Broom Kid said:
Is there some venn diagramming of the “Silent Majority” as you put it and the vocal side of a much, much smaller segment of that audience that self-identifies as “the fandom?” Definitely. Is that venn diagramming all that important to anyone but the people in that self-identified fandom? Not really.
I’m with you through most of this, but this absolutely is important to the studio, they want a four quadrant blockbuster.
I’m also not sure what it is you’re trying to argue in this context? That if things were different, they’d be different? TFA was liked. A lot. It wasn’t merely “Tolerated” to the level of success it enjoyed.
It’s popularity doesn’t negate or invalidate people’s feelings about the movie though. I’m not saying “Well, it was popular, so your criticisms don’t count” I have problems with TFA as a movie, too. What I’m saying is that trying to reframe its obvious and observable success both financially and critically as a mass exercise in tolerance doesn’t make any sense to me if you’re trying to reflect reality at all, nor does trying to frame TLJ’s reception (which was remarkably good if not AS remarkable as TFA’s) as a result of the general audience’s collective pent-up rage being unleashed.
It’s not always arguing, sometimes it’s just begging the question. I don’t fully agree with either characterization, TFA is a crowd pleaser and it wasn’t accepted begrudgingly, but there’s a kernel of truth without tackling hyperbole as literal. Mostly I don’t like how dismissive people can be because it feels like its own cherry picking, the numbers don’t matter even the week to week drop offs, the audience scores can be manipulated, my inner circle observations are anecdotal, the reviews even some made within weeks of initial release only represent the views of a small minority with an indiscernible overlap so the rest is unknowable and indisputable. Feels convenient and arbitrary, like I could use the same logic for any movie that wasn’t a colossal bomb. I get it that the studios shouldn’t feel held hostage to some 1% of fans in a twitter mob that just won’t shut up, but in this case it comes off as a failure to extrapolate or skewing the result to reduce those numbers to only the most passionately disgruntled.