This past weekend, I went to Disney World. My annual passes are almost up, and given my plans for the future, it may well be years before I get back to the happiest place on Earth. (Which, given that I still have not made it on the Snow White train thing during daylight hours, might be a good thing.) It was a miserable weekend, full of rain and sauna-like conditions that left me–despite my every effort–dehydrated and blistered. On the plus side, I did manage to keep from getting sunburned. So, at least I did something right. But being there, especially at Hollywood Studios (aka Star Wars plus some other stuff Studios), reminded me of something:
Star Wars fans are literally the worst.
They have driven the actresses who play Rey and Rose off the internet. They attacked the idea of a black storm trooper. Recently, they decided that Laura Dern’s purple hair and dress were just too damn ridiculous to be worn by an Admiral even though General Leia also wore dresses and had nice hair. (These same people, it should be noted, think Admiral Akbar should’ve been the one to suicide mission the ship. I’m beginning to think Star Wars fans aren’t that aware of the world, either. A guy named Akbar suicide mission-ing anything is probably not the sort of optics Disney wants, regardless of character history.) Earlier in the franchise’s history, they almost drove the guy who played Jar-Jar to suicide and mistreated the kid who played Anakin so badly, he basically had a breakdown. (Note: this is not to say that his mental health issues were caused by the abuse. But they certainly were exacerbated by them.)
These are people who are convinced that their elaborate fantasies deserve validation and they’ll be damned if they let anything else happen. After The Last Jedi came out, there was a surge of (mostly) dudes deciding that, you know what, they’ve liked the prequels this entire time, they were just afraid of saying so. So the prequels are good but the sequels are bad because…?
These people have decided that the fans own the franchise. That their perspectives are the only valid perspectives. That their fandom is the only legitimate fandom and heaven forbid you can’t name every book in the now-not-canon EU. They talk about how Luke isn’t their Luke, whatever the fuck that means, like the character we saw in TLJ isn’t completely realistic. Think about it: the last time we saw Luke, he’d just brought down the emperor and saved his father. We’re meant to believe the empire will crumble, despite having no evidence to suggest this because, this just in, killing the emperor doesn’t dismantle the system! Anyway, it’s been almost forty years since those events happened. The emperor Luke fought so hard to stop has basically returned. And Luke, in his own mind, gave the First Order its very own Darth Vader. He drove, through his moment of doubt (which we’ve seen Luke have before, canonically), his own nephew to the dark side and to the enemy. And not only that, but his single moment of doubt (driving that home–a SINGLE MOMENT OF DOUBT) ended up getting a whole new generation of potential Jedi killed. He let down his sister and his best friend, arguably drove them apart, and helped reignite the very entity he’d dedicated his youth to stopping. Whether or not he can be blamed for any of this–Ben Solo made his own choices, in the end, and the empire wasn’t going to just go away because the Emperor was dead–is up for debate, but the fact that he blames himself for it and goes into hiding is very much in character. Not only for Luke, but for the Jedi. And it’s not like Luke hasn’t been a melodramatic bitch from the beginning, guys.
But I take a huge digression. The point isn’t to argue that Star Wars ‘fans’ are wrong about Luke Skywalker (though they obviously are–and, though I haven’t read the ((again)) non-canonical EU books or played any of the games or anything, I have seen the movies many times and that’s enough to judge on); the point is to talk about fandom.
The fans do not own the thing they love. And, even more importantly, the thing they love does not owe them because they love it. JK Rowling didn’t owe fans a Hermione/Harry pairing (and the fans who hounded her into doubting herself and her authorial choices should be ashamed of themselves). Marvel doesn’t owe Loki fans another chance or a “more fitting” death. Star Wars doesn’t owe fans the Luke from the EU (which, for the third time, is not canon anymore). The fantasies fans create for their fan-fictions, no matter how well-thought-out or written or developed or whatever, are not canon and they do not automatically deserve recognition. In fact, fan-fiction writers should just be happy they’re allowed to write stories using someone else’s intellectual property at all.
All this being said, that doesn’t mean fandom should be without critique. There are valid critiques to be made of The Last Jedi. I don’t believe the casino scene was useless, but I do believe it was too long and messed with the pacing of the movie. Sometimes plans don’t work. Sometimes they end up not even being necessary. If the characters learn something from a plot arc, even if the plot arc (like, say, the plan to disable the tracker and whatnot) doesn’t work out, it is not a useless arc. Finn, Poe, and Rose all learned something. Finn became dedicated to the cause in a way he hadn’t been at the beginning of the movie. Poe stopped being the hotshot pilot that believed he knew best and thought fighting back was always the right move. Rose, who’d already lost enough, decided not to lose anymore. She also learned to stop worshiping people as heroes and see them as people, and maybe people she can fight among. (For the record, Finn would never have disabled that cannon. His death would have solved nothing and left the Resistance with even fewer numbers, plus taken away their man with, oh I don’t know, knowledge of how the First Order does things.) Criticize the movie all you want, but please check and see if those criticisms are born of genuine critique or whether or not a movie/book/whatever in your fandom is doing what you want.
Nothing you love is required to do what you want. It doesn’t have to follow your expectations or live up to the version you’ve created in your head. It isn’t bad because you didn’t like it, and maybe fans who find themselves complaining about SJWs or anything of the sort (like driving the sunshine from Instagram. Seriously, people. Kelly Marie Tran was human sunshine. WTF is wrong with you?!) should take a long, hard look at whether or not they’re actually a fan in the first place. Because when fans decide that they own the thing they love, they’ve become really damn toxic.
All this being said, the people at Disney loved all things Star Wars. Yes, even Solo. One of the most popular things there was a replica leather jacket worn by Han in the movie. (It was like butter, people. Butter.)
OK. I did the thing. I mused. If you’re one of those not my Luke people, just click out of the window and go about your business. We don’t want your negativity here.
–C
Nerd Cactus 