Star Wars can be confused for Star Trek but miniscule percentage of the audience would be unaware of it. Created by George Lucas, Star Wars, is an epic space-age saga revolving around the politics of an intergalactic institution governed by enforcers of the ‘force.’ The ‘force’ much like Bollywood encourages nepotism as an eventuality. In the latest addition to its movie franchise, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the movie explores the rise of Rey- a naturally gifted pilot who adopts the last name- Skywalker and is the granddaughter of the Emperor Palpatine.
Star Wars: The Rise of Disney’s Milching
Disney is omnipresent in the field of entertainment. They have done amazing work with a lot of franchises.
LucasFilms sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney for $4 Billion in 2012. The move was a mixed bag for fans but there was no option to opt-out. It is what it is. Post the acquisition of LucasFilms by Disney, we have had three movies, season 7 of clone wars and one season of The Mandalorian.
I snoozed through the premiere Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Most of ‘hardcore fans’ walked away profusing their deepest hatred for JJ Abrams in discerning expletives. The worst part is people assumed it was an Abrams movie when it was written-directed by Rian Johnson of Looper fame. Poor director choice aside, as this Vox piece details the movie courted a ton of controversy over online reviews for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
While the TV adaptations have seen universal user acclaim, the movies have witnessed a fair amount of criticism. The two websites that are considered the Mecca and Madina of user reviews are: Rotten Tomatoes and IMBD. The accusation is that the reviews for Disney’s Star War movies are being faked.
In a video uploaded to YouTube by a Sheila Allen claims are being made that 1000+ movie reviews are fake.
Tom Parker from Reclaim The Net has done a decent job of breaking down the entire issue. Noting, “For example, variations of the phrase “great end to the saga” appear more than 260 times in these 6,000 scraped reviews with the phrases listed below appearing in 4.3% of the reviews:
“great way to end” appears 46 times
“fitting end to the” appears 44 times
“great ending to the” appears 31 times
“good way to end” appears 20 times
“a great end to” appears 20 times (so on..)
We would strongly recommend our readers to verify its veracity using this Google document. The document contains reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.
Star Wars: The Fandom Menace
Star Wars evokes a ton of emotion & debate amongst its loyal followers. Personally, I feign ignorance of the canon movies & literature. However, I am quite well-versed with the important elements of the universe. One of the best projects of my life has been the launch of OnePlus 5T Star Wars edition. But, there is too much divide that has been created due to the last three movies. Such is the disdain that there was a petition that garnered 100k+ votes to remove Star Wars: The Last Jedi from canon (heh).
In this piece for Forbes, JV Chamary, goes on to question the divide between user and critics review. Talking about the validity of online reviews, the piece says, ‘Regardless of the cause, our variety in movie tastes means that taking any average rating — whether it’s from Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb user reviews — is like putting everyone’s opinions into a blender. “These averages can be a bit misleading because the individual variability is dramatic,” Wallisch explains. “If there’s too much variability, the mean is not meaningful.”’
The entire piece feels like a lot like whataboutery. However, the piece ends with a point most Star Wars padawans would agree with, ‘One key question remains: What did Wallisch think of Star Wars: The Last Jedi? “With the first trilogy, the original three movies, I was the biggest fan in the world, and I was so excited about the prequels,” he says. “Then I saw them. That was a scarring experience. I was so disappointed that I decided not to see the new ones. It’s a sad story.”’
The Jar Jar opinion
I have grown tired of the movies. They do not evoke the same curiosity that the TV series does. The reason for that is that we still need closure on a ton of things. The TV series are addressing that with The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. While the movies seem to be moving unnecessarily away from canon causing fans a lot of heartburn.
Also horses in space? What are you thinking JJ? Are you even thinking? Do you not care or know us Star Wars fans? We question everything, why oh why, did you think this would go unnoticed or unquestioned? This is the type of high handed behavior that ticks us off.
In conclusion, Disney has invested between $250-$300 million for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That is a huge commitment and from a marketing perspective, it makes sense if Disney is astroturfing to protect its investment. From a fan’s perspective, all we can hope is that the force awakens and keeps us entertained for decades to come.
Unsolicited advice, if Disney does not believe in the force then let Jon Favreau lead the development and we’d all be alright!
In Jon Favreaue, believe we must.
We have sent queries to Disney India and will update the article as and when we have a response.
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