News TLJ Negative Buzz Amplified by Russian Trolls, Study Finds

[Christopher]

I'll bet almost everyone who is an active Star Wars fan saw Solo in the theater at least once.

I consider myself an active Star Wars fan -- I'm actually a lot more fond of the post-Lucas movies and the Filoni-run TV shows than I am of the stuff before them -- and I haven't seen Solo yet. That's partly because my money is tight, but when I did get enough money to go see a couple of movies, I wasn't interested enough in Solo to make it one of them.

If TLJ left them with a not positve feeling when the left the theater, even if they can't define why, then their Star Wars momentum may have been disrupted enough to wait for Solo at home.

I don't believe "momentum" is a thing. Each movie is different. I loved TLJ. I don't think any Star Wars movie has ever left me feeling so delighted when I left the theater at the end. But that didn't make me want to rush out and see Solo, because it's a different part of the universe. It's not a continuation of the same ongoing storyline, so momentum has nothing to do with it. And it just didn't excite me as much, because it felt like an optional story and because the reviews were lukewarm.

All of the American right-wing? Some, yes, but all? Most right-wingers I know of keep slamming CNN as "Communist News Network" so somewhere there's a weird disconnect.

No, there isn't, because Russia hasn't been Communist since 1991. The GOP's past hatred toward the Soviet Union and its current love of the Russian Federation are of a piece, because the USSR was atheistic and anti-capitalist while Putin's Russia is Christian-nationalist and intensely capitalist. So they love Russia now for the same ideological reasons they hated the USSR (which was not Russia, but a union of 15 or so states of which Russia was the largest) a generation ago. (Though as I said, that requires them to somehow gloss over the fact that Putin used to serve the communist regime.)

 

[Relayer1]

Makes you wonder just how awesome IX will be... or not...

I'm thinking 'not'.

Partly because I'm a natural pessimist and partly because I have zero faith in JJ bringing it to a satisfying conclusion - after TFA I was utterly astonished that I enjoyed TLJ.

Each movie is different. I loved TLJ. I don't think any Star Wars movie has ever left me feeling so delighted when I left the theater at the end. But that didn't make me want to rush out and see Solo

Same here.

But I DID go to see Solo, because I've seen every SW movie when it came out, but it was without any great enthusiasm.

It was quite good.

 

[Christopher]

I fully intend to see Solo, I'm just waiting for Netflix to stream it.

 

[LJones41]

Does that mean those who genuinely dislike "TLJ" are supposed to change their minds?

I fully intend to see Solo, I'm just waiting for Netflix to stream it.

I saw it in the theaters twice and just bought the DVD.

 

[Relayer1]

Does that mean those who genuinely dislike "TLJ" are supposed to change their minds?

No reason why they should any more than I'll ever like TFA.

 

[DigificWriter]

I firmly believe that Episode IX is going to be a very different thing than TFA for a number of reasons:
1) TFA was made as a nostalgia-driven "agenda movie", but Abrams now has to "play by the rules" a bit more since he's building directly on TLJ

2) EIX has to bring nearly 5 decades of storytelling to a satisfactory conclusion while also leaving things open for future stories beyond the scope of the "Skywalker Saga"

3) There's far less "room for error" with EIX because, like it or not, it has to counteract the perception that TLJ divided the fandom to a heavy degree

 

[fireproof78]

Does that mean those who genuinely dislike "TLJ" are supposed to change their minds?

I've slowly warmed up to the PT as I have aged. Change is always possible.

 

[BillJ]

I've slowly warmed up to the PT as I have aged. Change is always possible.

Aging is a funny thing, I've tended to not take things as seriously as I get older. Warming up to things that were off putting when I was younger.

I figure I only need another 80 or 90 years to warm up to Star Trek: Discovery!

 

[Spot261]

That is an example of why people conflate "the past was never political" when, in fact, it was but not in such a heavyhanded way. At least in sci-fi.

 

[BillJ]

No one can ever claim the original Star Trek was subtle. Though I think that was part of its charm.

 

[BillJ]

1) TFA was made as a nostalgia-driven "agenda movie", but Abrams now has to "play by the rules" a bit more since he's building directly on TLJ

The only "agenda" the movie had was to reintroduce people to Star Wars and be profitable as fucking possible. It hit on both of those in spectacular fashion.

 

[Spot261]

No one can ever claim the original Star Trek was subtle. Though I think that was part of its charm.

I don't think Star Wars was subtle either, the nazi uniforms worn by thousands of white men on parade in almost mirror image of Nuremberg, the Templar style armour of the Stormtroopers (much beloved by the Nazis) who'd oppress the multitude of widely diverse alien races of the galaxy, the visibly much more diverse hero group, the almost spelled out in flashing lights Vietnam allegory of Endor, the actual flashing lights of the Hiroshima reference in Alderaan....need I go on?

 

[BillJ]

I don't think Star Wars was subtle either, the nazi uniforms worn by thousands of white men on parade in almost mirror image of Nuremberg, the Templar style armour of the Stormtroopers (much beloved by the Nazis), the visibly much more diverse hero group, the almost spelled out in flashing lights Vietnam allegory of Endor, the actual flashing lights of the Hiroshima reference in Alderaan....need I go on?

Visuals don't count!

 

[Spot261]

Visuals don't count!

Ok, the Alderaan one still counts, as does the Endor one, not to mention the racial purity inherent of the philosophy of the Empire, and that's truly only scratching the surface

 

[UssGlenn]

You get subtle, people start reading their own biases into it, and we end up here.

 

[Tuskin38]

I've slowly warmed up to the PT as I have aged. Change is always possible.

The reverse happened to me, loved them when I was 8-14 when they came out, not so much anymore.

 

[David cgc]

You get subtle, people start reading their own biases into it, and we end up here.

I still remember the guy here who was convinced the PT was pro-Confederate States of America because of the civil war imagery in AotC, such as Palpatine raising a "Grand Army of the Republic." The fact that the Star Wars Confederacy was also being run by the same evil bad guy he thought was standing in for Lincoln was cheerfully ignored.

 

[Campe]

The reverse happened to me, loved them when I was 8-14 when they came out, not so much anymore.

I was 19 when TPM came out. I actually did enjoy my first viewing even if I did think there were some childish issues being presented in the film. In subsequent viewings I came to not enjoy it. I was always fairly meh on AOTC and enjoyed the hell out of ROTS even if something didn’t quite set right for me.

Now I find TPM the strongest of the three movies. ROTS seems to be more like the “we have one film to check all the boxes!” presentation I believe it is and the less said about AOTC the better.

 

[DigificWriter]

The only "agenda" the movie had was to reintroduce people to Star Wars and be profitable as fucking possible.

No. It's been said numerous times, but Abrams' (and Kasdan's) agenda with TFA was to recapture the way that he (and Kasdan) personally felt walking out of a theater in 1977, but without either caring about or comprehending the fact that you actually can't recreate a feeling.

 

[Gaith]

The most common reaction to this article? "I am not a bot or a troll, and I didn't like The Last Jedi"
Fair enough, but can anyone honestly say that their negative (or positive) opinion wasn't in some way shaped or enhanced by an outside influence, or that they were drawn into an argument about the film by someone they don't know?

I can honestly say I haven't once turned to Twitter for reactions to the movie, and this study only measured tweets tagged at Rian Johnson.