When Fandom turns to the Dark Side

It was always going to happen wasn’t it? Since the release of the latest Star Wars movie things have threatened to get nasty. It’s been bubbling away on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, on the streets, in the pubs, round your granny’s house. Everywhere.

The Last Jedi, which I really enjoyed, was released after hype like I have never seen before. We were treated to gorgeous trailers and TV spots. We all carefully broke each of them down looking for clues. We had theories. We had hopes. We had ideas. I think ultimately non of them came true. And there, I think, lies the problem.

Personally I’m not one for looking for spoilers or buying into theories about who this or that is, what their background is, where have they come from, who are they related to etc etc. No other franchise do you get this. It’s insane. Such is the fandoms, young or old, thirst for Star Wars that we have started making stuff up for ourselves then getting upset when in fact we were no where near. And its a real shame because Rian Johnson and his colleagues have made a tremendous movie. In my eyes streets ahead of The Force Awakens.

So now we have this thing where it is trendy or fashionable to diss the movie. And I’m annoyed. But this week things have taken a turn for the worse. Things are getting really personal and nasty. Now I’m not against anyone having a opinion. I’m all for intelligent challenge and discussion. Everyone will of course have their own thoughts on this movie. But when it gets personal, directed at an individual or individuals and nasty that’s when it’s needs to stop.

See, this kind of thing isn’t new. Look at the prequels. The Phantom Menace was ok, it gave us Darth Maul and some sweet lightsaber battles. Attack of the Clones was awful. Awful. Revenge of the Sith was the best of the three. But we all had opinions. I have seen folk speaking passionately in defence of the prequels and that’s fine. Ive seen people constructively take them apart, Thats ok. But when these movies were released we didn’t have social media like we have now. All of these movies were released pre Facebook, pre Twitter, pre everything as we know it now. So in the main we had to have our discussions face to face, or on TV or Radio. Since the dawn of being able to address our heroes directly on platforms like Twitter these kind of debates have gone to another level.

Now to me, the creative individuals who have anything to do with Star Wars, ILM, LucasFilm etc are heroes. Every single one of them. Past and present. These people built my childhood. And I have nothing but respect for them. All of them. How anyone can think its ok to be nasty, childish and downright insulting to any of these people is beyond me. Now you may or may not know what I’m referring to here. I’m not going to directly reference it but I have seen exchanges lately on Twitter that have saddened me.

I have never seen a movie divide opinion like what The Last Jedi has. Critics loved it, pretty much unanimously. Fans are completely split and I suspect the likes of Rian Johnson don’t realise just how split opinion is on the streets. 

We are all fans of something that is truly amazing. Lets not all turn on each other. Opinion yes. Anger no.

I don’t need to tell you where anger leads to.

Adam