Hey, Disney, Your Movie Probably Sucked, But Accusing The Sad Puppies Of Some Sort Of Spam Campaign Is A Little Low

The new Star wars movie has had a mixed reception from fans this weekend. The fans that have been critical have more or less pointed out that the movie has forgotten what the franchise was about and the franchise has been turned into a celebration of diversity and incompetence. Seemingly the rebellion can do nothing right. I haven’t seen the movie and frankly I have no desire to see movie that the creators have to defend by saying how diverse the cast is.  Of course the mixed response was treated a media smear blast of the kind that the puppies are all too familiar with.

The piece that caught my eye is this one from Screen Rant.

Accusations of such activity are currently being leveled on social media by culture-commentators like activist Peter Coffin, who compared the proliferation of anonymous reviews name-checking the same set of points repeatedly (references to “forced diversity” and “SJWs” abound) to more explicitly politically-motivated “brigading” attacks from earlier in the year related to elections and social movements. The deeper recesses of Reddit and 4chan are indeed littered with threads in which enraged “ex”-fans organize campaigns in an attempt to control the narrative and create a situation wherein the idea of the new Star Wars Trilogy as “poorly received” can overtake the reality of its reception in the public discourse.

The term “Sad Puppies” has been raised, a reference to a collective of right-wing fiction writers who gained fame by manipulating the Hugo Awards several years back, along with the GamerGate and ComicsGate social-media movements. Some point to the aforementioned politically-tinged reviews as evidence of motive, while others allege that some of the brigading has been conducted by fans of Justice League seeking revenge on the critical press for its negative reviews. Also posited is that this comes from anti-corporate activists who see the recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney as the rise of a dangerous  monopoly.

The Twitter rant that the Screenrant quotes goes on to accuse everybody in in sight and tout other polls that take exit polls.

Through examination of seemingly non-political events going on in our culture, we can actually glean a lot more.

Everything is political, and a lot of what you observe in pop culture is an echo of something very serious.

— Soyter Krampus 🔑 (@petercoffin) December 16, 2017

Here’s another piece accusing somebody of coming up with a social media campaign to pan the film.

Disney’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi opened to theaters over the weekend after 2 years of waiting, speculating, and fan theories. Director Rian Johnson took everything that fans though that they knew about Star Wars and turned it upside down, throwing in surprises and plot twists that took many fans over the edge. Many hardcore fans were disappointed in a lot of the risks that Johnson took, but critics overwhelmingly praised the movie as did a lot of the fan base. However, a quick glance at the Rotten Tomatoes user score shows something much different than what is shown in the Cinemascore rating. Further evidence suggests that some internet trolls have made “burner” accounts to trash The Last Jedi.

https://movieweb.com/rotten-tomatoes-last-jedi-audience-score-fake-news/

And another one:
Did Audiences Enjoy ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’? Deciphering Online User Reviews From Exit Polls

Now I just did a quick check of the blogs of the major Sad Puppies and I’ve haven’t seen anything about the new Star Wars movie at all.  Most of them are too busy with other things to be paying attention to the movie.  Personally, I don’t get out to movies as much as I used to and if I do the prequels turned me off to the Star Wars franchise.  I didn’t make it The Force Awakens and I think that I want to see it before Last Jedi. I don’t think that any Sad Puppies have engaged in any thinking about this movie very much. Yet here we all are, being accused of playing on ‘chans and making puppet accounts.  The journalist making the accusation doesn’t know us at all.  I think that if we really wanted to we could come up with a macro that could take chunks and make hundreds of phony reviews that it would take looking at thousands to figure out that they were not real. We wouldn’t hire Asian bots to do it either.  But why would the puppies care? The puppies have nominated Disney movies for awards and we all want good things for the Star Wars franchise. Most us probably were profoundly impacted by the first movies.

The thing is that it isn’t the fans who are manipulating this. It’s fairly obvious that it’s probably some sort of false flag at Disney or somebody heading this off at the pass. After all with a billion dollars at stake a series of bad reviews is not a good thing. So the monster company, seemingly bent on monopoly control over creative entertainment feels the need to generate a media blitz against some kids in the ‘Chans and the Sad Puppies? That’s rather pathetic. But then the puppies are used to pathetic.

A look at  Variety tells the story.

‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Rotten Tomatoes Scores Show Discrepancy Between Critics and Audience Reactions

If you look at the reviews, they are all strained, as of the critics are looking to like the movie regardless of their real opinions.  I can understand that. I suspect that in the real world there are strong pressures to give a Star Wars movie a good review, strong pressures to go along with the pushing the diversity narrative and even stronger pressure from the bosses to no piss off an advertiser of Disney’s clout. That is if Disney doesn’t already own the outlet outright.

Disney on the other hand is facing the red queen’s race of becoming a consolidator who buys properties rather than a creator who makes properties. Disney had to pay a premium for Lucasfilm and needs to make it’s money back.  A lot of money that requires interest that needs to be paid back. So if a Star Wars movie tanks and the franchise collapses, they are going to take a bath.  The problem for Disney was that they are stuck without the creative vision that created the franchise in the first place. So they have to resort to attacking the people that rightly point out that the emperor is naked.

Update: Daddy Warpig weighs in.

http://www.castaliahouse.com/the-last-jedi-is-star-wars-for-people-who-hate-star-wars/

He end his review wih a cut scene that says the whole thing. Disney is milking the franchise and has total contempt for the franchise, it’s fans and the story. But then corporate types are not set up for epic on any scale.
Update: The Star Wars that never was.

Update: The New York Times  looks for answers and comes up with, meh.

https://archive.fo/r6gTM#selection-1977.0-2091.242

The problem is that we had fans expecting something epic from a corporate world that lost the ability to take the risks that created epic. The original movie was a risk, in fact the attitude at the time was that it was a sure fire  flop. The fact is that the Star Wars saga is tragic saga and tragedy is very hard to do well.