‘M:I Fallout’ Director Doesn’t Want to Direct a Star Wars Movie Because of the Toxic Fan Culture

In the good old days—before social media—a director's job was over once the film hit theaters. Now, anyone writing or directing a big budget franchise movie can expect to have to defend their decisions online for the rest of their lives.

It's enough to scare anyone off of directing a Star Wars movie or a comic book movie, and that's exactly what has happened to Oscar winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie. The writer/director of Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation and the upcoming Fallout took to social media to defend his friend Rian Johnson and revealed in the process that the current state of fandom has put him off working on anything in the Star Wars universe.

It all started with a tweet McQuarrie made in praise of Rod Serling, and then a whole bunch of people showed up to change the subject...

It continues as well, should you be interested in seeing even more of the worst of humanity.

I constantly hear people say that the toxic end of fan culture is a small but very vocal minority, which I buy on some level as I'm not the type to go espousing my beliefs about a work of art directly to its creator via social media. However, just like everything else in this world, it's up to the folks who consider themselves fans to put distance between them and the virulent end of fandom.

Religions have done this for centuries, making sure that people understand that there's a radical wing of every belief system and asserting that they don't speak for all believers. I think it's the same way here. Yes, there are awful, toxic fans out there, but they're also awful, toxic people. The internet puts them all on a level playing field, however, so it's up to those of us who don't agree with them to call them out.

So, to those of you out there who think that you speak for the majority just because you speak the loudest, may I say, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourselves. You're the reason we can't have nice things.