The Star Wars Sandbox and The Last Jedi: Why #NotMyStarWars Means #NotMySandbox

I have been perusing a lot of Star Wars media lately. I’ve been reading Strategy Strikes Back (review coming soon), watching some fan-made movies, checking out some Star Wars tactics discussions, and even probing the depths of The Last Jedi video reviews.

Caution: the last of these is not advisable. They are very emotional, both pro and con. The Last Jedi is a very divisive movie. Let’s talk about it.

A lot of the pushback on The Last Jedi rests on the premise that the movie was written to meet a social agenda and that Disney is using the franchise to promote an anti-white male cause and correct 40 years of gender imbalance and injustice in George Lucas’s stories.

I’m not buying that. At all.

Years ago, I read Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins. Jenkins is a well-known and well-regarded professor in Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California. He writes often on his blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, with “Aca-Fan” being a mash-up of Academic and Fan. He has been studying fan culture and media for a long time.

One of the key terms I learned reading Jenkins was his definition of a media “Sandbox”. Simply put, a sandbox is where a player can create what they…