Did TLJ kill the tradition of fan theories?

I think most new parents figure out how to be a parent by their own parents (foster or adopted as well as biological). We don't only learn by what they did, but by what they didn't do. For most people, we want to be better and reduce the bad experiences while improving both quantity and quality of bad experiences. Your job doesn't make you a good or bad parent, but how much time you allow your job to take your free time away from your family does. It's possible in Leia's case that Bail Organa was much like her and way a lot of the time fighting to right wrongs, and to her she found it inspiring, so she thought her child would view it the same. That's the thing about parenting, even if it's your kid, they won't translate what you do the same as you did as a child. The experience is unique to each individual.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 7, 2018, Original Post Date: Mar 7, 2018 ---

I was just thinking about this too. I think there are several factors. Some fans are angry, some feel trolled, many just don't find the questions that are hanging that motivating to make theories on. If you look at the amount of posts for TFA and TLJ, the number of posts is quite large, even if we assume there will be more coming for TLJ, it won't match the speculation and intrigue that TFA had. I think the fandom is uninspired, we simply don't have a lot of material to theorize on in comparison to TFA.

There's also been a pretty big fan backlash to fan theories, as mentioned by the OP, as many fans who liked or loved TLJ use head canon and fan theories as the excuse as to why those who didn't enjoy TLJ have a negative opinion of it (true or not).

I agree with the op though, losing fan theories takes a lot of fun out of the fandom. It's not entirely gone, but it's taken a hit. I didn't mind the whole "Your Snoke theories suck." quip by RJ until I saw the movie. When I saw RJ post that, I expected he had something pretty spectacular in store for Snoke. Now his death was cool, but I expected more, but I didn't have a set theory, just expectation because if everyone elses sucked, then he must have something (instead of nothing, which to me sucks even more).

 

There are fan theories and then there is writing for the author (because there was an apparent lack of exposition). I think both are very similar and there is some overlap, but I think TLJ has a lot more of the latter and less of the former.

Personally, I love reading about both, regardless of how outlandish and far out they are. SW always seems to need some, I think most fantasy and sci-fi requires some as things get quite technical in a world of make belief. I really enjoyed reading the fan fill in as I hope JJ picks up on some of it and it makes it way onto EPIX so I get better enjoy the ST. However my hopes are not great that this will happen.

SW for me has always been something to speculate about with friends, and debate and fact check ect... unfortunately most of my friends have no appetite to partake in that since TLJ, which is why I'm here. Even after TFA a lot of my sci-fi friends had distanced themselves. That's pretty much why I'm here. I want to hear other people's ideas and share my own, have others expand on my own or have my ideas picked apart, or have someone set me straight when I'm off in my own head canon. I like the debate and the repartee and the sharing of ideas. Then I usually like seeing it go in an unexpected direction or see how close I hit on certain parts or aspects of the film. It's part of the fun of the experience for me and I think a large part of the fandom.

Speculations is fun. It's why sports fans get together to predict trades and team success or failures, or that of players. Movie, like sports, is a leisure activity, so I see no harm in it. The only way it gets bad is if it is having a negative impact on your life or if you're actively trying to negatively impact other people's lives (hate mail, threats ect...).

For the most part though, send me what you got, I wanna hear it.