Disney Star Wars Sucks and I Hate It

A NOTE: I AM WRITING THIS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE THAT EVERYONE WHO READS IT WILL HAVE SEEN THE FILMS IN QUESTION. THEREFORE, I WILL NOT BE GIVING ANY IN-DEPTH PLOT SYNOPOSIS OF SAID FILMS. THIS PIECE IS LONG ENOUGH AS IT IS.

Though I am told I was brought along to screenings of The Empire Strikes Back as a sleeping infant, and Return of the Jedi as a toddler (it's like something out of a dream), the first true Star Wars memories I have are watching the original film (aka A New Hope) on CBS in kindergarten in the mid-'80s, having to go to bed when Luke, Obi-Wan and the droids reached Mos Eisley, and then begging my mother to recap the rest of the film to me the next morning. I eventually taped The Empire Strikes Back off of premium cable, calling my older cousin to immediately ask him if Darth Vader was lying when he told Luke, "I am your father." My mom then took me over to that cousin's house to watch Return of the Jedi because I had to find out if Darth Vader was telling the truth for myself. The original Star Wars trilogy is paramount to memories of my early childhood years, and feels as much a fabric to them as potty-training, eating ice cream for the first time, and riding my bike...or my next-door neighbor's Endor-themed speeder bike swing-set.

No better decade to be a child than the '80s

The rest of the 80s on into the mid-90s, I went through a pattern of forgetting about and then rediscovering the films until the pre-8th grade summer of 1995, when my younger brother and I watched the original trilogy over 50 times, to a degree that my spooky mother asked us if the movies had a demonic hold over us. At that point, Star Wars was in my life to stay. The Star Wars explosion that summer was kicked off by a purchase of a used copy of Super Empire Strikes Back for my Super Nintendo, and from then on, I played every single Star Wars related game Lucasfilm made for Nintendo consoles and my PC. I saw the original trilogy in theaters multiple times in the Spring of 1997, when George Lucas released his new Special Editions to theaters. I also bought all three Special Editions of the movie soundtracks on CD. The merits of George Lucas' 1997 additions to his films are debatable (maybe I'll do that one day), but those soundtracks are still top of the line.

 

The greatest album ever made

Like many, my Star Wars fandom hit a fever pitch in May of 1999, when my best friend in high school and I checked out early from school and drove to Baton Rouge to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace on opening day. In the theater, we sat next to a man reading a novelization of the movie. I asked him if it was any good, and he said it has some details not found in the movie, but if I should read anything Star Wars, it should be the early 90s Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn. This guy seemed knowledgeable, and over the rest of 1999, I followed his advice, reading Heir to the Empire that summer, Dark Force Rising that fall, and The Last Command that December, finishing just before Y2K. I also saw The Phantom Menace five times that summer. My relationship with the prequels is complicated, but that summer, I was pretty happy with The Phantom Menace, and excited about the next two prequel films. I also listened to John Williams' inarguably excellent soundtrack nonstop, I bought toys I've still never taken out of the box, and I bought a Darth Maul lightsaber that got chopped in half in a duel with my brother, just like Darth Maul's got chopped in half by Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Golly jeepers, was I the coolest high school senior on the planet

I generally consider 1999, the year I turned 18, as the best year of my life for a number of reasons, and Star Wars was certainly a large part of that. This was also the year I realized that all of the Star Wars games I'd played, movies I loved, and books I was now reading were all part of one incredible expansive world, and that almost everything George Lucas' company released in regard to Star Wars was canon, and that every canonized piece of media outside of the films themselves was considered a part of the Expanded Universe (that could only be contradicted by George Lucas, himself). 

I was hooked.

The Big Three, and I mean that in more ways than one

Late that year, Del Rey Books began the Star Wars equivalent of Lord of the Rings, a 19-book epic series called The New Jedi, which kicked off with October 1999's Vector Prime. The series contained massive story and character arcs to the degree that each novel featured a galactic map on the inside cover (ala Lord of the Rings), which showed how much of the galaxy had been conquered by the Yuuzhan Vong, the series' frightening new enemy, as well as a Dramatis Personae before the first chapter of each book to help readers keep track of characters. The New Jedi Order's massive dramatics were a welcome companion during my college career, coming to a satisfying, possibly perfect conclusion during my senior year. Even as I was initially disappointed by the prequels, which released roughly in parallel to the series, I had the New Jedi Order books to keep me company. Even as I went through some pretty cataclysmic life events, I had Luke, Han, and Leia going through them along with me. I loved Star Wars so much.

 

MINTED

I even went back to other older EU books and comics and read those as well. I found a favorite character in Corran Horn, a working class Jedi who lacks the usual Jedi telekinesis powers, and so has to rely on his wits and ingenuity to keep up with his peers. My favorite book in the EU, Michael Stackpole's I, Jedi, is told from Horn's first-person perspective, as he trains with Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi, and then later infiltrates a gang of pirates in order to rescue his kidnapped wife.

This is the one

Meanwhile, the prequels came and went. I saw them many times in the theater, many times at home, put their posters on my wall, listened to their soundtracks copious times, and like most people in my age group, was generally disappointed with them. I loved the storylines, production design, fight scenes, special effects, and John Williams' soundtracks. However, I did not love the dialogue and its delivery. I had been producing the prequels in my head since the first events described in this piece, and meeting those expectations would have been close to impossible. However, in the years after the prequels ended, as I began my post-college, post-New Jedi Order life, I got married, had a child, and still had a steadily released stream of expanded universe books and comics to join me on the journey of life.

Thankfully, I never had to fight my brother in a lightsaber duel. Also, behold Jaina Solo, an honest to goodness "strong female lead," who would hand Rey Palpatine her ass.

Throughout these EU books, Luke and his wife, Mara, have a son named Ben, and Han and Leia have twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin. Throughout the books, some of the children die, some turn to the dark side, and the remainder become great and inspirational heroes...along with their parents. The confident and powerful Luke from the end of Return of the Jedi goes on to reform the Jedi Order under updated tenets (Jedi can have romantic relationships now!), and then inspires and teaches an entirely new generation of Jedi, all while deepening his knowledge of the force and becoming the most powerful Jedi in history. Experiencing the growth of Luke, as he passes on all he knows to Ben (who faces his own relatable struggles and doubts on the way to becoming a powerful Jedi) is a delightful and rewarding experience for long time fans of Star Wars. Meanwhile, Han and Leia grow old together, experiencing pain and countless joys as Leia helps lead the New Republic from the ashes of the Empire, and Han tries to find a more respectable path beyond "smuggler" that doesn't betray who he is.

Han, Luke, and Leia's last adventure, taking place 45 years after A New Hope, published July 9, 2013

Hundreds of writers and artists contributed to this wonderfully well-fleshed out continuation of George Lucas' original story, all under Lucas' blessing and final say. In the decade between 2005's Revenge of the Sith and Disney's trilogy, through novels, comics, and video games, The Expanded Universe WAS Star Wars. The surviving Skywalker and Solo children had begun to and were poised to continue their parents' storied legacies, as the older characters would presumably eventually fade in an ether of glory. Comic stories even featured the Skywalker's and Solo's descendants over 130 years after Return of the Jedi, while novels and video games explored George Lucas' world thousands upon thousands of years in the past. Then Disney bought Star Wars.

Perhaps the most ironically fitting logo of all time

My initial thoughts were mixed. Maybe they'll make something great...but what will they do with the Expanded Universe? The answer came quickly. Despite decades of material that Disney could easily adapt into films, television shows, and video games, in one stroke of a pen, Disney rendered the Expanded Universe non-canon. In 2014, they rebranded the Expanded Universe as "Star Wars Legends," referring to their events as things that "could have happened, but definitely didn't." I was devastated, and I know I was nowhere near alone. However, a strangely large amount of media puff pieces, promoting the general idea "Disney's Elimination of the Star Wars Expanded Universe Makes Room for Fresh Stories, and that's a Good Thing" cropped up, beginning a pattern that took me several years to understand. After all, why would anyone have that opinion, unless they knew for a fact that Disney actually had a fresh story to tell?

 

I eat fresh stories for breakfast!

After coming to terms with the fact that the Star Wars timeline I lived in was ending, I decided to give Disney a chance. They announced that J.J. Abrams was writing and directing The Force Awakens, the first film in a new Star Wars trilogy set 30 years after Return of the Jedi. I loved the first two seasons of J.J. Abrams' 2001-2006 show, Alias, before it went off a bit off a cliff in its final three seasons. I loved the 2004-2010 show Lost, which Abrams created, though admittedly he didn't have much to do with the show after the first season. I thought, at least at the time they were released, that his two Star Trek reboot films, as well as his pet project film, Super 8, were okay, but pretty forgettable. However, as Abrams posted Force Awakens updates, he said all the right things, emphasizing that the films would go back to some of the practical effects of the original trilogy, while teasing the presence of the original trilogy's BIG THREE. Indeed, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher would all apparently be returning as Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa. It all seemed so miraculous.

Can everything old be new again?

Finally, the Earth spun on to December of 2015, and The Force Awakens, aka Star Wars: Episode VII, hit theaters. My first viewing was obviously quite guarded, as I cautiously watched J.J. and Disney's work on the big screen. I ended up seeing the film three times in theaters, twice with my then five-year-old son, who enjoyed it, liking the female protagonist, Rey, because "she killed the bad guy (I had to explain that she only badly injured him)." I thought the movie was fine. I was excited to see Han and Leia on the big screen again, by Han Solo's speech about how the Jedi were real, and by the moment late in the film where Rey seems to draw power and awaken simply by hearing the term "the Force." I did not love how the film was a retread of A New Hope. I was also hopeful that Han Solo's death would not be meaningless, and that the bantha herd of mystery boxes and loose ends the film presented would be opened up and tied off by the two following installments. Overall, I was quite excited by the prospects the film presented, its production design, and its great John Williams score. I particularly enjoyed the character of Finn, a stormtrooper who gives up his helmet to join the good guys, and who bravely wields a lightsaber near the end of the film against a much superior foe in the face of certain death. It suddenly felt like everything old could be new again, and the death of the Expanded Universe suddenly didn't seem so bad. Surely, this was all the start of a grand, well-thought out, epic saga.

 

The moment when everything seemed possible

Suddenly, it was the most exciting time to be a Star Wars fan in over a decade. The Force Awakens grossed over two billion dollars. Disney made many bold film announcements, and Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars story, which would tell the story of how a group of Rebels got the Death Star plans to Princess Leia right before A New Hope began, was slated to be released just a year later, in December of 2016. Never mind that the story of the recovery of the Death Star plans had already been told in the 1995 game Dark Forces, where they were recovered by mercenary (and later, Jedi), Kyle Katarn. Dark Forces was no longer canon. Now, Rogue One was. However, Rogue One proved to be Disney's crowning Star Wars achievement, a thrilling, action-packed, though not perfect film--and that's despite the fact that it had to go through five weeks of re-shoots and retooling, reportedly with a different director. A month later, Disney announced that the next film in their sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi, aka Star Wars: Episode VIII, would be delayed from May to December 2017. It appeared that every Christmas from now on, the world would be treated to an outstanding Star Wars film, and Disney could do no wrong.

 

Pictured: Disney

The lead-in to The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson, was strange. Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy, who had been managing Star Wars after Disney's purchase, announced that she was so happy with Johnson's work on The Last Jedi, he would be getting his own Star Wars trilogy after the sequel trilogy ended. However, Mark Hamill, who would be returning as Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, after only popping in for the last 30-seconds of The Force Awakens, seemed less than enthused. Describing his disappointment with Johnson's treatment of his character, Hamill said, 

"I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he's Jake Skywalker? He's not my Luke Skywalker. But I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well. But listen, I still haven't accepted it completely. But it's only a movie. I hope people like it. I hope they don't get upset..."

Jake Skywalker

I entered the theater on December 15, 2017, at a personal low-point. I was disappointed in my marriage, in my professional life, in my artistic endeavors, in the fact that I'd set goals earlier in the 2010's, like running a marathon, and come nowhere near reaching them. With 40 fast approaching, I felt like I had completely failed at life. As I witnessed a pathetic, hopeless, angry, bitter, failed Luke on screen for over two-and-a-half hours, I felt like I was witnessing my own life story. When the villain of the film, Kylo Ren, tells Rey to "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to," I was shouting "YES!" at the screen. I justified Luke's sudden heel turn in this film by things said about him and traits he displayed in the original films: mainly that he was always focused, to his detriment, on the future over the present, prone to follow emotional whims. I missed something key from those films, though, which I'll get to momentarily. In late 2017, though, I was shocked that so many people didn't just dislike, but HATED The Last Jedi, even my best friend and cousin Adrian, who said walking out of the theater that night, "I knew I should have listened to the audience score." However, I bought the lies, perpetuated by Rian Johnson, that those who hated the film were just alt-right trolls and Russian bots, even though the real life Star Wars fan I went to the theater with, Adrian, absolutely hated the movie. Surely, every REAL Star Wars fan and genuine viewer enjoyed the film, right? It might have had some mixed messages and been tough to get through after the first couple of viewings, and several of my real life friends who I grew up watching Star Wars with hated it, but it did the opposite of what I thought it would do and Rian Johnson publicly called everyone who didn't like the film a manbaby, so...

This fight scene is emblematic of the entire film. Look too closely and you'll see enemies who freeze when they have a clear opening of attack, and whose weapons sometimes mysteriously disappear right out of their hands when they have a chance to deal a fatal blow.

The next year, Star Wars fandom felt...weird. All of a sudden there was a violent schism. Damn those Russian bots and woman-hating racist trolls! Announced film projects started to get cancelled. The Solo movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story, based on the early years of the titular character's life, released six months after The Last Jedi, was the first live-action Star Wars film to flop at the box office, grossing only 1/5 of The Force Awakens total--something that some fans, I guess Russian bots and woman-hating racist trolls, called "The Last Jedi-effect." I saw Solo once in the theater, shrugged, and have never had the impulse to watch it again. Meanwhile, I noticed a shift in my son. After The Force Awakens, I showed him the original Star Wars trilogy...and he LOVED it. After The Empire Strikes Back, which he watched in its entirety without moving a muscle, he said, "That was so good! It was better than The Force Awakens." The day after watching Return of the Jedi, he made me re-enact the final scene between Luke and his restored father with him, and he wanted to be the dying Anakin! That ending stuck with him that much (he's never asked to do that with any other movie or show), and I got him a cool, green, replica light-up Luke lightsaber from the film. When The Last Jedi ended, he said it was "too long and a little boring." After Solo, he told me, "I don't think I like Star Wars anymore."

Thanks a lot, Rian

Over the next year and a half, I experienced a lot of personal growth, and finally started accomplishing a lot of the goals I'd set so many years before. My marriage improved, my professional life improved, and my artistic endeavors flourished. I was even set to run a marathon, and in my training, ran 26.2 miles just to prove to myself that I could do it before the actual event (I've run six marathons since then, and you definitely should not do that before a race). A few months before the December 2019 trilogy-closing release of Rise of Skywalker, aka $tar Wars: Episode VIII, I tried to watch The Last Jedi again. And that is, for me, when Disney Star Wars began to fall apart.

The Last Jedi the moment you start thinking about it

The viewing took three attempts. The film was shockingly uninteresting, and I just kept falling asleep. On repeat viewing, the opening bombing raid suddenly makes no logical sense (nor does the fact that Johnson believes the "can you hear me now?" comedic skit should precede it). The bombing raid only seems to exist because Johnson has a fetish for WWII bomber footage...but this battle takes place in space, where the laws of physics are quite different than in the air over Northern Germany. Then Johnson gives us his take on Finn. Why is Finn being treated like a clueless coward and a buffoon who always runs away, when at the end of The Force Awakens, he picks up a lightsaber and charges a Sith master to protect his friend, in the face of certain death? Why is Finn suddenly being lectured to about wartime morals and ethics by a ship mechanic, when in the previous film, at great peril, he leaves a fascist military force that is consistently ordering him to gun down innocent civilians? Why is Finn relegated to a boring side-quest that comes to nothing, when he is the most interesting character in the previous film? Why, on that side quest, is he rendered nothing more than a passenger in a chase scene that treats the freedom of livestock as a major victory, when in logical actuality, all of those livestock will then have to be rounded up by slave children? Why not free the slave children? In the climactic battle on Crait, why does the film allow the ship mechanic character to rob Finn of his one chance at heroism? Why does the ship mechanic character then tell Finn, "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love," when Finn was literally sacrificing himself to save what he loved, and the result of her stopping him is that the heroes' entire base is destroyed, meaning QUITE LITERALLY not saved? How did that moment in the film make it from Rian Johnson's brain to a movie theater screen without anyone stopping it? Why couldn't the ship mechanic ram into Rian Johnson's thoughts instead? How did Finn then carry the now unconscious ship mechanic from the enemy front lines, a mile across open ground in full view of said enemy front lines, back to the destroyed base, without even so much as getting shot at? How?!!!

The dumbest, most inexplicable kiss in modern cinema

I have less things to say about Rey because the film itself doesn't have much to say about her. Many a man--and quite a few women--were accused of being misogynist incel man-babies because they had problems with Rey's character. I can definitively tell you I am none of those things, and I can also definitely tell you that Rey does not go through a character arc in this film. Wanting to know who your parents are isn't a character arc unless it incites personal change. Rey is exactly the same at the end of The Last Jedi as she was at the beginning: perfect and inexplicably powerful. She learns nothing from Luke Skywalker, who went through one of the best character arcs in cinematic history long before Rey was born. She is stronger in the force than Luke, or any character we've seen (except for Snoke, more on that later), lifting tons of rocks late in The Last Jedi without even crinkling her brow, when any character who has moved something even half that mass before her has had to exert themselves to near exhaustion. At the beginning of the film, Rey is a confident warrior fighting for the Resistance...and that's who she is at the end, no hugging no learning, as if she's a Seinfeld character...but this isn't Seinfeld, it's Star Wars.

 

What's the deal with Disney Star Wars?

I mentioned Luke, The Last Jedi's greatest offense (next to Holdo, and hold-on because I'll get to that too), but the real issue with Luke's character here, what renders the entire "STAR WARS" tag before The Last Jedi mute, came to me several years later, after rewatching the entire original Star Wars trilogy, NOT just up to the moment where Yoda calls Luke shortsighted and impatient halfway through The Empire Strikes Back, which is where I assume Rian Johnson quit watching. Right when The Last Jedi was released, and many fans screamed THIS IS NOT HOW LUKE SKYWALKER WOULD ACT! I said, "Not so fast, he was like this in the first half of The Empire Strikes Back, impulsive and full of fear." The obvious problem with my statement is that the original Star Wars trilogy doesn't END halfway through The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke impulsively leaves his training early and goes to Bespin because of a negative vision, just like he pulls his lightsaber over his sleeping nephew after he has a brief negative vision of him in The Last Jedi. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke rushes to fight Darth Vader and is then brutally defeated on both a physical and metaphysical level in the most demeaning way possible. In The Last Jedi, Luke's nephew wakes up, sees Luke standing over him with a lightsaber, goes ballistic, and destroys Luke's entire Jedi Academy, after which Luke flees to a hidden planet on the edge of the galaxy, where he decides to bitterly live out the rest of his days in exile. What does Luke do after his humiliation at the end of The Empire Strikes Back? He learns patience and humility (again, this growth shines a harshly negative light on "no learning" Rey) and develops such a high degree of compassion that he returns to face Darth Vader, his father, again, not to destroy him, but to redeem him. In the most powerful moment in the original trilogy, and my favorite moment in any film, Luke stands over the injured body of his defeated father before the satanic Galactic Emperor, who offers Luke the world if Luke will finish off Vader and take his place at the Emperor's side. At this moment, this Luke, THE REAL LUKE, the Luke who supposedly pulled his lightsaber out to murder his nephew because of a vision in The Last Jedi, takes that same lightsaber, throws it away (in a moment whose profound meaning is outright mocked by its flippant and callous repetition in The Last Jedi), and says, "Never. I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

 

The real deal

The pale, manbaby imitation

Luke then faces certain death from the Emperor, who begins to electrocute him, before Luke's father, inspired by his son's own compassion and defiance in the face of evil, gives his life to save Luke and destroy the Emperor. It's the perfect conclusion to both Luke and Anakin Skywalker's character arcs over the span of six films. George Lucas even ensures that father and son are tempted in similar ways across these six films, but that Luke, who through much DIFFICULT pain and failure has grown to become the greatest Jedi in history, is able to resist all the power in the entire universe through his love and compassion for his father (conversely, Anakin fails where Luke succeeds because he takes the easy way, which also reflects quite negatively on the sequel trilogy's adoration of "Easy Way Rey"). And Rian Johnson thinks Luke, the guy who has been through and would do all this, would pull out a lightsaber on his sleeping nephew because of a vision? Mark Hamill is right and I was wrong. The Skywalker of The Last Jedi isn't Luke Skywalker. It's Jake, who exists in some alternate universe, where Luke made an entirely different set of choices and grew to become an entirely different person than he did after the midpoint of The Empire Strikes Back. The real Luke, after the events of Return of the Jedi, goes through many trials and tests, makes some mistakes, but stays true to who he's become by the end of Return of the Jedi. He marries Mara Jade (after helping to redeem her too), and has a son named Ben, who appears poised to follow in his footsteps. The last we hear from Luke is in Troy Denning's 2013 novel, Crucible, where the aged Jedi Master is enjoying some time with friends and family, though we do also periodically see his force ghost encouraging his wayward nephew, Cade, in the Star Wars: Legacy comics, a century after his death. 

 

For a much better exploration of the concept of "living up to a legacy" than anything Disney can make, check out the Star Wars: Legacy comics. They're great.

But is the plot of The Last Jedi any good? The central concept is that the good guys, after their victory in The Force Awakens, are running from the bad guys through real space and are almost out of fuel. The bad guys can't quite move as fast as the good guys, so they follow at a distance, waiting for the good guys to run out of fuel. Somehow, Rian Johnson never took a physics class, let alone a crash course in simple Star Wars physics. In space, the ships would continue at the same speed, regardless of whether they ran out of fuel, unless another force acted upon them. In other words, whether or not the good guys run out of fuel, unless they somehow run into a wall in infinite space, the bad guys will NEVER catch up to them. This won't be the first time I bring up "middle school," but the simple physics of space are something even a middle schooler knows. I guess Rian Johnson cheated through sixth grade science. I guess Johnson also hasn't seen a single other Star Wars movie, where a hyperspace-capable bad guy ship could have simply jumped to hyperspace and come out at a point ahead of the good guys to easily annihilate them. The only thing Johnson knows about hyperspace is wrong, as the film's central action is that the good guys' Admiral Holdo takes a capital ship and launches it into hyperspace right through the middle of the bad guys' capital ship, destroying it. 

Great idea, Rian!!! 

If only the Rebels had thought of this way back at the end of A New Hope. They could have just taken a cruiser and hyperspaced it right through the Death Star! No trench run needed! In fact, every space battle could just be ended that way! Either Johnson doesn't care about lore or logic, or he is a galactically enormous moron. Likely, though, Johnson just cares that the shot looks cool, and that he has deified his new character, Holdo...the worst character in all of Star Wars.

 

Deepest condolences to any 2010's kid who found this waiting for them in their Christmas stocking. I wish you could have grown up in the 80s and 90s. 

Admiral Holdo is fully introduced after a bafflingly clumsy scene where Princess Leia is blown into space and has to use the force to, again, against all ship pressurization logic, fly back into the ship, where she suddenly falls unconscious. Like every storyline in The Last Jedi, this comes to nothing, as Leia just gets fridged for a while, so Holdo can take center stage. Of all the "you fascist, incel manbabies just don't like a strong woman" characters, Holdo is the most awful. As Holdo takes command, The Force Awakens' hotshot pilot and fan favorite character, Poe, immediately asks her the plan of action. Poe spent his time before this film risking his life and going undercover for the good guys, even being tortured, before delivering the killing blow to the bad guys' superweapon. He's earned more trust than any other character in this trilogy. Poe begins The Last Jedi disobeying orders, yet saving the entire fleet through his actions during the bomber scene. Poe's reward for all of this: The noxiously toxic Holdo tells him that he is not to be trusted and that he should sit down, shut up, and follow orders, without questioning. Sit down, shut up, and follow orders without questioning? I don't know, THAT SOUNDS PRETTY DAMN FASCIST TO ME!!! In the end, Poe attempts to mutiny, before getting literally shot down by an awakened Leia. Holdo's incredible plan that she couldn't tell Poe? When the ships pass a planet with an abandoned base, the good guys will evacuate on ships without weapons, hope the bad guys don't see them, and then send a distress signal from the base, while Holdo performs her ridiculous hyperspace maneuver (the bad guys have many other ships that can blow up the good guys). This movie is terrible. Every time I think about The Last Jedi, I notice another idiotic flaw, and it grows worse in my estimation. I never got to its antagonist, Snoke, but I said I would, so I'll make this fast: Abrams presents Snoke as the mysterious, monstrous villain of the trilogy in The Force Awakens. Johnson kills Snoke halfway through The Last Jedi for shock value, and neglects to present another villain in his place. I think I'm leaning more toward he's a moron.

 

Objectively, has any one man ever cost a major corporation as much as Rian Johnson cost Disney? Has any one man's work ever split a longstanding fanbase this violently? And not down the middle--the last six years have proved that a lot more fans checked out after The Last Jedi than bought in.

However, these awful aspects of the film were only starting to dawn on me in December 2019, when, as many people, but not as many as previously due to the sequel trilogy's diminishing financial returns, I went to the theater and found Rise of Skywalker to be a monumental disappointment. Not only does the film fail to fulfill any of the promises of the sequel trilogy's previous two movies, it fails to deliver as a movie. The plot is nonsensical and unsatisfying, and not a single character undergoes anything like an arc EXCEPT FOR THE VILLAIN. The movie even manages to totally invalidate the original trilogy, as now Anakin and Luke did not bring balance to the force, as the Emperor never actually died. Evil legacy bonus: Rey turns out to be the Emperor's granddaughter, and after her climactic victory, she rather bafflingly changes her last name to Skywalker, meaning she took Luke's role, lightsaber, and even his name away from him. I'd need to reach book length to highlight just how illogically stupid Rise of Skywalker is, but in all its idiocy, bad plotting, and fundamental misunderstanding of everything that came before it, it's still somehow been less harmful to Star Wars than The Last Jedi. However, ROS is Star Wars' cinematic death knell, and now, four year later, no more films have come, though many have been announced and cancelled. The public demand is just not there.

 

This is what we call "diminishing returns." Graph created by Reddit user "saltierthancrait"

I felt my fandom quickly dying. I went on a late night run and texted my wife that I was having a bit of an existential crisis solely centered around Star Wars, as I hated Rise of Skywalker so much that despite my lifelong dedication to the franchise, I wasn't even sure if I was a Star Wars fan anymore. After all that time! However, a few weeks later, something pulled me, and I'm sure many others out of the Star Wars mire. The first season of Disney +'s The Mandalorian isn't quite peak television, but its practical effects, solid plotting, great heroic central character, and general Star Wars vibe gave me just a kernel of optimism that maybe, just maybe, there was hope for Star Wars. A second season came along, and while it didn't quite kick up as big a dopamine cloud for me as the first season did, its finale featured a fully-powered, in his prime Luke Skywalker, almost like a mea culpa for his treatment in The Last Jedi. I finally watched the computer-animated Clone Wars series (executive produced by Lucas himself), and found that it got better as it went along up until a stunning, incredibly moving conclusion. I then watched Dave Filoni's Rebels and found that, while it wasn't nearly as good as Clone Wars, it did have its moments. Around this time, I rewatched the prequels and suddenly found that, without expectations, I actually enjoyed them. Is the dialogue great? Nope! Is the acting always great? Nope! But unlike in the sequel trilogy, the plotting is fairly airtight, the characters follow well-executed, pre-planned arcs, and I've found that over the years these things are far more important to me when it comes to a film's rewatchability. Plus, the musical scores are mind-blowing! It felt like my Star Wars fandom was being ignited all over again!...and then it happened.

 

Thanks for making me like Star Wars again for five minutes

The Book of Boba Fett aired in early 2022, and many fans seemed to hate it. It was not my favorite, but also not a deal breaker. The quality most definitely vacillated violently from episode to episode over its seven weeks of airtime. I most definitely did not like how the title character was sidelined in his own show, nor did a quite vocally upset series star, Temuera Morrison. However, TBOBF didn't kill my fandom. For that, you can blame the 2022 Disney + series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, which aired several months later.

 

Thanks for violently ending those five minutes, you flaming piece of garbage

I just don't have it in me to recap how bad of show Obi-Want Kenobi is. I should have known the moment Disney went to the "Star Wars fans are racist" well, that the show was going to be bad. Disney's behavior around Kenobi implicitly proved that there wasn't some racist/misogynist-basement dweller movement stirred up by The Last Jedi, but that it was Disney who weaponized accusations of bad behavior against fans to shield themselves against the low quality of their products. Kenobi star, Moses Ingram, was paraded out and fans were told that Disney warned her there would be racist backlash for her casting, despite Star Wars fans being mysteriously not racist or misogynist before 2017. For some reason there wasn't a huge misogynist backlash against Princess Leia in 1977, or a racist one against Lando Calrissian in 1980. But those were well-written characters. Ingram's character, Reva, is both horribly written and horribly performed, a constantly shouting and belligerent blowhard that the show quite mistakenly thinks comes off as competent and likable. Ingram does herself little favors in her performance, though making lemonade out of this character would be a near impossible task for any actress. Meanwhile, the supposed racist backlash the actress received was highlighted by the public release of three online messages that are frankly far milder than messages I received when I said I disliked a Quentin Tarantino film on my podcast back in 2019. Disney even paraded out a frowny Ewan McGregor, who had recently left his wife of 25 years and their four children for a younger woman, to lecture fans about their perceived racism. The whole thing was ridiculous and embarrassing, and instead of distracting from the series' extremely low quality, only managed to highlight it, as did the studio manipulating the show's audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, which I saw happen in real-time (without their tampering, the audience score would be in the 40s at best, and if you don't believe me, go try to leave a review for the show).

WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

Remove all of Disney's posturing and you're still left with a show that is horrifically bad. Any show that highlights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader's activity between the prequel and original trilogies should be handled with the utmost care, especially one that brings back Hayden Christensen as Anakin. Instead, Kenobi is lazily and goofily plotted on a level that wouldn't be acceptable in a middle school English class, featuring cringe-inducing staging that likely wouldn't be acceptable on a middle school theater stage. The choices made by the "creative" team here are baffling, and their execution mind-numbingly bad. Few middle schoolers would want this kind of writing attached to their name. 

Here are two examples from Kenobi that are somehow not even close to being the most egregious offenders:

SAMPLE KENOBI DIALOGUE 1

Man # 1: Come with us on this mission.

Man # 2: I'd rather die a painful death than come with you on this mission.

Man # 3: Please.

Man # 4: Okay.

SAMPLE KENOBI DIALOGUE 2

Man # 1: Oh no, these two ships have split up. Who should we follow?

Man # 2: Good thing we have far more than two ships at our disposal. Let's follow both of them. Just kidding, all our ships should just follow one of their two ships.

Man # 1: Great logic, and I won't push back on that at all. I hope we pick the right ship to follow.

Think this is hyperbole? It's not. I've edited for brevity, but these two moments happen, and they're surrounded by much worse. For me, this was the end, and the choice was simple.

    

Not funded?

Not even a little shocked

Before Disney, I loved Star Wars. Though even my precious EU had its low moments, it was always clear that the property was being handled with the utmost respect and devotion. I wouldn't treat my worst enemy the way that Disney has treated Star Wars. And thus, Disney Star Wars is not Star Wars. It is Disney Star Wars, an entirely different property than George Lucas' Star Wars, which existed from 1977-2012 (with final EU works coming in 2013). That's 35 years of material I love, that, as long as I and others who love it are still alive, will never die. And that is what I will devote my fandom to. That is my cannon, and Disney Star Wars is fanfiction, though at this point, I'm not even sure if it is worthy of the term. It no longer exists for me. None of it. I give none of it a pass, even the stuff I enjoyed to some extent, like Rogue One. I'll still take what I read in books like Michael Reaves and Steve Perry's Death Star, and played in games like Dark Forces as the cannon around the creation of the Death Star over what happens in Rogue One. The only caveat I'll give is to Clone Wars, which existed through Lucas and Disney's tenures, though I'll consider that a sort of foggy "maybe?" that I'll take as non-cannon at any moment where it contradicts the original cannon. I'll never watch another second of Disney Star Wars. New Ahsoka show? I couldn't care less. They're taking bits from the EU now? Who is? They don't exist to me. I've got six Lucas Star Wars movies I love to watch again and again, and such a large array of novels and comics that I'll never have time to read them all. I refuse to even buy a copy of said material branded LEGENDS by Disney. In other words, for the rest of my life, I'll be buying and enjoying a lot of used books printed before 2014.

This is my old EU shelf, which is already doubled up, with older stuff in the back behind what can be seen. This year, I'm getting my expanding EU collection its own set of bookshelves. As I expand this collection, I don't intend on giving Disney a cent.

If you enjoyed this piece, and want to hear me go on equally as long, but in a positive fashion, here's a link to my piece on the greatness of The Empire Strikes Back.