Star Wars trailer stirs troll activity across social media

[C C]

www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/aweiner/2015-10-20/new-star-wars-trailer-brings-out-racist-trolls

EXCERPT: The new Star Wars trailer is out, and, because I am a person under the age of 70, you are very safe in assuming that I am a huge fan, and very happy about this new glimpse into my favorite fictional universe. But not everybody is as happy about the trailer as the legions of Star Wars fans are right now. And the unhappy ones are also racist as hell. [...] There's also the theory that this is just a small number of trolls trying to get a rise out of the Twitter-verse and the mainstream media, and that they don't actually believe the hate they are spewing, they just like offending people. The thing is that at a certain point, after you've published racist caricatures and memes about how the Jews control all the world's media, your intentions don't really matter....

[Magical Realist]

When I first saw Star Wars in a theater in 1977, I was a little disappointed. It was not the cerebral kind of sci fi I am always looking for and have been rewarded with in the films of Ridley Scott. The film seemed aimed at a younger more emotionally driven audience--an Arthurian space opera of sorts complete with a sword-wielding Merlin and a black knight. It seemed more fantasy than sci fi to me, and not a very good treatment of it compared to John Boorman's "Excalibur". Years later, when people grew up and grew fonder of things in their past, Star Wars now has a huge following. I say that's nice. But let's not mistake something that's been around for awhile for being classic. Star Wars was a blockbluster with great effects. But classic? I think not..

[C C]

[...] Star Wars was a blockbluster with great effects. But classic? I think not..

I've never understood the fascination with Star Wars, either. It really was just the equivalent of space opera from 1920s to 1930s pulp magazines. Historically, I guess it did trigger the "What would happen if you gave a B-movie a huge budget?" trend that has dominated summer movies since then. It might be argued that audience drawing predecessors like "Jaws" and "The Exorcist" didn't have Oscar-winning caliber stories, either. But I certainly wouldn't demote them to the category that Roger Corman's worst films exemplified. No, it is Star Wars that gets honors for saving Hollywood by fully demonstrating that a blend of kitsch and FX could reap money if you made it look very expensive.