There are three objective measures you can use to gauge a films popularity. Box office total, critical reviews, audience opinions. These are data points that can be quantified. For TLJ, two of the three were very positive. Audience reaction data has been an outlier only in the RT score. That data isn’t supported by the other entities which track audience opinions. So it makes the numbers suspect. When in doubt you then toss out the audience scoring and rely on the other two to come to a conclusion.
FWIW, for anyone that doesn't frequent the Jedi Council message boards, it's pretty much the de facto "official" SW board. Some hardcore fans there; lots of them.
After TFA, that place was buzzing; lots of love, some hate, but conversation aplenty, as the new characters were interesting and woven with enough mystery to sustain months of fun dialogue. Just weeks after TLJ, that place's ST section ground to a freaking halt. No one cared. What's to discuss? I mean, these are people that know how to dissect a SW movie, and have fun doing it. But they didn't.
TLJ had so much raw material to work with and somehow managed to dial it all back. It introduced a couple of new characters that no one really cared about. No sense getting into details (again).
So, yeah...numbers. If every marginal SW fan/parent/friend goes and sees it once, there's your box office (you can thank TFA for a lot of that). Critical reviews...there are conspiracy theories supporting Disney and critic's press screening access to combat those of these "bot fan reviews".
But as a fan, the numbers (to me) are actually what is shadows and dust. Being a niche item to a lot of us old-school fans, a proper Star Wars movie might not even top the box office anymore; it now incorporates a lot of whiz-bang optical stuff, suffering narratives, and heightened pace to appeal to the masses. So when I want to gauge where SW is at quality-wise, I look at the people that really hang their hat on Star Wars, and too many of those people simply don't seem to give a damn right now.
Sorry if that reads kind of pissy; it's not meant to be towards you at all; I guess I'm still angry that SW is quickly becoming a non-factor with many people (me?), and it sucks to write that out. :-\