Star Wars: The Last Jedi hate amplified by Russian Trolls

[Gray Lensman]

Yeah, if anything, the prequels are getting a revaluation of sorts, even if it's nothing more then just as "they weren't quite as bad as the internet would have you believe."

In the case of TLJ, I would be interested to see if there are any trends in the camps that like and dislike it, e.g. how do newer fans take it overall as opposed to older fans. If the dislike is primarily centered around people who grew up with the older movies, we may see TLJ have a less mixed reception in the future, just like how now fandom has been less hard on the prequels as those who grew up with them are becoming a larger voice in the "community."

For me, the single biggest flaw in the prequels is the complete lack of romantic chemistry between Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen. It ended up being a major stretch for me to believe he'd even tell a white lie for her, much less betray everything he had known for years.

Chemistry between actors matters - it's a large part of why Star Wars was such a success in the first place, and why Star Trek was remembered despite being cancelled before season 3 was completed.

[Jokerz79]

Yeah, if anything, the prequels are getting a revaluation of sorts, even if it's nothing more then just as "they weren't quite as bad as the internet would have you believe."

In the case of TLJ, I would be interested to see if there are any trends in the camps that like and dislike it, e.g. how do newer fans take it overall as opposed to older fans. If the dislike is primarily centered around people who grew up with the older movies, we may see TLJ have a less mixed reception in the future, just like how now fandom has been less hard on the prequels as those who grew up with them are becoming a larger voice in the "community."

The internet didn't create Prequel hate it was there from the moment people walked out of the Phantom Menace it was telling when a lot of critics at the time when reviewing Revenge of the Sith kept saying it was the best of Prequels instead of saying it was just a good movie.

[WebLurker]

For me, the single biggest flaw in the prequels is the complete lack of romantic chemistry between Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen. It ended up being a major stretch for me to believe he'd even tell a white lie for her, much less betray everything he had known for years.

I will agree that the actors did not interact well together.

Chemistry between actors matters - it's a large part of why Star Wars was such a success in the first place, and why Star Trek was remembered despite being cancelled before season 3 was completed.

Fair enough.

The internet didn't create Prequel hate it was there from the moment people walked out of the Phantom Menace it was telling when a lot of critics at the time when reviewing Revenge of the Sith kept saying it was the best of Prequels instead of saying it was just a good movie.

I seem to recall that TPM had generally favorable reception pretty early on, but I could be wrong about that.

In any event, my point is that it seems like the prequels have been reassessed, so they kinda outlasted the worst of the worst, and maybe TLJ will do the same?

[Jokerz79]

I will agree that the actors did not interact well together.



Fair enough.



I seem to recall that TPM had generally favorable reception pretty early on, but I could be wrong about that.

In any event, my point is that it seems like the prequels have been reassessed, so they kinda outlasted the worst of the worst, and maybe TLJ will do the same?

The build up to Phantom Menace was insane there was no YouTube and Online video was graining and awful so you had people going to theaters and buying tickets just to see the trailer. The only film in my lifetime that was close to that was Batman 89 it was nuts and early reviews were good but once the euphoria of having a new Star Wars movie wore off the question of "was it that good?" began to be asked but the real turn happened with AOTC people thought the flaws of TPM might had been a one time thing but AOTC was where people started going yeah these might not be that good and the buzz began to die. Now to be fair 2002 was a big year for new franchises the first Raimi Spider-Man, the first Harry Potter film, and the 2nd Lord of the Rings came out so there was also others things for people to latch on to.

[motherofpearl1]

Yeah, if anything, the prequels are getting a revaluation of sorts, even if it's nothing more then just as "they weren't quite as bad as the internet would have you believe."

In the case of TLJ, I would be interested to see if there are any trends in the camps that like and dislike it, e.g. how do newer fans take it overall as opposed to older fans. If the dislike is primarily centered around people who grew up with the older movies, we may see TLJ have a less mixed reception in the future, just like how now fandom has been less hard on the prequels as those who grew up with them are becoming a larger voice in the "community."

I'm a fan of the OT. Never saw TPM, but I did see AotC and RotS. The prequels suffered largely thanks to truly appalling scripts and, I suspect, that Lucas isn't as good a director as a producer. But I enjoyed them largely for Ewan McGregor Gregor, Sam Jackson and believe it or not Hayden Christensen who was pretty good in RotS. I loved TLJ. It's my favourite SW film. Others might hate it, but not me.

[Username taken]

Most of the people in the thread who are saying that Russian trolls have something to do with it aren't claiming that it is an either/or thing, but and. It's a film that I think has a lot of problems, that caused a lot of angry conversations, and then the Russian troll farms threw gasoline onto the flame war to make it worse. And from what I have seen of how they operate, they probably took both sides.

Exactly my point.

It's not that people didn't hate the Last Jedi, just that it was enhanced by "possibly" Russian trolls.

Seriously, these bot attacks aren't the Last Jedi specific. We just saw something like this happen with "Gagabots" attacking Venom on behalf of a Star is Born. One doesn't even need some specialized skills to identify these, just go through some comments on IMDB and Rottentomatoes and you can a lot of these accounts are fake.

[Gray Lensman]

I'm a fan of the OT. Never saw TPM, but I did see AotC and RotS. The prequels suffered largely thanks to truly appalling scripts and, I suspect, that Lucas isn't as good a director as a producer. But I enjoyed them largely for Ewan McGregor Gregor, Sam Jackson and believe it or not Hayden Christensen who was pretty good in RotS. I loved TLJ. It's my favourite SW film. Others might hate it, but not me.

I enjoyed his interactions with McGregor's Obi-Wan immensely. They were the opposite of his interactions with Portman.

[WebLurker]

The build up to Phantom Menace was insane there was no YouTube and Online video was graining and awful so you had people going to theaters and buying tickets just to see the trailer. The only film in my lifetime that was close to that was Batman 89 it was nuts and early reviews were good but once the euphoria of having a new Star Wars movie wore off the question of "was it that good?" began to be asked but the real turn happened with AOTC people thought the flaws of TPM might had been a one time thing but AOTC was where people started going yeah these might not be that good and the buzz began to die. Now to be fair 2002 was a big year for new franchises the first Raimi Spider-Man, the first Harry Potter film, and the 2nd Lord of the Rings came out so there was also others things for people to latch on to.

Could be. IMHO, I think that TMP is squarely in the "okay" camp; not up to scratch with the greats in the series, but not really awful either. AotC had a lot of problems (although it's still watchable, which is a small favor). Mileage may vary.

I'm a fan of the OT.

Personally, I've liked all the trilogies so far, although I think the original and sequel ones are better then the prequels.

Never saw TPM, but I did see AotC and RotS.

ROTS is high on my list of favorite Star Wars movies.

The prequels suffered largely thanks to truly appalling scripts and, I suspect, that Lucas isn't as good a director as a producer.

IMHO, I think that the prequels have a good story (maybe the best story in the film series to date?) on paper, but the dialogue and directing for acting drags it down. However, I think that Lucas is a master visual storyteller; the sets, props, costume design, and cinematography in the prequels are top-notch and put even a lot of modern movies to shame.

But I enjoyed them largely for Ewan McGregor Gregor, Sam Jackson and believe it or not Hayden Christensen who was pretty good in RotS.

Agreed, eps. McGregor; he was a rare find. I'd also add Ian McDermond (Palpatine) to the list.

I loved TLJ. It's my favourite SW film. Others might hate it, but not me.

I loved the movie too. I think that I still like some of the other ones better (like ANH, for example), but I think that TLJ is going to be this generation's ESB.

[Totoro Man]

eh, Graeme McMillan... not a fan. I see that he still likes to open up his articles with rhetorical questions and posturing.

however, I did read the entire article AND the research paper that he linked to.

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...a_manipulation


"It is important to mention here that it is widely considered almost impossible to attribute any sort of cyberattack or strategic operation in the online sphere to an actor with absolute certainty, due to the many opportunities for anonymization, masking of IP addresses, adoption of false identities online, etc. (Lobel, 2012; Dipert, 2010; Geers, 2010). This also applies to the trolls and bots found in this study. Though the above described classification has been performed with rigor and the accounts in Troll/Bot/Sock Puppet category fulfill most of the criteria listed, these accounts should be viewed as having a high likelihood of being trolls/sock puppets, bots and Russian trolls. No absolute attributions are claimed. "

Quora (as an aside)
"A user on a particular device at a particular location will be associated with a particular IP address; but if that device moves to another location, the twitter user will have a different IP address. ... There is absolutely no way to find out someone's IP address from their Twitter account."

at ResearchGate (as an aside)
Siddhartha Anand
"Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani
No you cannot extract location information if the user does not want his/her location to be public. If they have made it public then you have various methods to get the location. "

Pradeep Kumar
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
If user location/GPS is in "off mode", in that case we can't find the locations. Most of the tweets does have latt. and long. information as well.

* * * * *

what the aforementioned quotes tell me is that the author of this paper attributes Russian troll authorship to certain statements. but he doesn't have concrete evidence to back up these claims. these trolls could just as easily come from alt-right citizens of the United States. all we have is the assertion that it's "likely".

but it gets worse: the author tacitly admits that it is impossible to recreate the study and get the same results!


However, the assertions made in this article must be considered within the limited scope of the data set, which may or may not limit generalizability of the findings. Another problem for replicability is the fact that Twitter is a dynamic forum and only tweets from selected accounts are archived outside the platform’s own servers. This means that data collected during the study period in this paper may not correspond to later searches because users may have deleted tweets or taken down their accounts – a general problem with research based on Twitter data.

how can we pretend this is even remotely "scientific" evidence when there's literally no way on earth the 'experiment' can be reproduced and get the same results?

that research paper isn't silly rubbish, exactly... but I can't consider it seriously as "evidence" either.

[kjn]

what the aforementioned quotes tell me is that the author of this paper attributes Russian troll authorship to certain statements. but he doesn't have concrete evidence to back up these claims. these trolls could just as easily come from alt-right citizens of the United States. all we have is the assertion that it's "likely".

Good that you've been reading the article, but I find you misuse the quotes you pull from it to draw too wide conclusions on the paper in general.

First, Bay has a guideline on when a twitter user would be categorised as a troll, sockpuppet, or bot. Now, calling them "Russian" might be going a bit too far, but we do know the Russian state has set up agencies working actively with social media, even if the actual "agents" might be freelancers located somewhere else (like in Moldovia or India and other places with cheap labour but high Internet connectivity).

In any case, this study is manual based on set criteria, and might misclassify some twitter account here and there in either direction, but the evidence is in the forest and not in the individual trees.

but it gets worse: the author tacitly admits that it is impossible to recreate the study and get the same results!


However, the assertions made in this article must be considered within the limited scope of the data set, which may or may not limit generalizability of the findings. Another problem for replicability is the fact that Twitter is a dynamic forum and only tweets from selected accounts are archived outside the platform’s own servers. This means that data collected during the study period in this paper may not correspond to later searches because users may have deleted tweets or taken down their accounts – a general problem with research based on Twitter data.

how can we pretend this is even remotely "scientific" evidence when there's literally no way on earth the 'experiment' can be reproduced and get the same results?

that research paper isn't silly rubbish, exactly... but I can't consider it seriously as "evidence" either.

It is scientific because it gives the area studied, the criteria used, and the methods. In a way, it is similar to a study based on interviews with people who now might be dead. It's also impossible to replicate exactly. But another researcher might pick up the same methodology and check, say, Black Panther. Note also that due to how Twitter functions, you want to work with recent data due to account turnover and making the research much easier.

If there is a weakness in the study, it is that it didn't do a close study of the positive tweets for troll, bot, or sockpuppet activity. That would have been interesting to see.

[Jokerz79]

Could be. IMHO, I think that TMP is squarely in the "okay" camp; not up to scratch with the greats in the series, but not really awful either. AotC had a lot of problems (although it's still watchable, which is a small favor). Mileage may vary.



Personally, I've liked all the trilogies so far, although I think the original and sequel ones are better then the prequels.



ROTS is high on my list of favorite Star Wars movies.



IMHO, I think that the prequels have a good story (maybe the best story in the film series to date?) on paper, but the dialogue and directing for acting drags it down. However, I think that Lucas is a master visual storyteller; the sets, props, costume design, and cinematography in the prequels are top-notch and put even a lot of modern movies to shame.



Agreed, eps. McGregor; he was a rare find. I'd also add Ian McDermond (Palpatine) to the list.



I loved the movie too. I think that I still like some of the other ones better (like ANH, for example), but I think that TLJ is going to be this generation's ESB.

Honestly I don't hate TPM it's my favorite prequel because I like Qui-Gon and Maul. But I do remember people on the radio and TV and people I knew starting to dislike the Prequels before Episode III came out.

[The Negative Zone]

Yeah, if anything, the prequels are getting a revaluation of sorts, even if it's nothing more then just as "they weren't quite as bad as the internet would have you believe."

I feel like if the prequels came out today there'd be a lot of angry discussions similar to today.

[Zero Hunter]

I'm a fan of the OT. Never saw TPM, but I did see AotC and RotS. The prequels suffered largely thanks to truly appalling scripts and, I suspect, that Lucas isn't as good a director as a producer. But I enjoyed them largely for Ewan McGregor Gregor, Sam Jackson and believe it or not Hayden Christensen who was pretty good in RotS. I loved TLJ. It's my favourite SW film. Others might hate it, but not me.

I think that the biggest problem with the prequels was Lucas himself. Lucas is a master at big ideas and plots, but he is not good at all at getting those things on the screen. I think George had too many yes men around him during the making of the prequels so no one would tell him "hey George maybe this would work better like this". If he would have let someone else direct the movies and let someone else do a one over on his script the ideas where there.

[WebLurker]

Honestly I don't hate TPM it's my favorite prequel because I like Qui-Gon and Maul. But I do remember people on the radio and TV and people I knew starting to dislike the Prequels before Episode III came out.

Sounds about right.

I feel like if the prequels came out today there'd be a lot of angry discussions similar to today.

Probably. I mean, they are flawed movies (the disagreement seems to be to what extent they are flawed and whether the movies positives redeem them despite the flaws). Conversely, though, I think that today, anything can and will be extremely divisive irregardless of the actual content. (Personally, I think that any future Star Wars movies are going to have a vocal hate group attached to them, just due to have polarized and angry the fanbase has become.)

[Totoro Man]

Good that you've been reading the article, but I find you misuse the quotes you pull from it to draw too wide conclusions on the paper in general.

absolutely. I did that on purpose. I deliberately used quotes from the research abstract and other locations to undermine the possibility of this research paper being used as 'evidence'.

I think it's a reasonably well written and researched article that posits a plausible theory. but I don't believe the paper proves anything. I also am not convinced that the paper was trying to prove anything definitive on it's own. (four out of five people that took the time to tweet directly to Rian Johnson liked TLJ. there's that. it overlooks the fact that a LOT of the people who disliked TLJ would probably never bother tweeting in the first place, let alone to Rian Johnson)

the author of the study presents us with a qualified and informed guess based on research. McMillan takes it a step further.

full disclosure: I honestly dislike McMillan's approach as a writer. he usually tosses out a rhetorical question that purports to be 'conventional wisdom'. naturally he responds to this with his own answer telling us what we -SHOULD- be thinking instead. he's used that technique so much that I actually stopped reading him. (I read the research paper first and then red McMillan's article)

I'm always going to remember McMillan's rhetorical question "is there really such a thing as an unfilmable book?" his answer was that, because the Wachowksi's turned "Cloud Atlas" into a film - that we need to rethink this conventional wisdom. the fact that many critics felt that the Wachowski's failed to make a successful adaptation was not something he could be bothered to mention! he also didn't bother qualifying that contention with something as trivial as whether the book even had a narrative or not. if you tried to make John Lynn's book "Feeding Mars" or "Gradus ad Parnassum" by Johann Jacob Fux into films... I think you would find that they would make terrible movies!

moreover, I believe that in the same way, McMillan is reading too much into this research TLJ paper and ascribing it a type of clarity that it doesn't even pretend to have. even if he's not explicitly stating that position - the fact that he's publishing this article affirms this recurring "Russian interventionist via hacking/troll" theory. I believe McMillan was reading the article and linking to it to reaffirm previously established biases and theories... and since I don't share those, I can't agree with his conclusions. regardless of how adequate Bay's methods were... I believe that his conclusions are merely plausible, but ultimately inconclusive.

the study of possible Russian trolls trying to weaponize an already entitled and toxic fanbase seems a little to... self serving and pointless. an academic curio that is an entertaining read but nothing more. (it almost feels like a respectable academic version of whether Thor could really defeat the Hulk or not).

it seems like it's trying add credence to the Russian hacker theory that has come to prominence after Trump's only mildly unexpected victory by electoral college. it's the new "Red Scare" for liberals of the 21st Century. I thought that Red Scare fear-mongering was pretty ridiculous 30+ years ago and I don't care for it now either.

to be honest - I believe that the Russian hacker and troll angle is an unproductive path; we can speculate and point fingers... but I believe it distracts people from more useful actions.

to borrow a theory from David Daley's "Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy" (which I read not long after it came out) why don't people focus on redrawing the districts that the electoral college votes are being drawn from?

if Trump won based on a technicality of the electoral college... wouldn't this be the more useful angle to approach the problem of him being president? it's not like the Republicans savagely gerrymandered the electoral voting districts overnight. the Democrats just have to get their act together and try to compensate for that loss with actions of their own.

the problem there is that the "Russian hacker" narrative gives us the chance to say that Trump is not legitimately the president of the United States. we get to say "aha! gotcha! you were never really the president, Mr. Trump! now you're going to prison!"

focusing on revising district lines does nothing to make Trump an illegitimate president. it also tacitly admits that Trump "won fair and square". (for lack of a better phrase)

if Trump were going to be deposed over this Russian hacker theory shouldn't it have happen by now? wouldn't we have found more conclusive evidence a bit sooner? at this rate, he'll finish his first term before anything significant can be proven. heck, he could get a second term before anything really serious comes to light. it feels like the newest paranoid "9/11 was an inside job!" theory.

maybe my larger concern here is that it dodges the question of whether the Democrats failed or not by suggesting that the Republicans cheated through Russian proxies. does this mean that the Democrats didn't fail because of proven Republican tinkering with the electoral college be revising voting districts as far back as 2010-14? it lets the Democrats off the hook when simply admitting failure and trying to fix it would be better. it provides an all-too-convenient explanation for why Trump is still here that ignores how the Republicans rigged the system to enable that victory in the first place.

I guess my ultimate problem with this research paper is this: by adding a sense of legitimacy to the very idea of Russian hackers and trolls - it just feels like it's further misdirecting the general public away from something more productive. this doesn't really help the Democrats and it barely hurts the Republicans.