Already from the age when my self-awareness was emergent, Star Wars was already as familiar to me as the X-Men, the Terminator, or Mario. There is not a time when I don’t remember having loved Star Wars: the heroism of Luke Skywalker, the mysticism of the Force, and the cool-factor of ligthsabers.
Before the arrival of the ‘Special Edition’ remasters of the original movies, I was eagerly reading official novel sequels and side-stories. By the time of the prequels, I had wore thin the spine to my copies of Tales from Jabba’s Palace and the Essential Guide to all the main characters of the films and expanded universe.
It is a sort of surreal feeling to watch as this world I grew up immersing myself in transform, from a somewhat marginal piece of fiction into this cultural juggernaut comprising a dozen theatrical releases and about as many TV series. The classmates (and even adults) who belittled me for enjoying Star Wars are now buying its shirts.
I have wanted for a long time for culture at large to embrace nerd-things, to finally see the imaginative worlds I had seen. It’s a sad irony, then, that as this happened, I no longer enjoy Star Wars. Out of the two dozen movies and shows, my opinion is that most of them are simply bad cinematic storytelling.
I recall watching the Special Editions and being annoyed by many of the changes. I remember watching Episode I in theater the opening weekend and being utterly confused what the point even was. I was the target audience, but I was bored and puzzled. I tried pushing through this discontent, but by the time of Episode III I decided the only film releases I actually enjoyed were the original, pre-Special Edition trilogy.
Per the adage that ‘you can never go home again’, once I realized and understood the immense shortcomings in the prequels—the result of a filmmaker unwilling to accept the overwhelmingly negative response and to accept necessarily heavy-handed constructive criticism—I couldn’t avoid seeing those same shortcomings (to a lesser degree) in the original trilogy. The sloppy, circular editing in Star Wars (the first movie). The lazy retconning in The Empire Strikes Back. The merchandise-first approach to Return of the Jedi. Once the franchise was out of his hands, the sequel trilogy was ruined before it even got started, crushed in the hand of a cynical capitalistic giant which immediately declared its breakneck intention to pump out one theatrical release every year.
To be clear, I do not think all of the films are unenjoyable. But I do think that, on average, there are only two good movies: most of ESB, along with the broad-strokes narrative of SW and Luke’s arc in the second half of ROTJ. Beyond this, the prequels are thoroughly unwatchable to me, the Episode VII is only as good as the chemistry of the lead actors allow it to be, with the rest of the movies boring or insulting.
In regards to the TV series, the only good one is Andor, which felt unbeholden to the greed for nostalgic key-dangling which permeates all the others. Even the first season of The Mandalorian, which I did enjoy, constantly asks the viewer if they remember this or that from all of the existing properties.
I find myself sadly agreeing with the reviews which argue that Andor is not ‘just’ good Star Wars, but good cinematic storytelling in general, to such an extent that calling it by the ‘Star Wars’ name actually weighs it down. Its narrative depends just enough on Star Wars lore that it cannot have been fully detached without immediate comparisons, but otherwise operates on such a level that it does not require the viewer to have ever seen anything else from Star Wars to fully appreciate its narrative and themes.
I do want to others to love Star Wars if they find things in it which catch their interest or spark their imagination. I’m just sad I am no longer someone counted among them.