An official Disney twitter account has poked fun at Star Wars fans whose favorite trilogy is the recent sequels. The Disney trilogy’s final film, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, was released in 2019 to mixed reviews, and both critics and fans have questioned its overall success. However, the sequel trilogy ultimately amassed over $4.3 billion in box office sales, and has been followed by other Star Wars Disney+ releases like The Mandalorian, and the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series.
Disney acquired the Star Wars property from creator George Lucas in 2012 in a massive $4 billion deal, and went on to release its own Star Wars trilogy soon after. The Disney films, which began in 2015 with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and ended in 2019 with The Rise of Skywalker, has become known as the ‘sequel trilogy,’ as its events take place much later on in the Star Wars timeline, but connect to Lucas’s original Skywalker saga. While it broke box office records, the later trilogy was extremely divisive. Audience and critics’ reviews for The Force Awakens were largely positive, but both the second instalment, The Last Jedi, and the finale, were met with plenty of criticism. Some was focussed on the execution of the films, with pacing being pointed to as a cental issue, while others simply weren’t convinced that the overall story was compelling enough.
Now, an official Disney account has poked fun at its own sequels on an official Twitter page. The Disney + Latin America Twitter account took to the platform with a joke using the recent viral 'red flag' meme, in which users playfully share behavior they consider to be worrying. In the post, the Disney+ account wrote, "The latest Star Wars trilogy is the best" before inserting plenty of red flag emojis. Check out the post below:
The tweet is bound to upset some Star Wars fans who enjoy the sequel trilogy and have expended lots of energy defending it. Others, especially those who were more critical of Disney's films, will take the post as an admission that the sequel saga simply didn’t live up to expectations or fulfil their potential. However, while the tweet isn’t exactly flattering for the sequel trilogy, it also doesn’t suggest that it’s the worst of the Star Wars movies. George Lucas’ prequel trilogy was much more negatively received by critics, and while some fans now appreciate the prequels for their imagination and creativity, the consensus at the time was that the projects were a disappointment.
Not all of Disney’s Star Wars output has been divisive, however. The spin-off series The Mandalorian has received near-universal critical acclaim, with fans praising the series for successfully incorporating the expanded lore from both Star Wars' and prequel and original trilogy into its story. If the sequels hadn’t been followed up with a successful series like The Mandalorian, it’s likely that Disney wouldn’t be so comfortable joking about its failings. The tweet itself is surely to intended as a bit of harmless fun, but will no doubt stir up division among Star Wars fans.
Source: Disney+ Latin America