The Road to Episode Infinity: Star Wars Polls!

May the 4^th Be With You!

For “May the 4^th” I had fans rank their favorite Star Wars films and the results are fascinating.

If there is anything “The Last Jedi” taught us it is this: Star Wars films can be polarizing. Critics and fans alike hailed “The Last Jedi" as the best film since “The Empire Strikes Back”, while others claimed that “The Last Jedi” was an attack on fandom and that Rian Johnson was a War Criminal. That’s the narrative anyway. But was “The Last Jedi” really the most polarizing Star Wars film? The beauty of polls is that you can cut through the noise and examine raw data. What do fans really think?

While polling 100 Star Wars fans I was interested in the question of polarization. What made one fan cringe at something another fan loved? Did it come down to age? Gender? Taste? What were the best films? The best characters? Books? There is a lot I want to break down over the next three days. But first let’s get back to “The Last Jedi”. Is it good or not?

The raw data does seem to suggest that the film is (at least currently) the most polarizing Star Wars film. 19% of respondents ranked the film as the worst Star Wars film where 12% said it was the best. Another 25% places the film squarely in the center at number 5. But overall the film seems to be enjoyed among fandom. It ranked the highest of any film since “Return of the Jedi”.

It was no surprise to me that the classic films were ranked highest by most Star Wars fans. 46% of fans agree that “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best film in the franchise, while 26% of fans agree that the original “Star Wars” is the second best film, and 25% of fans agree that “Return of the Jedi” is the third best film.

Fans also seem to generally agree that the prequels are not as good. 37% of fans maintain that “The Phantom Menace” is the worst Star Wars film, where 41% agree that “Attack of the Clones” is the second worst, and 35% agree “Revenge of the Sith” is the third worst.

Then we have the new Disney films falling somewhere in the middle with fans enjoying “The Force Awakens” and “Rogue One” about equally and “The Last Jedi” a little more.

But where opinions differ (and they do differ) what conclusions can we draw? Are there patterns to be found?

The first generation I wanted to isolate were very, very young fans, let’s say teenagers. They would have been born after the release of The Phantom Menace and perhaps the first Star Wars film they saw in cinemas would have been “The Force Awakens”. Free of classic trilogy bias, free of fan entitlement, What would they think?

Turns out younger fans aren’t so different from older fans. Fans ages 7-16 agree that “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best Star Wars film and that the Classic Trilogy is generally better than anything else. The biggest surprise is that younger fans ranked “Rogue One” as being their least favorite film, with many of them ranking “Rogue One” as the 8^th or 9^th best film in the franchise. “Rogue One” is arguably the darkest Star Wars film and probably least resembles the animated Star Wars TV shows that this generation has grown up with.

Younger fans also seem to disproportionally love “Revenge of the Sith”. Most fans under 30 rank ROTS higher than “The Force Awakens” and “Rogue One”. When we look at fans over the age of 30, “Revenge of the Sith” drops dramatically in popularity. Yet all ages of fans tend to agree that it is still the best of the prequel trilogy.

An interesting fact about fans ages 20-24 is that they love “The Last Jedi” more than anyone. In fact, they are the only age group of fans to love it more than any of the classic films. So many fans in this age group found TLJ to be the best “Star Wars” film. This age group would have been teens during the later seasons of “The Clone Wars” TV show, which focused on a lot of Force mythology. Perhaps this is what they enjoy about “The Last Jedi”. Or maybe it’s the fathiers, who can say?

Even though all ages of fans find that the classic trilogy has the best films, Middle-aged fans seem to be the most passionate about these first films in the saga. There does seem to be a phenomenon that older fans are less enthusiastic about “Return of the Jedi”. In fact, fans over 50 seem to enjoy the new Disney films a lot more than ROTJ and fans in their 40s also tend to think that ROTJ just isn’t up to snuff compared to ANH or ESB. This is probably because young fans growing up with Star Wars in the 70s started to age out of the franchise just as it was introducing Ewoks into the films. The Ewok backlash didn’t affect my generation (fans in their 30s) as much because we first saw ROTJ at a very young age and for us it has always been part of the franchise. Some of us would have even seen the Ewok TV films before the Original Trilogy. But I can see how fans a decade or two older than me would resent the furry little creatures.

It’s also worth noting that fans over 50 ranked “A New Hope” in a virtually tie with “The Empire Strikes Back” as best film in the franchise, while fans under 40 find “Empire” to be superior. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that the over 40 crowd (who may actually remember seeing “A New Hope” in cinemas) would have a soft spot for the first Star Wars film in their hearts.

The data collected here is only a very thin slice of the fandom population, but I am very happy that I was able to collect data from fans as young as 7 and as old as 77. There are some notable trends. My analysis of these trends is only conjecture, so you can come up with your own theories.

Tomorrow, I will be back on Cinco de Mayo with some more data and graphs. This time I will examine fandom’s favorite characters. Until then “May the 4^th be with you!

May the 4th Specials

The Road to Episode Infinity

Friday, May 4, 2018

Star Wars Polls!

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