I was a huge Star Wars fan as a kid. I was only four years old when the original “Star Wars” was released, but I bet I’ve seen the movie over 100 times. My parents got me a record of “The Empire Strikes Back” when I was a kid. Not the soundtrack of the movie. It was the entire audio of the movie line by line. I listened to it over and over again. I don’t know how many times I listened to it, but now I have that movie memorized. It makes for a strange experience when I watch the movie because I know exactly what line is coming next. If I was an actor, I could act out the entire movie.
Of course I had all of the action figures and all of the toy spaceships like the Millennium Falcon. Even though I have “The Empire Strikes Back” completely memorized, my favorite Star Wars movie is “Return Of The Jedi.” To say I had a boyhood crush on Princess Leia would be a huge understatement. 10-year old Joe was in love with Princess Leia.
When the prequels were announced, I was excited right along with all Star Wars fans. “The Phantom Menace” was released in 1999 and I bought a ticket opening night and stood in line to get a good seat. You couldn’t get a reserved seat back then, which seems kind of odd now. Anyway, I loved it. Yeah, it had Jar Jar Binks, maybe the most infamous Star Wars character of all-time, and it relied a bit too heavily on special effects, but neither of those things took away from my enjoyment of the movie. I thought the other two prequels were good movies, too. “Revenge of the Sith” is my favorite of the prequels and is still one of my favorites of the nine main Star Wars movies.
Fast forward to “The Force Awakens” in 2015, which was the first movie of the sequel trilogy. The original cast of Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford were set to reprise their roles of Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo. I was very excited for this movie. Once again I got tickets for opening night and stood in line to see it. I liked the movie, but found something “off” about it. It wasn’t the fact that it was basically a remake of the original Star Wars or that they killed off Han Solo. There was a new, young, cast of characters introduced that were set to star in the three movies. The trilogy was set around the journey of “Rey,” a teen-aged young orphan who discovers the force and joins the fight against the evil First Order. The problem I saw with Rey was that she discovered she could use the force and became powerful almost instantly. She showed Han Solo a thing or two flying the Millennium Falcon early in the movie and then held her own fighting the main bad guy Kylo Ren, who was supposedly the most feared Jedi remaining in the Universe, at the end of the movie. How did she become so powerful so quickly? Most Jedi need decades of training in order to become powerful like that. She picked it up on a whim and was already as, or more, powerful than any other character.
Despite hating the character of Rey, I was still able to enjoy the movie. Harrison Ford as Han Solo is my favorite Star Wars character and I enjoyed seeing him reprise the role. Unfortunately, Star Wars has gotten progressively worse since “The Force Awakens.” The next movie was “The Last Jedi.” This movie showed that Luke Skywalker had turned into a hermit and went into hiding, swearing off the force and the Jedi forever. In my eyes, it took Disney this one movie to destroy Luke Skywalker. And they did literally destroy him in the end, killing him off for good. Han and Luke down. Leia to go. They were forced to kill the character of Leia after the death of Carrie Fisher, so I can see why they did that one.
The third and final of the sequel trilogy “The Rise of Skywalker” was a debacle of epic proportions. We find out that Rey is NOT a Skywalker, but yet she takes the name “Skywalker” at the end of the movie after destroying the Emperor and the First Order with the help of some of her friends.
I didn’t like “The Last Jedi” or “The Rise of Skywalker” for many reasons, but I never realized the main reason why until Star Wars fans started talking about it on social media and making YouTube videos about it. Kathleen Kennedy heads up Star Wars for Disney, who bought the franchise from George Lucas prior to Disney making the last three movies. Kennedy is a “wokester” who is intent on molding Star Wars into her vision. For proof of this, look no further than her “The Force Is Female” t-shirts…
Kennedy is the one wearing the black t-shirt.
I always thought the force was a mysterious power that could be wielded by anyone with midi-chlorians, but I guess it’s really just for the “females.” Hey, I don’t mind females or any other alien life forms in the universe being Jedi, but I just don’t like the “wokeness” being shoved down my throat all the time.
The newest Star Wars series on Disney Plus is “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and it is a “woke” disaster. They are making Obi-Wan out to be a weakling while being led around by a 10-year old Princess Leia, who bosses him around and makes him look like an idiot half of the time. In the third episode, a female character saves Obi-Wan from Darth Vader, because of course she does. The main antagonist in the show is not Darth Vader, but an African-American female character named Reva, who is of course much stronger and wiser than Obi-Wan Kenobi. For what reason exactly is anyone’s guess. It looks like they are destroying Obi-Wan Kenobi just like they did Luke Skywalker. Ugh.
I am not anti-woman or anti-minority in the Star Wars universe or in the real world, but why does every woman character in the new Star Wars movies and shows have to be stronger and smarter than every male character? It’s “wokeness” on steroids.
Luckily there are people out there that agree with me. Here is a video from a YouTube account that I follow. I agree with everything he says here.
I guess the saddest thing to me about this is that Disney could have had a Star Wars fan for life, but they have lost me as a fan. I’ll finish up the final three episodes of the Obi-Wan series and then I think I’m done. I’m not going to blindly follow a declining franchise like this. The “wokesters” seem to be ruining everything nowadays and Star Wars is no exception.