There’s no doubt that over the course of a Star Wars trilogy, the stars endure everything from love to full-fledged geek-hatred for choices scripts and directors take with the plot. Daisy Ridley can attest to all of this and more when it comes to Star Wars.
By the time The Rise of Skywalker premiered, all of the stars of the sequel trilogy seemed relieved to conclude their time with the franchise. Ridley remained professional about the backlash, but recently spoke to Men’s Health about the experience:
“[Reaction has] changed film by film honestly, like 98% it’s so amazing, this last film it was really tricky. January was not that nice. It was weird. I felt like all of this love that we’d sort of been shown the first time around, I was like, ‘Where’s the love gone?’.
I watched the documentary, the making-of The Skywalker Legacy, this week and it’s so filled with love; and I think it’s that tricky thing of when you’re part of something that is so filled with love and then people [don’t like it].
You know, everyone’s entitled to not like something but it feels like it’s changed slightly. I think in general that’s because [of] social media and what have you.”
Star Wars is no stranger to passionate fans and negative reactions to franchise entries. SW got negative fan reactions all the way back during the original trilogy. Nothing on the scale that we see today. Social media’s enabled fans and critics to spread their likes or dislikes to the masses.
A film as divisive as Star Wars: The Last Jedi threw gasoline on the hornets nest when it came to backlash. The film took drastic leaps to shake up the traditional formula of the franchise. To some it ruined entire story arcs.
