Disney and Lucasfilm made a strong case for their future stewardship of Star Wars with 2015’s The Force Awakens. Sure, it heavily rested on nostalgia, but it was great to be reintroduced to a galaxy far far away, and deserved to become a box office smash. The Last Jedi attempted to recreate that feat, but despite being a hit with critics, a very loud group of fans absolutely despised it. And The Rise of Skywalker…? Well, let’s just say that it deserves every bit of hate it gets.
With the dust slowly settling on Disney’s inaugural trilogy, the fan consensus is that represents a huge missed opportunity and was clearly a bungled production. But is that view really universal?
An interesting discussion is taking place on r/StarWars going over any actual evidence that “most people” hate the sequel trilogy. Replies point out that it doesn’t make sense to treat the massive global Star Wars fandom as a single entity and that those griping about the movies on various forums aren’t representative of wider opinion.
It’s rightly noted that “negative voices are louder.” After all, someone saying “I liked the movie” isn’t as compelling to read as an angry takedown of every little thing wrong with it. This feeds into the YouTube movie discussion ecosystem, which incentivizes extreme points of view for clicks. There are many people whose full-time job is being angry about Star Wars on the internet, and they need to post as much content as possible.
Replies also identify the simple truth that most casual viewers simply watched the movies, enjoyed them to various degrees, then got on with their lives. In addition, many of those viewers would have been actual children who simply enjoyed the films for what they were without getting caught up in whether Rey was a “Mary Sue” or if Rian Johnson ruined Luke Skywalker.
So we think it’s safe to say that ‘most people’ at least somewhat enjoyed Disney’s sequel trilogy, though it’s unlikely they spend much time thinking about them three years on from The Rise of Skywalker.
