Comments

1
The good news is that it can't possibly be worse than I-III, the bad news is that it can be just as bad.
Han Solo on Jimmy Kimmel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWTtMdXAa…
2
I've got a bad feeling about this...
3
Followed by a South Park episode of George Lucas and Walt Disney raping Han Solo.
4
I wish curses were real. Cause I'd like everyone involved with any more Star Wars movies to all die freakishly slow and painful deaths.
5
You know, if they just adapted the Dark Empire series into a trilogy - crazy watercolors and all - I'd be pretty happy. Instead, this just winds up running roughshod over so, so, so much expanded universe stuff. I used to read all the pulp fiction and comics and played all the video games when I was a young (and obvs super cool) teen in the 90's, and it makes me sad that these movies are going to render all that geek lore... worthless? Sigh.
6
God damn John Hodgman, and god damn you for showing me this. I actually came close to crying at the end of his story.

I was in my sophomore year of high school in May of 1999. By that time, I had been obsessed with Star Wars for a few years, since I read Jedi Search, by Kevin J. Anderson (one of the more terrible Star Wars authors; the man never met a Star Wars story he couldn't shoehorn a new superweapon into) in seventh grade.

See, my mom was always a voracious reader. She was a CPA who ran her own practice, with two or three employees working for her, so for her, reading was more about escapism than anything else. She enjoyed science fiction, and wasn't too particular about quality so long as the read was enjoyable, so the Star Wars books were a great fit. Starting with a cast of already established, already beloved characters, you can just jump right in to a new adventure.

Once I finished ripping through all the books she already had and everything available for checkout at the library, it became a sort of a tradition between the two of us to buy new ones for each other, come Christmas or birthdays. We would really always be buying them for the both of us, but whomever the gift was for always got first dibs. My dad and my sister never took the same interest, so it was something that was just between the two of us.

When I first heard from a reliable, verifiable source that Episode I was going to happen, well I can't even express how I felt. I had never experienced a new Star Wars movie; I had grown up with the entire trilogy as part of the cultural background radiation of my life. I never experienced the shock of learning that Darth Vader was Luke's father, because everyone knew that already, for almost my entire life. But now I would finally get a chance to experience something like that. I literally started counting down the days.

I was at a midnight showing. The opening crawl started talking about taxation, which was weird, but whatever. Then, a ship shot past the camera! A new ship! Not a ship I had seen a thousand times, not a ship I could rattle off the armaments and hyperdrive capabilities of, but a new, actual Star Wars ship! We cut to the cockpit, and on a video screen, the pilots talk to an alien of some kind. An alien with an offensive Chinese accent, and whose face comprises some of the worst puppetry I have seen in my entire life.

That was the moment. That was when eighteen months of anticipation came crashing down all around me. That was when I learned that sometimes, when you love something, that thing can turn out to be just the worst.

That October, the book Vector Prime was published. That's the one where Chewbacca dies. It's the beginning of Yuuzhan Vong invasion; a war that tore the galaxy apart over the course of nineteen books, spanning 5 years in-universe and almost as many in the real world. It wasn't the lighthearted fare my mom preferred, the kind where the heroes win and everything's back to normal by the end of the trilogy. Novel after novel, the heroes retreat, are defeated, lose their homes, their friends, their family, their lives. But we read on, my mom and I, because we loved the characters, and surely things had to turn around sooner or later, right?

But while the entire Star Wars galaxy was being turned upside down, so was my world. In late 2001, right as I was starting college, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. She went in for surgery on my first day of classes, which I skipped, so I could be with her in Rochester. We hit it hard, with aggressive chemo and an aggressive patient who had no tolerance for bullshit from doctors. She actually developed a bit of a reputation for backing doctors and nurses into corners of exam rooms whenever some paperwork would get mixed up or someone dropped a ball somewhere. She went into remission for a while (which was one of the happiest days of my life), but it came back. To make a long story short, she died in 2005. She never got to see either of her kids graduate. She never got to see either of her kids get married. And she never got to find out how the stupid Yuuzhan Vong invasion ended. Sometimes, when someone important to you dies, dumb little tragedies hit you especially hard. Maybe the big obvious tragedies are too much to process, or maybe the little ones can sneak up on you easier, I don't know. But for some reason, it still upsets me that she never got to see that stupid war end.

I have a lot of friends that are snooty about a lot of shit, including books. But I will never, ever, in my life apologize or make excuses for reading Star Wars books. Because I did graduate. And I did get married. And we moved 1500 miles away, to Seattle. My sister moved to New York, and married a guy there. All my friends moved away, too, and more of my family died. When I go back to my hometown now, all that's there is my dad and a big, cold, dark house. It's not home anymore, it's the ghost of that home. I really can never go home again. But when I open up a Star Wars book, and read about these old friends of mine going on an adventure, I feel like I'm home. I can feel that connection to my mom again. I can bring some small part of her back to life. I can read them for her.

And fuck, now I am crying. God bless John Hodgman, and god bless you for showing me this. You bastards.
7
@6, Ben, thank you so much for your story. Now I'm crying too. And even though I have listened to that particular segment perhaps as many times as I have seen A New Hope, I still ALWAYS choke up at the end.

My story pales next to yours, but I still want to share it now. I was still a somewhat closeted nerd back then, working at a now-defunct alt-newsweekly in Cleveland. It was my first job out of college. I was beyond thrilled that finally, FINALLY, Star Wars was returning. And my paper decided to do a cover story about the hype, and I thought "This is my moment to contribute! This is my turf!" I shamelessly shared my glee in the editorial meeting, only to discover that just like in junior high, I should have kept my mouth shut. The piece was to make fun of people like me, people who were giddy with anticipation. Even though I was supposedly an adult, in that meeting I was suddenly a red-faced and stammering teenager again as everyone's face reflected back to me that I was obviously on the wrong side of the story.

Still, my friends and I waited in long lines for opening night with everyone else, only to experience what you and Hodgman and so many did. And even though the disappointment was so deep that I have not to this day seen Revenge of the Sith, it was the last time I let anyone make me feel bad about my dorky passions.
8
@6: Damn, Ben. Thank you for that. I'm reminded of the Animal Crossing comic that made the rounds some time back.

@7: Sadly, some people never grow up, maybe because they've spent their entire life as part of the "in" crowd and are terrified to be nonconformist to the group opinion, lest they be expelled and have to learn what it's like to be in your position.

I learned my lesson after a friend introduced me to The Powerpuff Girls. I had (rather condescendingly) dismissed his opinion of it after only seeing the poster he had in his dorm room in college, only to find after he'd dropped out and moved away that I loved the show and that he was totally right in recommending it.
9
Thrawn Trilogy. There, I just made millions.
10
John Hodgman may be on to something.

Is it just coincidence that not long after Star Wars Part I came out, George Bush Jr became president for fucksake!

And you know, it's even worse for us folks in our late thirties! "Star Wars Part IV: A New Hope" (we knew it as "Star Wars" BTW) was the first movie I vaguely remember going to. I think my mom took me to it when I was 5 or 6 or something and we saw it in a DRIVE-IN Theatre.

So yeah, fuck George Lucas for getting George Bush elected. Bastard!
11
Powerpuff Girls ftw!
12
@6, I was going to come in here and dribble a trail of snark all over everything, but your beautiful story shamed me into shutting up for once. Slog comment of the decade so far (non-comedy division). God bless you.
13
@6,

I retreated into the same kind of escapism with Star Trek (books, movies, and TV) when my mother was dying from cancer, and I completely sympathize. If anyone did to Star Trek what has been done to Star Wars over the past 15 years, I would feel exactly the same way.
14
@10,

Return of the Jedi is the first movie I remember seeing in the theater. I guess that's why I don't mind the Ewoks.
15
The books ain't that great. The story is over after the Emperor dies. There's a reason why genuine fairy tales don't continue after 'and they lived happily ever after'.
16
@ Mary,

I can't imagine it'd constitute a "recommendation" by any means, but ROTS (ha! was just trying to abbreviate that title and wasn't aware the acronym would be so telling! I was gonna suggest the final installment was the most watchable, or perhaps the least horrible, of those movies. But that acronym speaks for itself.)

And yeah, Ben, that was pretty freaking beautiful there.
17
This character dropped my jaw:
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/articl…

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