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(in reference to this post I reblogged on “testing your dashboard osmosis” skills, where people are invited to submit fandoms I don’t know anything about so I can describe them based on what I’ve seen on my dash)Ok so this one is cheating a bit because I have actually seen one (1) Star War film, and a special holiday episode, but I assure you that I still understood nothing. Also, the Star War on my dash seems to be VASTLY different and more charming/appealing than what I know of the source material!
Star Wars is mostly about one family, which is Problematic, and the galaxy, which is ruined, such that the entire story is about a very long trainwreck. There was a trilogy of movies about this family, but it was considered that they had not adequately explored how everything got to this terrible state, so George Lucas made three more movies to explain this, but in doing so he mortally offended everyone who was born in the 80s, and also their ancestors. Now there is a new movie which provides an update on the family, the galaxy, and the trainwreck. Happily, this movie appears to be brightly colored and cheerful, and thus the honor of our ancestors is restored.
Star Wars is ostensibly about a boy named Luke Skywalker but he is actually the character of least concern, with fandom preferring to discuss the exploits of a gentleman who rescued an ice-cream machine from an explosion, or the guy(s) whose last names are Fett. Django? Fargo? Bubba? All of those.
Many Muppets are involved, like I think the movies are mostly Muppets and robots, but they aren’t talked about at all. Nobody likes Ewoks or Jar Jar Binks. They are anathema, and formally interdicted. People used to dislike Anakin, although I am unsure how much of that is post-teen shame and embarrassment, i.e. how everyone had to elaborately distance themselves from the Backstreet Boys for a while, and now they like them again in a post-ironic way.
Luke is the Chosen One with very odd fashion sense (like a golden retriever in a poncho) and he leaves home to get religion and solve his problems, but little does he know that he is from a Problematic family! and even the simplest activities, such as fetching a pail of water, lead to Muppet song and dance routines. There is some kind of war occurring, and Luke etc are Rebellious. There is the brief question of incest, and an evil religious management consultant turns out to be his father. The entire family, everyone agrees, has Problems. In the end Darth Vader dies, and Joseph Campbell does an entire PBS series about it in an attempt to dissect the archetypes, but to be fair there is very little emotional impact to be wrung out of killing a jerk.
The Princess is too good for everybody, but gets little attention. Regardless of anything else that happens, Han Solo is always shipped with one or the other or both siblings of the Problematic family, possibly because he is considered to be a responsible adult? He’s definitely the oldest one.
The scale of things is very strange, i.e. there is an immensely massive artificial planet filled with Evil, which you learn to defeat by playing with monkeys and ghosts in the forests ??? I think it is either meant to be Metaphorical, or an extended riff on David versus Goliath.
There is no conclusion.
Back in the day, fandom was a little simpler. everyone bought lots of sheets and plastic cups with the characters on it, and made “whoom” noises with lightsabers. Oh! There are lightsabers. They are… colorful and religious. People exchanged printed-out fanfictions, I believe.
Then there is a special holiday episode with bears that live in a tree, but I don’t think it’s necessary to understand the plot. It was Christmas for bears, and the baby bear had terrifying lips, like those taxidermy monsters they make from whitetail deer butts.
At this point I had to google these things so you would know. Here they are! Assquatches.
Anyway, the assquatch baby was very sad about the true meaning of Christmas, and Han Solo went to a … disco? Actually I may have made all of this up. Maybe it didn’t happen?
Then there are some movies explaining how we got to this terrible state of affairs, but the aesthetic makes me cranky. The idea seems to be making Darth Vader very sympathetic, but as I said earlier, there is very little emotional impact to be wrung out of it, so I believe that it was not successful. Padme Amidala, played by Natalie Portman, wears a succession of hats, and the rest of it is just Twilight.
Everyone just… pretended this body of work doesn’t exist?? It might not actually exist. Maybe it didn’t happen? It was the early 2000s, and we had just discovered Grimdark. It was a bad time. I think giant fish might have been involved, and Natalie Portman had many handmaidens. Her lipstick was pretty, but otherwise girls were not invited to be involved. In conclusion, the family was always Problematic and I think religion might be illegal. This was a bad time for fandom anyway, and even now, nobody talks about these films. The only cultural artifacts these films have left on my dash’s consciousness appear to be
“look at all the fucks I give, Anakin. Look at them.”
Jar Jar Binks is a Sith lord
Natalie Portman can wear a star wars shirt because she was IN them
There are also some books about everything, and there were some bad CGI television series things, and I think some movies for younger kids. It’s possible that none of these actually existed either. Lightsabers would have been involved.
BUT NOW.
Now there is a new movie, a shiny movie, a movie with hopes and dreams and heart. A delightful young trio of beautiful shiny-faced people - Rey, a young white girl who may be a member of the Problematic family; Finn, a young black man who may be a member of the Problematic family; and Poe, a young Latino man who is adopted in the Problematic family - are enacting the plot from the original movie, but this time people are more prepared to be sympathetic. They are shipped in a polyamorous triad, which is adorable. The fanart involves flower crowns and Regency costumes. The bad guy is Leia and Han’s spoilt grimdark son and that appears to be parodied relentlessly, WHICH NOW THAT I THINK OF IT may be the reason it’s successful, like, have we finally gotten over grimdark? is it recognized as a ripe source of parody now? OH MAN. so like, perhaps this movie is circling around to stab the prequels in the back, rejecting the values that made them sound like a good idea on paper?
The family has continued to fuck up, and everything is terrible. Religion might not be illegal? The robots are different colors now. THIS MOVIE DEFINITELY EXISTS. AND IT LOOKS VERY CUTE.
Though I suspect that’s a case of my dash doing all the work, and if I hand over some money to Partake in this Franchise it won’t be half as fun.
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