A discussion on the crazy things said about TLJ after release

"TLJ is under performing"

 

But the last point is true to some extent. Read the reviews of it's time. One critic call Yoda a Wanton that speaks like a fortune cookie and another critic called Tauntauns a space camel. Official SW has a article about it.

 

I have seen the reviews online not long ago, actually I think someone posted them here on this forum as well. The reviews aren't all glowing but I would not characterize them as indicative of the film being divisive (which was my original point). There is certainly no evidence that I have seen that the audience was divided then as it is now. If there was a poll that you know of, please share it (serious request, not being snarky at all). All I know is that people continue to assert that ESB was divisive in a desperate attempt to find some talking point to protect TLJ. As often as I have heard it's odd to see people this angry about a movie, it's even more odd to see people becoming the personal bodyguards for a movie they had nothing to do with LOL.

 

I think it has to do with people picking apart a movie but blindly ignore the faults of the original movie and some cases, the very thing they are hating on is seen in the OT. Most of the time people justify themselves saying "it's 30 years ago and it was okay for it's time" which is just a lame cop-out. I don't think a such poll exist but I'm sure if they had internet available to the public in the 80s, people will be complaining like they are now. I'm sure people would be complaining about Han using the light saber and the time issue in ESB between Lukes training and the other events that take place in the movie and i'm darn sure if the internet was around in the 70s, people who be ripping George apart about an actual plot hole of the death star exhaust port.

 

But what if...the audience and fanbase are two different things. The fanbase back then is not the fanbase of today. It wasn't a post-prequel, post-E.U., post-30 years of fan fiction and timeline obsessed fanbase that brings 40 years of baggage into the theater. Personal bodyguarding happened during the prequels and it continues regarding the EU.

The reaction to ESB can't be compared because the fanbase didn't come with all the baggage it does today. But not because ESB was unifying or embraced...because it wasn't. Any of us can point to the retconning of how much we hated, and now have come to peace with the prequels because - "oh the themes were good and Darth Plagueis and other stuff came out of the prequels so we can love them now". Or how we all wanted to throw out Ahsoka until four seasons later when she became of the top characters in Star Wars.

The 'personal bodyguarding' is as much fans coming to terms with how funky and crazy Star Wars content has always been and being surprised that other fans have such an attachment to the Luke of yesteryear, or of the EU or how space physics is 'supposed' to work.

A franchise that says a lot about the dangers of unhealthy attachment to dogma (its....like a central theme FFS) certainly has a fanbase with tons of emotional baggage.

 

There are legitimate complaints about the movie.

There are complaints about TLJ that could just as easily be applied to any of the Star Wars films.

There are nonsense complaints that are mostly just from people that are so angry they are desperately searching for any possible reason to attack the movie.

There are the knucklehead complaints from people that have political hot buttons they can't see past.

And then there are complaints like this...

...that are just crazy.

The last group are my favorites.

 

Say what you want about The Last Jedi.....at least it doesn't suffer from chronic misspelling, like another recent SW movie....

*cough* "Rouge One" *cough*

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 30, 2018 ---

Uhhh....IMDB has TLJ at 55% with an 8/10 or higher.....vast majority of the 303,00+ voters really liked it.

The most crazy thing said about TLJ is this "vast majority hated it" idea that seems to be pervasive.

 

Me: I thought it was crazy that people said that the bad reviews on iMDB were exclusively due to a bot campaign
Them: Uhhh....IMDB has TLJ at 55% with an 8/10 or higher.....vast majority of the 303,00+ voters really liked it.
Me thinking to myself: Uhhh... what do the ratings have to do with whether or not bad reviews on iMDB were exclusively due to a bot campaign?

This site is amazing

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2018 ---

Six years after Walt Disney Co. spent $4 billion to buy a single franchise, “Star Wars” is looking a little less stellar.

Despite being one of the past year’s most successful movies, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” has fallen short of Wall Street’s expectations due to a faster-than-expected falloff at the box office, declining toy sales and a poor showing in China.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-la...omentum-raising-concern-for-disney-1517245312

 

Might there be other reasons than "the movie being bad"?

 

The user reviews are given simultaneously with the ratings on the site. What are you even talking about?

 

Possibilities are endless. There could certainly be people who hate the movie for aspects that have nothing to do with the technical execution of the film, some may hate the story, some may hate the political undertones, some may just not like Rian, or any one of the leads, some may have been people who were dragged to see it who weren't SW fans and didn't understand anything. You can literally speculate hundreds of reasons why someone might say the movie is bad which may or may not have substance.

 

No I meant: "why the movie made less money" It does not necessarily have to be because people assume the movie is bad. There are a variety of factors which contribute to possible lower box office results in comparison to previous entries.

 

Possibilities still endless. Market in China may simply have been softer than what they expected -OR- there may have been another movie (or set of movies) out that that stole some of the market share from the target audience. Time inbetween episodes could also play a factor (how much anticipation there was). Prior to TFA we had no clue what was going on, prior to TLJ we have a basic framework and so potentially have less anticipation (knowing some of the story). There are any number of reasons that may play a role.

 

Exactly.

 

What are some other possibilities?

 

"Ticket sales = good film"

 

Fatigue. No matter the quality, 3 movies in 3 years is bit too much. You need to built up anticipation and denormalize the release of Star Wars movies if they ever want to reach the audience and income of TFA.

That's definitely one, but those you mentioned above are certainly possibilities. For instance the PG13 rating. I don't see an aweful lot of youngsters in a Star Wars movie these days. There were a lot in the prequel days. Less so in Revenge of the Sith. But really less from TFA onwards. They are very scary for children. Especially Rogue One. If I were I child, like when I saw Empire, I wouldn't care less if it was scary. My mom neither. She wanted me to see it. But a lot of parents do these days. They're scared that if their children are exposed to scenes of fear and violence they might be traumatized. That's why in Star Wars rebels, no one with a face....really dies.

 

OT: 1977, 1980, 1983. 3 films in 6 years
PT: 1999, 2002, 2005. 3 films in 6 years

ST&Anthologies: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. 6 films in 5 years

< "Greed. Quantity. Impatience. Not quality. That is why Disney fails."

 

I do think that we have to be careful when comparing stuff to TFA, though. Sure, it was the first Stat Wars movie in years, so it was bound to garner attention.

However, when you make the comparison that if future movies don't net more sales than TFA they're somehow a failure, you have to be pretty liberal with the use of the word "failure". Not beating one of the most successful movies of all time is a pretty high bar to measure success by, even when we are talking STar Wars.

 

When will you people learn that total value of accumulated ticket sales does not equal "good film" ? Many tickets were bought weeks or months BEFORE anyone even saw or read reviews of the film! Compare the drop in ticket sales from first week to the following weeks after!

If you package, market and sell sh.. "inferior snow" well enough, you can even persuade eskimos, polar bears, penguins and yetis to buy "inferior snow" !