On the one hand, I feel obligated to be culturally relevant. I have to know what the volk know, or I risk being out of the loop on the few broadly held social referents that define our net-fractured zeitgeist.
On the other, I honestly don't know if I'm up for an endless stream of Star Wars movies.
I was there for the first three, perfect in the completeness of their mythopoetic arc. They were new and exciting and wonderful.
I read a couple of the expanded universe novels as a lad, and owned a handful of late 1970s comics. I thoroughly enjoyed the spare brilliance of the Gennady Tartakofsky animated Clone series.
Then it just kept on going. I groaned my way through the cluttered, commodified, soulless prequels. I diligently went to see The Force Awakens, and struggled through its peculiar, sloppy, cannibalistic drabness.
I may be done.
"Oh, have another movie," says Disney. "Just one more! It's wafer-thin!"
But I know they're lying. The movies will stack up to the far horizon, one profit-margin-padding tale after another, endless fractal franchise spinoffs spreading wider than a fangrrls bookshelf. That prospect is exciting in the way that going to Starbucks is exciting.
It was, once. Remember that, those of you old enough to have experienced the spread of that franchise? Oooh, a Starbucks, you'd say. Now? Not so much. You go in, get your morning bump of stimulant fluid, and you're out. Or perhaps it's like the release of a new Apple product. Remember when that was a thing, an event, a moment? Now, it's just yet another expensive rectangle.
It feels like that.
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