May the Force help us all…

This, I gather, is what happens when you let the world’s most flamboyant homosexual conservative loose on a bottle of sherry whilebinge-watching the entire STAR WARS saga:

There’s so much wrong with Star Wars that it deserves a book-length treatise to cover properly. After all, the famous Red Letter Media takedown of The Phantom Menace
is longer than the film itself. For that reason I will focus on three
of the worst mischaracterisations: the Rebel Alliance as good guys, the
tragically misunderstood Jabba the Hutt, and Palpatine’s supposedly evil
Empire. 

This is going to upset some diehard fans, but who do you trust more?
Milo, who always tells you the truth while being witty, charming,
handsome and having great hair, or the filmmakers who tried to tell you
that Jar Jar Binks is a hero? [Didact: I am forced to admit, very reluctantly, that he does have a point there.]

THE REBEL ALLIANCEThe Alliance is a ragtag band of fighters from many different
cultures bonded together by a hatred of the Empire, fighting an
asymmetric war resulting in massive collateral damage and loss of
civilian life. They take their lead from mystics hiding in caves and
swamps, and want to return the galaxy to a primitive religion that
hasn’t changed for 600 years. That’s right nerds: the Rebel Alliance is
ISIS. 

The Jedi are a typical wishy-washy Mother Gaia-style progressive
cult. Their most obvious failing is not using the real Force powers.
Force lightning is actually quite humane; it’s like hitting a bad guy
with a taser instead of cutting him in half with a lightsabre. 

Same thing with force choke: do we really need to shoot a criminal
resisting the will of the Emperor? Why not subdue him with a choke–or
the term we use in the Sith community, enhanced persuasion techniques?
Besides, in the far-flung universe of Star Wars, SJWs have
ensured force-sensitive individuals get affirmative consent every 10
seconds while using their powers so there’s really no big deal. 

The Jedi are sick bastards. They use the Force to cloud the minds of
others. The movies show this being done to stormtroopers, but you just know Luke uses it on dates at the cantina. He probably
uses it to get anal. I bet every Jedi has a BDSM dungeon that they use
to force-torture unwilling victims. Any time they are told to stop they
just wave their hand and say “That isn’t the safe word you are looking
for.” Evil and rapey.

Well that just went and wrecked all of my favourite memories about the series. And you know what’s really bad about it?

I actually find myself agreeing with a lot of what he says.

There is absolutely no use arguing with him. It would be like trying to reason with a hurricane.

Worse still is the fact that quite a lot of the Expanded Universe fiction- especially the latter-day stuff in the  New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force series- makes Nero’s take on the saga seem staid and reasonable by comparison. Just you try reading through seven novels’ worth of Jacen Solo painfully navel-gazing about whether or not it’s right and just to use violence in defence of sentient life, in the face of a truly staggering xenocidal campaign by extra-galactic alien invaders bent on holy war. And that’s well before we get to the horrors that Karen Traviss committed upon the saga with her attempt to sneak an approving message about gay lifestyles past young teen readers into a book that was supposed to be about Mandalorian warrior culture.

On a related note- anyone seen the latest film yet? If so, what did you think of it?

Based on what I’m reading and hearing thus far, it would appear that the rampant SJW entryism that I was afraid of has come to pass. John Nolte’s review is a very peculiar one because it gives positive nods to some of the worst things that J.J. Abrams could possibly have done to the canon, which I rather do not expect from a Breitbart staff writer. 

Instead of telling a great story, it would appear that Abrams was far more interested in ticking off boxes about diversity and women. Now, it could be that the acting and special effects will make up for a truly limp-wristed and stupid plot- but I have my doubts. And it could be that the “wow” factor of hearing that music and seeing that scrolling yellow text right at the beginning of the movie will make up for the likely bloated runtime- damn thing is over two hours long, which is probably 90 minutes longer than it needs to be given that the entire plot of the STAR WARS saga was more or less neatly tied off at the end of Return of the Jedi.

As I’ve said, repeatedly, I am NOT looking forward to seeing it, even though I will at some point anyway; it’s a family thing for us, and now that I’m back in the old country, it’s something we can all watch, and then bitch about for hours, together. For me, STAR WARS was and remains a very fond and beloved childhood memory, one that I’ve spent the last twenty years seeing tarnished and stained by execrably bad expanded universe fiction, ridiculously stupid and utterly pointless prequels, and comics and cartoons that long ago hit rock bottom in terms of credibility and plausibility- and then started digging.

And now we’re being told that there will be a new film released in the saga, with spin-offs and tie-ins and all that other nonsense, every year, for probably the next ten years.

If ever there was a classic example of flogging a dead Hutt horse, this would have to be it.

Indeed, I suspect J. J. Abrams could have saved a lot of time and money if he’d just made this into a feature length movie instead: