Depressingly, Disney responded by giving in to those most toxic elements of fandom when the empty and soulless Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, came out in 2019 and undid much of what Johnson introduced to the show, including dropping Tran’s Rose Tico to less than a few minutes of screen time. Instead, this film reverted to retreading the basic plot elements of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) and was generally better received, slightly, by the louder voices of the star wars fandom. Ironically, and perhaps tellingly, it always made less money than The Last Jedi.

Cry 5 laughs at this and even at himself as he goes through the motions of a star wars legacy suite, from 2015 Star Wars: The Force Awakens, who also redid Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) in all but name, though it killed off old fan favorites like Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. In Cry 5, longtime franchise stalwart Dewey Riley (David Arquette) is finally gutted after surviving nine stab wounds in four previous films. Delightfully, as her killer undermines their hero’s last life, the Ghostface fangirl tells her, “It’s an honor.” She kills her idol with adulation.

Meanwhile, Campbell’s Sidney Prescott has no time for that bullshit after so many movies. She calls the killers – and the franchise – on repetitiveness.

“Oh, there are two of you. Again,” Sidney says with a hint of annoyance when she gets her first phone call from the new Ghostface. She already has her gun and little interest in conversing over scary phone calls. “Perhaps you are the most derivative of them all,” she said, unimpressed, “I mean, Christ, the same house? »

As with some star wars fans are happiest when Luke Skywalker still wields green lightsabers to take down faceless goons The Mandalorian, or Rey stares at Emperor Palpatine on not-a-Death Star, Sid (and the filmmakers) poke fun at their fanboy killers in Scream, and perhaps their audience, for wanting to see variations on the same thing over and over, endlessly.

Of course it’s not alone a star wars thing. More than three million game of thrones fans have signed a change.org petition asking HBO to redo the final season of game of thrones with writers who aren’t “grossly incompetent” – even if they seem unable to realize that until an intentionally bitter, unhappy, and admittedly hasty end, much of what fans loved and quoted from the previous seven seasons of game of thrones was written, adapted, and sometimes outright invented by the showrunners who were now proverbially left to bleed to the ground.