Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Destroyed The Star Wars Meme Economy

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in the March 2020 issue of Meme Insider, a magazine covering memes and other internet phenomena. You can subscribe here.

There's been a great disturbance in the force as if a thousand memes cried out in anguish and were suddenly silenced. No, it's not Alderaan. It's the Star Wars meme economy. What seemed like it should have been a booming time for Star Wars not more than three months ago has abruptly crashed like so many podracers.

Yes, the Star Wars meme community crashed, and it's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's fault. So what happened? In short, it was ambivalence. The film might have made a billion dollars, thanks to fans, hardcore and casual, dutifully returning to cinemas to see the conclusion of the "Skywalker Saga," but nothing has erased the film's existence from the cultural zeitgeist quite like the lack of memes for the film. The final entry into the central Star Wars series went out with a whimper. Even democracy got more thunderous applause.

And it's not like there weren't meme-able moments. There was a fantastic new character named Babu Frick, a couple of space horses and Kylo Ren doing a little shrug. However, compared to 2019's other fan-based meme powerhouses, Avengers: Endgame and Joker, it barely made a blip. As noted, the film cleared a billion dollars, which is somehow the only marker of box office success these days, raking in more money than the Oscar-nominated Joker, but still, no memes. What gives?

At this point, it's safe to say that the response to Rise of Skywalker has been muted at best and ignored at worst. The film, for all its frantic plotting and half-hearted attempts at fan service, has been almost wiped from the public consciousness. It wouldn't surprise me if people struggled to remember whether or not they saw Rise of Skywalker. The response from the meme community resembles the answer to Justice League, which similarly made gobs of money but left no impact in the meme community or the public memory. And, of course, an army of fans clamoring for the "real" cut of the film, as a viral Reddit thread launched the "Release the JJ Cut campaign", which appears all too familiar to the "Release the Snyder Cut" of Justice League campaign.

But in terms of Star Wars memes, the number of Rise of Skywalker specific examples is low. Even more divisive entries in the series have inspired more memes. In fact, you could say that the more divisive a film is, the more memes it's likely to inspire--just look at The Last Jedi and all three prequel films. But who's going to take the time to create a meme for a film that no one remembers or cares about. It's why no one has ever seen a Solo: A Star Wars Story meme. Yes, Solo. Remember Solo? It's the movie that revealed to us where Han Solo got his last name and where Chewbacca got his nickname.

For there to be a meme community surrounding a piece of culture, there must be some sort of passion for the property. Obviously, that exists for Star Wars. Just a month before Rise of Skywalker's release, Star Wars basically scooped up the entire meme world with Baby Yoda, the breakout character of The Mandalorian. For a time, it felt like every new episode of Mandalorian brought with it a new Baby Yoda meme. The character dominated the online conversation for weeks with everyone from George Lucas to Werner Herzog, proclaiming allegiance to "The Child."

Now, maybe fans were oversaturated with Star Wars memes to really give Rise of Skywalker its due. I mean, who wouldn't want to meme Babu Frick? But Spider-Man: Far From Home came out roughly two months after Avengers: Endgame and had a host of memorable and useable formats. Rise of Skywalker undoubtedly gave fans more images, video and quote to meme. Fans just haven't used them.

Star Wars fatigue is not a new theory. After Solo failed to explode at the box office, many analysts blamed its proximity to the release of The Last Jedi, released only six months prior. Some believe that a little Star Wars goes a long way. The big draw of the series is the anticipation of more Star Wars, so it's possible that Baby Yoda cut off Rise of Skywalker’s meme possibilities at the knees. But for that argument to take hold, you'd have to ignore the other Star Wars-related memes that have popped up since mid-December. Baby Jabba the Hut, Lego Star Wars Icons and Pimp Vader all joined the fight since Rise of Skywalker and all have fared better than the memes from the film.

According to Know Your Meme's database, Rise of Skywalker has generated five new memes prior to its release. Who could forget Dark Rey and They Fly Now? Five memes, which is exactly how many memes the film's inspired since release. Those memes aren't laudatory either. They're mostly expressions of disappointment with the finale. Somehow Palpatine Returned, a meme that mocks the lack of screenwriting in the film, is the only major meme, aside from Rey Who?, which also isn't particularly positive towards the film.

But a film's quality is not an indicator of memes. Prequel Memes, that is memes based on the Star Wars prequels, act almost as a Rocky Horror Picture Show, commenting on the camp value of the prequels with memes like Hello There and I Don't Like Sand. Even Cats, released only five days after Skywalker, has a burgeoning meme community and that received much worse reviews.

Indifference is the killer of memes because, if nothing else, memes are about the communication of an idea and feeling. But when you have a film, like Rise of Skywalker, which did not receive passionate responses one way or the other, memers are left looking for things that people recognize. No one memes Rise of Skywalker because no one remembers it that well, which is the worst review a Star Wars movie can get.