Star Wars Defined-A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Fandom...

“No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.” (Wise proverb.)

I’m late to this discussion. I had a 9-part retrospective series on my blog to wrap up, but I also wanted this to be as good as possible. Star Wars means a lot to many people, myself included. And I felt that the only way to accurately get my thoughts down for the Star Wars Defined series was to let the discourse die down. It’ll have been a few weeks anyway when this publishes, and most of the those interested will have seen the newest movie, so it made sense to wait.

I’ve said this before, but I didn’t grow up with the original trilogy. I was born in 1990, and the final film in that saga was already 7 years old. My official introduction to Star Wars was The Prequels, the first of which I saw at a friend’s birthday party in 1999. I remembered enjoying it, but hey! I was 9 years old. I enjoyed a lot of “garbage” as a kid.

But even as I got older, I never understood why The Prequels received such intense backlash. True, time hasn’t been kind to them. But they’re still films. They weren’t even the worst movies ever made, nor did they somehow “ruin Hollywood”. And even if they had, so what? We asked for more Star Wars, we have ourselves to blame.

This was also my first introduction to toxic fandom, in high school. I owned my first laptop, had official access to the internet and could see what people had to say for the first time. It’s true that the internet was vastly different in 2006, but some parts remained consistent with now. Key among them was how vitriolic and possessive people were about entertainment.

Star Wars backlash isn’t anything new. As HelloGreedo has pointed out, it can be traced back to 1980, when Star Wars Ep. V: The Empire Strikes Back debuted. We remember that movie fondly now, but almost 40 years of hindsight can do that. When it first came out, however, people were pissed. They found that it didn’t meet expectations, instead challenging them, and that its bittersweet ending made them uncomfortable. Even fan letters screamed “This isn’t what I wanted!”, showing that toxic fandom existed then.

Perhaps that’s why the next entry felt like a course correction. Whereas Star Wars Ep. V: The Empire Strikes Back was slow and drawn out, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi was quick and to the point. Whereas the former had heavy themes, the latter had light ones. And whereas the former ended on a downer, the latter ended on a happy one. It was no contest: the latter was more satisfying.

Except…not really. As people have pointed out in recent years, time hasn’t been as kind. Speaking personally, the movie’s first act was sloppy leftovers, while many of the character resolutions were rushed or underdeveloped. This was especially true with Emperor Palpatine, whose death, to this day, feels anticlimactic. It wasn’t a bad movie, it had some great moments involving Luke’s temptation to The Dark Side, but it never coalesced the way it could’ve. But fans were happy, so what do I know?

The real issue started when The Prequels pissed fans off. I won’t reiterate my own thoughts, it’d take too long, but I find it bizarre how offended people were. I remember one of my local papers, following the release of Star Wars Ep. II: Attack of the Clones, having kids write in to express their dissatisfaction. One of them compared Anakin’s line about sand to something barf-worthy. Okay…

The discourse turned around a bit come Star Wars Ep. III: Revenge of the Sith, but even then it was pretty vitriolic. If you frequent the film’s IMDB page, you’ll find that most reviews are either neutral, or downright vile. Some have claimed that George Lucas “raped their childhoods”, which is a little overdramatic. The fact that people get so worked up over what, to paraphrase Patrick Willems, amounts to a space opera about fantasy wizards for children concerns me. It makes me wonder if Star Wars fans got that memo.

Which leads to post-Disney acquisition, and the weird backlash that their output’s received. Whether it’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens being a “lazy rehash of nostalgia”, Star Wars: The Last Jedi “deviating in weird directions”, or the spin-offs feeling like “unnecessary Wikipedia entries”, Star Wars simply can’t win. Even Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, with its attempts at course overcorrection, can’t win. And while I won’t give any spoilers, in case some of you still haven’t seen it, I often wonder if we’re watching the same movies.

What do we expect from Star Wars, after all? It’s not Casablanca. It lacks the sophistication of The Godfather films. Even in terms of action spectacle, I can think of several franchises with better acting, writing and, possibly, special effects. Star Wars is pulpy, frequently schmaltzy, occasionally weird and sometimes lazy. It’s gone in both good and bad places over its almost 43 year run, often simultaneously. And that’s okay. You don’t have to like all of its choices, I don’t, but with the way that fans talk about it, you’d think it was trying to murder us!

And that’s not okay. That’s not healthy. It’s actually scary, especially since the franchise was meant for children. That’s not to say that it shouldn’t have standards, it should, but that doesn’t mean that going in a different direction than you’d hoped is a justifiable cause for bile. It’s not.

I’m also concerned what’ll happen when kids watching Star Wars now grow up and become adults. Will they be equally as vitriolic to newer films, demanding they live up to what Disney’s first wave had to offer? Will they be mad that Rey, who’s seen her share of struggle, will have her ideology challenged, like how Luke was challenged by Rey? And will the discourse over the films devolve into a series of “NO U”s again, with defenders and detractors refusing to acknowledge who the target demographic is? The thought of Gen Z fans becoming old coots over Star Wars, which is supposed to be for kids, makes me wonder if humanity really deserves this franchise.

*Sigh*

Perhaps I’m biased. I’ve enjoyed every Star Wars-related property to an extent, and that’s potentially clouded my judgement. But it also gives me a certain clarity to realize that I’m not really the franchise’s target demographic. And that’s okay. If little kids are being inspired by Star Wars, only to grow up and create their own art, then who am I to judge? What good do I accomplish by claiming that Star Wars has to be for me and me alone?

I guess my concern is that we’ve forgotten why we loved Star Wars. And not only toxic fans, but even some of the more critical ones. Star Wars isn’t solely about subverting expectations, or tickling the nostalgic funny-bone. It isn’t only about challenging you, or pleasing you. It’s about the struggles between good and evil, set to a sci-fi backdrop, and culminating in a soap opera story about space wizards. And Star Wars fans need that reminder a little more often.