I Now Hate the Thing I Love

Read at your own peril. No spoilers, though.

Twenty-three years. For twenty-three long years I have had a favourite thing in the entire world. Not a person, not an animal, not a particular artist. But a franchise. A kids (or family) science-fiction intellectual property that has been around since the late seventies and still haunts the world today. Though today it is a very different beast altogether. Today, it is a ghost of its former self. And don’t worry. This isn’t a piece on how the franchise is now ‘woke’. Or how Disney ruined the franchise through its evil corporate machinations. No, this is about the people. The ‘fans’ of this beloved franchise. This is about another thing in the world that has been corrupted by the average person; corrupted by people who cannot talk to one another; corrupted by those who don’t really care about the franchise. Back in 2002 (a year after seeing the original trilogy for the first time), Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones was released into cinemas and, after a wait till it was out on DVD, my mother purchased a double DVD set of the new film along with Episode I — The Phantom Menace (mostly because my DVD case for the latter had broken). I was excited and having loved all four of the previous films, I had no doubt I would love this one too. I was proven right, and although I do consider Episode II to be the worst of the prequels currently, I do have a certain fondness for the film as a lot of merchandise that either I bought or family bought was centred on this film. My curtains and duvet set were even Episode II themed and remained so for a much longer period of time that I care to admit to. Then after three years of anticipation, Episode III finally released into cinemas across the world and I was able to see it as my very first cinema experience. It was incredible. Not only could I see some of my favourite characters on a giant screen, but I was also treated to John Williams’ score on a fantastic sound system. A couple of friends who I saw the film with were also so enamoured by the experience that we quickly arrived back at one of their houses and acquired, in a certain way, a digital copy of the film to look back on what we had just seen and talk about how much we liked this and that throughout the experience. I say all this to hopefully add weight to this topic, and to add weight to the title. Something I have loved for years, something that I’ve spent a lot of time and money on, and something that I have defended for years has turned into a bitter experience every time I see a new product. Maybe hate is too harsh a term for it. But I think I can finally say that I no longer love Star Wars.

The questions that remain are ‘why?’ and ‘what now?’. The first I’ve already hinted at but there are some other possibilities that still have had at least a small effect even if they are not the main reason. Disney machinations are an easy one to talk about and only a few may end up disagreeing. If you vaguely are aware of what I write here, or at least somewhat a fan of art, you will know that an artist’s full vision is always going to be better than some corporate zombification of ideas that are spat out by an algorithm. So any company, whether that be Disney or some other big corporation, was always going to poorly manufacture more Star Wars products. With Lucasfilm, there was Lucas. And although more creative control has been given to the true successor of Star Wars that is Dave Filoni, it is still a company that dishes out films and television series with no real clue on what they might do up to the point where they end up firing show runners or directors for ‘creative difference’. That phrase perhaps being the most toxic to come out of modern Hollywood. Since Disney’s take over they have produced five films, three of which were a trilogy where the next director had no clue on what the previous film was and had to start writing and pre-production before the previous film had even finished. The other two were known disasters of production, Rogue One being drastically changed from a war film to an adventure film that was only just about made into something decent, and Solo which changed directors and, although gave us some interesting shots and music, ultimately was something that had no real oomph about it and does not stand the test of time at all (despite my previous comments). The shows haven’t really been much more successful either. Filoni helped shows like The Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka, The Bad Batch, and a few others survive being too Disnified, but you had The Book of Boba Fett, The Acolyte, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and even parts of The Mandalorian (despite Filoni’s contributions) ultimately fail to live up to the franchise whilst diving the community for other reasons we will go into. Instead of Disney paying any attention to the section of fans and critics that offered genuine advice, they ploughed forward. Not caring what they flattened along their path. Ultimately Disney’s failings can be put down to poor planning, failing to listen to experts in the area, and spewing out as many products as they could. But they did not realise this wasn’t the eighties any more, we are now in the age of social media.

Because that’s the real ‘why?’ of this article. The people have ruined Star Wars for me. And yes, you can scream at me about ignoring the online talk if you want but ultimately if you’re a fan of something and want it to consume your life, you are going to learn as much about it and what people think of it as much as you can. Internet or no internet. I would quote Osho, though the meaning may end up being lost in the process. The people simply could not help themselves like in a number of other areas of life and just continued to draw fake cultural and political lines in areas that they needed not to be drawn. Gone were the days of talking to each other, now only the days of arguing and insults and harassment exist. This does come back a little to Disney’s own management of the situation as they continued to drive forward this idea of a set and distinct canon. Previously, different people had different ideas on not only what was and wasn’t canon, but also had differing opinions on how the canon was split up. Some split it into multiple layers, some simply had the six films and then everything else in the Expanded Universe. Lucas would just give his official licence to friends or simply to a project that he liked the sound of — whether it affected the canon or not. So it was a miasma of overlapping stories and inconsistencies on what characters’ motivations were or how they had been raised before entering the story. But now the canon is distinct, Disney’s way and nothing else. Which means canon means more, there’s only one and it has to be my way or else it doesn’t mean anything. That’s how people now treat it anyway. But the people are still at fault here. They didn’t have to pay much attention to the ‘Disney canon’, they didn’t have to argue about how one piece of media affects the other, they didn’t have to explain why one change is bad when a few years ago they would have loved that change. I hate people, and sadly the recent years of Star Wars have only strengthened that opinion.

So what now? That’s the other question I posed. What am I, or what has anyone reading this, going to do in this situation? The first is something I’ve tried since the early warning signs of Rogue One reshoots, the initial cancellation of The Clone Wars, and the divisive response to The Last Jedi (which the article where I wrote about this I now regret writing in the first place — even if no one really reads these). And that is to simply ignore the weirdos arguing online and just try to enjoy the releases as they come out. It worked for a bit. Complaints about Solo washed over me. I could overlook the cheesy parts and dumb things in Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I could appreciate aspects of The Bad Batch and Rebels without tapping out because they were kids shows. But this only built up resentment, resentment that I had no way of releasing. And eventually, after only seeing arguments and hatred directed towards each other after every single release of a Star Wars film, television episode, video game, comic, novel, etc., I gave up. I got depressed every time something was released simply due to the fact that half the community would hate it and the other half would hate the first half for hating it in the first place. The fact that I would be sad about something I love getting a new thing added to it simply made me even more depressed. So no, I can’t just ignore the online commentary. I can’t just watch, play, or read the new thing without the community having an effect on me before I am even able to consume it.

The second option of what to do now is simply impossible and something I cannot believe in so long as I have complete contempt for the human race. It would be to talk with the community and hope that enough people being nice to one another and discussing topics politely would sway the community in a better direction. But I know humans. I know we are now incapable of that, if we ever truly were. Maybe it isn’t social media’s fault, maybe us humans simply aren’t able to keep anything nice for too long before we inevitably argue over it and tear the thing to pieces. I’ll move on from this as really, there is nothing more to say on the matter. Then the third option is the one I’ve come to. Stop loving it. Because not doing so only makes it worse. This may sound overdramatic. Like some scorned lover in a noir film. Maybe I shouldn’t have let myself get too involved in a piece of intellectual property. Maybe I should have found better and more ‘worthwhile’ pursuits. But we’re here now, I feel how I feel. And the only thing to do is leave it behind. This is not a step I take lightly, I really should have done this years ago, when it was sensible to do so. But it’s better to do this sooner than prolong the inevitable. Again, it sounds overdramatic, but I would rather stop participating than continue to see myself loath more and more of the thing that has taken up a lot of my life. That may sound like a sad thing, and perhaps it is, but at least I tried to gain some sort of philosophy, artist taste, and love for something in this world. At least I gave it a go.

So then, will I watch more Star Wars products? Will I write about them ever again? Well, going by some of my previous thoughts and statements, I wouldn’t bet anything important on it but my plan going forward is to likely watch some stuff that I did still enjoy without the conversation around it being too depressing like Ahsoka, maybe the Mandalorian film that may end up coming out in 2026. Perhaps even the Dawn of the Jedi film if that doesn’t end up being cancelled within a year or two. But unless something big happens, and I’m not too sad to write, I doubt anything more on this publication will be about Star Wars. Who knows? We’ll see what the future brings to us.

Sorry this one has been a little depressing but it needs to be said. Maybe I’ll feel differently about it on another day. Maybe it’s just the weather at the moment.