Fin: The best and worst of Star Wars social media content

Plus, a fake Israel quote from Scarlett Johansson, Sony buys Alamo, a weird award for Jonathan Majors, and more in this week's notes column.

Luuuuuke (Wookiepedia)

I wrote last month about how Jenny Nicholson’s recent video about the Star Wars hotel was the best piece of Star Wars content in several years. It was great, in part, because it came from a place of great knowledge and while critical, it wasn’t especially hateful or snarky. It was vastly preferable, in other words, to the frequent Star Wars fan narrative that “Disney ruined Star Wars, because they made it all about girls, and girls are icky.” 

This week on social media, it was the best of Star Wars discourse, it was the worst of Star Wars discourse. 

On one end, many of the most vocal and angry Star Wars fans are really mad at the latest Disney+ Star Wars show, The Acolyte. I have not seen the show, so I can’t say whether it’s any good. I can say that a bunch of new TV shows every year, and no movies, doesn’t seem like the ideal way to consume Star Wars; even the ones that are supposed to be good, like The Mandalorian and Andor, I ended up catching about a year late. 

But the criticism of The Acolyte tends towards the mean-spirited. If they’re not sharing a small out-of-context clip — as if 95 percent of Star Wars wouldn’t look ridiculous, out of context, to someone who hasn’t seen it — it’s extremely personal insults aimed at showrunner Leslye Headland and/or star Amandla Sternberg. 

South Park, by the way, has really been doing a lot lately to validate the worst people on the Internet.

However, one bit of Star Wars discourse this week was way better than that. Namely, this Twitter prompt: 

I must have spent a solid hour the other night reading the quote-tweets of that. Some truly hilarious stuff, most of it from two categories: Blindingly obvious plot holes in the main canonical Star Wars movies and stuff in the Star Wars Expanded Universe/Star Wars Legends books, tie-in comics, and other media that is just absolutely batshit insane. For instance, I was unaware of the clone character named Luuke Skywalker. Or the Empire’s Grand Moffs attending a “Mofferance.” 

This is key: Star Wars is a little bit silly and corny, and always has been! Even the original trilogy. It never made perfect sense, and that was part of the charm. The way to react to that is not with blinding rage, but relatively good-natured poking of fun. 

And finally, I’ll say this: My two sons were super into Star Wars when they were little. I took them to see every one of the new movies on the opening weekend. But… they’re now in early teenager-dom, and they’ve since outgrown it. I know way too many 50-year-old men who haven’t outgrown it.