Why I Don’t Like Star Wars

And why I don’t care how good Andor is

One of my earliest memories is sitting on my father’s lap in the front room of my childhood home watching Return of the Jedi with my whole family. I am of an age that missed seeing the initial movies in the cinema but grew up with their legacy. For the first 15 years of my life Star Wars and Indiana Jones were cinematic legend, with only three movies each to enjoy. There was supplemental comics and books, etc but the core, high-quality, true Star Wars was just the original trilogy. That was it. For years. No internet fan movies, no online forums, some toys but nothing radical. These legendary, culture inspiring films amounted to about 7–8 hours of film. If you loved sci-fi during this time, you loved Star Wars, no question. And I did. I loved those movies, Empire Strikes Back especially.

My obsession with Batman and Superman as a kid ran across film, animation, the comics, toys and more. I could indulge those obsessions all I liked. For the two George Lucas trilogies, all you had was six films, that were, similar to Donner’s Superman and Burton’s Batman, more grown-up. These weren’t just for kids. This was ‘real’ cinema. They looked high quality, adults respected them, they were cool. What’s more was, despite their success and popularity, there was very little else like them. Certainly nothing anywhere near…