Recently, there were a couple of big bits of Star Wars-related excitement: the release of a new trailer for the upcoming movie, and some “not gameplay footage” footage of the upcoming new Star Wars Battlefront game.
And… I don’t really care.
This post isn’t, however, a tirade where I get angry at people who are into Star Wars — certainly I don’t begrudge anyone their excitement over the new stuff, and it’s nice to see something people can get enthusiastic rather than angry about for once. No; rather, it’s a contemplation of why I’m no longer into Star Wars now, in 2015, when many of my peers are.
In theory Star Wars should be right up my alley. I like sci-fi and I like fantasy, and Star Wars combines elements of both, being, essentially, a tale of heroic fantasy, mysterious magic and dastardly villains… and a tale that just happens to be set among spacefaring civilisations rather than the more conventional quasi-medieval setting of most fantasy.
And yet I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for it any more.
I don’t think it’s the fault of the films themselves. A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are all still solid films, albeit somewhat cheesy at times; The Phantom Menace is a bit poo but inoffensively so, and Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are both perfectly competent, exciting movies. I recall a couple of years back I watched them all through in sequential order — The Phantom Menace first, Return of the Jedi last — and found it to be an enjoyable experience that actually made the prequels seem a bit better than I had previously thought.
I’ve not felt any sort of urge to watch them again, though; I don’t think I even own a copy of them any more, having ditched most of my DVD collection the last time we moved house. I’m kind of done with Star Wars; I got all that I wanted to out of it, and moved on.
Except Star Wars didn’t want to move on, and I think this is why my excitement and interest in it has completely faded over the years. Over the years since the prequel movies, we’ve had TV shows, animated shorts, websites, video games, toys, novels, comics, fan movies, endless speculation, memes, and the Great Unwritten Rule of Geekdom: that if you don’t like Star Wars you’re not a proper nerd. (I don’t actually believe this last one, of course, but I have had a few looks of surprise when fellow nerds have asked me what I think of something Star Wars related and I’ve responded that I’m not really into it.)
In other words, Star Wars was inescapable and being used more as a gigantic marketing juggernaut than anything else. I’ve become very aware of this sort of thing over the last few years — I think working in the press and seeing long-running PR campaigns for various blockbusters “from the inside” jaded me somewhat — and I was just getting a little fed up of seeing it seemingly everywhere. That manifested itself in the realisation that I didn’t really care for Star Wars any more, and a response to the announcement of the new movies and games best described as “meh”.
I’m kind of sad about this in a way, and I do stand by my title for this post; I do wish I liked Star Wars more, because it would be nice to share in some of this excitement, and it’s nice to reminisce about classic games like Super Star Wars, X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But, for me, at least, I think that ship has sailed (or done the Kessel run in however-many-parsecs-it-was, insert your own tortured metaphor here) and I’ve moved on to my own things that people give me blank looks about when I express my own excitement and enthusiasm. It all balances out, I guess.
So for those of you into Star Wars, I hope the recent reveals were everything you hoped they’d be. And for those of you not… well, I’ve got a nice quiet little corner of the Internet here. Pull up a chair and I’ll put the kettle on.
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I’m sad that angryjedi doesn’t feel the force any more. It’s in the music! Every time I hear that music I get a great burst of exhilaration followed by a desire to sit down and watch the series through – as I do with the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit music. Of course it’s usually at some impractical moment where I can’t sit down for a few days to do so. 😀 Even the poignant music themes from them – especially the newer 1, 2 & 3 movies – strikes deep and my mind sees the characters and settings and yearns to watch it all again. The layers of the story/stories are so cleverly devised and so well constructed – so epic, encompassing all that this word covers. Will you still remain angryjedi ?
I have a weird relationship with Star Wars. I was obsessed with it as a kid. Posters. Repeated viewings. Mountains of toys. All that standard stuff. But then I just kinda grew out of it. I mean no derision when I say that I “grew out of it” – it’s just that I got older, and moved on to fussing over other fictional universes. That said, I get excited for each new movie. Although I no longer really consider myself a “Star Wars Fan,” I am a fan of film, sci-fi, fantasy, and fictional storytelling in general. So even though I don’t get all hyped up about lore and what parts of the no-longer-canonical extented univers may still be canon, I’m just excited for a new, big-budget sci-fi movie that looks like it wont’ be afraid to have some fun and tickle our nostalgia bones. I’m also a sucker for pratical special effects, so Abrahams’ approach to this movie has me beyond intrigued.
As an aside, Star Wars or not, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars cartoon shorts remain some of the best animated media ever committed to screen. So I am a huge fan of those. It’s actually the only Star Wars media I do own on DVD.