[krapp]

>TLJ: cultural elites liked the whole burning the sacred texts thing, normies hated it.

Wouldn't the "cultural elites" in this context be the hardcore Star Wars fans who hated everything about the new trilogy, and Luke's disillusionment arc in particular, and the "normies" be the mainstream fans who really didn't care?

[notJim]

I think the interesting thing about this comment and the other reply to it is that there are actually several different subgroups of people who all will have different takes on this. I meant cultural elites the way bluefirebrand described it (I'd put it a little differently, but still), but as you say, there is another group that you could call cultural elites as well (though this isn't usually how the term is used)

The nice thing about letterboxd is that many different subgroups are represented, so you can find the reviews you vibe with and get a better idea of whether the movie will appeal to subgroup you're a part of.

There's probably a pretty decent youtube essay on like the balkanization of culture and also the construction of identity through consumption, and how social media has turbo-charged all this here.

[bluefirebrand]

Cultural elites is within the context of the broader culture, not the narrow niche of Star Wars.

They tend to hate Star Wars because it's wildly successful and popular, but it doesn't have any of the cultural crap that they want.

Cultural Elites are the ones who decide what wins Oscars, for example.

[nvm0n2]

Hardcore Star Wars fans are very much not what "cultural elite" means. Quite the opposite.

TLJ got great critic reviews and poor audience reviews because it was propaganda designed to please movie executives and their friends who don't care about Star Wars but do care about social engineering (the badly named "cultural elites"). It wasn't intended to please the people who paid to go watch it.

[jonathankoren]

"Hardcore fans" is doing a lot of lifting here. There's definitely a giant toxic group in the fandom, but in my experience of absorbing Star Wars for over 40 years, those folks have very simplistic opinions that aren't informed by anything in the material except their edge lord fantasies.