I’ve always wondered, do you think the reception to TLJ would’ve been different if the leaks hadn’t gotten out before it released and everyone was already pooping all over it just from the few clips they saw?
Because honestly, I really do. For a lot of fans on reddit or wherever, they had all collectively decided they hated it without actually seeing it. There was a group consensus from a big chunk of fans that the movie was bad before it even came out. The way the movie handled Snoke or Luke or whatever was already out there and people had decided it was bad, but they didn’t get to experience it in the moment. I think that would’ve made a big difference.
I avoided spoilers and online discussion, so I didn’t know about that reaction. I remember going to see it, thinking it was brilliant and everyone is going to love it, everyone in my theater loved it, all my friends loved it. Then I got home and fired up reddit and it was like they all saw a totally different movie to me. It was a very weird thing.
It’s kind of like what’s happening now with Morbius. I’m sure it’s probably terrible, but everyone decided it was terrible months ago. It never had a chance to surprise us. Same with TLJ.
I can’t speak for others, but I was almost entirely uninvolved in the fandom from 2015 to 2017, and did mostly avoid spoilers. So I went into TLJ with only some vague snippets of information, like the fact that Snoke died. I was actually quite on board with Kylo killing Snoke before I watched it, and I mainly wish it had been built up and executed better, in a way that felt more consequential to the story (i.e. not just having Kylo replace him).
I read reviews for the movie beforehand that praised it for taking Star Wars in a bold new direction, and I really hoped that was true. But I don’t think the movie was nearly as gutsy or bold as people made it out to be.
Of course, I wasn’t really expecting anything amazing, since I’d already gone into TFA (with no prior knowledge) and really disliked it, despite all the positive word-of-mouth about it. I definitely wasn’t setting out to hate these movies. And in general, I’m not overly critical about the movies I watch. I can relax and enjoy something just fine even if it’s deeply flawed. But I couldn’t do that with the sequels.
I understand how you feel, though. There are movies I feel similarly about, where I’m baffled by the negative reaction to them. And I do think it’s odd that TLJ got hit so hard while TFA was so liked. And with how easy-to-please Star Wars fans usually are, the TLJ reaction is a strange outlier.