I Don't Like Star Wars

I don't like Star Wars. That's the crux of this article, pretty much. Just by the title alone, you have already formed an opinion on me. That is the power of Star Wars, the proof of the immense reach that this franchise has on popular culture. If anything, Star Wars is the rare kind of beast that transcends popular culture and simply becomes part of every day life. It is a completely unavoidable, unstoppable, unkillable monstrosity and I do not care for it.

There may be some rational people who have read the title to this article and may not be so quick to judge, who believe that I am certainly allowed my own opinions on the topic. Here's where a lot of people start to fault my argument though: I've never seen Star Wars.

Let me clear that up slightly, to eliminate all doubt. I have seen one Star Wars film, which I saw when it was first released in cinemas, and that film is Episode One: The Phantom Menace. Already people are rolling their eyes, telling me that of course my opinion on Star Wars would be negative if that were the only film in the franchise I had seen. To appreciate it or even to be critical of it, one must watch all the films and then pass judgement. Having seen one film out of a series of nine, a film that is hardly regarded as the best of the bunch, and making a judgement based on that is no way to form an opinion. That's what they say.

There is no proper equivalent to Star Wars for me to be able to spin an appropriate analogy as to why watching nine films I have zero interest in would be a monumental waste of my time. Even before I saw The Phantom Menace as a child, I had no interest in Star Wars. Even as a young child in the 90's I knew about Star Wars, and knew I had no interest in it. I didn't need to watch ANY of the films to come to that conclusion. Sometimes a film just isn't for you, and that's fine. Sometimes that film spawns a ton of other films, and half of the entire population of the world talks about it constantly.

That is the issue I have with Star Wars. Everybody talks about it, everybody knows about it. I know the plot of Star Wars, I know all of the characters, I know all of the jokes, I know the music, I know the actors, and yet I have seen just one of the films in the franchise. If you watch television, any television program at all, they'll slip a Star Wars reference in because it's universal, everybody gets it. Even those of us who choose to remain ignorant of it. That's the reason I dislike Star Wars.

Originally I disliked it because it just didn't appeal to me. That was fine, there are a lot of films that do not appeal to me. This one, however, was gigantic. As I said, it transcends popular culture, it becomes rooted in everybody's subconscious. Everybody knows about Star Wars. Everybody knows Darth Vader is Luke's father. Everybody knows Luke and Leia are brother and sister. Everybody knows Chewbacca is a Wookie. Everybody knows all of this, whether they want to or not.

If you are not a Star Wars fan, tough luck. You're going to be bombarded with Star Wars for the rest of your life anyway. This has turned my mere dislike into a deep hatred of all things Star Wars, that I have to hear about Star Wars relentlessly. It never ends. Every day I hear about Star Wars, every time I log on to social media there will inevitably be some sort of Star Wars post that will pop up on my feed without my consent.

Let me ask you all to think of something you just don't care about. Like a film or a book or a television program. There are people who may not be fans of Harry Potter, yet unfortunately had to sit through many years of Harry Potter related media. That's fine, eventually the buzz died down. Pokemon got a shot in the arm with the release of Pokemon Go, and for a year it felt like the world was talking about Pokemon. If Pokemon isn't your cup of tea, that's absolutely fine, because eventually the Pokemon buzz died down again and it remains slightly under the radar, popping its head up every now and then before retreating under again for a little rest.

Star Wars doesn't take a rest, ever. It is an entity to be milked of every single cent it could possibly make, and that is a lot of cents due to the fact that Star Wars has subtly been ingrained into the minds of seemingly every single person on Earth. It's maddening to go through your entire life with the spectre of Star Wars constantly looming over your shoulder. I can never escape it, it will never die. I will be cursed to have to hear about Star Wars until the end of my days, and in some ways that is an incredibly depressing fact to have to come to terms with.

Nobody else in the world other than people who don't like Star Wars know what this is like, believe me. If there is any piece of media or art that you dislike, I guarantee you are not relentlessly bombarded with it every day of your life. If you dislike Star Wars, however, then it sucks to be you because you're going to hear about it anyway. I'm obviously wrong for forming an opinion on something which, in the grand scheme of things, literally has no relevance to my life.

I would consider myself somewhat of a nerd, a geek if you will, somebody who is interested in video games and popular culture, things like that. The nerd community is a very strong, very opinionated place to be, and Star Wars is absolutely front and centre of their movement. If you care little for Star Wars, or if indeed you don't care at all for Star Wars, you are almost ostracised from the community. You're cursed, you have a dark mark on you. You're one of the few nonbelievers, one of those creatures that doesn't appreciate how wonderful and special Star Wars apparently is.

Star Wars has such a unique, worldwide reach that it's even made me write this article. As someone who cares very little about Star Wars, here I am anyway talking about it. It's unavoidable, you see. You can't escape it, it's forever a curse on humanity, a blight, an unspoken spell that everybody just accepts and carries on with their life, safe in the knowledge that at some point they'll pick up a stick and pretend it's a lightsaber. Because Star Wars. Somebody once remarked that the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. I think its safe to add Star Wars to that list. Lucky us.