Hate Log #1: Star Wars

    If you haven't read the Expanded Universe this post may contain spoilers.

     I don't know all that many people who will admit to hating Star Wars.  Oh, there's always the odd contrarian, the sophisticate who finds popular culture vulgar or even the poseur who confesses with relish that they've never even seen Star Wars.  Plenty of people also have strong opinions about Star Wars- they hate the prequels, or the new movies, Return of the Jedi or what have you.  Still, most people I know like Star Wars, at least a little.  I can't hear the words without feeling a flood of hatred.

     To explain why I have to start with some of my earliest memories.  In those moments I already knew certain things about Star Wars, which means I must have watched them even earlier.  My family loved Star Wars.  We only owned A New Hope, so my sister and I would take turns checking out The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi from the local libraries.  I think eventually we had the dialogue for all three movies memorized.

     As I got older my love only grew more intense.  I read every book in the Expanded Universe I could get my hands on.  (Many of them multiple times.)  I played the CCG (card game) whole-heartedly, and later became a huge Star Wars paper and pencil roleplayer.  Star Wars was amazing, and I loved it deeply.

     Then came the prequels.  I thought they were garbage.  About the same time Decipher lost the rights to the CCG and there were rumors George Lucas had been behind the switch.  I began to joke that Lucas had suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm, because I couldn't imagine how else he could go from creating such brilliance to trash.

     With each prequel things got worse.  For a brief moment Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars series brought on a restoration.  I was watching Star Wars again, the magic was back.  Then the show was cancelled and replaced with some CGI nonsense.

     New Jedi Order didn't help much.  It was a hot mess.  Timothy Zahn and Michael A. Stackpole's contributions were brief shining gems in a convoluted, contradictory series that culminated in nonsense and tragedy.  It was about then that I stopped reading new Star Wars books.  (More accurately immediately afterward, when Jacen turned to Dark Side for no apparent reason except they needed a new villain and couldn't be bothered to create one.)

     Somewhere along the way my attitude changed fundamentally.  One day I was thinking about the original trilogy and realized I could see the plot holes.  They were still good movies, but the immunity to forthright analysis my love had given them was gone.  Now that I knew Lucas probably had made them amazing by accident I no longer reflexively rushed to their defense.  Once I had gone to great lengths to explain every misstep, now I just sighed.

     And then, as the final step, came the new movies.  I had no interest in going to see them because all indications were that they would be focus-tested messes.  Morbid curiosity did lead me to investigate after the fact, leading to a grim satisfaction when my predictions were borne out (for the most part.)  

     That wasn't what led to my hate though.  I was already pretending the prequels had never happened, I could have done the same with soft reboots/sequels.  There could have just been three wonderful movies existing in isolation for all time.

     No, the thing that broke me was when they threw out the Expanded Universe.  It was such a calculated, gratuitous and lazy move.  The people in charge didn't want to be constrained.  They wanted to be free to do whatever the focus groups and latest hotness dictated.  They could have just ignored the Expanded Universe, let it branch off by itself.  Writers like Timothy Zahn surely would have done their best to square that circle (after all, Zahn almost made Terminator: Salvation make sense.)  Instead they killed the Expanded Universe, apparently because they had the power and it would have been a minor inconvenience had it stuck around.

     That was what made me realize that I had never really loved Star Wars.  Not the way most people do.  I loved the Star Wars Universe as it was presented to me.  The Outer Rim versus the Core Worlds, the HuMAN policy, Derra IV, the design philosophies and logistics of Fondor and Kuat Drive Yards, the liquidation of Incom Corporation, Gand Findsmen, B-Wings built in asteroids, A-Wings assembled by hand, Admiral Ackbar learning tactics from Grand Moff Tarkin, deceptive design plans for Mon Calamari Star Cruisers...I could go on and on.  The contrast between smart, nimble but weak rebels and arrogant imperials with the power to glass planets who can't tell the difference between atrocities and combat experience.  I'll just stop here lest I go on indefinitely.

     When you come right down to it I don't think I was the only one either.  I've heard it said that you can't do much with Star Wars, which is the reason the new movies don't really bring anything innovative to the table.  That's certainly not true if you look at the Expanded Universe.  Some of the earliest popular books were just collections of short stories giving the background of various extras.  Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Tales from Jabba's Palace.  All barely touched the main characters, instead focusing on figures who were only seen for a few minutes (some only for a few seconds.)  Why if not because that brief glimpse of alien life sparked interest?

     Some of the greatest and most successful Expanded Universe writers focused less on the main characters from the movies and more on introducing us to new figures.  Timothy Zahn, Michael A. Stackpole and Kevin J. Anderson created completely new characters and we loved them.  (These weren't Shadows of the Empire style clones of characters from the movies either.  They had their own peculiarities, personalities, backgrounds, outlooks and skillsets.)

     That's what I loved, and they killed it.  Oh, not entirely I suppose.  The books still exist, and they're still worth re-reading.  There will never be any more good ones, but Homer is dead too and the Iliad is still worth a look or five.

     The problem is that the universe is dead.  All those years of effort on the part of so many, trying to fill in the background, fit all the pieces together so they make sense.  All those authors, pouring themselves into new characters, scenarios and organizations.  The universe my roleplaying characters had adventures in.  That so fascinated me, prompting countless hours of investigation and imagination.  The unknown future they were inching towards.  All gone.

     Corran Horn's children will never carry on the line of Corellian Jedi- the bloodline with all its strengths and weaknesses is gone.  My friends will never reunite to finally track down Bane Malar or put a stop to the plans of the sinister Harth.  Those last minute escapes turned out to be final.  A-Wings no longer have wood paneling, in fact they probably no longer exist.

     Stripped away.  Gratuitously, callously, and by those (my malice informs me) who lack even sufficient imagination to really recognize what they've destroyed, much less replace it.  Will its like ever be seen again?  Who knows.  At the moment there is something living where it once resided though.  Hate.  It expands to fit its environment, and the hole it is residing in now is quite sizable.

     So now you know why I hate Star Wars.  Have a great one!