Have Star Wars Fans Turned Into Assholes?

So, the trailer dropped the other day for the new Star Wars series, and it's riddled with dislikes all across various platforms. It currently has 154 thousand likes and an insane 256 thousand dislikes. As someone who's been pretty open about the fact that Star Wars isn't his thing anymore, I wish I could still connect with it. I wish Star Wars put out better products. It should be a world worth revisiting, yet they continually let me down. One thing that I always hear is "That nobody hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans." That is true to a certain extent, and I'll explain why later. But we need to answer the question, are Star Wars fans just assholes?

First, we need to define the word. "Asshole" derives from the latin word "Assasa" and the Greek word "Holanda." By definition, it means you're a dickhead who hates everything. I feel like I'm setting myself up for backlash with the title of this blog, and that's fine. You gotta hook the reader in somehow. It's a gross generalization to say that every member of a fan base is an asshole. There are a lot of asshole Star Wars fans. Suppose you're one of those people who Attacked Kelly Marie Tran after "The Last Jedi" came out and forced her off of social media or harassed Jake Lloyd for his performance in "The Phantom Menace" when he was growing up. In that case, that's just you being an insecure person and a bad fan. I know nothing in the world we can agree on unanimously. Still, I think most people will agree that if you're taking a fiction series and using its lack of quality to attack individuals on a personal level, then you're fucked in the head. 

Star Wars is to Star Wars fans what the Detroit Tigers are to me. I know that sounds very lame and probably quite eye-roll-inducing coming from me, but hear me out. I love my tigers. No matter how frustrated I get, I'm always back every opening day with an added level of excitement, knowing that the season is about to kick off. I also acknowledge that, as an organization, they've done a lot of shit that's made me really mad over the last eight years, and I don't think I'm wrong with that criticism. I think Star Wars is very similar. I re-watched the sequel trilogy just the other week, and while I do still like "The Force Awakens," the last two films are bad films. Maybe you like them, and that's fine, but you can't tell me that many of the complaints aren't completely justified. Saying that you like Star Wars but wish they would construct tighter narratives is no different than saying you like your favorite team but wish that they fielded a better one. We live in an age where we've seen some pretty satisfying blockbuster film epics. While Star Wars is definitely epic in scale, the stories have been underwhelming at best. 

Regarding "The Acolyte," I don't know if I'll watch the show. I really enjoyed the first two seasons of "The Mandalorian," but besides that, there hasn't been a whole lot that Star Wars has featured on television that has changed my mind about the fact that I think It's a universe that works better on the big screen. Having watched this trailer, I can say nothing in it is objectionable and warrants a thrashing. In this particular instance, I think people are just hating to hate because they're disappointed with the direction the universe is going in, which I understand. But I've seen trailers in the past (the 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot standing out right away) that seem to go out of their way to piss off the fans. I didn't get that out of this trailer, but I feel like fans believe that they're sending a message in some way. I just hope those same fans give the show before speaking about how they feel about it. Or they could do what I do: don't watch and don't comment on it.

I hope that one day we get a Star Wars product that comes along with a real vision that puts Star Wars back where it was when the original trilogy existed. I don't know if that will ever happen. I think the universe has gotten so over-saturated that the products themselves have ceased being important. And also, maybe I just grew out of it. I hope they find magic again one day, but I feel like that magic has only been seen sporadically since 1980.