Is it time to quit Star Wars??

[Dalty]

Posted this already in the Corona threads on FB but not sure who from here is there. Interesting debate actually and something I have wondered recently:

https://filmgoblin.com/nerd-fight/time- ... ig-debate/

[Space Tycoon]

If it wasn't time to quit after the Prequels, which apparently were the Worst Movies Ever, then why quit now? After we've had three (mostly) solid films in two years?

[Mal Shot First]

I don't think it's necessarily time to quit Star Wars, especially after three solid movies like Spacey said, but Disney should probably rethink its strategy for releasing new movies in the franchise. With the frequency at which they're doing it, something like Star Wars fatigue can set in. It's kind of sad to think about it, but at this rate, the release of a new Star Wars movie will cease to be a special event (which it used to be for me, anyway).

[Mal Shot First]

And can you really ever quit Star Wars anyway?

[Space Tycoon]

And I thought Star Trek fans were vicious!

I'm going to see The Last Jedi again tomorrow at the Cinesphere, a massive IMAX theatre here in Toronto with my Dad. The last SW movie I saw here was Return of the Jedi back in ole' '83. I sometimes need two viewings to decide how I feel about divisive movies, so tomorrow I'll be on more solid argumentative ground.

[Dalty]

I would call it two solid movies. TLJ was a travesty.

[Mal Shot First]

Your mom was a travesty!

[Mal Shot First]

But seriously, "a travesty"? You think TLJ was worse than the prequels? I don't remember you referring to any of them as a travesty.

That's what I don't get: People who tolerated the prequels and in some cases even went so far as to show how they could have been "salvaged" are now acting as if TLJ was the one Star Wars movie without any redeeming qualities. Give me a break!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It had some rough edges and a lame side quest, but I liked it more than I was expecting to. I liked it more than TFA. I thought it was a decent shot to franchise's arm. (I've already written about it at length in the other thread, of course. The above was the gist, though.)

Disney's not going to worry too much about franchise fatigue until the first biggish financial disappointment. A Star Wars movie has been the top domestic earner three years in a row, and the continued success of the MCU franchise has convinced Disney that franchise fatigue is relative.

Still, Star Wars will inevitably lose some of that event specialness. It already has for me, thanks to the Special Editions and the prequels. It has become--for me, at least--a sometimes pleasant nostalgic diversion.

[Mal Shot First]

The more I think about this debate about "giving up" on Star Wars, the more confused I get about what they're actually asking. Is it: Should all Star Wars fans stop watching Star Wars movies? What if they actually enjoy them (since there are people who actually enjoyed the new movies, including TLJ)? Surely, this is an individual decision that can't just be applied broadly to the entire fan base. If you don't enjoy the movies anymore, then yeah, you should probably stop watching them. It's not like you swore a solemn oath of loyalty at some point.

You can look at it this way: There's this restaurant where you've been eating with your family since you were a kid. As you got older, the food there seemed to get a bit bland and the staff sort of stopped trying as hard to make quality meals, but you'd been eating there all your life, and it was a familiar setting. Then, a couple of years back, the place got a new owner, and the new management decided to modernize the joint. They added new menu items and removed old staples, and they're going for this whole newfangled "artisinal" experience that's not really your thing. So do you keep going back to this restaurant even though you don't enjoy eating there? Why? Out of a sense of loyalty? To whom? In the end, you need to decide whether it makes sense for you to keep spending money on eating there, but just because you decide it's not for you, it doesn't mean that there aren't people who like what the new management has done with the place.

Is this really so controversial?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Here's a thing I mostly wrote on my phone but didn't get around to finishing and posting until after I was once again connected to the Internet (Mal more or less said some of the same stuff in the interim, but I'm too lazy to go through and delete the overlap):

I tend to embrace kill-your-idols narratives, so I may have been primed to like it in ways others were not. I dunno. Kill-your-idols narratives can annoy me, too, when I feel like the crafters of those narratives are pissing on legacy just to piss on it, but I didn't get that sense from TLJ. It felt to me, instead, like was put together by somebody who was in love with the Star Wars mythos, was interested in engaging in some world-tinkering What-ifs, and wasn't subverting just to subvert.

I grant many are passionate about Star Wars and that this passion can lead to some strong opinions and fiery expressions of those opinions, but it strikes me as silly when I see adults frothing at the mouth over what is, at its core, a relatively inexpensive leisure-time piece of pop culture. I was really bummed out when I was watching the prequels and feeling like I was getting substandard product, so I can sympathize on some level, but I never felt the impulse to deliver ultimatums into the void or hold an open debate to help me determine whether or not I would condescend to continue giving the IP holders more of my money.

It all feels pretty prissy to me. I think of people sending their steaks back and asking to speak to the manager. I think of theater patrons demanding their money back for a movie they found to be not to their liking. The most vocal complainers--they seem mostly to be white guys in their thirties and forties, but haven't really seen any stats on it--appear to me to be complaining most fervently about things happening in the movie that they didn't like. There are some moments of sloppy storytelling throughout, sure, some of the humor didn't work for me, and some scenes dragged on a bit, but I don't these things alone add up to "bad movie." If they did, I'd probably like way fewer movies than I do.

I continue to reject the notion that certain characters' essences were "betrayed"--especially in cases where those characters have done three-plus decades of living since the last time we saw them. I also have trouble swallowing the it's-unbelievable-how-OP-Rey-is argument when some of the same people making it are Dragon Ball Z fans, Harry Potter fans, superhero movie fans, fans of mythology in general, Star Wars fans, et cetera. (Some of them are definitely sexist and definitely feel "their" Star Wars has been taken away from them--I'm not conjecturing here, since I've seen some of them say it outright--but I'm sure not all of them are.) If you're willing to believe a male human was conceived by the Force--presumably without a Y chromosome to work with--then haven't you already shown you can suspend your disbelief to an alarming degree? Some chick who's been getting her ass handed to her on a desert planet for a couple decades is suddenly able to speak parseltongue and summon brooms, but you can't buy it?

Back to the topic at hand, though:

I feel like the healthier thing to do when you find yourself no longer enjoying a thing is simply to check out--unless you truly do feel some obligation to it. (Why? I dunno. Maybe your love of Star Wars saved your life, or maybe it's the only thing that makes you feel close to a deceased love one. If that's the case, I suppose you'll just have to weather through it.) If thy right hand offend thee, saber it off. This whole holding-a-referendum thing seems pretty emotionally unhealthy. It's looking for validation/seeking the approval of peers for something you should be doing on your own. It's this scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:



It's just a movie, after all. It's not the end of the world. Maybe you're older now and ready for more sophisticated entertainment, maybe it's apples and you're an orange fan, maybe it's pushing an obnoxiously feminist leftist agenda, maybe the people making it just want your money and don't care about you as a person, maybe the movies are hastily made pieces of shit, maybe your idea of what a Star Wars movie should be is too personal/rigid to allow for anything that doesn't check all the right boxes, maybe it's some combination of all the above, or maybe it's something else entirely. Whatever the case, do you really need to be told whether or not to keep watching these things?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Also:

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

(I constantly make Star Wars references while talking about things unrelated to Star Wars. I thought it would be fun to try it the other way around.)