RIP Star Wars

This is Part 1 of 4 loosely related posts.

I have been a fanboy of a lot of things over the years. He-Man. ThunderCats. Lord of the Rings. Transformers. Spider-Man, X-Men, and Marvel in general. Star Wars. The Legend of Zelda, and other Nintendo related things. Unfortunately, I’ve had to see most of them wither away.

I have loved Star Wars since I can remember. The earliest memory I have of Star Wars is seeing the ending of Episode 4 on TV with my dad and being worried about R2 getting blasted by Vader. I dressed up as Yoda for Halloween, and gave myself an embarrassing nickname that involved Yoda as well. I saw bits and pieces of the movies over the years, but never sat down to watch the entire trilogy until it was on the USA network over a weekend when I was about 13 years old. After that, I was hooked. I played the games on SNES and when the Special Edition re-releases were out in 1997 I took my two youngest brothers to the theater to see them.

I especially loved the music. I loved John Williams from Superman first, but adding Star Wars to his resume just made him all that much better. And before the Lord of the Rings and Marvel/superhero franchises, Star Wars was the definitive pinnacle “geek” culture. I spent money getting a couple of electronic lightsabers, but I didn’t, however, delve into the Extended Universe (EU), like the books and such, other than playing Shadows of the Empire on N64 and the Rogue Squadron games on N64/GC.

In the lead up to the release of Episode 1, a friend and I talked about how we were worried that Lucas wouldn’t be careful with the details and possibly “ruin” the franchise. In one sense, I would have almost rather have not had anything released past Episode 6 and just left it alone in perfect condition than to have its reputation tarnished by low quality subsequent product.

After watching The Phantom Menace, I was a little disappointed. There was some cringe, but also some cool stuff. But it felt like Star Wars. I think Episodes 2 and 3 were each a little better, but still not as good as the originals. John Williams' music was good enough in Episode 2 to almost convince me that Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman had some on-screen chemistry. Almost.

My overall thought was that Lucas was a good, imaginative story-teller and producer, but not a good director or writer of dialogue. If you take his body of work between the 6 Star Wars films and Indiana Jones Trilogy, and compare quality when he was directing, you’ll see what I mean. Ultimately, while they were inferior films, there were enough redeeming qualities that made the shortcomings tolerable. I will also add that watching them in Machete Order makes them better, and gives me a sense of what Lucas was trying to accomplish story-wise, albeit through clunky dialogue and cringe-worthy moments. I think more than anything, the fact that Machete Order improves the films shows that Lucas kinda wrote himself into a corner when he changed the title of the first film to Episode 4: A New Hope. Overall, I think had he gotten someone else to direct and someone to help with the script supervision, the prequel movies would have turned out much better. Part 2 of this series is mainly about this topic.

But now we come to the Disney era of Star Wars. I was excited to see what they had cooked up, as I think how they’d been handling the Marvel Cinematic Universe was top notch. Episode 7 seemed like a well-made fan-fiction version of Episode 4 to me, but with a few new twists – the main thing I didn’t like was that Luke’s role was taken over by a total Mary-Sue. And while I was disappointed that it was just a re-tread of ANH, I gave it some leeway because the movie set up a whole bunch of little plot points and mysteries that would (hopefully) be resolved in the future films. I was willing to suspend judgment because I curious to see the outcome. A good analogy was how Fellowship of the Ring got a few Oscars, and then Two Towers got some nominations, but Return of the King got all the Oscars (because it paid off all the buildup from the past 2 films). I think the academy was waiting to see if Peter Jackson could really pull off such an endeavor, and didn’t want to preemptively give it a lot of praise if the series eventually turned out to be a train wreck.

Then Rogue One debuted. I really liked this one, even more than the prequels, and is easily the best Disney-era Star Wars film. No, it’s not perfect, and, yes, there were a few things that I thought they could have done better, but overall very good. I loved the way it lead right into Episode 4 and used old footage really creatively. It was made to fit in with the older movies instead of trashing them or re-writing history. But the ending was what made the film for me, and that’s what we were missing from Episode 3 – Darth Vader kicking some ass.

So when Episode 8 was going to come out, I was optimistic. Excited, even. And then I was bored. I never thought I’d be so bored during a Star Wars movie, but there I was trying to stave off sleep in the theater. I thought exactly what Kevin Smith thought at Wild Wild West – “Good lord, what a piece of shit.” All the little mysteries and plot threads that were started in 7 were unceremoniously trashed, and most of the “plot” consisted of a “Best Of” reel from Episodes 5 and 6 mingled with something else I can only compare to Twilight (ugh) and an ad from the PETA people. Now I can retroactively state that I don’t really like 7 anymore, because the little bit of faith I had in the movie has been destroyed. I won't rehash all the reasons why it's bad, but Sargon of Akkad's synopsis is pretty good, as well as MauLer's commentary on it (way longer and more in depth).

To top it all off, the producers and director pulled the same stunt as Sony did with the Ghostbusters reboot – use social media to blame the fans. Instead of good writing, snappy dialogue, and coherent plot, they instead opted for gender swaps and social justice dogma (aka, Fan Baiting). When it wasn’t received well, they didn’t take responsibility for alienating long time fans, and instead made accusations that detractors were 40-year-old virgins living in their mothers’ basements who were racist, sexist, and homophobic. Not a good look. I didn’t buy the Blu-ray for The Last Jedi, which is a first for me in this franchise. 

And now we’re at Solo. I saw it because I was in Nebraska visiting friends, and wanted something fun to do together. My biggest thought was that the producers set out to explain the origin of all the stuff we didn’t want to know about, like where Han got his gold dice, or his gun, or Chewie’s bandoleer, or Lando’s skiff outfit. I usually stay away from learning too much “behind the scene” stuff before the premiere because I like to be surprised in the theater. But having now read about all the problems Solo production had, as well as the Lucasfilm division has had itself, I’m not surprised at how these films have turned out. I never thought I would look at the prequels so longingly. Midnight's Edge has a pretty good write-up about the whole debacle (meaning the Disney-era movies). Basically what happened is that just like Atheism in the early 2000's, academia in the past 30 years, and Gamergate in 2013, Social Justice Warriors have infected some of my favorite franchises because they see them as a popular platform on which to spread their message. They don't actually care about the characters, the story, or the history. They just know that a lot of people watch the movies, so they swarm on a fanbase like locusts and leave once it's been sufficiently ruined. The term "Seagull Manager" might even be appropriate, but "Social Gentrification" is probably the best term. Star Wars has just become the latest sacrificial lamb for the purple-haired god of social justice. Part 3 of this series deals with Disney and the SJW mentality. 

[Edit in late 2019] And now that the "Skywalker Saga" has concluded (even though it already did back in 1983) the postmortem's conclusion is that Kathleen Kennedy horribly mismanaged the franchise/studio and even though there was a "Star Wars story group," they did nothing really and each director was given leeway to do whatever he felt like (up to the point that some of them were unceremoniously dumped). There wasn't a plan in place for a trilogy. Say what you will about the prequels, but there was at least a plan and a story arc. All the fears I had expressed about Episode 1 ruining a perfect streak were completely realized in these movies. 

The thing is, if the new movies/characters were written well, nobody would care or probably even notice the diversity. Forced diversity is sort of like special effects - you only notice it when it's done poorly. Nobody batted an eye when Peter Dinklage played Bolivar Trask (who is not a little person in the comics) in Days of Future Past because he is a great actor playing a really well-written part. Same with other "race swaps," like Heimdall [Thor], Domino [Deadpool 2], or Nick Fury [MCU movies]. When kids in the mid-80's finished Metriod and discovered that Samus Aran was in fact female, most people were like, "Huh. Cool," because it was a great game. Nobody thought twice of Billy Dee Williams playing Harvey Dent in the 1989 Batman movie because he was a good actor playing a well written part. 

The Lord of the Rings franchise basically did the same thing to me (although they were ruined out of greed and not because of social justice). They made 3 excellent movies, albeit with some minor flaws and parts I would have done differently. Then they ruined it for me with the Hobbit movies. I loved the first one, couldn’t stand the second one, and didn’t even go to the third one. I don’t even own the 2nd or 3rd one on Blu-ray. They took something I loved and tarnished its reputation beyond repair for me. I did watch a 4-hour fan edit of them, distilling all 3 movies down to only the stuff that was in the original book. I mean, the entirety of the Lord of the Rings is about 1100 pages, and they made about 11 hours of movie out of it (if you count the extended editions), and they they took The Hobbit (300 pages) and made 9 hours of movie out of it. Ridiculous.

To be fair, this kind of disappointment is something I should be used to having been a comic book fan. Every few years, it seems that my favorite books started to decline in quality and then a radical new change in art/story/direction is needed to resurrect it from obscurity. Eventually, they (meaning the writers/publishers) will drop the ball. To us, the fans, they are temporary caretakers of American mythology, but to many of them, it’s a 3 year gig that’s a stepping stone to something bigger and better. I had hoped that movies (being bigger and more expensive) would warrant spending the time and care it takes to make a good product instead of churning out corporate mass-produced schlock. On top of that, they way they let EA handle the video game side of things just adds the rotten cherry on the shit cake. (google "sense of pride and accomplishment" for fun)

So, in closing, thanks, Lucasfilm. Not to be too overdramatic or clichéd, but thanks for ruining part of my childhood. I’m tired of seeing it being eviscerated. I won’t be watching any more. RIP Star Wars.  

[Edit: by “ruined,” what I mean is that it has left a stain on the franchise, making me completely disinterested in furthering my participation with the fandom. Where I used to pop in a Star Wars DVD here and there just for fun, I no longer can without having the recent movies in the back of my mind. In other words, a significant chunk of how I spent my free time has now been taken from me. And to be fair, this isn’t limited to just Star Wars. It happened with how the Matrix series ended, as well as the Hobbit movies dampening my fondness of the Lord of the Rings movies.]

Paramount and Michael Bay have run Transformers into the ground. New Line’s greed ruined Lord of the Rings. He-Man and ThunderCats have, more or less, retreated into obscurity (but let's not forget the terrible Masters of the Universe movie). Despite Sony’s best efforts to ruin him, Marvel has rescued Spider-Man, and have put together a brilliant cinematic universe. Fox has been hit and miss with the X-Men films.

Nintendo in general is at a good place with the Switch but they always have the potential to have a few bad business decisions. Thank Hylia that Zelda is on top right now, thanks to Game of the Year winner Breath of the Wild. 

And please, Marvel Studios, by Odin’s beard, don’t screw up Avengers 4. [Editor's note: they stuck the landing - hopefully they can keep it that way] [Editor's note 2: they didn't]






Part 2: My thoughts on George Lucas

Part 3: Disney-era Star Wars and SJWs

Part 4: Fandoms