What’s Everybody Mad About This Week?!: J.J. Abrams vs. The Last Jedi, Game of Thrones, and Percy Jackson

Welcome to What's Everybody Mad About This Week?!, a SYFY WIRE series that rounds up the biggest geek culture uproars of the week and adds a little bit of context for those who missed out.

There's no denying that the internet, no matter how you feel about it, is a breeding ground for debate in all forms. Not all of it is healthy, but we're looking to fill you in on all the latest, best debates so you can pretend to know what your friends are talking about.

This week, we’re exploring the biggest Emmys snub, fervor around a Disney+ rumor, and, yes, Star Wars.

Credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO

Look, I’d be more shocked if everyone was, for once, totally happy about how award season nominations go. That being said: The Golden Globes stirred up a lot of negative buzz this week. 

Most of the controversy seemed to stem from the Hollywood Foreign Press’s perceived snub of Game of Thrones’ final season.

Sure, Kit Harington got a nomination for Best Actor – Drama, but that was… it. And that wasn’t enough for the fans of a series that’s notably wiped the floor with the competition at awards shows for years. Some were angry that Emilia Clarke didn’t receive a nomination and that there were no technical nominations.

But, really, most of the anger was still directed at Game of Thrones Season 8 itself. People still are not happy in the slightest with how the series turned out, and will doubtlessly continue being mad ‘til the end of time!

Photo: Copyright Fox 2000 Pictures. All rights reserved./Courtesy Everett Collection

Okay, so the “anger” here isn’t so much anger as it is “desperation” that could easily be misconstrued as anger. Really, any anger is directed not at this recent news-rumor but at the memory of the previous Percy Jackson adaptations. 

Here’s the gist: On Tuesday, author Rick Riordan tweeted that he was in Los Angeles having meetings about potentially adapting his hit YA novel series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians. Even before he did so, there were inklings that Disney+ MIGHT pick the series up for adaptation, which set off a tweetstorm and general freakout across the internet. 

Let me emphasize here: These are all rumors. There is no confirmation that Disney+ is considering a Percy Jackson series. But that didn’t stop the books’ notably enthusiastic fans from completely and utterly losing their s**t.

Any anger associated with this was mostly hidden by the fandom’s enthusiasm. But that anger was 100 percent directed toward the movie adaptations, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), which many fans dislike to this day for how they misinterpreted the novels. Fans will doubtlessly continue to be mad about those adaptations — but now at least they seem to have some (rumored) hope for the future.

Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney

We are mere days away from the premiere of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. People are excited, scared, and… mad. Of course they are! This would not be the Star Wars fandom if folks weren’t yelling about it on the internet. That’s not even me being bitter — that’s just fact.

So, this week’s hubbub includes a lot, but we’re going to focus specifically on some quotes in a recent story in The New York Times. We’ll be looking into the J.J. Abrams stuff in this entry. If you want any stuff on the John Boyega and Daisy Ridley of it all, I can’t help you at the moment.

The story reads:

Abrams praised The Last Jedi for being “full of surprises and subversion and all sorts of bold choices.”

“On the other hand,” he added, “it’s a bit of a meta approach to the story. I don’t think that people go to Star Wars to be told, ‘This doesn’t matter.’”

Even so, Abrams said The Last Jedi laid the groundwork for The Rise of Skywalker and “a story that I think needed a pendulum swing in one direction in order to swing in the other.”

Longtime defenders of Johnson and The Last Jedi jumped to his and the film’s defense once again, criticizing Abrams for potentially implying anything negative about the film. Others seemed confused — suddenly, several folks seemed to be throwing Johnson under the bus for his work on the series.

We do not need to get into a debate about The Last Jedi here. Your opinion is your opinion, and that’s cool. J.J. Abrams' opinion is J.J. Abrams' opinion, and that's also cool. Granted, his opinion holds a bit more weight than most other fans', but still!

I’m just here to tell you the only thing I know anymore: People are mad. And I am tired. So very, very tired.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's, and do not necessarily reflect those of SYFY WIRE, SYFY, or NBC Universal.