Star Wars has lost its mystique and The Rise of Skywalker is to blame

Today is May 4th. Yes it is that day. Star Wars Day. May 4 be with you and all that. The word game that, thanks to the Internet, somehow transformed a normal day into a world party to worship Star Wars. But there is only one problem: I no longer want to worship on that altar.

AND Skywalker’s rise it’s to blame

It’s embarrassing, but there was a point during my first The Rise of Skywalker watch where, in a crowded theater, I said audibly “what hell? ”

I don’t remember exactly which part. There were some candidates.

It might have been right at the beginning, when Rose Tico (played by Kelly Marie Tran) was removed from The Rise of Skywalker as Poochie from The Simpsons. It felt absolutely like a movement designed to placate racist trolls who had bullied Tran on social media in 2018.

That sucked. In a big way. Definitely worth a “what the hell?”

It might have been the time when Chewbacca was “not killed,” rewinding perhaps the only challenging first-act moment that seemed to have been written and edited by a 5-year-old boy with a straw.

But if I had to make bets, I’d say my “what the hell” moment came during the great “King’s Origins” reveal.

Undo one of The Last JediThe most interesting options, Kylo Ren tells Rey that she was not the drunken daughter who sold her for alcohol money. No, cross that out. In a desperate attempt to link everything to the original trilogy (making the Star Wars universe feel smaller than a snow globe), Rey was revealed to be the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine – the great villain who magically appeared in the third movie, minus any foreshadowing in the previous two movies.

“Than hell?”

Six months later, distanced from the warped bubble of the Star Wars “speech”, and its place in culture wars that consume all light and reason, it is still difficult to explain. why This choice bothered me a lot.

In hindsight, Rey’s reveal was the time when Star Wars ceased to exist as an object that I could believe in and transformed into banal fanatic supplied to the worst fan type Where Star Wars shrugged into a story set in a Reddit thread far, far away. Designed to offend as few people as possible, built for people to sit in movie theaters and point out, “LOOK, IT’S LANDO. LANDO IS HERE!”

I was angry.

Too bad my poor wife, with glazed eyes, who had to endure the train journey home. Me, waving my arms like crazy, trying to explain why the passable science fiction movie I had just seen (and immediately began to forget, like a normal adult) was a treason. Who deliberately and systematically unraveled every attempt by The Last Jedi to reinvent Star Wars and make it successfully escape the boring nostalgia pit into which it has now fully descended.

I agree with the evaluation. The Last Jedi was a film that demanded that “we let the past die.” Ruined against casual nostalgia. Entire sections, like the casino scene at Canto Bight, were far from perfect, but The Last Jedi was bold and inventive. He never invited us to point out: “LOOK, LANDO IS HERE!” Instead, he did a fantastic job of destroying all fan expectations. He murdered his main villain halfway through execution time; He transformed Luke Skywalker from a boring type of hero who does the right thing into a vicious and bitter hermit tortured by his own failings.

It was a film that testified to the strange imagination of the original trilogy, but refused to indulge the most basic tenets of its mythology. A vocal minority hated it, but for my money it was one of the most successful movies of the last decade. It made me worry about Star Wars again.

But my biggest sin was worrying in the first place.

In a post-Gamergate era, intense fandom has poisoned the well. The only answer: Treat franchises like Star Wars and Marvel with indifference. If they rise above, like Into The Spider-Verse or Thor: Ragnarok? Excellent. If they don’t? Ah well, it’s just a movie. Taking it more seriously than that is a losing game.

I made the crucial mistake that makes every fandom toxic: I was too interested. As a teenager, I devoured the expanded Star Wars universe. The Good, the Bad, and The Courtship of Princess Leia. He was painfully in love with Star Wars as a series and an idea. As an adult, I had great respect for the universe and the incredible films it helped produce, but now, after The Rise of Skywalker, I think I need a break from Star Wars. A long long break.

May the room be with you. I just want to ignore it. It is a hashtag that I will be silencing in oblivion. Because on a day that is supposed to be a celebration, there is not much to celebrate.

That’s enough Star Wars for me, thanks.