Skip to main content

The Force Is Online

Most Star Wars Fans Rely on Website Performance to Get Ready for New Star Wars Movie
Ann Ruckstuhl

The greatly anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters December 18, and geeks and R2D2 and sci-fi fans around the world will be lining up to see the latest addition to the iconic series.

And they are well prepared for the full Star Wars experience, according to the findings of the latest survey from SOASTA. The survey found that Star Wars fans are counting on website performance to watch movie trailers (45 percent), get updates on the movie (33 percent), and read movie reviews (33 percent).


Using its Consumer Performance Index (CPI), SOASTA also tested the performance of websites where fans would most likely watch previews before seeing the movie itself and found that all popular online movie trailer sites out-perform the official Star Wars website.

Star Wars Fans Take to the Internet

The survey results also revealed a curious geographical division of activities among Star Wars fans based in different parts of the US. While fans across the country are depending on website performance to watch movie trailers (45 percent), Star Wars fans in the West are more likely to be relying on it to read movie reviews (41 percent, compared to 27-33 percent elsewhere).

Star Wars fans in the Northeast and South are more likely to be relying on web performance to learn about The Force Awakens stars (24 percent each, compared to 9-14 percent elsewhere).

Star Wars fans in the Northeast are relying on online retail outlet performance to guide purchases of Star Wars toys (17 percent compared to just 8 percent in the West and 10 percent in the South).

Care About Website Performance, Millennials Do

The SOASTA survey also revealed that among Star Wars fans, Millennials (62 percent) are more likely than their older counterparts to say online performance matters when preparing for the new Star Wars movie.

Millennials are relying on online performance to:

■ Watch movie trailers (61 percent)

■ Get updates on the movie (43 percent)

■ Read reviews of the movie online (40 percent)

■ Watch past Star Wars films (33 percent)

■ Learn about the movie’s stars (30 percent)

■ Buy Star Wars toys (18 percent)


Meanwhile, the Force Does Not "Awaken" on the Official Star Wars Website

Considering how many Star Wars fans said they are counting on online performance to watch the Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie trailers, fans should be advised that while Starwars.com may be the most logical go-to website, they would be better off watching a preview at Lucas Film (CPI score: 84.6), Rotten Tomatoes (CPI score: 83.6), or Moviefone (CPI score: 82). In fact, any other popular purveyor of online movie trailers offers a more reliable performance experience than the eponymous StarWars.com.

This research is about Star Wars and its fans, on the face of it. But it is truly about website performance, as fans rely on the Internet to, for example, watch previews and buy toys. Performance is now the critical differentiator for brands across the globe in all industries — and web and mobile app performance matters now more than ever before as a result.

Ann Ruckstuhl is CMO of SOASTA.

The Latest

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

AI workloads require an enormous amount of computing power ... What's also becoming abundantly clear is just how quickly AI's computing needs are leading to enterprise systems failure. According to Cockroach Labs' State of AI Infrastructure 2026 report, enterprise systems are much closer to failure than their organizations realize. The report ... suggests AI scale could cause widespread failures in as little as one year — making it a clear risk for business performance and reliability.

The Force Is Online

Most Star Wars Fans Rely on Website Performance to Get Ready for New Star Wars Movie
Ann Ruckstuhl

The greatly anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters December 18, and geeks and R2D2 and sci-fi fans around the world will be lining up to see the latest addition to the iconic series.

And they are well prepared for the full Star Wars experience, according to the findings of the latest survey from SOASTA. The survey found that Star Wars fans are counting on website performance to watch movie trailers (45 percent), get updates on the movie (33 percent), and read movie reviews (33 percent).


Using its Consumer Performance Index (CPI), SOASTA also tested the performance of websites where fans would most likely watch previews before seeing the movie itself and found that all popular online movie trailer sites out-perform the official Star Wars website.

Star Wars Fans Take to the Internet

The survey results also revealed a curious geographical division of activities among Star Wars fans based in different parts of the US. While fans across the country are depending on website performance to watch movie trailers (45 percent), Star Wars fans in the West are more likely to be relying on it to read movie reviews (41 percent, compared to 27-33 percent elsewhere).

Star Wars fans in the Northeast and South are more likely to be relying on web performance to learn about The Force Awakens stars (24 percent each, compared to 9-14 percent elsewhere).

Star Wars fans in the Northeast are relying on online retail outlet performance to guide purchases of Star Wars toys (17 percent compared to just 8 percent in the West and 10 percent in the South).

Care About Website Performance, Millennials Do

The SOASTA survey also revealed that among Star Wars fans, Millennials (62 percent) are more likely than their older counterparts to say online performance matters when preparing for the new Star Wars movie.

Millennials are relying on online performance to:

■ Watch movie trailers (61 percent)

■ Get updates on the movie (43 percent)

■ Read reviews of the movie online (40 percent)

■ Watch past Star Wars films (33 percent)

■ Learn about the movie’s stars (30 percent)

■ Buy Star Wars toys (18 percent)


Meanwhile, the Force Does Not "Awaken" on the Official Star Wars Website

Considering how many Star Wars fans said they are counting on online performance to watch the Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie trailers, fans should be advised that while Starwars.com may be the most logical go-to website, they would be better off watching a preview at Lucas Film (CPI score: 84.6), Rotten Tomatoes (CPI score: 83.6), or Moviefone (CPI score: 82). In fact, any other popular purveyor of online movie trailers offers a more reliable performance experience than the eponymous StarWars.com.

This research is about Star Wars and its fans, on the face of it. But it is truly about website performance, as fans rely on the Internet to, for example, watch previews and buy toys. Performance is now the critical differentiator for brands across the globe in all industries — and web and mobile app performance matters now more than ever before as a result.

Ann Ruckstuhl is CMO of SOASTA.

The Latest

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

AI workloads require an enormous amount of computing power ... What's also becoming abundantly clear is just how quickly AI's computing needs are leading to enterprise systems failure. According to Cockroach Labs' State of AI Infrastructure 2026 report, enterprise systems are much closer to failure than their organizations realize. The report ... suggests AI scale could cause widespread failures in as little as one year — making it a clear risk for business performance and reliability.