No matter how many awesome aliens or action-packed lightsaber duels a Star Wars film has, they just can’t please everyone.
Both the prequel and sequel trilogies got plenty of hate from the Star Wars fan base. The funny thing is, a lot of fans can’t pinpoint exact reasons why they hate these films. Many just feel that the mood wasn’t right or the storyline was missing something — but what, exactly, was missing?
More often than not, a lot of these critics can’t answer that question.
What did fans say about ‘The Rise of Skywalker’?
According to the Rotten Tomatoes critic ratings, The Rise of Skywalker was the lowest rated film of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. It received a rotten tomato at 51%, while the other two films were both rated as fresh tomatoes with scores at or above 90%.
Reddit users seem to agree with the critics–several fans feel that they were short-changed with the way the Star Wars saga wrapped things up. One Reddit user stated: “It felt like 4-hour movie that had a bunch of key scenes cut out from it.”
They felt like the film was rushed and missing key components that could have made the story feel more complete.
Other Reddit users feel that the outrage over The Rise of Skywalker was similar to the criticism of the prequel trilogy. They recalled how the harassment of the actors in the prequels was so severe that Ahmed Best (who played Jar Jar Binks) contemplated suicide, and Jake Lloyd (who played Anakin) has spoken out about his mental health as the result of bullying as a child.
Still, other Reddit users think that people complain about films not because they really don’t like them, but simply because it’s popular to follow the crowd. “And then came RLM and it became even worse, and not because people actually hated them. No, it was mostly because it was popular to hate on them.”
Is it the prequel outrage all over again?
The backlash that The Rise of Skywalker has received is very similar to the hate that was dished out at the prequel films. Fans had a plethora of complaints about the prequels, from bad CGI to Yoda’s use of a lightsaber to the annoying voice of Jar Jar Binks. They weren’t happy then, just like they aren’t happy now.
Although some fans can voice specific complaints about the prequel films, many of them don’t really know why they dislike them. Psychology Today speculates that most of the time, our like or dislike for things stems from the unconscious mind.
So we might not understand why we don’t like something, but then we’re influenced by outside sources. For example, we’ll read reviews of a film and think that we agree with the reasons the critics give, even if we may not have noticed those flaws until someone else brought them to our attention.
One really great example of this theory is from the original Star Wars trilogy. The special edition changed a very small part from early in the film. Han Solo and Greedo are arguing in the cantina–in the original version, Solo shoots Greedo before the alien has a chance to shoot him. In the special edition, Greedo shoots first.
Many fans who will now complain about the change didn’t even notice it when they watched it the first time–they only noticed after someone else told them.
So the question is this — if you didn’t even notice your “complaint” about the film until someone else told you about it, is that really the reason you didn’t like it?
Not likely, since you didn’t even notice the flaw in question. The vague complaints about the sequel trilogy probably have a lot to do with this same theory…
So do fans really only like the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy?
There will always be unhappy fans when you’re dealing with a cinematic universe as vast as that of Star Wars. There are plenty of fans who loved The Rise of Skywalker–loved the whole sequel trilogy, in fact.
There are also plenty of people who enjoyed the prequel trilogy. They just aren’t trolling around the internet, harassing actors and spreading hate, so we tend to forget they exist.
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