Are The Creators Turning The Actors Against The Fans?

NOTE: Swearing in the trailer below and in one of the other videos in use

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has already had its share of controversy before the box is even constructed to come right out of. Many critics pointed to all the product placement. While Sony pushing it’s own product is no surprise, there’s also the Porsche spaceship (on a space bounty hunter’s income?), Adidas sneakers, and that gaming chair she’s using as a pilot seat probably came from somewhere but I missed it. I guess this is what we do to push AAA games since it’s less clear if such games will be successful.

One of the reasons for that lack of success is the other controversy: the character. In the first trailer she comes off as the trendy “girlboss” warrior woman in a medium that has been trying to blank out attractive women. At least in the western gaming sphere. Marvel Rivals out of China (of all places) and Stellar Blade out of South Korea have featured powerful women looking sexy and kicking butt not like a male character would but as a female character would. It’s not the gender, it’s the depiction, and gamers are getting tired of unattractive women, especially the ones who were attractive in the first game (Mary Jane in the Insomniac Spider-Man games comes to mind). I’m not really here to talk about all of that, but it does lead into our discussion topic.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tati Gabrielle, who is the model and voice of Intergalactic‘s player character, Jordan A. Mun, discussed her roles in the TV and movie versions of other Naughty Dog properties, but it’s when she discussed how Neil Druckmann, creator of the original The Last Of Us games and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, prepared her for backlash from this game based on his experience…and when I read it I got the impression he was already trying to tell her what all the negative responses “really” were, which got me to thinking: is this going on in Hollywood all over? Note that Druckmann is part of the Hollywood culture even though he’s making video games, only know he’s put the pseudo-zombie horror game franchise on pause to focus on the HBO retelling of the first two games, so I’m counting him. And I believe he might not be alone.

To look at the controversy about the game I’m grabbing a video from a YouTuber I’ve never seen before, The ComebackKids TV. This should sum up what gamers were saying about the trailer.

Do we know she’s lesbian? It does fit the Hollywood stereotype. A lot of the issues come from history. Druckmann made Ellie gay in The Last Of Us II, though at least she wasn’t shown to be definitely straight in the first one, as far as I’ve heard at least. Meanwhile the new character Abby was the target of so many jokes because she looked like a steroid-popping man in the apocalypse, and any defense of that design could be shot down not only by real woman bodybuilders, MMA fighters, or pro wrestlers, but by the actress chosen for the HBO series–all of whom look nothing like the model in the game. Even the mocap actor didn’t look like her, which was also something Insomniac did with Mary Jane in the second Spider-Man game and Alloy in the Horizon games. Compare that to the lead in Stellar Blade, modeled after the creator’s wife. At least Jordan does look like Gabrielle. Then again that leads to other complaints about actors and actresses wanting to be seen on screen versus being seen as the character. We heard that from Cynthia Erivo in Wicked and it’s one of the reasons all the superheroes now have collapsing helmets that they take off all the time because secret identities are not a thing anymore at Marvel, be it movie or comic. I think Spider-Man is the only one with one and that was part of the devil deal in the comics and Peter being forgotten completely in the MCU.

I can understand Gabrielle being upset at the blowback to the character model because it is based on her actual appearance. It’s her playing the part, like some of those celebrity Sat AM cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s. The Gary Coleman Show and Camp Candy come to mind. However, if this design were an exception in western gaming I don’t think people would have minded. There are games with a woman as the fighter that people like, or at least complaints come from the gameplay mechanics and controls, not the character. Nobody complains about Ripley’s look in later Alien movies because that’s not the worst part of the later sequels, and she was the exception based on circumstances rather than the rule today, not so much the baldness but the personality that goes with this look and how she keeps her ship. Jordan has that attitude that rubs people the wrong way. I’m not sure I’d like it on a guy but the girl version is somehow more annoying because they at least feel like they’re stuffing it in your face more than the male jerk with an attitude. Or maybe we expect it more from dudes. This is is all build-up to the interview. After discussing her appearances in the TV version of The Last Of Us and movie version of Uncharted we get to the game and the comments that got my attention.

The original The Last of Us, which released in 2013, made stars out of its lead actors, Troy Baker (Joel) and Ashley Johnson (Ellie), in the gaming space. Uncharted, similarly, became some of more widely recognized credits of Nolan North, who originated the game franchise’s lead character, Nathan Drake. As Naughty Dog continues development on its next big IP, Gabrielle is left wondering how Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet might impact her life.

The studio unveiled the game that’s been in the works since 2020 during the Game Awards ceremony last December. The announcement trailer revealed a story, set in an alternate history in which space travel progressed heavily by the year 1986, a factor that gives this galactic odyssey a retro-futuristic feel. Gabrielle’s Jordan pilots a Porsche space ship, rocks an Akira-style red jacket, and watches anime.

Baker was already pretty well know in the gaming space. His Joker is one of the better replacements for Mark Hamill now that he’s given up the role past Kevin Conroy’s passing. He’s voiced plenty of cartoons, including anime, and video games for other studios. If anything his breakout role in gaming would be Booker DeWitt in the Bioshock franchise more than Joel in the Last Of Us games. Guess she has to shill for the boss.

When Gabrielle first joined the Uncharted adaptation, she was intrigued by the idea of making a movie based on that kind of source material. Now, headlining a video game is opening her up to a whole new set of experiences.

“Neil’s been bootcamp-ing me,” she says — though perhaps not in the ways you might think. “I know Troy’s experience, I know Ashley’s experience…I know Laura Bailey’s experience.”

“Experience”?

Bailey originated the role of Abby in The Last of Us Part II and endured an onslaught of brutal gamer reactions to the character, especially after Abby kills Joel. In a making-of documentary, Bailey recalls through tears how these so-called fans even threatened her newborn over social media. Gabrielle, too, received backlash just for her presence as the lead of Intergalactic, though hers was racist in addition to misogynistic.

I’ll get into this later but I need the text wall broken here so…why is this guy attacking his defenders? Lucasfilm.

In fairness going after the kid is always a scum move and the responsible party should be ashamed, but let’s not pretend that’s the rule rather than the exception. People were upset with Abby, something Bailey had no control over as she was not the writer of the game, the director, or the character modeler. She doesn’t look like Abby, either. People were also unhappy that Abby brutally murders the character you played and got to know in the first game and yet there are levels where you have to play AS her and understand her reasoning. Her father was going to kill Elle for a cure that probably wouldn’t work according to MatPat, so Joel killed him as he had bonded with her as a daughter. We understand that. We just don’t want to kill a character we grew to like and then switch to the murderer later on. The only thing worse would have been if you played as Abby WHILE killing Joel.

She recalls, “I got a lot of love, but there was a lot of hate over me being a woman, me being a woman of color, me having my head shaved, all these things that I didn’t even actually initially see — I’m out of the social media zeitgeist for that reason — but once I did, Neil was like, ‘Ignore it. No matter what, me and you, we’re going to make something beautiful. We’re going to make something that we’re proud of.'”

Bounding Into Comics does confirm she got unnecessary hate…and some she brought on herself, like so many actors right now.

(It should be noted that while Gabrielle did indeed receive her fair share of intellectually dishonest attacks, she also exacerbated the situation by mocking her critics by responding with a piece of fan art showing both Jordan and The Witcher 4 lead Ciri drinking “Incel Tears“.)

But if she’s not going to see it anyway because she left social media because of existing backlash, why coach her on it now? And remember, unless Gabrielle is going after the fans like Amandla Stenberg and her infamous music video, nobody is going to care. That’s quite the trend right now, and Stenberg isn’t the only one from the Star Wars franchise having a fit. The more recent additions don’t even make sense. Kelley Marie Tran has discounted claims that she left social media due to fan harassment over Rose Tico and never blamed fans…until recently.

A lot has changed for Tran since “Star Wars.” But as she looks back on her experience with that fandom, she knows that the racism she faced was symptomatic of a larger, continuing issue. When considering what she wants to see change for actors of color who might not receive the support they need when they appear in major franchises, she replies: “The world?!”

…

“We live in a world where those identities have been weaponized so that people are not able to see the bigger picture,” Tran continues. “I really just want people to recognize, it’s the system that’s the problem. Stop scapegoating people of color or queer people or anyone who’s different.”

Now it could be Variety putting a spin on things…but what about recent comments by John Boyega. Fans defended the daylights out of him for the poor treatment of Finn in The Last Jedi losing his character arc while his presence on the poster was pushed to the corner for the Chinese version of the poster.

Yes, I used Nerdrotic. Just Some Guy no longer allows embedding of his videos. So here are two people who had no trouble with fans now suddenly having trouble with fans. I’ve seen other actors “warned” by directors and producers that the “toxic” fans are going to go after them. However, most of us put the blame on the directors and producers as well as the writers and character modelers for games and animation. They’re the ones responsible. As I’ve said before, the actors don’t care. They just see a role they want to play with little understanding of the source material, sometimes by force by the directors and producers insisting they don’t watch or read it.

Tran’s statement about race being “weaponized” is technically true, but not in the way presented in her interview. I’ve seen a few interviews where actors will state that the director or producer “warned” them about the backlash and that it was only racists, sexists, and other bigots, not that they were passionate fans who just want a proper representation of existing characters and a continuation with good characters. So they’re immediately bias against fans, not listening to what they’re actually saying because they loved playing that character or working with that director or other things along those lines. A proper response to fan concerns about Intergalactic would have been more like…

“I hear your concerns and let me convince you to give us a chance. Yes, there’s product placement, but that helps pay for the game and gives us a chance to play with the world using actual products if they continued to exist in our alternate future. Jordan is a tough, self-assured, independent woman but she won’t be an indestructible girlboss. I love playing her as tough but it’s boring if she doesn’t struggle and grow, especially since this is a video game and players want a challenge. Any abilities that allow her to fight off giant robots twice her size and four times her strength will be explained away and make for good game mechanics as you upgrade and choose your gear. As far as whether or not she’s a lesbian, that is simply her character. It will not be her only aspect and really in this game it doesn’t come up. It’s one dude she hates for his crimes and a bunch of genderless killer robots. She has a personal vendetta with this one target but she’s a space bounty hunter in an alternate post-1980s world and everything about her story, personality, weaponry, and abilities will reflect that story, not some agenda that ruins the game. I love playing Jordan and I want you to enjoy playing AS her as she battles a hostile environment to get her man. Please give this game a chance.”

Instead we’re told this about the game:

If The Last of Us is about grief, Intergalactic is about faith. Druckmann told The New York Times the game centers around a fictitious religion and “what happens when you put your faith in different institutions.” Gabrielle expounds on this concept.

“The question of faith is not black and white,” she explains. “When you initially think of faith, you think of religion, which is a part of it, but there’s also faith in oneself. There’s faith in your environment or your community. All that faith means is, What are your beliefs? What are the things that you hope for? Faith sounds flowery, but we all experience it day in and day out. What is your reason for waking up?”

No offense, Gabrielle, but the people you’re working for are not my first choice to discuss religion and faith, as the Hollywood mindset can’t tell the difference between faith and culture and have personal bias against one faith in particular. I would instead encourage Gabrielle to actively seek out reviews when the game releases, or live gameplays. I can recommend a few critics and game streamers who know the difference between character and performer, and place any blame where it belongs unless something is off with her actual performance. Feel free to call out what you see as bigotry, but keep an open mind yourself while giving your naysayers reason to do the same. See what they actually say versus what Druckmann told you they will say. Listen to no spin but what your own ears tell you. Show your willing to listen and find critics who will do the same even within the angrier members. Maybe you do have a great game here, but that will depend on the creators. If there are game bugs, odd dialog choices, questionable controls or mechanics, or a lame story none of that is on you and so long as you don’t attack the fans they may be willing to see that. Here what they tell you, not the boss who has interest in seeing his critics shut up while he plays to groups that will praise him but not buy or play the game. “Treat others as you would want to be treated.”

In the same vein I would encourage the critics to wait to see the game in action before passing final judgement if history didn’t already make that more and more difficult. There will be players who, mostly for the views, will play this game to see if it’s worth your getting and if they focused on making a good game rather than false pandering and shoving the game out the door they can fix with day one patches. The game looks good, but it’s the gameplay and presentation that will truly make or break this game. Be cautious because Druckmann has burned people before, but keep complaints to the game, not personal attacks, and convince her to give you a chance to explain your position. She shouldn’t have to work on a terrible game just because she likes the character, and if the game industry won’t listen to players, maybe if we can get past the biased creators and convince the actors we are passionate about what we love (and some actors have taken note so it’s not impossible), that common ground might net us the ally instead of the failed creators who continue to be the ones who ruined our favorite media.