I am on my company Slack channel seeing everyone get really excited about the new Star Wars movie that apparently is coming out soon but people have been talking about for at least a year.

I am probably not going to see it in a movie theater.

I went to see the prequel movies when they had their midnight showings. I dressed up to go to midnight showings of all the Lord of the Rings movies. I was tempted to buy tickets to the various Marvel movie marathons before the Avengers and the second Avengers movie came out.

The last time I remember doing something fun and being a fan girl for a movie was when The Avengers came out. A friend of mine had an all day marathon of the previous movie. We had themed shots. I got drunk with the best group of coworkers I ever had, who will probably never be in the same room together ever again. It was a really special experience.

I am not feeling it anymore.

I am finding it difficult to be excited by anything in pop culture anymore.

Reading all the insane stories about people getting in line to buy the first of the Star Wars merchandise makes me weary. I am bitter and cynical and feel like the movie is nothing more than a vehicle to sell toys like the wonderful cartoons of the 80’s such as He-Man and Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I am a child of the eighties. I have a lot of toys that I wish I still had from various things I was obsessed with as a kid. But I feel like this whole thing is a giant sensory stimulus that is simply trying to get me to buy shit I don’t need.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I read enough spoilers to know that this movie is basically a retelling of the original trilogy. Killing the Emperor didn’t bring about a new Galactic republic. The war is still going on.

I enjoyed the Extended Universe more than I would like to admit because it at least moved the narrative forward. We had several years before the Rebels were able to expel the Empire from the capital planet. There was governmental stuff that people had to figure out. Luke started his Jedi academy and we had actual new Jedi characters. There were still wars and remnants of the Empire, but the battles were at least different and somewhat psychologically interesting.

All that is gone now. The Rebels are still fighting the Rebellion. Luke is still the only Jedi. Nothing has progressed and everything our heroes did thirty years ago is essentially forgotten. We had progress! We had change! We had character development! Now we’re backtracking from all of that to say we’re basically back where we were thirty years ago?! What the fuck!

It’s like a god damned soap opera. All this has happened before. All this will happen again. There are so many stories that keep being drawn out longer and longer and I just want them to fucking end!

There is something to be said for ending a story. Having a satisfying ending to a story is like having dessert at the end of a good meal. You leave satisfied and remember it fondly. You don’t want a meal that will not fucking end where each course is worse than the one before it, but you can’t leave because they won’t bring you the bill.

I know that marketing and other bullshit exists to keep us in a state of perpetual need. We need more story. We need more books. We need more toys. We’re dangling this resolution just out of reach so you will keep buying our stuff.

I demand satisfaction! I am sick of being strung along for years and years on a meandering trip that goes fucking nowhere.

The Star Wars universe has enough compelling aspects to it that you don’t have to go and pretend like nothing happened for the last thirty years. As much as I hated the prequels, at least they did something different. They told a different set of stories than the original trilogy did.

I know that Disney wants to turn Star Wars into it’s own Marvel Extended Universe franchise. I know there is going to be a new Star Wars movie every year for the next like two decades.

I’m sorry, I just can’t muster up the enthusiasm for it anymore.

I am sure I will enjoy watching these at home like I do every other movie that’s come out over the last year that I simply couldn’t muster the ambition to put a bra on to go see in public. The idea of sitting in a dark movie theater for over two hours without being able to check my email without getting looks of disapproval by a hundred strangers has zero appeal to me at this point in my life. I am not going to complain about how shitty movies are now because even if they were good and targeted at me, I am too tired to go anyway.

For all of you who have been excited about this for a year, I hope you get what you wanted. If not, wait a few months and you’ll get another chance to be disappointed.

May the force be with you.