A few years ago, I was discussing The Last Jedi with a classmate and he said something like āIt was a good movie, just not a good Star Wars movieā. At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that he was a teenage boy who was probably parroting the vague and irritating criticism that the movie faced at the time. Years later, I began to think about that moment more and more. Despite hearing that critique so many times, hearing it from him made me reflect on the concept of āgettingā Star Wars and what fans perceive as āgettingā Star Wars.
What the last few years (and the stream of post-TROS shows) have taught me, is that a large portion of fans donāt actually get what Star Wars is. The same is true for those who are currently planning the future of the franchise. They donāt see the value in the mythical framework of the series or care to understand it, it seems like they overlook it entirely. Theyāre so consumed by the fidelity to āthe loreā that they canāt take step back and see the (mythical) elements that drew them to the story in the first place. It feels a bit arrogant of me to say that, but itās a feeling thatās been bothering me.
Yes, part of the core of the problem is that even the people who actually like SW that DLF hired seem to be mostly fans of the old EU who are fundamentally unconcerned with what SW is actually about. People who prioritise 'lore' and minutiae, who think trivia is worldbuilding or that 'worldbuilding' is what defines the GFFA.
Whereas what actually defines the GFFA is the themes ('love people, that's all Star Wars is' -George Lucas). The universe exists to tell the story and the story exists to communicate the themes. It is character-driven, not plot or setting driven. Things making emotional sense is the only thing that matters in the OT, the logistics are irrelevant and incidental. It's not sci-fi and never has been, there is no interest in explaining the rules of the technology or codifying the Force into a structured system. There is no exploration of the relationship of society with technology because this is an epic fantasy story focussing on the conflict going on in the human spirit between selfishness and love; it's about the coming of age of an individual where the entire setting is established to facilitate that. SW is a story about individuals and their journey to ethical adulthood.
TLJ is written to the mythic archetype and themes of SW, its basic narrative shape is absolutely textbook exactly what anyone who understands literary criticism should have expected. It is exactly what a SW sequel to TFA should and needed to be. Which is why so many people doing that kind of analysis were able to accurately predict its main story beats.
The lore fans who want 'realism', video game power system Force magic, and the kind of moral ambiguity which is foundationally incompatible with SW are not fans of the story, they are fans of the trappings. These are the people who dismiss Vader's redemption as a unforunate incidental that 'everyone' can ignore because the rest of RotJ is good (paraphrase of an actual post I saw).
THE moral victory, the protagonist's moment of vindication, the entire POINT of the story and this dude thinks it's like, an accidental blooper that just kinda snuck into the edit because he wants Luke to be a standard American hero and not to have his worldview challenged.
I am totally comfortable saying they don't get SW no matter how much trivia they've memorised and merch they've collected.
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