If the Holiday Special and prequels didn’t ruin the Star Wars franchise, I highly doubt The Last Jedi will either. People are still talking about Star Wars, and one good trailer for Episode IX is all it will take for Star Wars fever to kick back in.
The Holiday Special is complete cringe and there’s lots of cringe in the prequels as well but neither attacked the fans, attempted to majorly alter in-universe rules or made you feel insulted for loving the original Star Wars and it’s characters. During my one and only viewing of TLJ at the cinemas I often felt as if there was an invisible middle finger from Rian Johnson directed at me through the cinema screen and many times I wondered if I was really watching a Star Wars movie and not some secret spoof of nu-Star Wars akin to Spaceballs. Leaving the cinema I felt assaulted and angry, an anger that stayed with me for 8 or more months and still surfaces today when I think about it.
I am not interested in the slightest in watching Ep9 and will not be going to see it. The usual Star Wars hype will of course kick up but a good portion of the usual fans will be missing from it. I’m not predicting the movie to flop or anything like that but I highly doubt it will surpass TLJ box office takes, instead likely to continue on the visible downward trend, if not accelerating due to TLJ, Solo (despite apparently being an “OK” movie) and the way Disney/Lucasfilm staff, directors and actors have been handling the criticism.
Despite the host of new animations and shows released and yet to come out, Star Wars is not currently in a good place.
Anyway, that’s all I’ll say for now as I can’t afford to get mixed up at the moment in a lengthy debate on the matter.
Val