I love Star Wars. Love it. Even the bad stuff.
My unapologetic love and fandom for Star Wars is probably like someone who is a life long Dodgers fan.
As a kid they get taken to the games, they collected baseball cards, they owned a jersey, and are brought up knowing all the players. As adults, regardless of how the Dodgers are doing they still watch the games, they still root for the team, they still want them to win the World Series.
They also know when the team stinks, but that doesn’t diminish their love for the team...in fact, it might make them defend them and love them even more.
That’s me and Star Wars. Seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater when it came out as a six-year-old made a deep deep impression on me.
It would probably be like taking a kid who was into sports to a professional game and having them high five one of he players as he entered the arena.
I came home and replaced my Batman costume with a black Luke costume (with one black glove), and my RoTJ Luke action figure became a daily carry. A life long Star Wars fan was born.
I’ve never felt franchise fatigue for Star Wars, and I can plainly see that so much of it is designed to make money, but at the heart of it, just like in Major League Baseball, there’s people who are making it not just to collect a check, but for the love of the game.
That love still shines through in a well acted character, a really thoughtful piece of concept art, and an exhilaratingly creative scene.
Which is why I love this brilliant, flawed, beautiful, stupid, but most of all FUN galaxy far, far away.