A Life With Stars Wars In It

At a time and point during the three month period it took me to finally write & publish my first blog post I floated

the idea of making Star Wars the theme of it. Having it be the second was not inevitable as there were two other ideas that also bidded highly for taking the first topic as well. However it seems the cosmic force has granted me the M-count required to actually commit to putting my opinion of Star Wars on the internet. Because god knows there is not enough of that already. I love Star Wars unironically and with my full chest, these are true words. Rise of Skywalker killed my love for the franchise for half a decade, as I expect it did for many people that don’t have ADD brain. Twenty-twenty five has been a year of many things, the mask of fascism in America finally slipping away, and my renewed love of this nearly fifty year old franchise. This must really be the dark timeline if you're trying to frame this as a positive thing. 

It only took me a month to catch up on all the slop Disney has been dumping onto Disney Plus and I’m surprised to say most of it was good slop. I’m an imperfect perfectionist by nature you see, so when I commit to rewatching something I need to approach it with a gimmick or I would never commit to it. What a healthy and not at all disturbing way to deal with your compulsions. The gimmick this time around was a common one, I was going to watch everything in chronological order based on time in the Star Wars universe. This is the rule I have loosely abided by for the movies and shows, animated and live action (I massively prefer Star Wars in animated form, I am not as keen as I once was on it in Lego form). 

Following this rule the starting point is easy, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, a movie. I don’t have much to say about the prequels and nothing original at that. I love to hate the prequels because they are very poorly made films. A truth shared between the movie and the video game industry is that if your product’s biggest selling point is it’s cutting edge tech, and super cool new three-d effects; then it probably isn’t going to age well or be a good product. It will reek of choices made because of the convenience and feel as if it has no soul at all. That isn’t to say the prequels are soulless, say what you will about George Lucas but the man had dreams of the little guy making bold choices on the scene that is Hollywood. It’s not his fault the system was built under capitalism and as such necessitates the need to constantly get bigger despite what is best for the story. Art and capitalism don’t mix well, and by all means George knew this and sought to make as much money as possible and then disappear from the world. That’s just what the system encourages and his apathetic journey is hard to separate from Star Wars itself. 

Starting off the rewatch believing this and still committing to it takes some level of something energy that I guess I have but this is my long winded way of saying I’m a very realistic Star Wars fan. I know what it is and I’m happy in its camp and simple yet complex logic it holds itself too. If it isn’t obvious yet let me just spell it out, I’m too pompous to enjoy the prequels. I cannot even laugh at them anymore because it’s like laughing at my younger sibling because I know the potential they could have been. I have been shitposting the prequels on the internet for a decade and I’m tired of wearing the mask and hiding my tears that I just really love Star Wars and want it to get better. I am one of many who cheered when George sold Star Wars to Disney just because I was excited for something to happen. You will find that apathy leads many under capitalism, maybe as if it isn’t actually the best system out there and just the one the elite have chosen to keep power. So no the prequels are not some flawed masterpiece, anyone can spend an egregious amount of time analyzing something that doesn’t make what they have to say any more right or valid. They are flawed movies made by a depressed man that is sad the rest of the world makes fun of him for his based views on Hollywood and the general trash that is allowed to go on there. I can’t stop myself from thinking this when I watch the prequels so I don’t get much joy from watching them anymore. Except Episode II: Attack of The Clones because 3PO going “Droids making droids.” is the most peak thing ever and is the only time 3PO says something good. I will not take any further questions about that at this time. 

Going through the story chronologically is wild because you get a large sense of time dilation. There is next to no content for the time period between Episode I and Episode II outside of some fringe books and comics but almost to much content between Episode II and Episode III, way to much between Episode III and Episode IV, then nothing again between Episode IV and Episode VI and then not enough between Episode VI and Episode VII. Fudge I mentioned a sequel movie. How will this blog survive if I talk about the prequels and sequels in the same post?? Gosh I let the internet shape me and my opinion too much about this franchise, but some of y’all are truly scary. At the time of writing this I am currently at Episode IV in the movies but I have watched all the shows in between Episode III and Episode IV too. That is: Clone Wars, Rebels, The Bad Batch, Andor, Tales of the Underworld, Tales of the Empire & Tales of the Jedi (also The Acolyte and Ahoska because I really love her). If you too like or hate Star Wars too much the beginning of this paragraph made sense to you right away, now for everyone else that knows nothing about Star Wars the sane people reading this this is why chronologically watching the Star Wars universe can be tedious. Rebels, the Bad Batch & Ahoska all start before Episode IV but end after Episode VI. There is this place I love called the World Between Worlds (at least the episode that heavily features it in Rebels is titled) where time ceases to be and the Force exists in a much more tangible way. It could be argued that the things in the Star Wars universe are all happening at the same time, set in stone yet carved by passion. To me it's a beautiful expression of the depth of the force and the intangible things that bind us all. I’m sure to most it’s dumb high minded story over explaining to justify all the dumb things that happen in Star Wars.   

I would disagree with you though, and at the same time say Star Wars is well aware of how dumb it is and is more than happy to be. *Crosses legs triumphantly and takes a sip of wine from their silver goblet. So I’m not dreading going back and watching the sequels, except Rise of Skywalker, I love The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi but I’m not above pretending they have their own flaws too. They focus way too much on the legacy characters and lack bringing any real quality to the new characters that are introduced. The original trilogy has similar flaws when talking about quality of characters, hell the truly only good character writing in Star Wars is in Andor. The rest is fans drawing their own conclusions and projecting the rest of what they want to see. If you think I’m above this I’m not because my favorite characters are Luminara Unduli and her apprentice Barriss Offee, even though I have more to say and stronger feelings about Ahsoka Tano. For any sane person still reading Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee are minor characters in the Clone Wars, Unduli is in the movies she’s the chick in the dark headdress and robes with tattoos on her face and a green lightsaber. They are next to nothing other than what we're told in the show aside from some brief conflicting characteristics shown in the Return to Geonosis arc in the Clone Wars. I see Unduli as your average “good” jedi, she has a very specific interpretation of the force and the doctrine of the jedi. This is her very thick shield she wields in the face of war and makes all her judgements off it. This allows her to justify her actions and keep swinging her plasma sword at the parts of the universe that are wrong and need to be pushed back into the embrace of the cosmic force to be rebalanced. Her brief interactions with Ahsoka and Anakin during the war are enough for her to question her faith and this unacknowledged feeling is what bleeds into the force and causes her apprentice Barriss Offee to act hastily and commit several terroristic acts on the jedi temple. None of the last three sentences happened in any Star Wars show (other than the terroristic acts on the jedi temple), this is just my personal cannon and interpretation of what happened. This is also only the beginning of their story and I have more to say about it’s end but that’s for another time and place. 

So what do I want you to get out of all this, why did I write about Star Wars for three pages, instead of simply saying: “I love how dumb Star Wars is.” I don’t know!! I wrote this because I wanted a place to iron out my thoughts on Star Wars, I could care less if you like or hate it either way your feelings are valid. Star Wars is fun because the universe is similar to ours in terms of size but it holds so much more tangible mysticism. I know some believe in ghosts and spirits in our reality but I have yet to be given any substantial physical proof of them, that couldn’t be explained away by the craziness the human mind is capable of. I like thinking of existing as an NPC in that crazy world just trying to make it as I am now, a person just trying their best. If you let it, Star Wars can teach you a lot of simple life lessons, it’s not nuanced or high minded, it’s simple and fun. So give it a chance if you want and don’t if you want to, but not just to be a counterculture twat as part of your identity because that road will lead you to nothing but loneliness and anger.