I have noticed that insecure people latch onto a person who produces problematic material, perhaps because they were praised for liking it, and then froth to defend that person regardless of their short fallings... it reminds me...

Of narcissistic structure... an imaginary 'perfect self' created by extreme insecurity that cannot be questioned or attacked without invoking a violent reaction.

It is like they have offset their perfect self construct to another person

Regardless of how bad the person of their fixatiom behaves, or how much their product is actually bad, that link cannot be broken or questioned.

For example, of you list the many, many, many shortcomings of The Last Jedi, you will immediately be attacked and challenged. Or if you point out the smoking hot mess of Snyder's DC films.

And you cannot reason with these people, in the exact same way you cannot reason with a narcissist regarding their idealised self construct.

It cannot be flawed, because to do so opens up and exposes their own vulnerable selves to criticism.

No amount of Batman killing and branding people, no amount of green tiddy milk or mary poppins jedi can penetrate the bubble safely.

That's even before you go into failures of story structure, tone and ethics.

You may as well call a narcissist wrong.

The problem isn't the director, or the films, it is the unhealthy displacement of belief.

And, I would extend this to people who will go all out defending a tyrant regardless of evidence, of exposed lies, of obvious flaws.

It is the same phenomenon.

Okay, so you are uncertain of something... but you take a risk and say, this thing is for me. You are praised. This immediately sets the foundation for the construct... you build identity and self worth based on that link.

It is Cathexis.

To call into question the things you cathect requires self destruction and reconstruction. An insecure person doesn't have the wiggle room to do that.

You can see this in the cruelty of their behaviour when, say, Rian gets a film deal or Snyder gets millions to reshoot his 'cut'. They are more concerned with owning the critics and siding with others who behave the same then the films.

Because for them it is personal. They have bonded part of their emotional defenses to the director.

So me saying The Last Jedi script alone is an absolute steaming pile of poop, is to them saying that they, themselves are a steaming pile of poop.

Hey...

Pssst...

The Last Jedi script is an absolute steaming pile of poop.

Go and work on yourself if you find yourself bristling at this.

I love Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But it is riddled with problems and problematic people, and can and should be criticised.

In being able to criticize yourself, you grow as a person. To build healthy relationships with media you need to be able to criticize it, and appreciate the good and learn from the bad.

The bad being things like, hmmm, the scripts to The Last Jedi or Batman vs. Superman.