The Truth was in Me all Along

The truth is that I am not a Star Wars fan. I always believed I was because I got so ridiculously happy when I watched Empire Strikes Back. “My hands are dirty.” “My hands are dirty too.” The whole thing kills me. I am a grown woman and I'm entertained by an ugly green puppet that grunts wisdom and apparently makes things float. Go figure.

In 1999, I dead serious had a man ask me to accompany him to see Phantom Menace on opening night. I was completely romanced. Any of you who were there remember that the opening of that movie was a really big deal and going to see the latest Star Wars movie was downright exciting. And then, just like that, it wasn't. I won't go over why. You all know why. Needless to say none of the prequels rekindled my love for long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Then we have The Force Awakens. I only remember enjoying two things about that movie. One, Chewy. One of my dream careers is designing and making costumes like that. He looked so beautiful. And I liked the thirty seconds of Mark Hamill. I didn't like Rey or any other character they introduced. Ya know what I didn't like most of all? What happened afterwards. Rey is a girl protagonist, right? Such forward thinking, but not forward enough. No little boy is running around with Rey on his lunchbox. They have a patricidal maniac on the lunchboxes instead, because little boys don't actually want a girl on their lunchbox, even if she is the hero. Later, I was in a child psychiatrist's therapy room and saw a poster of Kylo Ren on the wall. I asked why they had that poster on the wall, when the main character featured was a murderer who killed his father. The reply was that a parent had brought it in and I could only think that was because that parent didn't want it in his own house.

Fast forward. I like Felicity Jones, so I was convinced to go see Rogue One, which I didn't enjoy either. Felicity is so beautiful and fun in other roles, but in this film it seemed like they did everything they could to make sure she had zero sparkle. I remember taking my eyes off the screen and looking at the walls of the theatre instead. They were ridgy. Then I started thinking about the ridges in human intestines and that was way more interesting than the movie.

*SPOILER ALERT*

When I saw the trailer for The Last Jedi, I was really disappointed. Patricide for Christmas two years ago, all the characters die last year, and from the trailer, it looked like matricide for Christmas this year. Get out your Yoda Christmas ornaments! I didn't go see it. I read the spoilers instead and I didn't even read all of them because they were really boring. I sort of stopped reading when I read that Luke dies.

Here's the thing. I love Luke. I love Mark Hamill. I will sit around and watch him do Star Wars promo on YouTube for hours and get a kick out of watching him on Muppet Show and laugh at him doing commentary on fan antics. My favourite is the guy in a Darth Vader helmet riding a unicycle, and playing bagpipes that light on fire. I even played Wing Commander and had fun doing it. Killing Luke makes me feel nothing but sad. I don't even care what the context is. I don't care if the new characters learn and grow and become more the people they are meant to be because he's out of the way. His was a story where he fought to save his Father and as a parent, I like that story better than one where any character kills his own father.

So, I saw the angry fans online who want Disney to strike Episode Eight from canon. And I went to read more about it. Then I read an angry fan of the film who said something like, “If you only like Empire Strikes Back, you're not a true Star Wars fan.” And I agreed with him. So, since there are nine movies and I only like one, I guess I can go watch Lord of the Rings. Where it's fun.