Star Wars: The Last Jedi is my least favorite Star Wars movie. This is NOT an article in which I rant about Last Jedi. If you are reading this, you probably consider yourself a “fanboy” or “fangirl” and most likely consider yourself a Star Wars fan. The thing about being a fan of something, no matter what it is,means you are passionate about it. You remember the first time you watched a Star Wars movie, right? Or maybe you are part of the generation that was lucky enough to grow up with the Clone Wars animated series as your introduction to Star Wars? Regardless, that memory, that feeling is probably still close to the surface. Think about that moment…. I’ll wait…….
Odds are you remember it very fondly and you might have a big dopey grin on your face at this point. That’s awesome! I hope you are remembering playing with action figures, or using homemade light sabers while playing with your friends. For someone out there, it’s very possible that Last Jedi gives them that same feeling. I know, it’s hard for us to imagine that, if we aren’t that person. The thing about Last Jedi is, I haven’t met anyone (who was being honest) that could say “not one single second of that movie felt like Star Wars to me”. There are moments in that movie no matter how much you dislike it, that are amazing to watch and feel like Star Wars. Ok, now we are at the point where you might be thinking… “Why is this jerk defending a movie he already said is his least favorite Star Wars?” A simple Facebook post from a friend (who should really be a film critic professionally), my reply to that post, and his follow up brought about this article. 
I’m not going to copy the whole post, but the idea behind it was this. We disagree on Last Jedi, but we did it in a nice way, we respect that we don’t agree on the movie and we moved on pleasantly. His entire original post was because of having not fully recovered from a troll hating on Last Jedi. I can dislike a movie, comic, game, song or just about anything artistic I might be a fan of, but I don’t need to actively harass someone online that was a part of it. We live in a world where we can all put our opinions on the internet at any time. That’s really awesome in a lot of ways because we can help promote something we love, but we can also make ourselves look like unreasonable whiney kids who never grew up (a stereotype we already deal with from some people just because of our hobbies). Currently The Mandalorian is getting a lot of positive attention online. Many of us are saying “this is Star Wars” and that’s hopefully helping viewership and letting Disney know that we want more Star Wars related shows and movies with the vision used in this show. Dave Filoni (Clone Wars) and Jon Favreau have created something the majority of Star Wars fandom seems to really enjoy and hopefully Disney is seeing that and continues to allow people who understand and love Star Wars to create more content.
I can list a ton of reasons I don’t like, choose not to watch, try not to buy certain things that I feel aren’t on brand with the thing I’m into. I could write a novel about why I haven’t seen and won’t be watching the Joker movie, but at the end of the day it’s our own choice to reasonably articulate that or to act like ridiculous spoiled humans who feel entitled to a property we didn’t create and don’t own.
I want more Star Wars. I’m beyond excited about another season of Clone Wars and I believe in less than a month we will have another good Star Wars movie. I also happen to know we have some really awesome Star Wars comics that are also in continuity. If you haven’t read the current Star Wars ongoing, there are 75 issues, all of which are available in collected volumes as well. There are two different ongoing Vader series that ran about 25 issues also available in collected volumes. Come January there will be a new Star Wars ongoing that takes place between episodes 4 and 5. If you don’t believe it’s great stuff, ask any of our staff for a copy the Vader Down tpb and let me know what you think!
May the force be with you.
JC
