“The way I used to love you is the way I hate you now, Star Wars.”

I wanted to start this blog out by being personable and genuine. My thoughts and likes and dislikes in the world of fantasy and sci-fi. Some people do not understand the displeasure of the real Star Wars fans who feel betrayed by the new Star Wars movies. Why do I hate Star Wars now? The truth is I do not hate Star Wars. I love Star Wars but when you see something you love being prostituted it makes you angry and upset, it garners feelings of loathing.

So what happened to Star Wars? Star Wars was the most amazing “Space Opera-Sci-FI-Fantasy” of all time, the GOAT. I was told by my parents they saw episode four when my mother was pregnant with me, in 1977 at the theaters. Star Wars was in my blood. I saw “Return of The Jedi” when it was released in the theaters and watched Episode 4-6 over and over on VHS and DVD. “The Empire Strikes Back” is my personal favorite “Star Wars” movie of all time and one of my favorite movies of all time.

When the prequels were released, episodes: I The Phantom Menace, Episode II Attack of the Clones, and Episode III The Revenge of The Sith, many of us fans were disappointed. But in retrospect, the movies were good. The whole Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader was anticlimactic at best much of the character development was unlikeable. Jar Jar Binks was the most hated sci-fi character ever in my opinion. But the lightsaber duels and special effects were great. The movies were watchable. Revenge of the Sith is a fun movie to watch and characters like Darth Maul and General Grievous were great additions to the Star Wars world. But the Disney Star Wars would make the prequels one hundred percent better by comparison. How that works is you take a mildly unattractive woman and stand her next to a disgustingly ugly disease-ridden morbidly obese woman and the mildly unattractive woman will appear more attractive.

The Empire Strikes Back was the greatest Star Wars movie of all time and The Last Jedi was the worst of all time followed by The Rise of Skywalker and the Force Awakens. Why is this the case? Let us wade into the rancid swamp that is Disney Star Wars. But first, let’s go back to why The Empire Strikes Back was so good. First, it had the perfect build-up with the original Star Wars, A New Hope. What do I mean by perfect build-up? In episode 4 of Star Wars: A New Hope, the main characters were firmly set up with their character issues and arcs in place. The character of Han Solo, the reluctant hero who starts out being only selfishly seeking his interest into the self-sacrificing leader in Empire. The plot of the Light Side and the Dark Side of the Force was set up perfectly. George Lucas created the most iconic villains. As a small child I used to have nightmares Darth Vader was trying to get me, now that will scare the shit out of a nine-year-old.

George Lucas was a student of storytelling, he apparently had no ulterior motive other than telling a great Space Opera based on “The Hero’s Journey”. He borrowed from famous Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. He developed technologies that were invented for Star Wars and the film almost didn’t get made because the studios were not keen on the concept and expected it to be a failure. Star Wars’ success was so unexpected that the studio let Lucas keep the merchandising rights, which turned out to be worth a huge fortune, 4 billion dollars to be exact. That’s right George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars for 4 billion dollars.

George Lucas said: “I’ve spent my life creating ‘Star Wars’ — 40 years — and giving it up was very, very painful. But it was the right thing to do,” Lucas added. “I thought I was going to have a little bit more to say about the next three because I’d already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else. Things don’t always work out the way you want. Life is like that.”

It has been reported that had Disney taken Lucas’ sequel trilogy plan into consideration, Darth Maul would have returned as the franchise’s primary antagonist and Princess Leia would have returned as the “Chosen One” character.

But that didn’t happen…

When Disney bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise they saw a cash cow and a goose that lay the golden eggs. But perhaps they should have thought about the saying: Do not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

And that is what they proceeded to do. First off they killed off the primary characters of the previous trilogy and destroyed their legacy and never reunited the entire cast. They had Han Solo murdered in an act of patricide. They changed the character of Luke Skywalker from the hope-filled core of optimism to a horrible version who attempts to kill his nephew/ student because he foresees him going to the Dark Side. Hammel said on a TV interview that he fundamentally disagreed with every choice Director Rian Johnson made with the character of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. Mark Hammel went on to say this is not my Luke Skywalker, he had to pretend it was another character, maybe Jake Skywalker. Hammel said Luke would never give up. And I agree he was the best of Star Wars, the Light Side of the Force.

The movie was so disgustingly terrible that the next movie in the Disney Star Wars Franchise was the first Star Wars Movie I refused to watch in the Theater. I only bothered to watch it years later on Disney Plus.

The Disney Star Wars Trilogy was even so much worse than their disgusting portrayal of the previous trilogy characters but the plot was unoriginal and mindless and best described as a comedy of errors.

The plot of Episodes 7-9 is incoherent and doesn’t build from movie to movie. They used Frankenstined and reanimated plots from the first Trilogy like a Death Star-Planet they must destroy. There is no real character development. Rey, their main protagonist, is the first Jedi to never need to train to be a Jedi she is just born great at everything like some entitled elitist. Later we find that Leia Organa trained her but we are never even explained till the last minute that Luke trained her before he died. Nothing in this series seems to be thought out. All the evil villains are comical except Snoke but he is killed off easily at the end of The Last Jedi, leaving the viewer confused as to what is going on. It was clear that by the Rise of Skywalker, Disney threw the kitchen sink into the movie to try to make it entertaining to the fans.

The Last Jedi was so bad that it caused “Solo”, the next Disney Star Wars spin-off to be the first Star Wars movie to lose money. Another thing that made the movie so terrible was that they focused on being woke. You can tell that the executive behind Star Wars Kathleen Kennedy was more concerned with making sure the movie had gender politics and diversity at the forefront that they forgot to write a good story for the entire trilogy but relied on special effects and cheap thrills for cheap laughs and to keep viewers watching.

The Disney Trilogy was so bad that it just about killed Star Wars. But then there was The Mandalorian. Finally a bright spot in the Star Wars Universe. Could there really be Star Wars life after Disney?

The answer to that is — I do not know. The Mandalorian seasons One and Two are both fantastic but Kathleen Kennedy has already started to cause problems with the only good series in the Star Wars Universe from Disney, by firing Gina Carano for being conservative and refusing to fit their woke narrative. It was at this point that I canceled my Disney Plus membership. I really think politics needs to stay out of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. Fantasy is just that, an escape from reality. There is no left or right in fantasy, just entertainment, and magic. I for one read to be entertained and taken to a new world of adventure, not for political indoctrination of any kind. I don’t want to divide my friends up by their religions or sex life or who they vote for and I certainly think if we can get along at the Mos Eisley Cantina with the most wretched hive of scum and villainy we should be able to get along with others who disagree with our points of view.

I recommend you watch the the first trilogy episodes IV-VI and then VII- IX compare Them for the quality of the plots and character development. Would episodes 7-9 stand up with the graphics and special effects of episodes 4-6? I think not.

But that is just my humble opinion, what are your thoughts about the Disney Star Wars? Please comment or email me merick.n.h.ulrik@gmail.com