And yet in many ways she was probably right. Don't get me wrong I love SW but the idea it was never riddled with problems in the first place is very much influenced by nostalgia. It has failings but TLJ is being judged by a much more hostile, cynical and critical audience than ANH was.
Because it's just some convenient excuse for people not liking things. I don't like blaming people for not liking things.
Nostalgia can have a very powerful pull on people, especially when they originally experienced something at a young age. Why do you think they go flooding to the box office on opening night dressed up as characters? The characters are unabashed heroes in their eyes, and any deviation from that can create issues.
I'm not disputing the power of nostalgia, but I don't think it's necessarily to blame for people not liking the new movies or overrating the old ones.
My wife thought the movie was ok and is going to EP9, my friends and I didn't like the TLJ and aren't going to EP9.
Often it is the case that the two extremes positive and negative are the most vocal about liking or disliking something, with the middle of the ground who say it was average being less vocal in expressing their viewpoint. Now for me TFA was more enjoyable than TLJ despite its rehashing of previous films, do I hate TLJ no but I wouldn't say it was great either.
Not really. I love SW but I can't help now but watch ANH with a very different eye than I did back then. It was a sensation and rightly so, but it wouldn't be now. It broke a lot of new ground in terms of what was shown on screen but frankly the story telling was limited and based in archetypes as old as storytelling itself and those visuals and the epic scope wouldn't hold up as visionary in the modern age. It would be viewed as slow, derivative and relying on the charisma of the performers to really drive the characterisation. If you really want to take the effects of time and context out of the equation that opens a lot of other doors and not all of them flatter ANH on it's own merits as the blockbuster it was so successful as. Conversely had TLJ been released in 1978 it would have also likely been a game changer in terms of movie making.
It really isn't blaming people. But people sometimes fault a movie for growing characters up in a way they don't agree with. And that can impact the way they see a film. I grew up with Star Wars, though Star Trek: TOS was my drug of choice. I imagine the aged version of the characters can be jarring to someone who only wants heroic archtypes/stereotypes.
Perhaps not solely to blame but we often look back with rose tinted glasses to things from our youth. Ask the question which decade was best for music and you'll likely get the answer of the decade that person grew up with second place often being their parents decade. i.e. the 80's and 60's
The film's overall box-office numbers are a good place to start: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars8.htm There's also the fact that a researcher conducted a study and initially reported that the backlash against the film was heavily influenced by "bots" and Trolls (yes, he later tried to do a "walkback", but that's not really something you can just disown): https://www.wired.com/story/star-wars-russian-trolls-study/
I wanted to believe this stuff, but it doesn't seem to paint the entire picture. The box office can be explained by people liking TFA so much that they rushed to see the sequel and also the good reviews. The Russian trolls thing is unlikely to explain the majority of the hate posts throughout the internet. They might have contributed to it, or even started the trend, but people seem to hate TLJ on their own now. No trolls needed (unless they are all trolling?)
Do they? I don't. A fair few people posting here seem not to. Ca russian "trolls" not be said to have massive influence on public opinion? Seems to me we'd be living in a very different world if people were less malleable.
I find that extremely hard to believe, given that BTS information made it clear that Abrams and the LFL story group were all aware of, and pushed for, Johnson's choices in TLJ. So, the idea that Abrams is going to go back and undo that would be surprising to me, to say the least. As for Snoke, who cares? We knew nothing of the Emperor in the OT, and would have continued to not know if we didn't get the PT. I'm doubtful that Lucas would have given us swaths of exposition on the Emperor if he had done Episode 7. I think that there is this widespread belief that the ST is haphazardly put together but I don't think the evidence supports such an assertion.
It was still hugely popular when it relaunched in the 90s. Obviously it wouldn't hold up as 'visionary' now, but the writing itself is still excellent, and those 'archetypes as old as storytelling itself' are part of what made SW so popular. Maybe the biggest part.
Anyone claiming that JJ Abrams is going to use Episode IX to "undo" anything that Rian Johnson did in The Last Jedi is straight-up mistaken, either out of genuine ignorance or flat-out delusion.