Fandom in Pieces

Star Wars has been on a roller coaster the last couple of years hasn’t it. It came back in 2015 with The Force Awakens and the consensus was that people loved it. Then 2017 happened and we got The Last Jedi which is probably one of the most divisive movies in the franchise’s history (more so than the prequels) and from that point the fan base was split in two. You either loved or hated it.

Critics certainly did whereas the audience it’s fair to say didn’t based on their rotten tomatoes score. To this day the films writer and director Rian Johnson still gets harassed on twitter by people who disliked the film. Why do people have such a negative reaction?  Here are some of the possible reasons.

There were too many twists

A film goer will on average accept one twist per story since anything more makes it inconsistent. The Last Jedi threw a lot of twist s and subverted the audience’s expectations too much to the point it could be seen as inconsistent with the other parts of the series.

No Room for Speculation

In the run up to the next film there was always speculation on what might happen. Is Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker’s father? Who are Rey’s parents? Episode 8 answered some questions while out right ignoring others which resulted in people going “What now?” For a lot of people there was nowhere to go or theories to craft and they only started when it was revealed that Rise of Skywalker had the Emperor returning and then the question was “How did he come back?”

Fans are fickle

I say this as a fan of the franchise and I still standby what I said in our review but fans build up their own version or expectations of what a film might be and the moment it doesn’t live up to that they turn nasty. See how they treated Kelly Marie Tran, Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd throwing verbal abuse at the actors and blaming them specifically for the faults in the films story.

I am by no means saying that these are the only reasons there are plenty more nuanced arguments about why the film was divisive and how the fan base has reacted to it. In all honesty I’m glad that Disney are taking a break from the films since it will allow things to reset a bit and give people the time to calm down and build perspective.