Star Wars Fandom Survey, Part 5: Importance of Movie Characteristics

Welcome from Part 1, where I talked mainly about methods; Part 2, where I discussed the three major types of Star Wars fans; Part 3, where I discussed sexism and political attitudes; and Part 4, where I discussed age and nostalgia. In this part, I will focus on age and nostalgia. As always, email sw.survey.2019@gmail.com with questions about analyses, methods, results, and so on.

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People enjoy movies for different reasons. Some want to have fun or want the film to challenge how they think, some want to be emotionally moved or to see compelling action—and others want a combination of these things. I wrote a questionnaire about “movie importance” to gauge what respondents want from their movie-watching experience. (I briefly mentioned this in Part 1.) And I wanted to know how each of these correlated with favorability toward each Star Wars trilogy. I asked participants, “How important are each of these to you when watching a movie?” and presented them with this list:

• Fun: “Having fun while watching the movie.”

• Meaningful: “Finding the movie meaningful.”

• Emotionally Moving: “Being emotionally moved by the movie.”

• Complex Characters: “That the movie has complex characters.”

• Thought-Provoking: “That the movie be thought-provoking.”

• Action: “That the movie has engaging action.”

• Artistically Valuable: “That the movie is artistically valuable.”

• Twists and Unexpected: “That the movie has twists and unexpected events.”

• Feel-Good Ending: “It has a feel-good ending.”

• Costumes and Setting: “The costumes and sets are aesthetically appealing.”

• Logical Worldbuilding: “That the movie builds a logical world and lore.”

Participants answered each on a 1 (not at all important) to 7 (very important) scale. Every item correlated positively with one another (minimum correlation: .09, maximum: .58, average = .27), so looking at correlations between each item and favorability toward each movie could surface illusory correlations. For example, the “fun” question correlated with the “action” question at .39, and if fun correlates with enjoying one of the trilogies, it could be due to the overlapping correlation with action. What I did here, then, was use all these questions as simultaneous predictors in a multiple regression equation. Then I looked at any movie importance item that was significant at p < .01.

As I’ve done in other parts, I averaged how favorably people feel toward each of the main Star Wars films by trilogy. This created favorability scores for the originals, prequels, and sequels. There were three regression models, one for each saga. I plotted the standardized regression coefficients below.

Wanting action and logical worldbuilding were positive predictors of enjoying the originals, while needing complex characters and a feel-good ending predicts feeling unfavorably toward movies of the original trilogy.

We see more significant predictors for the prequels. People who enjoy the prequels also tend to like action, a feel-good ending, well-made costumes and settings, meaningful films, twists and unexpected events, and logical worldbuilding. Much like the originals, wanting complex characters predicted not enjoying the prequels.

We see different relationships for the sequels, which has been a recurring theme in each part. Yet again, the data showed how this trilogy is divisive and breaks from the other two Star Wars trilogies. People who want a feel-good ending, twists and unexpected events, complex characters, to be emotionally moved, to have fun, and to watch something with artistic value are all more likely to enjoy the sequels. For originals and prequels, wanting complex characters predicted disliking the movies; conversely, finding complex characters important to a film predicts enjoyment of the sequel movies.

The biggest relationship here, however, is that those who wanted logical worldbuilding and lore tended not to enjoy the sequel trilogy. This also flips relationships that we see for the originals and prequels, where logical worldbuilding predicted enjoyment. This flip is likely because of the bold character and narrative choices Rian Johnson made in The Last Jedi.

These data do not necessarily mean that, for example, the originals had non-complex characters (e.g., Lando’s actions on Bespin in Empire Strikes Back are neither deplorable nor laudable). It also doesn’t mean that the sequels lack logical worldbuilding (e.g., Leia’s Force pull in space in The Last Jedi has canonical precedent from Rebels). What these data do show, however, is the psychological relationship between what people want from a movie and how much they enjoy each trilogy. And yet again, we see the sequel trilogy is empirically separated from the other two trilogies.

Star Wars Fandom Survey, Part 4: Age and Nostalgia

Welcome from Part 1, where I talked mainly about methods; Part 2, where I discussed the three major types of Star Wars fans; and Part 3, where I discussed sexism and political attitudes. In this part, I will focus on age and nostalgia. As always, email sw.survey.2019@gmail.com with questions about analyses, methods, results, and so on.

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Star Wars was a big part of many fans’ childhoods. In 2005, George Lucas told BBC News that the Star Wars “movies are for children but [fans] don’t want to admit that.” Star Wars has a massive adult fanbase, but my survey’s sample of over five thousand fans suggests that these fans largely became such as children. The median age when first watching a Star Wars film was six, 90% of respondents watched one for the first time before the age of 13, and 96% of the current sample did so before the age of 18.

I also wanted to know if fans felt particularly warm toward the movies that came out when they were children. I looked at this by plotting participants birth year against how favorably they reported feeling toward each of the trilogies. I averaged scores for movies within trilogies to get this overall favorability score.

I did not, however, draw a typical, straight regression line. Instead, I drew what are known as “cubic regression splines.” Put simply, the lines try to be more flexible to the data than typical regression lines. They allow more bends in the line, while still being smooth so as to not read too much into noise.

In the left panel, we see that people who feel most favorably toward the originals are the people who were children when they first released. The same thing is in the middle panel: A bump in favorability for the prequels for people born in 1990 and afterward, since they grew up with these movies (whereas older generations did not). The right panel shows that those who were born around the time of the original trilogy dislike the sequels the most. We are still a decade or two from getting good data on the kids who grew up during the sequel trilogy, but I hypothesize that they will feel more positively toward it than the other age groups.

I interpret this as a sign of nostalgia for participants’ childhoods. Nostalgia is a “sentimental longing or affection for the past” (Baldwin, Biernat, & Landau, 2015). As mentioned in Part 1, I asked respondents how much they “feel a nostalgic and warm feeling” for things from their personal past: friends, family, pets, toys, TV shows, movies, and music. Unfortunately, since these questions did not form a cohesive scale together, I looked at each separately. As many people told me at the end of the survey, one cannot feel nostalgic for pets if they did not have pets; for that reason, I do not include that item here.

In the figure below, I show the correlations between favorability for each of the trilogies and how nostalgic people are. Each box represents a correlation, which can range from -1 (an exact, negative relationship) to +1 (an exact, positive relationship). Empty tiles represent correlations that were not significant, p > .01.

Many of these are considered “small” correlations (< .10) in psychology, so I focus on the larger correlations. In general, we see that nostalgia is correlated with how favorably one sees the originals, while the relationship between the prequels and nostalgia is smaller. The only negative correlation is between the sequels and nostalgia toward toys. Many of the survey’s respondents were referred from toy collectors’ websites, so it makes some intuitive sense that nostalgia in this domain would be powerful. The more nostalgic one reports being toward the toys from their past, the less they like the sequel trilogy. This again shows how the sequel trilogy—particularly The Last Jedi—have broken with tradition, to the chagrin of some nostalgic fans.

I also wanted to compare those born before 1990 and those born in and after 1990, since that is when we see positive attitudes toward the prequels start to increase in the age plot above. The two panels of this plot are mostly the same; it seems like the nostalgia for the original trilogy carried over to the prequels for those born before 1989, even though they were largely adults upon those movie’s releases.

The biggest difference again shows the polarization of the sequel trilogy. Nostalgia is largely unrelated to the sequel trilogy for those born in and after 1990; the negative correlation between toy nostalgia and sequel-trilogy favorability is only present for those born before 1990. It seems the nostalgia that carried over from the original trilogy to the prequel trilogy has not also carried over to the sequel trilogy, which does not directly involve George Lucas and has broken with tradition in casting and narrative decisions.

Many Star Wars fans start young, as did the majority in this sample. This allows nostalgia to be a powerful lens through which people perceive these movies. The more nostalgic people report being, the more they enjoy the Star Wars films. The only exception to this is older fans and the sequel trilogy. In The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren implores Rey to, “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.” This line had some meta-contextual meaning: many unexpected narrative choices in The Last Jedi made it break from what one might expect from a Star Wars film. These data suggest some older, nostalgic fans would rather not kill the past.

Star Wars Fandom Survey, Part 3: Sexism and Political Attitudes

Welcome from Part 1, where I talked mainly about methods, and Part 2, where I discussed the three major types of Star Wars fans. In this part, I will focus on sexism and political attitudes. As always, email sw.survey.2019@gmail.com with questions about analyses, methods, results, and so on.

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It is not inherently sexist to dislike Disney’s Star Wars films. There have been many thoughtful, intelligent criticisms of these movies. That being said, sexism played a major role in the backlash against these movies, particularly The Last Jedi. A vocal minority has published a great many articles and videos condemning The Last Jedi as feminist, politically-correct (“PC”) propaganda. Tweets about female characters contained hate speech, which drove actor Kelly Marie Tran (who plays Rose Tico in the sequel trilogy) from social media; she has since responded to this online abuse in a New York Times op-ed. And the actor who plays Rey, Daisy Ridley, responded to criticism of Rey’s competence—the “Mary Sue” critique—by calling the term sexist. The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams and Mark Hamill (who plays Luke Skywalker) both spoke out against the sexist rhetoric used to criticize the Disney movies.

I am not here to litigate the gender politics in the Star Wars movies. My focus in this part is on the empirical, psychological relationship between favorability toward Star Wars films and sexist attitudes. I also look at the closely related concepts of “political correctness” and political identification. I focus on the survey’s questions of hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, PC beliefs, and political identification. I briefly discussed these in Part 1.

These concepts are all related to one another. If we see a relationship between how conservative someone is and their attitudes toward The Last Jedi, then how do we know it isn’t one of these other variables that is responsible for the relationship? To address this, I ran regression equations with each as a simultaneous predictor of fan-cluster membership, movie favorability, and character favorability. In these equations, I will focus only on variables that were significant predictors (p < .01).

I’ll start by looking at how fan clusters (from Part 2) differ on these items. Then I’ll turn to the relationships between these items and favorability toward Star Wars films and characters.

Fan Clusters

In Part 2, I found three major types of Star Wars fans: Prequel Skeptics, who love the saga but rate the prequels lower than the rest; Saga Lovers, who rate everything highly; and TLJ Disowners, who rate only The Last Jedi very negatively.

Sexism

I measured hostile sexism with two statements: “Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist,” and “Feminists are making unreasonable demands of men.” I averaged these together to get a general picture of hostile sexism. Benevolent sexism was measured with: “Women should be cherished and protected by men,” and “Many women have a quality of purity that few men possess.” Again, I averaged these together for a general picture of benevolent sexism.

In the plots below, each dot represents a response. The black circle is the mean of the group, and the horizontal lines above and below each dot are the 95% confidence intervals. The confidence interval represents a plausible range of values we can expect the mean to truly be.

TLJ Disowners reported more sexism than Saga Lovers, who reported more sexism than Prequel Skeptics. Comparing both means and medians, all comparisons were statistically significant, (p < .01). Those disowning The Last Jedi tended to score higher on sexism, though, as you can see, not everyone who hates The Last Jedi is sexist. This demonstrates some empirical evidence that sexism plays a role in attitudes toward The Last Jedi.

PC Beliefs and Conservatism

I asked respondents how much they agreed with: “Needing to be ‘politically correct’ creates an atmosphere in which the free exchange of ideas is impossible” to measure their “PC” beliefs. Participants also rated themselves on a scale from very liberal to very conservative.

The same pattern of results is found here as above: TLJ Disowners reported more negative attitudes toward being PC and more conservatism than Saga Lovers, who reported more of both than Prequel Skeptics. All comparisons were statistically significant, (p < .01). The biggest differences were between TLJ Disowners and the other two clusters. TLJ Disowners are more likely to believe political correctness is a negative force in society and are less politically liberal. Once again, we see a lot of variance within these groups, showing us that the clusters are not in lockstep with these political beliefs.

Trilogy Correlations

I asked respondents how much they liked each Star Wars episode on a ten-point scale. Movies in the same trilogy tended to correlate highly with one another, so I averaged attitudes toward movies of the same trilogy together for these analyses. In this and the next section, I look only at the sexism and PC questions because political identification was no longer a significant predictor after taking these attitudes into account. That is, the relationship between conservatism and movie favorability could have been due to sexism and PC beliefs.

The plots below show sexism and PC scores on the x-axis and favorability toward the trilogy on the y-axis. Each point is someone’s response, and I drew a line showing the relationship between the two attitudes through the points.

Each graph shows the same pattern. There were small, positive relationships between each attitude and favorability for the original and prequel trilogies. The more sexism and anti-PC beliefs one reported, the more they rated the movies favorably. However, we see the opposite relationship for the sequels, especially with hostile sexism and PC beliefs. The more sexism and negative PC beliefs someone reports, the less likely they are to like the sequels.

There has been a lot of cultural discussion about Star Wars and sexism. These data show the empirical relationship: Sexism is correlated with disliking the sequel films, as is thinking political correctness harms society. Again, however, I will point to the variability around these lines; although this relationship exists, not everyone who dislikes the sequels is a sexist or bemoans PC culture.

Character Correlations

Three sequel-trilogy characters have faced the brunt of sexist criticism: Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, Rey, and Rose Tico. We see the same relationship across all three characters and three attitudes (sexisms and PC beliefs): The more sexism someone reports, the less they like Holdo, Rey, and Rose, and the more one dislikes political correctness, the less favorably they feel toward the characters.

This aligns with what we know about psychological theories of sexism and political correctness. Each of these women defy traditional gender stereotypes. Both types of sexisms are based on traditional gender stereotypes, and violations of these anger those who believe in the stereotypes. Those who believe political correctness harms free exchange of ideas might not see traditional stereotype-defying women as a free artistic expression, but as a decision made solely to appeal to political correctness.

These results also replicate work a colleague of mine and I did after the release of The Force Awakens. We found that hositle sexism was a positive predictor of the typical, “Mary Sue” complaints about Rey, i.e. that she was “too competent” throughout The Force Awakens.

Conclusion

These data shed some insight onto the still-ongoing conversation about sexism, politics, and The Last Jedi. Looking at responses from over five thousand Star Wars fans, it is clear that sexism and disliking political correctness are positively related to disliking Disney’s sequels, though it is also not a one-to-one relationship: Some people defy this trend and dislike the movies while holding progressive attitudes about women.

These data support the excess anecdotal evidence (tweets, comments, articles) that sexism plays a major role in the backlash to Disney’s sequels. While some criticism of the movie is in good faith, these data suggest some of the backlash to the film is likely not. Given their social and political attitudes, some people might have been predisposed to hate it—regardless of the film’s quality—due to main female characters demonstrating skill, bravery, and leadership.