The Star Wars review the fans don’t want you to see

Spoiler: I realise that I’m going to lose many friends over this, because we all know that you can’t touch the sacred “trilogy of trilogies”. The response you get is akin to watching a toddler being told they can’t have ice cream and mars bar with chicken nuggets for dinner.

In fact, I know that I’m opening myself up to lots of hate mail over this, to which all I can say is: Calm down, it’s just a film.

I read a hilarious “review” of the Star Wars film, by a clearly butt-hurt fan, responding largely to a review in the Huffington post. Because apparently people care what the Huffington Post says about anything.

It’s a funny old world, eh?

Actually, I quite agreed with most of what he said. What I found hilarious was his attempt to claim that the plot of the film – indeed, the entire franchise – is something akin to the Odyssey, the Bible or Beowulf, by claiming it’s an example of chiastic structure, or “ring composition”.

Well, they clearly have absolutely no idea what ring composition is.

Big hint: It’s NOT just recycling so many plot points that your film is basically little more than a rewrite of other films.

This is symptomatic of the mental-gymnastics that hardcore fans will go through to deny there is ever anything wrong with their beloved franchise, because they find it almost impossible to not take it all so seriously.

Another prime example was the whole “under 12 parsecs” blunder in Episode IV. Let’s face facts here: Lucas didn’t know what a parsec is, saw it contains the word “sec”, and thought it was some exotic, spacey-sounding measurement of time.

Could the fans let that drop? No, we’re inundated with endless apologetics and post-hoc attributions of meaning, about how he meant parsecs as a measure of distance all along, and it completely fits the warped dialogue of the scene because [insert tortured and contrived reason here].

This is the thing with Star Wars fans. They can’t just accept and deal with mistakes in their treasured franchise. They can’t even admit them. It’s at first cute, and then absolutely irritating – like a child who won’t stop tugging at your sleeve. At first you think it’s kind of adorable, but after about an hour, you’re wondering if anyone thought to pack a taser, or where the nearest bath tub and toaster are.

That’s why Episode I hurt so much, and they don’t want to talk about it – hell, they even want to pretend it doesn’t exist. It was just too bad that even they knew their convoluted apologetics program couldn’t save it.

But instead of dealing with the fact that it’s merely a piece of mass produced, mass consumed entertainment, they couldn’t just laugh it off like any normal person would. They had to enter into an era of mass hysteria not seen since Diana died.

Even now, there are many hardcore fans that seemingly won’t even speak its name, and who contort their viewing experience of the franchise’s box sets in order to magically banish it from history (see the “Machete Order” for such an example).

Yep, Star Wars fans can’t admit a mistake – so when an entire film is an undeniable mistake, they want to do everything they can not to admit it into the franchise.

Still, like I said, most of the points in the response to the Huffpost review I agree with. There are several claims about “plot holes” that really aren’t plot holes at all, to the point that I really had to wonder if the Huffpost team had bothered to watch the film before taking mild hallucinogenics, or whether they decided “bugger it” and munched their way through a big bag of funny looking mushrooms at the opening credits. Their review was filled with some of the most vacuous and hilariously stupid “points”, that even a 5 year old could have shot down. And seemingly did.

Hell, I liked the film, despite the fact that I’d already seen it back in the 80’s.

But this is the thing with the hardcore Star Wars fans – nobody else gives a fuck. Try to get that through your heads, please. Nobody else actually really cares.

You see, it was your relentless, pissy, whining “don’t give us any spoilers! WAAAAAH!” that sealed it for most of us normal people.

If someone had written a review before I went to see it, would that have ruined it for me or made me not watch it? Of course not, for fuck’s sake. They could even have just said “you’ve already seen it” and gone through all the recycled plot points to their heart’s content, and I’d have still gone to see it AND enjoyed it.

I watch films after reading reviews all the bloody time – that’s the reason I haven’t subjected myself to the fucking ROOM, for shit’s sake, because I saw the reviews and realised I don’t have to waste hours of my life on that shit. And when reviews are good, I’m there.

It’s what fucking reviews are for.

Newsflash: Reviews don’t ruin films, you precious little idiots!

 

But no, for some fucking mental reason, you star wars fans think you have the one and only franchise that “NOBODY CAN EVER TALK ABOUT UNTIL I’VE SEEN THE FILM!”

The only film franchise where for weeks afterwards even the fucking REVIEWERS didn’t say anything about the fucking film, for fear of a bunch of spotty geeks grabbing the nearest pitchfork and heading over to “DESTROY THE MONSTER!”

Yep, when it comes to Star Wars, nobody else is allowed to know anything about the film, and has to go in blind, just because of a bunch of overgrown, pissy children, who haven’t realised one simple fact – Nobody’s forcing you to read the reviews and the spoilers you pricks.

And it was hilarious, because for all your pitiful and idiotic demands that nobody put up any reviews or spoilers, all anyone needed to do was just stick up a fucking massive poster of Episode IV, with the caption “Suck it, losers!”

Because truly, it looks like JJ Abrams pulled off the greatest act of trolling in cinema history, and you hardcore fans are so far down the rabbit hole of Stockholm syndrome for your beloved franchise that you’ve found it impossible to not take yourselves too seriously about it.

No, it can’t be that Abrams was stuck for new ideas, or he was pulling off the greatest scam ever concocted on the big screen, knowing full well that everyone would watch any old shit without it recieving even a basic review as long as it’s STAR WARS, and knowing full well that the fans would rally behind it no matter what (just so long as he didn’t make the horrendous mistakes of Episode I). No, it can’t be that.

It MUST be that he’s a literary genius, and the whole thing is the next fucking Iliad. Yeah. That’s it.

It’s just a fucking film – and it’s not even an example of the best cinema. It’s hardly Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I mean, it’s hardly even Dr Strangelove, for fuck’s sake.

Shit, it’s hardly fucking Benny and Joon.

Let’s not pretend we were watching some incredible specimens of movie masterpiece, that if they could be stuck on canvas would be hanging in the Tate.

It’s Pirates of the Caribbean in space – fairly well written for what it is: swash-buckling, action heavy adventure with great special effects and not too much plot to have to really hurt yourself with, but just enough to engage your brain and not just be a Michael Bay film (where you feel like you could have been lobotomized before hand and STILL understand every intricate facet of the plot, and end up wishing you would be lobotomized after listening to the dialogue). It’s great entertainment, but it’s not a fucking cinematic Mona Lisa. Get over yourselves.

Some of it was barely above the level of pantomime, for Christ’s sake.

That scene where Rey and Finn run into each other in the Millennium Falcon after getting away to congratulate each other was so cringe-worthily directed and acted, that it looked to be straight out of an awkward rehearsal of the worst amateur dramatics production in the universe.

Seriously, that scene just epitomized the problem with Abrams: He’s great at big ideas and special effects, just like James Cameron, and just like James Cameron he’s utterly shit at writing the detail and dialogue, and even worse at directing actors. Can we stop pretending otherwise, please?

That’s my problem with Star Wars – or rather, you die-hard fans are.

Can you just let the rest of the world enjoy the films, without demanding we succumb to your whims and desires to stay eternally 10 years old, and pretend you have some magical reasons for everyone to tip-toe around you?

I want to make this absolutely clear, because you idiots keep missing the point, claiming that we’re “just hating on the franchise/film”. I’m not. I have no problem with it. I actually really do like it. It’s you guys I hate. The real hardcore, die-hard fans. Not the films. You.

Again, I loved the film. Even knowing that it was just basically a case of JJ Abrams getting stuck for ideas so he just dusted off the Episode IV script, rewrote a couple of things, made it bigger and repackaged it, didn’t make me enjoy it any less.

In fact, thinking of the humongous troll scandal he’d just pulled off on all the fans only made me love it even more, to the point that it’s probably my favourite Star Wars film for that fact alone, and for getting to watch the mass mental gymnastics you lot go through as you try to cope with it.

So, come the next Star Wars film, can everyone just ignore the spoiled little children crying about “NO-SPOILERS!” and just post up some normal reviews?