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

Today is May 4th. Yes, The Day. Star Wars day. May the 4th be with you, etc. The word game that, thanks to the internet, has somehow transformed a normal day into a global holiday of Star Wars worship. But there is only one problem: I don’t really want to worship on this altar anymore.

And The rise of Skywalker is guilty.

It is embarrassing, but there was a point during my first watch of The Rise of Skywalker when I said audibly in a crowded theater, “What the hell hell? ”

I can’t remember which part. There were some candidates.

It could have been right at the beginning when Rose Tico (played by Kelly Marie Tran) like Poochie from The Simpsons was torn from The Rise of Skywalker. It felt absolutely like a move appease the racist trolls who bullied Tran from social media in 2018.

That was shit. Big time. Definitely a “what the hell?”

Could have been the moment when they had “undead” Chewbacca and perhaps rewound the only challenging moment in a first act that felt like it was written and edited by a 5 year old sorbet high.

But if I had to place bets, I would say my “what the hell” moment came during the big revelation of “Rey’s origins”.

Undo from The last JediKylo Ren tells Rey that she made the most interesting decisions was not the daughter of drinkers who sold them for alcohol. No, scratch that. In a desperate attempt to relate everything to the original trilogy (which makes the Star Wars universe feel smaller than a snow globe), Rey was exposed as the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine: the great villain who magically Wise appeared in the third film, minus all the heralds in the two previous films.

“What the Hell?”

Six months later, it’s still hard to explain, distant from the distorted bubble of the Star Wars “discourse” – and its place in the cultural wars that consume all light and reason Why This choice annoyed me so much.

In retrospect, Rey’s revelation was when Star Wars ceased to exist as an object that I could believe in and transformed into banal fan fiction for the worst Type of fan. Where Star Wars shrank to a story set in a distant Reddit thread. Designed to insult the minimum number of people, built to make people sit in movie theaters and show, “LOOK, IT’S LANDO. LANDO’S HERE!”

I was mad.

Too bad my poor wife, her eyes glassy that the train ride home had to endure. I, my arms like a madman, tried to explain why the passable science fiction film she had just seen (and immediately began to forget like a normal adult) was one Treason. That it deliberately and systematically deciphered every attempt by The Last Jedi to reinvent Star Wars and successfully escape from the boring nostalgia pit that it has now completely descended into.

I stand by the assessment. The Last Jedi was a film that demanded that we “let the past die”. It scolded occasional nostalgia. Whole sections, like the casino scene in Canto Bight, were far from perfect, but The Last Jedi was brave and inventive. It never invited us to show: “LOOK, LANDO’S HERE!” Instead, it has done a fantastic job of destroying all fans’ expectations. It murdered its main villain in the middle of the term; Luke Skywalker transformed from a boring hero type doing the right thing into an evil, bitter hermit tortured by his own mistakes.

It was a film that demonstrated the strange imagination of the original trilogy, but refused to turn to the most basic principles of its mythology. A vocal minority hated it, but for my money it was one of the bravest blockbuster films of the past decade. I was interested in Star Wars again.

But my greatest sin was primarily care.

In an era after Gamergate, an intense fandom poisoned the fountain. The only answer: don’t care about franchises like Star Wars and Marvel. If they get up how In the spider verse or Thor: Ragnarok? Great. Unless? Well, it’s just a movie. Taking it more seriously is a losing game.

I made the crucial mistake that makes all fandoms toxic: I was too invested. When I was a teenager, I devoured the expanded Star Wars universe. The good, the bad and Princess Leia’s advertising. I 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 produced, but now, after The Rise of Skywalker, I think I need a break from Star Wars. Along, Long break.

May the fourth be with you. I just want to ignore it. It is a hashtag that I will forget about. Because on a day that is supposed to be a festival, there is not much to celebrate.

That’s enough Star Wars for me, thanks.