Can we just separate for one moment what goes on within the screen from what goes on outside it?
Nope, there are no women in Star Wars because in ancient traditions war is a subject relative to men. And it’s absolutely logic that in a fictional tale, that takes place in a fictional galaxy and that borrows from traditional sources women are to be not as represented.
Yet no one complains here about Ahsoka Tano, or about Ayla Secura, or about female Jedi masters in the PT. Nor about Leia or Padmè. Because their inclusion didn’t feel forced. No one complained about Windu being portrayed by Samuel Jackson neither.
As probably Holdo’s inclusion wouldn’t have felt forced were it not for the fact that there already was Admiral Ackbar to be used, there already was Leia to be a strong woman in charge. And she has been there since the 80s. So to many of us the sole point of some characters is to push an agenda very well outside the logic of the movie. And it just doesn’t fit the Star Wars mythos to many of us. So what’s the problem with it?
Why does a girl have to be “represented” on screen as a soldier? In the end, being a market product it just explains itself within the logic of market and therefore it’s not even femminism, it’s just plain toy selling and widening the market base.
I totally can take RJ’s new trilogy, outside the Skywalker saga being about the most misrepresented social sector taking over the galaxy and bossing people around. It’s a LFL product and have this kind of inclusion is not only good but even necessary…both for equality reasons and market reasons. Yet being it a different tale, set with a totally different perspective, it can have its own rules and take it wherever he wants to.
The thing is they just included a bunch of stuff that didn’t pertain to the repertory of the original saga in it, when they have plenty of room to do their stuff somewhere else.
Though in the end, it’s their story, they own it and they can do with it whatever they want.