Not long ago (and in this galaxy) Star Wars was beloved to almost everybody who's ever been to a cinema. It's a trilogy with an absurd yet compelling storyline and has some great characters. Sure, the dialogue falters at times, "Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise..." but it set the standard for practical effects. It also has a classic soundtrack that sucks you into its narrative world like a black hole.
Good work George.
When The Phantom Menace was released, I was as excited as a tiny particle of water on the skin of a floor tom being mercilessly beaten by a heavily tattooed metal drummer playing a drum part involving the pounding out of bitchin' triplets on the previously mentioned floor toms in what would likely be a 'middle eight' section of an epic song that has a simple verse-chorus-verse structure and is likely being played about 2/3rds of the way into the setlist when the crowd is peaking. Like a bad simile, Star Wars has lost its way. It's drifted from being a mesmerizing, involving, enveloping, grandiloquent, monumental heroic saga, to being la cagada.
But time is kind and thus more time means more kindness. Think about the great anti-semitic demagogues of past centuries. Time has been sehr kind to them, these days all the coolest kids are raging against the Jews with the only difference being brown shirts and jackboots exchanged for green hair and pronouns. In fact, the latest 'thing' (which I'm always into) is to have gluten free, plant-based, high protein, low carb, keto friendly, carbon neutral, grass fed, non-GMO antisemitism. Disney purchased Lucasfilm back in 2012 and hit the ground running by releasing Star Wars: The Force Awakens with a crotchety Han Solo and a menopausal Princess Leia. There was quite a buzz, not quite the tiny particle of water on a floor tom with bitchin' triplets buzz, but it kindled fond memories of the night we went to see The Phantom Menace way back in 1999 and a group of nerds showed up dressed as Jedi with plastic lightsabers and impressive neckbeards. I wish I could go back in time for only three reasons, to learn the guitar, to apologize to those nerds for laughing at them and to apologize to George Lucas for hating The Phantom Menace. It was disappointing at the time, but ever since the Disney Star Wars films were inserted into the rectum of public consciousness without lubrication, I now consider The Phantom Menace a classic - second in line to Citizen Kane as the greatest movie of all time.
Forgive me George.
However comma the first red flags appeared when the follow up, The Attack of the Clones was released, a film that even eternity couldn't be kind to. I saw it at the same cinema where the nerds showed up in '99. But four years later the nerds were sans costume and even if they had dressed up, laughs would only have been directed screenward. Attack of the Clones has become personally legendary for being the most impressive unintentional comedy experience I've ever had. We were laughing so hard I thought my rotund friend Joe was going into cardiac arrest and I was worried because he owed me money for his ticket. My other friends were laughing so much that they were falling between the seats and spilling their popcorns. True mercy is expressed by stopping the carnage, but Attack of the Clones gave no quarter, because all of this hilarity ensued before Yoda and Count Dooku had a lightsaber fight. It got dangerous because somebody tried to finish Joe off when he yelled out, 'attack of the leprechaun!' which sent everybody into convulsions and breathless howling. I laughed while I watched Joe and wondered if it would be okay to ask for his PIN number before starting the chest compressions.
Joe was okay, I got my ticket money and my sides were hurting for the next few hours - but I didn't feel ripped off because it was hilarious.
Thanks George.
So now Star Wars is owned by Disney and that means it's garbage because of woke. The Disney corporation has let hyper-progressive California types into its boardrooms and so now the creatives seem to be in control because of the fear with the woke hammer and anvil of fear mostexcellentanalogy I will use thankyouverymuch down here ↓. If you're not keeping up with things, then let me explain what this 'woke' is that everybody is talking about. Woke used to mean somebody who was aware of actual racism, but now it means anybody who is aware of the mostly imagined social and financial benefits that come from making oneself socially desirable by hating the right stuff and the right people. However, the potency of woke is fueled by hating the potential something has to offend people. By 'offend' I of course mean something that contradicts a person's particular vision of what the world should be. (It's important to establish the contemporary definition of 'offend', as the semantic base of that particular word is ever-expanding because of the presupposition that anybody who disagrees with anybody else is immediately perceived as disenfranchising and dismissive, but usually only if the person being disagreed with 'identifies' as something.) This potential to offend is therefore italically huge and if you're an artist, woke will hammer your muse into a precise shape over the anvil of fear of social rejection - or losing customers✷ This fear is mostly of social media and soon turns into a quasi-religious determination to not do anything that might potentially offend anybody who has access to social media platforms like Netscape Navigator, Google+ and AskJeeves. By removing any potential for the potential to potentially offend, one finds oneself more socially desirable amidst people who ironically by their worldviews, personalities and appearance have no social desirability whatsoever.
The potential to offend somebody real or imagined and who identifies as something, means they're vulnerable or a victim in perpetuum which is a great way to motivate individuals and huge corporations pursuing social desirability and imaginary sources of income. Now, like most things these days, these fragile entities are not real and therefore the situation is perfect for something like Star Wars because of the huge potential that aliens have for representation. Allow me to mansplain: These aliens - who knows what might get them fired up? (I was going to say 'who knows what might get up their noses, but they might not have noses and to assume noses on an alien lifeform is potentially offensive.) Therefore, thanks to infinite space - and infinite insanity - these obnoxious stupids can draw from the infinite potential for representations about stuff that makes people who have fallen to wokeness continue whining about stuff and I love it. And it's perfect when you consider how this infinite pool of representation gives you un chèque en blanc to lionize a person or group with a victim status and then seemingly randomly, but not really, besmirch another group for representing offensively white men who are offensively not gay and who offensively enough do not identify as gay ambidextrous hermaphrodites. Bastards. The heteronormative, ambidextrous hermaphrodites by the way are being persecuted by right-handed people who do not have sex with themselves for procreative purposes and therefore have cultural hegemony and patriarchal power because of their nurotypicalnessness- ambi-hermo rights now! Harrumph!
I hope that's clear.
Star Wars is no longer relevant solely because it tried so hard to be. Those nerds with the neckbeards and plastic lightsabers are not interested anymore. But more importantly those woke idiots✷ with their fragile vision of a better world without fun but with gender neutral urinals, affirmative action, 'taking a knee' and their signature obnoxious and insufferable smugness (as they fight their eternal battle against heteronormative microagressions while imposing their socialist misery) they were never interested in Star Wars to begin with.
Sorry George.
