The Star Wars sequel trilogy occupies a strange space in modern film discourse. The movies were all, by the primary metric of performance, box office receipts, incredibly successful. Yet, opinions regarding whether or not the films are actually, you know, good, vary wildly. There’s a decent chance that if you’ve seen all three, you really dislike at least one of them, and many seem to have been disappointed by all of them.
Other people really love the sequels, or at least parts of them. People feel all sorts of different ways about the sequel trilogy; however, the one constant among them all is that they tend to feel very strongly about whatever opinion they hold. Brian Herring, one of the actors and puppeteers behind BB-8, the droid most seemed to like, recently told GameReactor that, while the sequels are certainly polarizing, it’s nothing we haven’t seen in Star Wars before. He explained…
I think the sequels are no more polarising than the prequels were when they came out. All the people who are upset about the sequels are too young to remember how upset the people when the original ones came out were, except they now have the internet. If the internet had been around to the extent it was around when the prequels came out, you'd have seen exactly the same stuff play out.
Please give me a moment to pause and recover from the realization that it’s been more than 20 years since the release of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and thus it is actually true that there are adults in this world who were not alive when the prequels came out. I'm too old.
Article continues belowTo be fair, the internet did exist when the prequel trilogy came out, though it certainly wasn’t as widely used as it is today, and that was where the initial backlash to the prequel trilogy happened. That trilogy did have a very similar experience, as all three movies were massively successful, but so many fans seemed to hate them. The backlash was so bad that it really hurt some people. Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best admitted a few years ago that he contemplated suicide due to the hate he received.
But a funny thing happened as time passed. The prequel trilogy has since been reevaluated by critics and fans alike. And while nobody is necessarily arguing that the prequels are masterpieces, there does seem to be a general feeling that the movies are, at the very least, fine. Herring seems sure that ultimately the same thing will happen to the sequel trilogy. He said…
And I think in 10 years' time, you're going to see what you're seeing with the sequels, because the sequels have a huge fan base and I meet them all the time, but they're all much younger than the people complaining on the internet about how much they didn't like. It's perfectly fine, if you don't like them, you don't like them. Everything's not for everyone. And I just think that these things are all generational and I think Battlestar Galactica said it best, 'this has all happened before, it will all happen again.'
While we’ll have to wait 10 years to know for sure, there’s a pretty decent chance that Brian Herring is correct and the sequel trilogy will get its own reevaluation. The people who tended to be against the prequels are the people who grew up with the original trilogy, and it’s the group that grew up with the prequels that has grown up defending them. It’s a safe bet the same will happen with the sequel trilogy. And by then, there will likely be a whole new batch of Star Wars movies for everybody to focus their opinions on.
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