Maybe not confirmation bias per se—I acknowledged people loved the first film.

I was surprised by what I observed amongst my social circle of people not really digging it or talking about it. But I said in my post it was just my own anecdotal experience. I didn’t dislike the film, but just found the ending a bit of a let down.

Twice so far in this thread I’ve acknowledged that I did not realize the show only released yesterday, as I had been reading about it for at least the last week, and saw it featured on the home screen of my smart TV, so I thought it came out last week. So yes, I did respond to that and admit that I did not know it just came out.

But that wasn’t really the crux of what you were saying about me / my post. Again, I am not and was never implying that audience reaction should impact one’s personal enjoyment of something.

I think the reality is that you read my topic title, made false assumptions about what my intent was, and then lobbied accusations at me based on your incorrect assumptions.

Now that I’m clarifying my intent and my perspective and giving you substance to respond to, you can’t do so and you’re just telling me I’m “wrong” and that I’m “lazy” instead of explaining what it is that you disagree with in my other response where I explained why I find the topic interesting. I never once said or implied that an audience reaction should “matter” in terms of one’s own enjoyment of a piece of art.

If you can’t have a civil disagreement or discussion and have to insult people and call them lazy when you can’t actually defend your accusations, then perhaps you shouldn’t be on a message board. That’s just not how this works, even if you do think I’m wrong.

These are good points to consider and I hadn’t realized the show just came out yesterday. Thanks!

I’ll still stand by my anecdotal experience of KO2 not receiving much love from folks I know but that’s just my subjective experience.

Again, I will ask you to refer to my other comment for an explanation of why I find it interesting to discuss or acknowledge. To be clear, for my own personal enjoyment (or lack thereof) of a piece of art, I couldn’t care less what the general reaction is amongst critics or fans.

But in discussing the history of a film or a director (especially in circumstances where opinion shifted over time or things were reassessed) then it can absolutely be interesting to consider.

To be fair I didn’t realize it came out yesterday because I’d been reading about it for like the past week and assumed it had been out since then. I opened my android TV yesterday and it was on the homepage.

Perhaps read my response to another comment below explaining why I find the audience reactions to be worth at least discussing. I’m not saying it should shape anyone’s opinion or that it influences my own. I think the really defensive and slightly aggressive tone is unnecessary.

I don’t think this is true these days with social media and everyone on their phones and giving thumbs up/down on Netflix or a rating on RT etc. Many average viewers passively rate films in a way that used to only be reserved for the “film geeks.”

A site like Letterboxd is obviously a different animal though.

I totally agree. I’m not saying audience reaction should shape your opinion or my opinion.

But as a film fan and as a discussion point I think it’s still interesting to at least recognize and talk about how there can be a divide between critical and audience reaction. Sometimes it adds to a film or director’s legacy and it can go both ways — sometimes there are films that get ravaged upon initial release by critics (like the original Blade Runner or so many poorly reviewed comedies like Dumb and Dumber) but become iconic with time because of audiences reacting differently to them. Rear Window was initially considered by critics to be a massive disappointment and one of Hitchcock’s lesser works and was a box office disappointment. Now it’s routinely ranked as not only his best work but in some cases the greatest film of all time (I believe a British poll ranked it as such not long ago).

So, I’m not arguing that it’s important per se. I just find it interesting to talk about I suppose.

I’m getting downvoted and I think a lot of people are just reading the title and getting defensive because they like Rian Johnson but I’m not bashing the guy. I like a lot of his work, or even pieces of the films I’m less fond of like Last Jedi.

Maybe, but it’s the best way to gauge public reaction to a film. Box office used to be a more helpful indicator but in the streaming era, besides anecdotal stories (like my personal experience of almost no one I know claiming to have enjoyed Knives Out 2), those user-rating based sites are really all we have to gauge the reaction to something.

But for his older pre-streaming work you could definitely still point to box office and lackluster exit polling as an indicator that his work wasn’t exactly winning over audiences—at least relative to the critical reactions.

If I exported the file to my desktop computer is there an app you use that can easily blur objects?

I don’t think I’ll need it too often but just in case I need to blur any faces or anything, I wanted to make sure I had a good editing tool ahead of time.

Thanks!