(Spoilers) A Love Letter To Star Wars From a Dad - Rise of Skywalker Review

To everything there's a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to gain and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace.

So I'm recording this in my father and mother -in -law's basement. I'm here for the weekend and I'm going to be seeing

Rise of Skywalker Monday night. I just wanted to record my pre -thoughts. When I was a kid,

I just grew up with Star Wars. It was a big part of my life. I would play with Star Wars. I'll never forget this.

We used to play Star Wars with our GI Joes. We had a lot of GI Joes, those three or four inch

GI Joes. We had some that were black colored, so we'd call that one Darth Vader and stuff like that. We would play with them all the time.

Then one day, my dad came home with some real Star Wars toys from back in the day.

He found them at a flea market. We were so pumped. These things were old, they were missing parts, but we were so pumped.

We had like ten of them. From then on, we would always go to flea markets and look for more

Star Wars toys and we would buy them. They were cheap at that time. It wasn't a big thing back then. We played the heck out of that stuff.

There's no question about it. We would watch the movies, the VHS. I remember when the

NES Star Wars games came out, we would play them. They weren't very good games. They were very difficult, but we played them.

Tons, man. Tons. I'll never forget the Empire Strikes Back level with the snow speeder and the AT -ATs.

We loved that. We would say, man, it's never going to get any better than this. Of course it did.

PlayStation games would come out, Battlefront, all that stuff. It was a huge part of my life. I was a

Star Wars fan growing up. I know a lot of people say that these days, but allow me to explain my bona fides.

We had a huge collection of old school Star Wars toys. All of them were missing parts. All of them got played with a lot.

My brother and sister and I even created a movie using them at one point during winter break from school. It was awful, but we had a lot of fun.

I don't think I ever played in the snow as a child or even as an adult for that matter without reenacting scenes from the ice planet

Hoth, where we were desperately trying to take down an Imperial Walker with just a few blasters and a snow speeder.

Everything revolved around Star Wars for me. When video games didn't exist, we would pretend they did.

Generic space shooting games on Nintendo became X -Wings and TIE Fighters. Once the real games did come out, we played them to death, even though they weren't very good.

We loved it. As I got older, it started becoming clear that Star Wars was not something that the cool kids cared about.

Also, I came to realize that it would severely impact your ability to get a girlfriend if it got out that you liked it, but I didn't care.

I loved it. While all the regular nerds played Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering at lunch, I played

Star Wars customizable card game. Even among the nerds, I was a misfit. I still have my cards by the way if anyone wants to get a game in.

The point is, if you want to decide whether someone was a real Star Wars fan back in the day or a fake one, ask them how much they got ridiculed for their fandom.

My fandom was real. It was forged in the fires of high school jock's mockery and disdain.

I was always able to make friends across social stratas, unlike some of my more unlucky nerd companions, but I always had that mark on me, that mark of being a nerd, close behind.

I could be in the in crowd, sort of, but I was never in -in, if you know what I mean. I used to read the novels, shout out to the

Thrawn Trilogy. I used to collect the original comics. I have almost the entire collection now, except the first two annuals.

I even had a moderate vocabulary in various fictional intergalactic languages, including

Jawa, Wookiee, and Tusken Raider. I had a ton of toys. Toys, models, you name it,

I was on it. Star Wars was a big part of my life, there is no question about it. I remember when the prequels came out,

I went to the theater opening night for each one. I'll never forget going with my brother to a midnight showing.

The house was totally packed. We had an empty seat next to us, one of the very few empty seats in the building, and in order to sort of maximize our comfort and enjoyment during the show,

I pretended, anytime someone would look at our seat, I pretended to have involuntary spasms when they would look over and, you know, it actually worked.

No, every, anytime someone came their way towards us, they, we ended up having that seat empty towards us because they, they didn't want to sit next to someone that had these involuntary spasms.

But yes, I was an idiot back then, no question about it. But even then, you know, we knew that the prequels were flawed, but we, but we wanted to see how

Darth Vader came to be. It was all headed someplace, and it was a place that we wanted to go.

There were ups and downs in the ride, but it was a ride worth buying a ticket for. Anyway, Star Wars left its imprint on me all the way through adulthood, even to this point.

I can't prove it, but if you take Star Wars out of my childhood, I don't think I'd be the same person

I am today. I think it's infected my thought patterns, my mannerisms, my attitude, and my disposition.

I was a nerd too, you know, when all the regular nerds were playing magic cards and stuff like that, I was playing

Star Wars cards. They had a Star Wars customizable card game, and I still have all my cards and everything like that.

You know, I was, I wish I was at my house right now so I could show you my collection of stuff. I've got so many things, all my old cards, new card games, that's the kind of nerd

I am. I play tabletop games, little plastic men, you know, plastic ships, stuff like that.

I've got the entire collection of the original comics, except for two, two, I'm missing two books, that kind of thing.

I just love Star Wars. It was a big part of me growing up. There's just no question about it. When I grew up, you know, I was a

Star Wars guy. There's just no question about it. There was always something special about it, you know, it was like, it was, it was a fantasy, obviously, everything was made up.

But the characters and the places, everything felt real, like you could go there, you could actually visit

Tatooine, you could, these people were real, like you could, you could talk to Han Solo and Lando and stuff, like the characters were, were lifelike, you know, it was, it was, it was awesome stuff.

And I remember going to, to Orlando, Walt Disney World, they had like kind of a couple Star Wars things there back in the day, and it was just awesome.

Everything about it was awesome. I even liked the prequels. I mean, they weren't that great.

But again, the characters and it just felt like it felt awesome. You know,

I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry. And so fast forward to the present day.

I'm 37 years old. And here's where I'm at. I obviously have a lot of serious responsibilities to my family and my church before God and I take those responsibilities very seriously.

I am not as successful at all of them as I want to be, but I'm striving to be better. Now Star Wars is a very small part of my life at this point.

It's still part of my life, but it's very different than it used to be. This is natural and good. But lest you think

I've sold out, trust me, I am still a Star Wars nerd. I still read Star Wars novels, shout out to the new

Thrawn trilogy. I actually have a few new comics as well. So much content is being produced these days, it's impossible to keep up, but I have a few.

I still play video games as you can see on the screen, albeit, you know, very rarely because I don't really have a lot of time anymore.

So I don't play video games hardly at all. You know, family men, we do different things in the very rare moments that we have to ourselves.

Sometimes men will go to sports bars or bowling or golfing or cigar shops or what have you.

Me, if I have a rare night to hang out, what I'll do is I'll hit up a game store and I'll push around little plastic stormtroopers or X -Wings in a simulated war zone, duking it out with the rebellion to the death.

Or maybe I'll sling cards and dice around the table, finally figuring out once and for all who would win in a fight, a team of Boba Fett and Count Dooku or Luke and Lando.

So yes, I'm still a nerd. I probably own more plastic ships and troops and Jedis and cards than I would care to admit.

And I still love Star Wars. Not a morning passes that my oldest son doesn't interrupt my morning coffee and say,

Daddy, do you want to play Star Wars with me for a little bit? Time repeats itself like that. And our mornings are filled with pew pew and lightsaber duels and rancors coming out of nowhere, looking to eat the good guys.

Everything looks the same as it did when I was his age, but the names have changed. Now it's, oh no, watch out.

It's the first order. It's Kylo Ren. Shoot him. Rey, watch out. Here comes Poe Dameron.

Shoot the adat. There is no question that Star Wars has changed. It's changed for me.

I love playing with my kids, but Kylo Ren, Rey, Finn, Poe, the rest of the gang, I don't care about any of those characters.

It's all very flat to me. I don't go to midnight showings anymore. I didn't even see the solo movie in the theater.

I just didn't care enough to make the effort. I've always been against spoilers and I always wanted to go into the new movies fresh without reading anything about what people say is going to happen.

But for Rise of Skywalker, I read every single spoiler. I just didn't care enough to avoid them.

And so the question is, what's happened? I haven't seen

Rise of Skywalker yet, but I know what it's about. I've seen all the spoilers and this is the first time that I've ever done the spoilers thing because I just don't care anymore.

It's become unspecial. And the reality is that I see

Star Wars for what it is now. It's just mostly cheap thrills now.

They don't put much effort into it. It's interesting. There's going to be cool ships always. It's going to be cool planets, but the characters are hollow.

It's not like real life anymore. It's obviously a movie. There's nothing to get wrapped up into.

Not anymore. It's just not special. So this review will have some spoilers technically, but nothing that is supremely unexpected.

If you don't want spoilers at all, I'd recommend skipping to the next chapter. This is your last warning. Spoilers ahead.

Okay. The Rise of Skywalker is completely adequate. It's action -packed.

It's visually appealing. It's exciting. It's surprising -ish and the Rise of Skywalker is just fun.

It's a fun movie. There is no question about that. But at the same time though,

Rise of Skywalker is a disaster. It's confusing. It's frustrating.

And in many ways, it's just soulless. It's great for some cheap thrills, but it doesn't save the

Disney trilogy. And that trilogy, let's just be honest, the Disney trilogy was destroyed beyond the point of no return with The Last Jedi.

That's just all there is to it. A couple of things about this movie that I want to just kind of get off right off the bat.

The first thing is that it's very clear to me that the Rise of Skywalker is a straight up apology to fans.

Disney clearly regrets The Last Jedi. That is crystal clear. They apologize to everyone in Rise of Skywalker.

And one of the ways that they try to undo all of the worst missteps from Last Jedi.

The character Rose, the worst character in any movie in history, she becomes irrelevant. They don't continue that ridiculous love story with her and Finn and that stupid kiss at the end.

It's just ridiculous in The Last Jedi. Well, Rose is in this movie, but barely. She might as well just be a nobody.

Luke Skywalker, he becomes more tolerable in the Rise of Skywalker. The attempt to save him from the ridiculous travesty that he became, that crotchety old man that he became in The Last Jedi.

They try to save Luke, they try to make him better. They even mock that ridiculous light speed

Holdo maneuver. And finally, this gives us beyond all doubt that Admiral Gender Studies herself was an irresponsible, irrational soldier, as if people didn't already know that.

They make it very clear in this movie that that maneuver was it worked, but it shouldn't have essentially, it was just complete luck that it worked.

So Admiral Gender Studies is lucky, but she's a terrible soldier. And so it's an apology to fans.

There's no question about it. This movie attempts to service the fans that were so up in arms about The Last Jedi.

And yet it's just not enough. It's just not enough. The damage was done and it can't be undone.

Last Jedi scrambled the Star Wars egg. And you can't unscramble an egg.

It just doesn't work that way. The second thing that is clear from The Rise of Skywalker is that Lucasfilm and Disney, they simply didn't have a plan for the trilogy.

They flew by the seat of their pants from movie to movie. So storylines are started and developed, and then they just are dropped without any explanations.

It Ryan Johnson set things up a certain way. And then JJ Abrams completely ignores it. It's the continuity of the story is an afterthought, it seems.

And the idea of Palpatine being the main villain all along, there's no way that anyone can convince me that that was the plan from the beginning.

It wasn't. It just wasn't. Palpatine's appearance in this movie is a desperate, desperate attempt to bring fans back in by nostalgia.

And it just doesn't work. It doesn't work. Palpatine's return, the fact that he's been pulling the strings from behind the scenes for this whole time, it doesn't make any sense.

It's not believable. And they know this. They know this. That's why in the beginning, you want to know how they introduced

Palpatine? This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a Star Wars movie. So this big reveal,

Palpatine is somehow alive, right? You know how they tell you? In the opening credits, the opening scroll, they just say, okay,

Palpatine's back. What? What do you mean Palpatine's back? You can't just put that out there.

By the way, that opening credits, whatever it's called, the crawl, it's written like an eighth grader would write it.

It's just so stupid. So stupid. And so they know. They didn't even try to work that in in a clever way.

No, they just tell you in the opening credits. So dumb. It's so dumb. Here's another reason I know that it doesn't have a plan or an outline.

Someone on Twitter I saw asked the simple question. Okay, so who's the chosen one? Remember that the idea of the chosen one?

Yeah, you know, there's a prophecy from the Jedis and the chosen one is going to destroy the

Sith. And then it makes you think it's Anakin, the chosen one. But then Anakin becomes Darth Vader. And then you think and then and recently,

Disney said that the chosen one was Luke. So Obi Wan Kenobi is protecting Luke and in the Star Wars Rebel series.

And it's supposed to be Luke. But then Luke doesn't really do anything. He doesn't destroy the Sith once and for all. Actually, Rey does.

So is Rey the chosen one? Well, nobody knows. They never even mention it. Because that's a storyline that they just completely dropped like a bad habit.

It's been a primary aspect of Star Wars lore. Who is the chosen one? And you know, the movies is over and we have no idea.

Nobody has any clue. That's a symptom of having no plan. They had no plan. When you don't have a plan or an outline, the artistic value of the art suffers.

There's just no question about it. The prequels aren't perfect. Let's just be honest. George Lucas's prequels, they're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

Nobody debates that, but they still work. And I think I know why they work.

Because the prequels had intention, right? They had a specific story to tell that was obviously preplanned.

George Lucas had a plan in mind for the prequels. So what happens is, in the story, things don't just randomly happen.

Everything has the end in mind. So George Lucas knew he had to land the plane with Anakin Skywalker becoming

Darth Vader. So at the beginning, he knew that he had to get there. So there's a cohesion of everything in the in the in the prequels that pulls everything towards that end.

So everything fits together much better because of it. So that having that plan having a place to land ahead of time helps your story.

Disney had no such plan. So the artistic value of the story suffers. This is why in grade school, like your teachers tell you, outline your papers first.

It's not just busy work, it actually really helps to outline something. It's possible to get away with writing a paper or story without outlining, but it's very difficult.

And Disney clearly fails at that here. One way to highlight this this phenomenon in Rise of Skywalker is just the breakneck speed of the scenes, right?

It's like a video game plot, like you jump from planet to planet to planet to planet. And there's very brief, like lame explanations as to why you have to go to the next planet.

And it really just makes you feel like they just wanted to get you to a new set piece. And so they put a little plot reason in there, but it's very thin, it's very lame.

And so you just move from planet to planet. Now in a video game, you understand why they do that. Because in a video game, each level, you know, you got to get to the next level.

I mean, that's that's how video game is. But this is a movie, it's not supposed to have a video game plot. You know what I mean? It doesn't make any sense at all.

And so what you're left is, you know, you watch this movie over two and a half hours, and you're like, well, how much time passed in this movie, right?

It honestly, it feels like the whole movie happened in a day. You know, like in the story world, like, like, there's no sense of time, there's no sense of scale, there's, there's no sense of any, any, like, drama in between set pieces, you just jump from set piece to set pieces up, it's like a teleportation, almost.

And you just start to feel like, well, the story had to get you there. So you just had to go there. And they give you some again, they give you some lame reason why you have to be there.

But, but the problem is that the speed of this movie, it leaves you with no time to think about what's going on.

And I think it kind of works to its advantage. So there's that, because it actually hides a lot of the problems with the plot, because it's just so fast, you don't even have time to think about it.

So I guess, I guess it works in their favor in that regard. So, so here's the reality.

So so there are some cool action scenes in this. And there's some interesting plot ideas here, you know. So despite all that, though, the movie is just another movie.

It's nothing special. It's just cheap thrills and not much more. The characters are flat, you don't care about them.

Emotions just you just don't have any emotions at all that you don't feel what the characters are feeling, except there's one scene,

I won't tell you what happens. But, but it's with Chewbacca, you know, the Wookiee, Chewie. There's a there's a part there's a scene if you've seen the movie, you know, the scene

I'm talking about, where you feel what Chewbacca feels. And you see what you

I mean, a walk, a big furry ape man has the most soul in this movie, and you feel what

Chewbacca feels at that moment. That doesn't happen with any of the main characters, any of the other the new characters, that's a problem.

I don't, I don't care about these characters, they could live or die, it makes no difference to me. That's a problem that the only character with soul is

Chewbacca, no disrespect to Chewie, but he's not a main character in this movie. It's weird that he's got the only soul in it.

And so, you know, again, I didn't want to give too many spoilers away. That's the basic idea here with the Rise of Skywalker is just another movie.

So the question is, is the Rise of Skywalker worth the price of admission to go see? I don't really think that's the right question, to be honest.

Because I paid $8, I think now I paid $9 .50 for my ticket. So is it worth $9 .50?

Well, value subjective, you know what I mean? And it's also relative, it depends on the person. And also it's relative to other things like $9 .50.

Get you like five double cheeseburgers at McDonald's, you know, get a couple frou -frou coffees at Starbucks for $9 .50.

I mean, $9 .50 is $9 .50. So it might be worth it to you, you know, or might not. You know what

I mean? I think the better question is, though, is Rise of Skywalker worth your time and effort to see?

That's the real question. And to that question, the answer is no. Knowing what I know now,

I would not recommend expending any extra effort or time or money to see this movie in the theater or even at all.

I mean, it's probably okay to watch. A friend invites you over, he has it on DVD or something. It's like, hey, let's watch

Rise of Skywalker. Like, sure, go see it. You know what I mean? But it's just not worth extra effort. You know what

I mean? It's just okay. You'll probably enjoy it, but no more than next month's generic, you know, action -adventure flicks.

It's fun. It's fun, but it's nothing special. It's just that simple. Now, I know that this is going to be blasphemy for a lot of you, but I've seen none of the

Marvel movies in the theater. None of them. And in fact, I've only seen X -Men, the original one, and Spider -Man and the

Batman movies, but I've never seen any of the other ones. None of the Avengers, none of that. And it's not that I don't, like,

I wouldn't watch them. It's just like, Marvel was never a part of my childhood, so I had no interest in it. I'm sure that if I saw them,

I would like them. I just don't put any effort into seeing them. You know what I mean? It's just kind of like that. So if you're like a huge Star Wars fan as a kid, go see

Rise of Skywalker. I'd wait until it comes out on DVD or something like that, where you can kind of rent it from Redbox or something.

But it's just not worth extra effort. I kind of wish I waited like I did with Solo. Anyway, it's just okay.

That's the verdict. Is it worth the price of admission? That depends. Is it worth extra effort to go see? Not really.

It's fun, but that's it. It's just fun. Cheap thrills.

I can see it for what it is. When I went to Force Awakens, I knew it was flawed, but I still was excited because it had a lot of possibility.

Like these characters, they weren't great, but I couldn't wait to see what they were going to do with them. And then Last Jedi came out and it became very clear that they're just going to phone it in.

There's not going to be any effort here. It's not going to be the phenomenon that it once was.

So the question is, how did this happen? What has gone wrong?

And I can think that it can all be traced back to one simple thing. I think

Disney has fundamentally changed their target audience. Nerds are no longer the target audience for Star Wars.

Disney is attempting to make Star Wars for everyone. And in the process, it pleases almost no one.

You cannot forget what made Star Wars great in the first place in order to try to make it better.

It just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. Star Wars in the past targeted the sci -fi nerd audience.

And as a result, it ended up pleasing a lot more demographics than just the nerds.

It does not follow that because it pleased a lot more people than just the nerds, that now what you should do is you should go back and change the target audience to make it appeal to a more general audience.

And that'll yield even better results. That doesn't follow. It doesn't work that way. What you need to do, in my opinion, is continue to have

Star Wars primarily be for the nerds and the other people will follow.

You ever watch one of those kitchen makeover shows like Gordon Ramsay and Robert Irvine? I love those guys.

Those guys are cool. One of the problems that's common to almost every failing restaurant in those shows is a lack of focus.

Their menus are way too big. They have way too many items on the menu. And often they're attempting to please people with all kinds of tastes.

The idea is that if we please lots of different people with different tastes, we're going to have a huge market size.

And so lots of people are going to come because everyone's going to be interested in our food. But that never is how it works out.

What ends up happening is that they have this humongous menu and they don't do any of the dishes well enough to please anybody.

And so what Robert Irvine and Gordon Ramsay, what they end up doing is they shorten the menu, they have the restaurant focus on what they do well and so that they can please that particular market.

And when they do that, things go better. The restaurant thrives. All of a sudden it's like, okay, this is a wing place.

Oh, great. I love wings. And people who don't like wings don't come, but you get that wing segment, you know what

I mean? That really is passionate about your restaurant. The same thing happens on Shark Tank. You ever watch

Shark Tank? The sharks, they hate it when people say that their target customer is everyone, everyone in the world.

Obviously every business wants everyone to buy their product, but you cannot make a product that will meet everyone's wants, needs and desires.

It just doesn't work that way. People are different and want different things. Think about something simple like toilet paper, right?

Toilet paper has a specific target audience in mind. Everyone does need toilet paper, but some toilet papers are marketed towards people who value comfort.

Some are marketed towards people who value price. Some are marketed for people who want a good combination of both.

And the list goes on. Not every toilet paper brand is for everybody. I've got a brand that I use all the time and I have it for a specific reason.

And you probably have something similar. Even my YouTube channel, if I think about it, I purposely target a certain demographic.

I haven't hidden this in my content. I'm targeting the male demographic, somewhere in the 20 to 50 year old range.

That's what I have in mind. So when I do my content, the kind of style, the approach, the wording, the visuals, everything that I do is done to capture that one audience, male, 20 to 50 year old.

But I don't mind that females watch my content, but I don't think about, okay, what are girls going to like when

I make my content? I'm glad that a lot of women watch my stuff and they get value out of it and stuff like that.

But the kind of references that I'll make, I'll reference sports. I'll reference certain movies. I'll reference certain decisions

I make are for the male target audience. And what ends up happening is I capture that audience and I get others as well.

But I'm not trying to please everybody. I'm not trying to reference things that I think women will like. And again, it's nothing wrong.

I'm glad that women watch my content, but I'm focused on a to put out a product that makes sense.

People know where you're coming from. People know who you're speaking to. And if they get value out of it too, and they don't fit into that demographic, there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't have to make my content quote unquote for everybody in order for everybody to get value out of it.

Does that make sense? So here's the reality. Movie trailers are the same thing.

Movies are the same thing. They should have a target audience in When I see a trailer, and the main characters are all females, and they're like cracking, cracking jokes to each other.

And then the premise of the movie is that they're going to go to a baby shower, and then they get lost along the way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I know, I'm not the target audience there. Right? I get that. I get that. So I make no effort to see the movie.

Now, this doesn't mean that I wouldn't like the movie or laugh at some of the jokes. Like, it doesn't mean that I would refuse to watch it.

If I was in a certain situation, people were watching it. All it means is I'm not going to put effort into it.

I know it wasn't made with a person like me in mind. And so I don't have interest in it. There's nothing wrong with that.

You know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with that. And then if I find out later, oh, this movie is actually really great. You should watch it with me.

I'll do it. It's not a it's not a big deal. So movies have a target audience in mind to at least they should.

Star Wars doesn't. Their target audience is world population. The Sharks would hate that.

Star Wars is trying, they're intentionally trying to appeal to everyone. Men, women, kids, adults,

Americans, Chinese, Indians, you know, like they want a product that that that appeals to everyone. And because they're intentionally having this like huge, you know, general audience in mind, they end up not pleasing anyone.

They don't do anything very well. That's why the dialogue in Rise of Skywalker so idiotic and banal.

Because what they're trying to do is they're trying to appeal to the international audience. And so what they think Disney and their minds think, well, if it's too, if it's too esoteric, and if we rely too much on the acting for the feelings, and we don't just exposition, exposition, dump everything.

So we don't just explain things like like a child should need to understand it. It was basic dialogue and all this stuff, then people would get lost, the international audience would get lost.

They're like, but but a real good movie, though. A good movie has only the dialogue necessary, and then you use the acting to get the feelings and the emotions and the implications and stuff like that.

This movie is just like, I am I am a spy. And I like it's just exposition dumps constantly.

Everything has to be explained on the base level. Otherwise, the global market might not follow along. So they're trying to please everybody.

This is why Ray is such an overpowered female character. They're like, well, if we if we don't have an overpowered female character, that makes no sense that she's excellent at everything has absolutely no character flaws whatsoever.

If we don't do that, then women might not feel represented because they're trying to appeal to women too. But again, like it doesn't even do that very well.

You know what I mean? This is why we have this is why they have like all the social justice narratives in it as well.

Because they're like, well, we got to have social justice in it. And we have to have gay kisses in the background. Otherwise, we might get canceled.

We got to please the social justice warriors to this is this is why Ray falls in love with the main villain

Kylo Ren, even though that makes no sense at all. We have to have Ray fall in love with Kylo Ren because we need to appeal to romance lovers as well.

But it makes no sense. Can we talk about that for a second? It makes no sense for Ray to be in love with with Kylo Ren.

How much time have they spent with each other? Like 10 minutes, maybe 10 minutes, and they're in love. Oh, and they've done the force connection thing.

And somehow they're in love. How? How are they in love? It makes no sense. At least when

Han and Leia fell in love, you can kind of understand they spent a lot of time together. They were in stressful situations together. Yeah, they hated each other in the beginning.

But then over time, you get the sense with Empire Strikes Back that weeks and months have passed and things like that.

So it makes sense that they're in love Kylo Ren and Ray that that love story makes no sense. None. But they got to do it because they're trying to appeal to women, men, children, the action people, what romance people, it just doesn't make any sense at all.

So Disney Star Wars tries to please everybody. But because they're trying to please everybody, they they can only go halfway with any kind of style because if they don't, if they go all the way, then they please or I'm sorry, then they anger everybody else.

This is very obvious on the screen. And it's a very obvious way to do a movie to do any kind of art.

It's essentially art by focus group, right? storytelling according to grievance studies, filmmaking by democratic vote, like it's very stupid.

What I have to realize, though, of course, and where the where this is all going, is that me and my nerd friends, we're no longer the target audience for Star Wars.

We need to accept that we need to accept that we're a portion of the target audience, but we're not the whole audience.

And so they're going to throw bones our way every now and then. But it's always going to be half, you know, halfway, halfway measures, it's only going to it because if they go too far for you know, pleat trying to please the nerd fandom, they're they're going to anger the social justice wars, and they don't want to do that.

And because they're their audience is world population. That's how they decided to do movies.

It makes no sense. It's stupid. And the art suffers because of it. It never is going to be that I'm never going to be able to recapture my childhood.

And honestly, that's probably a lesson for me. It's just not going to happen. And, you know, maybe my kids will enjoy it.

Maybe they won't. Because to be honest, I don't know how much longer view, you know, this is going to last. You know, with with the way the way it's been, the way it's been trending, you know, but my kids will probably like it.

And, and I'll like playing with them with the stuff we already playing with Star Wars toys. And, you know, they'll, they'll be telling me, you know, oh, no, there's a rancor.

Let's get let's get on. Let's shoot him with the x wing. It's a lot of fun. So there's going to be that.

And there's always going to be that. But everybody. But that's the reality of me. I so if Rise of Skywalker was an apology to fans, then apology accepted.

You know what I mean? The Rise of Skywalker is fun. And so I accept your apology for the ridiculous

Last Jedi. But the reality is, it's just it's not going to be the same anymore.

It's apology accepted, but it won't be the same. I've often talked on my channel about how my attitude towards the

NFL and my favorite team, the Jets has changed over time. I used to be a real big

Jets fan. I used to do fantasy football. I watched every single game. I followed every single stat.

I visited rumor websites. I knew the salary cap numbers for the players. It was like it was intense.

It was worse that I was so invested that the Jets would start to affect my life outside of football.

The Jets won on Sunday, then I would have a great week at a great Monday. You know, the Jets lost my

Monday was ruined. I remember once I met a young lady named Ivy and I asked her out.

She agreed. And we decided to meet at a sports bar on a Sunday afternoon. The Jets were playing, they were losing big and I was acting like a deranged idiot.

And of course, she never called me again. Why would she? But over time, my love for the Jets has waned.

And I still like the Jets, but I just don't care in the same way. It's just it's different. I have fun watching whether we win or lose.

I can and often do laugh at the Jets incompetence on the field. It's way more fun now.

When we win, it's cool. We lose. It's cool. I have a good time with it either way. I now I barely know anything about the players, the coaching staff, trade rumors, or really anything about the team.

And so things have changed. And I think definitely it's been for the better, no question about it. And the reality is that that Star Wars is becoming like that for me.

I imagine that the future you know, Star Wars is going to have even less impact on my life than it does even right now, which is very little.

Star Wars is fun for me, and I can't imagine it not being fun. But it's no longer impacting me the way it used to.

And that's a good thing. I'm all growns up now, I guess, and I'm fine with that. When the new movies come out,

I'll am I going to rush to see them? Probably not. When I do see them eventually, will I enjoy the movies?

Probably. Am I going to rage online when the plots don't make sense and the characters are stupid and all that?

No, I'll probably laugh about it. I'll meme on the stupidity of Lucasfilm.

You know, incompetence can be funny. It's all in good fun. Kathleen Kennedy, for example. I mean, come on.

But though the movies don't appeal to me in the same way that they once did, there still is an aspect of Star Wars that does appeal to me very much.

And interestingly, it's the part of Star Wars that still have me in mind, the nerd fandom.

You know, sure, casual fans will go to a movie, of course. Casual fans of Star Wars will watch a mindless movie for ten dollars in a couple hours of their life.

But very few casual fans of Star Wars will invest the time in reading a novel or purchasing tabletop games or card games, which each of the tabletop games can take multiple hours in themselves to play.

And these are the parts of Star Wars that I still find interesting to this day. And I don't think it's a surprise that they're still made with nerds in mind.

Nerds are the target audience for novels and for games and for stuff like that.

And they probably always will be because casual people, you know, regular general audiences, they're not interested in that kind of stuff.

And so ironically, what's interesting about this is a lot of people don't realize, but this is where the world of Star Wars got fleshed out in the first place.

Like, people often forget that what eventually became the Star Wars universe, like the names of characters, their backstories, all that kind of stuff, their origins, that didn't come from the movies.

Like, you don't know that Palpatine's name was Palpatine from the movies. You do realize that, of course.

It's like the nerd kingdom that did this. RPGs, you know, sourcebooks, video games, novels.

That's what actually fleshed out the Star Wars universe in the first place. And so can we really expect

Disney to put that kind of stuff, that kind of lore in the movies? Not really.

I mean, George Lucas didn't even do that. And so it's really nerds that created Star Wars, and it's going to be nerds that sustain it into the future.

But there is one aspect to this, one more aspect to this that I that I look forward to.

Now, people have this stereotype about nerds that like nerds are basically incels. You know what I mean? They don't have wives.

They don't have families because they're nerds. They can't they can't get wives. You know what I mean? But that's false, obviously.

Nerds, nerds, nerds created pop culture. You realize that. We've inherited pop culture. We won that debate.

If it's nerds or jocks, I mean, no, the nerds won. Just look at the theaters. It's comic book characters. It's Star Wars.

And that's what's popular these days. Many of the best family men that I know would have been classified as nerds back in my day.

And this is the thing. This is what I look forward to the most when it comes to Star Wars. I look forward to enjoying

Star Wars with my kids. I imagine that I'll go to the Disney Walt Disney World Galaxy Edge with my boys and we'll have a blast.

We'll have mindless fun that we'll probably never forget. We'll blast each other into smithereens with the first order or the final order or whatever the heck they call it.

And we'll try our best to rule the galaxy with Poe and Finn and all the other Disney stupid

Disney characters, whatever they shoved down our throats. They'll eventually win in the end and we'll have a blast. Me and my kids will have the time of our lives shooting

AT -ATs in the snow. Imperial walkers will build bunkers to try to hide from stormtroopers and wampas and approaching probe droids and all of that.

That's what Star Wars is. It's not about the shady business dealings and the terrible artistic decisions and the social justice agenda.

All that junk is real. Like that stuff really happens. But that's not the point of Star Wars in the end.

It's about childhood memories for me that will last a lifetime. And it's about future memories that God willing

I'll make with my own sons that for them will last a lifetime. Thank you

Star Wars. It's been a fun ride and it was a ride that was worth buying a ticket for.

I hope you find this video helpful. God bless and may the force be with you. Um but I guess the lesson for me and this is again this is before I watch

I go to the movie so so maybe I'll change once I see it but you know I guess we all gotta grow up someday.

You know we all gotta grow up someday. I can recognize Star Wars for what it is. It's just cheap thrills and it's really not that big a deal anymore.

And maybe that's just the way it has to be now that I'm an adult. Um I think there's more to it than that by the way.

If it was still if it was still awesome I would know it and it's not obviously.

It's I think that that Disney's phoned it in. You can't really blame them because they can always count on guys like me that had nostalgia from when they were a kid and had

Star Wars be a big part of their life. You can always count on guys like me to go to it even if it's low effort.

But eventually it's not gonna be worth the 11 dollars. In fact I don't think it is now. Um I don't think it's worth the 11 dollars now.

So I mean this might be the last one I see. This might be the last time I go to the theater guys. At least for a movie you know without the kids kind of thing.

Um but yeah so we'll see what happens. Maybe this maybe it'll change but um once I see the movie.

But I don't think I will. I don't think I will. I think this is I think this is it for me. I think this is it for me in Star Wars.

Anyway um I'll see you on the other side. When I was a child

I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when