To be fair… enthusiasm for Star Wars was at an all-time low. At least that’s how I saw things irl… in 2015 the marketing for Star Wars was huge. Everyone talked about it that December. Then in 2016 and 2017, the excitement was less than in 2015 but still far-reaching. Everyone was at least aware of the Star Wars movie coming out even if they weren’t planning on watching it.

But in 2019 everyone was… tired? At least from what I saw, there wasn’t much general excitement for the movie. Maybe the marketing was too focused on “the end” when everyone knew Disney would keep making movies. Maybe this was the first movie without the return of an iconic character (Han/Vader/Luke). Or maybe it wasn’t Disney’s fault at all and three was just the magic number for people to become tired with the franchise.

I don’t think it had anything to do with low reactions to TFA or TLJ, but there definitely was a dip in enthusiasm among general audiences.