PT Initial Audience Reactions to The Phantom Menace (Summer 1999 Gallup polling)

Hey folks! To commemorate the 25th anniversary release, I made this infographic for the film, based upon neat polling data Gallup did for the movie (thanks Gallup!) during the summer of 1999. (Source articles here: 1, 2, 3). I think the results are quite interesting.



Look at those expectations -- 35% expecting it to be better than the original Star Wars! Wow. And how about the characters -- Jar Jar ahead of Obi-Wan! Qui-Gon dominating the favorites seems only right, and Anakin isn't doing too shabby at all either! I like this polling data because it's a time capsule to a time and place before people's views were very much affected by the internet or cultural buzz that picked up later on, as we all are all-too-familiar with. Another thing I find interesting is that although children did like the film more than adults did, the disparity is not too large -- and the amount of detractor who actually hated the movie is small in both groups.

I've created a poll with this thread so we can see how our answers stack up against the answers of the general population of 1999. Feel free to share this image around if you want -- one reason I decided to put this into an infographic format was to make it easily shareable, so feel free to do with it what you wish! Interested here you guys' thoughts, on the infographic and Gallup's data, or even just more widely, about the initial release and response to the film.

 

Watto

 

Watto for me too. I was so jazzed about that character. I was quoting all his lines and always talking about him from day one. So much so, my friend got me a Watto action figure for my birthday that year.

 

Well this is very interesting and not at all what 'common knowledge' would have you believe.

 

This infographic should be embedded within any and every retrospective review, analysis, comment, and opinion piece, professional or otherwise.

Never let external pressures change history. Never let pessimism win the day. Never forget.

 

Seems a bit sus.

 

Hey thanks!

It's probably fair to wonder about it, though the data is as solid as it gets. Gallup has been doing professional polling since 1935. I linked the sources to the original Gallup polling from summer 1999 in the original post, but if you didn't click on that, I can summarize: Nationwide, telephone interviews were conducted with 1,014, 925, 1,053, and 1,022 adults over four weekends in summer of 1999. From that larger pool, the many adults who saw the film gave their answers. The confidence is 95% with a margin of error of plus or minus 3%. All the polls were done through randomized national telephone interviews during daytime hours. The pre-release poll was conducted the weekend of April 30-May 2; the post-release polls were conducted over the three weekends of May 21-23, June 4-5, and June 11-13.

 

I understand that Gallup is solid, but as far as I can tell this infographic probably isn't from Gallup itself. The only other source for it that I can find is a Reddit post, and that doesn't give any link to the data set itself. I also find this a little suspect. I can see that you have given further information @xezene - could you give a link to the original source. Sorry for being a bit of a sceptic but....

 

Well whoever it was - they ignored the audience results, Watto was clearly the audience favorite, he should've been given a leading role going forward. Obi-Wan and Watto obviously should've been a team, like a buddy-cop movie, but Lucas dropped the ball. hell - Lucas fell over the ball and then threw it to his grandmother , ( sorry, I'm not sure why his grandmother turned up in this analogy but let's be honest it's the truth, and the truth is what we need right now.) Like - who the **** is dexterjenxster? That could've been Watto.

But no , the woke brigade just wouldn't stand for a slave owner being the best character and they shut it down.

 

Well, Watto did find his way onto the list! (Barely.)

I organized the infographic using Gallup's polling data which they released publicly in 1999. The other Reddit post is mine, aha. Under the Reddit post is an extensive comment that includes all documentation and links which I included as an accompaniment. For this post, I did link to the original Gallup sources in the original comment, but I can do so here again since you are asking.

The corresponding articles which announced the findings of these polls can be found here:

• "The Phantom Menace" -- A Force to Be Reckoned With
• Phantom Phever Strikes America
• Public Gives the Latest Star Wars Installment Positive, but not Rave Reviews

Over four weekends (one weekend before release, three after), Gallup did surveys of about 1,000 randomized adult Americans each weekend, using the telephone (in the end totaling about 4,000). From that group they asked the questions they did about The Phantom Menace, and people answered. Adults were also asked to give their children's assessment of the film, which is the children portion. All in all, Gallup estimated 95% confidence in the poll results with a margin of error of ±3%.

Since you were wondering about it, I went and also grabbed a page from Gallup's 1999 book of poll results, where they offered abridged summaries of data and polls they conducted. Here you can see a truncated summary of the polling data, from page 262 of the Gallup book from 1999.


The data in the infographic is pulled from this poll and others Gallup conducted at the time, which are found in full in the above articles; instead of using individual weekend percentages though, I used the overall average percentages which Gallup used in their final online article.

 

I remember this. Now, let me engage in my favorite hobby of flag-burning.

 

All interesting stuff. But (and I'm sure you're aware of this) the actual numbers of people who claimed they had seen the movies is somewhere between 359-383 (its difficult to work out exactly how many because they are clearly using only full integer values for their percentages). I'll note that as time has gone on and there are more respondents, the reaction to the movies drops off (so, the larger the correspondent replies, the less positive the reactions are). The first poll only had between 37 and 42 who claimed to have seen the movie for example, compared to the last week's 164-173.

What we also don't know is if the poll was incentivised or not. This can have major implications for the results. The first issue is that incentives are often offered at the beginning of the call and so some respondents may claim to have seen the movie who haven't at all (there's a chance of something free, why let the facts get in the way?). Secondly, incentives tend to give more positive results (possibly due to a belief that, in the case of a cash draw for example, positive results are more likely to be entered and thus win). Even without those issues (and the small number of respondents possibly suggests they weren't incentivised) there is always ambivalence (in the words of Samuel Popkin in The Reasoning Voter; "“Ambivalence is simply an immutable fact of life.”) - it may just not matter very much to the people, or a substantial subset of the people, polled. I think it would be fair to say that if you polled the same number of people from these boards, that there would be appreciable differences in the results.

I'm surprised, given the low numbers involved, that Gallup feel that the results of the poll are as strong as they claim.

But, its certainly a good talking point.

 

4 of the 5 possible answer are on the positive end of the spectrum. There’s only one possible outright negative response.

Sus.

 

My favorite was Obi-wan, I liked seeing a younger version of him and loved how he kicked ass all the way through the film.

I probably would have given it a “one of the greatest” ratings.

 

TPM might have been the last movie I saw in a theater where people applauded at the end.

Obi-Wan was my favorite. I loved the end where they established the master and apprentice relationship and set the stage for Episode II, so well done.