I wrote this in response to a video that Liana Kerzner made, which I will link down below. I highly respect her and the work that she does, so I wanted to weigh in on this topic. I suggest watching her video first, then reading my commentary.

This is an interesting topic, and I think it goes to the heart of a couple of things. First of all, to dismiss it as simply “it’s just Star Wars” trivializes it in a way that a lot of people trivialize gaming, which you defend, so it was a little odd to hear you come off as a little dismissive of it. That being said, you do have a point that in the grand scheme of things, they’re just movies, but the impact that they can have on people is more magnified now than ever, due to how much of a community is built up around them. In today’s world, it’s becoming ever more rare to build up a community locally. With the proliferation of the internet and being able to connect easier than ever with people that have the same fondness for the movies, you can finally find those fandoms that are just as passionate as you about whatever topic you pick.

Secondly, I wanted to bring up your point about how fans seem to be OK with a 6 year old piloting a podracer but having an issue with Rey being a Jedi master with no training. I’ll be clear, I’m not a Star Wars fan. I’ve seen the movies and played a couple of the games, but I’m absolutely a super casual consumer. But even with that, it’s easier to accept Anakin’s podracing ability over Rey’s Jedi abilities because it still doesn’t ask too much of suspending disbelief. There’s just enough backstory and corroborating evidence that makes it seem at least plausible. There is no such validation for Rey’s abilities. Short example: Anakin has been working on and building his own podracer for a year(?). He knows it inside and out. He can calibrate the hydraulics to be easy enough for him to operate (yes this is possible, I work with hydraulics and they can be made incredibly sensitive). He is set up to be perfectly knowledgeable to fix the mechanical issue in the middle of the podrace. Obviously, yes, he’s still only 6 years old, but he’s also grown up in an extremely harsh environment, and having 3 kids myself, they are smarter than they look at that age and will rise to a challenge, believe me. Rey has never seen the Falcon, and by the minimal backstory we get, doesn’t even seem like she’s ever been in a working spaceship. So when they are trying to figure out what’s wrong with the Falcon, and she pulls out a part that immediately solves the problem, even though it could have been on the other side of the ship, it pushes the boundaries of belief. She knew exactly what the problem was and how to fix it, even though it didn’t fit the given backstory of being a scavenger. We don’t see how she knows how to troubleshoot, or even an explanation on how “there was this one time…” kind of story. It’s just accepted that she knew what to do. By itself, this isn’t too big of a deal, but when you add it to the rest of the events in the movies, it starts to paint a picture of someone that simply can’t fail. And she never does. She doesn’t even get a scrape. Ever.

But back to the original question you pose. Why do people get so angry over Star Wars? I think it comes down to a psychological response, and it’s one that people talk a lot about in one sense, but never seems to go deeper, and that’s the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). Most people hear that phrase and go to the self explanatory definition of it; that someone doesn’t want to miss an opportunity and will make a choice to be involved so they can be included in the event or community. But I think people should look at it as a loss of potential. And this is important, because it goes to the heart of why people get so angry and frustrated in the “culture war” today, of which the Star Wars debate is only one facet.

Think of it this way. You’re a die hard Star Wars fan. You’ve watched all the originals, dressed up as any of the characters, and read all the supplemental material.

(Which, as a side note, I think the very fact that there is an Expanded Universe with hundreds of stories, comics, and fan films, blows the idea that fans don’t like canon changes right out of the water. More on that some other time.)

Anyway, you’ve even watched the prequels, which while not the greatest movies, still stay somewhat faithful to the canon of the universe. And now they’ve announced the new trilogy, the one that will complete the Skywalker saga. This is HUGE. For as great as the originals were, the prequels were a little bit of a letdown, but the potential for a truly epic conclusion is there.

Then the Force Awakens comes out. OK. It’s pretty much a rehash of A New Hope, but that’s OK, we have some really interesting plot elements. A renegade Stormtrooper? That’s new. A fanatical follower of Darth Vader? Sweet, could make for some interesting psychological gymnastics on how he was good, then evil, then good again, and how that impacts the Force.

Then The Last Jedi comes out.

I’ll say it again, I’m not a big Star Wars fan, I’m just a casual consumer. But even I was a little thrown off from the very first scene, and could see the palpable distaste and confusion in others as to how this became and approved part of the Star Wars canon. Of course, it’s all downhill from there.

Now it starts to become clear that after getting the hopes up after the medicare prequel trilogy, that these new films are just being seen as a cash grab by a company that isn’t respecting the fans or the lore that has been built up over the last 40 years, completely ignoring ANYTHING built in the Expanded Universe, going so far as to pretend it doesn’t even exist (Kathleen Kennedy was quoted on this). Disney missed out on using plotlines that were popular, instead choosing to focus on their own characters, which again, could be perfectly fine, if it didn’t also choose to inject Hollywood’s grandstanding morality preaching.

So now the anger has really started to boil. People launch entire YouTube careers bashing the new Star Wars movies. This goes on for years, fueled by spin-offs that seem to be even more attempts at just making money instead of a good story.

Now, present day, when The Rise of Skywalker releases. It’s hyped up, it’s the grand finale, the conclusion that people have waited for....except is has nothing to do with the Skywalkers, and is just about propping up a cardboard version of a character that you’re TOLD you should care about, while the ones that were idolized for YEARS have been killed off or disrespected entirely in order to try and sell you an agenda that doesn’t give two figs about the lore because it’s current year. The name of the movie is even more ironic considering it has more to do with the Palpatines than the Skywalkers.

I think it’s completely understandable that people feel that loss of potential, the loss of not seeing a story made in all the grandeur and spectacle that today’s movies are made in. They didn’t get a satisfactory ending to the characters that they grew up with, because Disney was in such a rush to introduce their new ones. Put simply, these movies and characters will not stand the test of time. They were made to fit a narrative that most moviegoers do not care about, banking on nostalgia to bring people in, and stories that die hard fans find absolutely insulting. Angry fans aren’t trying to pretend the originals were perfect, they just told a better story in a genre that was a lot less popular and harder to enjoy publicly back in the day. That common struggle builds strong bonds, stronger than a lot of the faux social media bonds of today. When a Twitter profile starts pointing out flaws in the originals/prequels as a counterargument to criticism in the new movies, that doesn’t make those problems go away, especially when it’s exacerbated by extremely lazy storytelling, and it makes that person feel like they’re just being talked down to. It’s not necessarily about nostalgia, it’s the fact that the new movies can’t be enjoyed without enough good reason to suspend disbelief.