When there's a popular backlash to a major Hollywood product, the managers at the top (and their hack in-house directors) come to a fork in the road. Will we rethink our approach to the material, or will we double down and attempt to manipulate the cultural environment to view our product more favorably? You'll notice that despite the latter approach ending horribly in nearly every case (*cough* Ghostbusters 2016 *cough*), it's the go-to move for our corporate overlords.
"Message discipline" has been the name of the game in the wake of Solo's disastrous opening. First, Lucasfilm called its pet film commentors, people like Breznican at Entertainment Weekly and the usual neckbeard geekbloggers and planted quotes suggesting that, really, Solo was an excellent movie hamstrung by a TOXIC ONLINE CULTURE OF CYNICISM and THE INEPTITUDE OF LORD AND MILLER who TRIED TO MAKE IT FUNNY.
And now, hack director Rian Johnson, creator of a forthcoming trilogy of his own, has begun snarkily posting passive-aggressive attacks on the TOXIC FANBASE:
I haven't seen "manbaby" trotted out since this much since the wake of the lady Ghostbusters film.
All of this bodes well. As Paul Feig and the GB2016 disaster showed us, once the audience becomes the enemy many hilarious meltdowns surely follow. When Johnson's shitty new trilogy inevitably disappoints, I expect the gloves to finally come off. Johnson, the schlub, will show his fangs, and he'll go right for the jugular and saying anyone who didn't care for his films are "alt-right manbabies" and possibly "incels".
After all, this is exactly how they reacted when their last bold and subversive deconstructionist triumph The Last Jedi tanked at the box office and now you have people seriously saying that Solo did poorly because men who live in their parents' basements complained about female protagonists.