When I went to see The Last Jedi in
the theater last December, I was hyped up beyond any other recent Star Wars
movie. It had been reviewed better than
any other Star Wars film, and was lauded as better than Empire. I told my girlfriend I would probably be
coming back on cloud 11. But as it
unfolded, I got uncomfortable. I started
wondering what might be wrong with me.
If everyone thought this was so amazing, what was I missing? I kept trying to make excuses for it; trying
to go along with it. But by the time the
film was done, I was just depressed. Not
only had I not enjoyed the movie, knowing what the future held for the
franchise, I wasn't interested in anything they had planned for the
future. I had just lost my love for the
series.
This was a big deal to me because I
grew up with Star Wars. The original
Star Wars was the second movie I ever saw, (damn you, Benji!) My first experience telling stories was
playing with the action figures; and that literally caused me to become a
writer. Most of all, I always saw
untapped potential in Star Wars. The
title alone implies so much.
"Star" - Within a galaxy there are hundreds of millions of
stars, around which billions of beings live.
"Wars" - Within any war there are millions of stories, and
this is plural, implying many, many more stories.
My biggest disappointment with The
Empire Strikes Back was that it only followed the main characters. Though in retrospect it was the greatest of
the Star Wars movies, I always felt that it could have branched out from there
and done what the Marvel universe is now doing.
So when Disney bought the rights to the franchise, I thought they'd do
something similar.
And to be fair, they are; but
unfortunately the people they've put in charge of it have turned out to be
wanting to go in a direction I simply don't care about. This was the crossroads where that's
happening, where JJ Abrams has been brought back to finish the main storyline,
and Rian Johnson is going on to create the new series, while Kathleen Kennedy
oversees it. These are the three people
that have proven to be on a path I believe is detrimental to the franchise.
By the time I got home that night, I
was downtrodden. I truly did not care
what happened next. I never thought that
I would actively boycott the next films; I just had no interest. It was the first time in my life that had
happened, and I felt empty. My
girlfriend asked if I was on cloud 11, and I said, "There is going to be a
huge backlash over that movie."
I'm not a film critic. I usually endeavor to tell my own stories
rather than criticize others. In the
case of Star Wars I've been writing my own fan fiction to tell it the way I
would You can find it at:
But this time my mind kept racing
back to it. For some reason it's really
bothered me and I've wanted to speak out.
I didn't for a while partially because it's just not something I do, but
also because my prediction of the backlash has been right, and there's been so
much vitriol from both sides. I didn't
see how my voice would help.
I doubt it will help now, (in fact,
I'm probably just beating a dead horse,) but it's bothered me long enough that
I just need to get it out on paper. I'm
not going to write a diatribe of how bad it is; I wish to be reasonable about
it and even point out where it was good.
I also don't want to belittle people who liked it. If you enjoyed it, that's fine. In fact, I envy you. I wish I could have enjoyed this as much as
you did.
This
is intended to be a reasonable discussion on The Last Jedi, but bear in mind
that there will be more negative than positive.
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