Judge By The Cover: Not-Star Wars
~ AND WHY NOT judge books by the cover? They spend millions on cover art, right? If I ever see the new Star Wars movie, I’ll tell you in a new review how right I was in this review. Anticipatory ITYS, and you’re welcome.
Star Wars VII: The Fempire Strikes Back (SW:FU) is a fun two hours of pretty 3D, but– it is not Star Wars. Yes, I went there.
Now, I’m one of the neandersexual hopelessly-lost-cause dinosaurs the fembots have given up on: I’m a Summer of ’77 thirteen-timer at the Casino theatre in Halifax, seeing The Amazing. Star Wars? GOOSE BUMPS of joy and awe, EVERY time!
Along with the Lord of The Rings books, and the Narnia series, SW:77 shaped my young life. I gave the Dark Lord George’s merchandise empire a ton of my hard-earned paper-boy money. The sequels were cultural events, eagerly awaited, without an internet or spoiler trailers. This was not soft-fascistic Star Trek: it was gritty and dangerous and real. Geek out!
Luke Is A Girl
“Anything She Can Do, You Can’t Do Better. You’re A Sexism.”
Then versus now– this is post-#GamerGate, when Identity politics and Social Justice Warrior dictates run amuck. No more geeking out: just being told off about teh evil mens. Again and again.
The new Luke? Nooby super-girl. The new Yoda? A 1000 year old female bartender. The new Leia? The wimpy black guy. The new Han Solo? Also the girl, but the old Han is now a sensitive mangina.. before he gets murdered by his nasty father-hating son. Chewie? A few cheap cameo-scenes. R2D2? Mostly unplugged.. i.e., won’t sell the toys, so there’s a new beach-ball robot BB-8. Villains? Nothing too serious… just a Darth Emo named Kylo Ren, who eventually gets his arse kicked by the nooby super-girl, after killing his dad.. Han Solo.
It’s SW:FU— dear male geeks & nerds, and all hard-core fan-boys and fan-girls, original trilogy or prequel-lovers– FU! You will watch and love this, or you’re a sexist!
Begone archetypes, literature, the muses, and grand tales. Depart ye non-self-rescuing princesses in metal bikinis, young male heroes, and roguish space captains who shot first. Let us sit and tell smirking tales of the drinking of male tears. SW:FU!
Star Wars The Feminist Force Awakens Spoiler Review Overview
Behold the Dark Ladies of the Sith, who exert malevolent control over the minds of the masses. We must to empower teh wimmins, and put teh mens in their place. Because reasons, and Patriarchals. Hence, The Farce Awakens. The Dark Ladies have a right– nay, the duty!– to break all the things and fix them in their form and image. Nothing must make us uncomfortable, or ask awkward questions, or bring our current all-knowingness into doubt.
Oh No You Don’t
Dear derivative director Dark Lord Jar Jar Abrams, and the writers of SW:FU– hands off. Star Wars is not yours, any more. It’s not even George Lucas’ any more, not to mention EvilMouseCorp. It belongs to the fans. Remember them? ALL the fans, especially we first ones.
Hence the rising tide of backlash to this movie and the mentality behind it on Twitter, The YouTubes, blogs, and other free (dare we say Rebel?) forms of media. Hands off our stuff, you crazy people.
Artistic Hubris
Fiddling and erasing and– in the case of this movie– jettisoning the whole meaning, and point of the original trilogy? Just no. Why bother– except for ideology?
Recall: Vader repented, and killed the Emperor. Luke & the former Rebels won. This is not some dreary university where the academic radicals keep pissing and whining at the old books and wrong-think profs and uppity students until everybody falls into line, forgets the wrong-think, and a sleepy Marxist victory is won, where the answer to all the questions becomes ‘Feminism’, or whatever the old Imperial bullies happen say it is.
Authentic art– even derivative Hollywood art like Star Wars (movie Westerns, Swashbucklers, Flash Gordon, Akira Kurosawa, WW2 War movies)– has a kind of integrity of its own. It is our hubris to imagine that we can make the muses into sockpuppets for propaganda; to mine the past for incorrect messages, and unwrite them. Even Lucas himself couldn’t respect his own past efforts, with his tweaks and fiddling and digital interference with the original trilogy, not to mention the green-screen blandness of the three regrettable ‘Prequels’.
Baaa Baaa Baaa
The worst comment I’ve heard reported was that for some movie-goers, this rehash of the first Star Wars and bits of the original trilogy is “even better than the original“. Let despair commence!
Why so serious? Because this horrid sheep-like approval is what the mind-controllers of academia, culture, the media, politics, and movies want: for people to become so accustomed to the permitted perimeter fence of allowable ideas and feelings, that their response is “New non-awkward non-micro-aggressing Star Wars! I can stay in my intellectual baby-blanket! Yaaaaaay!”
What next after Star Wars VII: The Fempire Strikes Back? Maybe Star Wars VIII: The Trans Arises. Or perhaps Star Wars IX: Non-Triggering Safe Spaces. Followed by Star Wars X: Kill Teh Patriarchals! And the grand finale?– why, Star Wars XI: Return Of The Slut Walkers. The mind boggles.
This is a serious war by non-military means: a political and a culture war. If you will not sit up and take notice and comment and talk back and demand better (or refuse to see the latest brainwash), then this becomes the new normal for your kids, grand-kids, Hollywood, and our society.
Be a true rebel. ~
Saith teh
A Swift Sunrise 