew to get the Hell out of dodge and the infection spread to McQuarrie's Twitter.

I'm actually pretty pissed about this and hope McQuarrie changes his mind.  Not that I think he was goinig to make a Star Wars film, but he'll likely avoid anything with a rabid fanbase, and that includes Marvel, DC, whatever. We're missing out.