You fucking nerds

WARNING: this post has lots of spoilers in it for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. You cannot escape them if you continue reading.

Okay. So I say this as someone who saw The Last Jedi (and my review is here, for those so inclined): I liked it a lot, but I do think there are some flaws in the execution. There’s definitely some fridge logic issues in the “fleet” half of the movie, the Canto Bight sequences are overlong and I think complaints about them feeling “prequelly” are valid because they don’t feel grounded like most of the rest of the movie, and I didn’t like Benicio Del Toro’s performance much at all. But it’s still, mostly, a very good Star Wars movie, and for me it is the only one other than possibly Rogue One that really stands up beside the original trilogy.

And then I saw this fucking thing. If you can make it more than three or four minutes before pausing and saying “no, fuck this,” you impress me. I had to skip forward quite a bit to get through it at all.

First off, I want to douse every one of these four nerds with lye and hose them down. They make me feel icky just watching them. I feel like watching them made me a worse person by default. They are all terrible and should not be allowed to have fun toys. (They can keep their Phasma helmet and their Kylo Ren helmet. Those are not fun toys.)

But mostly, their annoying fanboy gripes (and I will admit a couple of them have a bit of a point, but only a couple) are all that’s awful about fandom in general and a lot of Star Wars fandom in specific, so I want to try to address most of their major complaints in the video, because most of their complaints are stupid.

1. The movie doesn’t really explain why the Resistance is on the run now after the events of the first movie. This is actually, let’s be honest, one of their better gripes; the first film doesn’t explain the interstellar political situation clearly and this one is too busy to get the chance. Force Awakens, in retrospect, needed just a couple of minutes to properly explain it.

BUT: these are supposedly Major Star Wars Fans Who Buy All The Star Wars Shit, as evidenced by the piles of it prominently on display in the video. And thus, they should be aware that the explanation exists – it’s in the (canon) tie-in prequel novels and the (canon) novelization. Basically, the Republic has a “no standing military” rule in place, to prevent the rise of an new Palpatine. However, when the First Order (which is the remnants of the Empire, which retreated to some core territories and licked their wounds before re-establishing their fleets and kidnapping children by the thousands and brainwashing them into becoming Stormtroopers) began expanding once again, Leia and some other Rebellion veterans said “we need something to counter the First Order,” and the result was that the Republic secretly funded the Resistance for plausible deniability reasons, which means that the Resistance was smaller than the First Order (as always) but at least had a few fleets’ worth of frigates, carriers and fighters. Unfortunately, most of the Resistance’s forces were (not unreasonably) hanging out in the Republic’s core systems when those systems were destroyed by Starkiller Base in Force Awakens, which is why the Resistance had to attack Starkiller Base with, what, a couple dozen fighters? Because that is what was left. And in Last Jedi the remnants of the Resistance (who took even more losses during the Starkiller battle) are running away, because yeah, Starkiller is gone, but the First Order still has the most important element of any evil space arsenal in Star Wars, which is lots of big ships shaped like triangles.

I didn’t even read those books and I know this basically via fan osmosis. It’s not really reasonable for such Major Star Wars Fans to not know this stuff. But it’s at least a reasonable complaint vis-a-vis the movies. It’s one of maybe two or three.

2. Why did Luke leave a map to find him if he came to the island planet to die? Because when he left he still maybe thought some day he might want to be needed, and then ten or fifteen years of him being alone on the island made him change his mind? Or maybe he just left Leia the map because maybe some day she might want to see him again? Brothers do things for their sisters, you know. It doesn’t just have to be at the turn of the tide, at the third morning’s dawn, et cetera.

3. Why did Luke milk that thing? Why did he drink it? Luke is A) a farmboy B) a hermit. These are literally the two professions where you are most likely to milk a thing and then drink the milk.

4. Leia should have died in space! Leia has at least some Jedi training and the Force is powerful. Seriously, you can accept “firing lightning from your hands” but not “being able to stave off vacuum death for about a minute”? Never mind that this sort of power would seem directly related to the concept of Force hibernation, which is a thing which has shown up in both Clone Wars miniseries as well as many other less-canon sources. And it’s not like she’s fine afterwards; they have to hustle her into a medical bed immediately in order for her to have a chance to survive.

5. Phasma’s death was lame. So was her death in the first movie. Oh, wait, you didn’t see her die in the first movie? Well, you didn’t see her die in this one either. She fell through a fireball; if she can survive Starkiller Base exploding she can survive a lousy fireball. And, if Phasma is in fact dead, so what? I mean, sure, I love Gwendoline Christie too (seriously, someone cast her in a romcom, it can be a romcom about Shit Tall Women Have To Deal With), but let’s be honest, Phasma is the Boba Fett of this trilogy, and Boba Fett is most remembered for A) successfully tracking the Millennium Falcon one time and B) being overrated as shit because he’s not really any good despite his awesome reputation. The movie’s quality does not hang on Phasma, just as Boba Fett dying by having his jetpack accidentally set off by a blind Han Solo in Jedi didn’t make that movie bad either. (The awful video nerds even have to admit this.) Phasma is not a character in these movies: she is an obstacle that happens to have Gwendoline Christie’s lovely voice attached to it.

6. We don’t get to find out who Snoke is. I can kinda see this as a reasonable complaint, because Snoke was a cool bad guy and you want to know more about cool bad guys. But, at the same time: he was clearly not important to the overall story Rian Johnson and Team Star Wars want to tell, and obviously not as important as (say) Kylo Ren. Besides which, we know almost as much of Snoke at this point as we did of Palpatine after three movies; you’re going back and adding details you learned in the prequels to compare the two. Yes, I too would have liked some more minutiae about Snoke, but the movie was already too long and if anything more needed to be cut from it. Snoke’s story isn’t important to the movie, because his story isn’t the movie’s story, just like Phasma’s wasn’t either.

7. Rey has all these abilities before she even gets trained and now she’s awesome with a lightsaber before Luke even trains her and – Oh, this again? Look, this is simple: Kylo, in Force Awakens, probes Rey’s mind telepathically without guarding himself because he has no idea she’s Force-capable. When he opens the door to her mind it opens both ways, and she accidentally accesses/absorbs the knowledge of how to do some Jedi things – Force hypnosis, telekinesis, fighting with a lightsaber, and so forth. (And really, it’s established fairly early in Awakens that Rey has had to become pretty good at fighting with a staff in order to survive on Jakku, so she probably didn’t have to learn that much about fighting with a lightsaber.)

8. The Finn/Rose plot sucks. I agree that the Canto Bight sequence needed better editing and that the space-horse stampede sequence probably could mostly have been cut out and it would make the movie flow better, and that the shots inside the casino feel ungrounded as compared to just about every other shot in the movie and thus feel vaguely “prequelly,” but that’s not the same as it sucking. Canto Bight establishes the entire reason the First Order are evil – not just because they blow up planets, but because they create oppressive, cruel systems that abuse the many for the sake of the few. It explains why Finn’s solution of simply fleeing can’t work and isn’t right, and it situates the Resistance (and the Rebellion) firmly on the side of truth and justice, which is where they should be, instead of just making them one of two sides (as Benicio Del Toro’s codebreaker guy suggests).

9. Rey’s parents are nobody special. And this is where they completely reveal that they just don’t get it, because the reveal of Rey’s parentage is perfect and the best possible answer to the question they could have chosen. If Rey is a Skywalker or indeed related to any major Star Wars character from the original trilogy, then that would have reinforced that the Star Wars saga is and always will be about the Skywalkers and their friends/relations; it reduces a universe down to a family, and enforces the horribly Campbellian ideal that Chosen Ones are a thing rather than a pernicious story trope that reinforces classism and apathy in the real world. Rey’s parents being nobody is the moral of the entire story, the one Luke keeps trying to hit you over the head with: the Jedi weren’t special, the Skywalkers aren’t special, the Sith aren’t special. The Force is for everybody, and everybody matters. The universe (both ours and the Star Warsy one) is not divided into heroes and lookers-on; anybody can be a hero, even if your parents were junk dealers who sold you for drinking money because they didn’t care about you. When Kylo tries to convince Rey to turn by implying that she matters because he cares about her, that’s the Dark Side talking, the last remaining Skywalker telling you that only Skywalkers and those Skywalkers deem important count for anything. And he’s wrong, which is why she then duels him.

About halfway through the video, one of the nerds whines that Lucasfilm/Disney “coulda given us what we wanted.” And it’s true, they could have made a movie which pandered desperately to every nerd fetish. But The Last Jedi is, instead, an actual good movie, and not just a good Star Wars, and that’s pretty great. Anyway, that’s all the Star Wars from me for now, until JJ Abrams asks me to resolve the issue of what to do with Leia in Episode IX, which yes I have already figured out.

EDIT TO ADD: Since people have asked, here is a ROT13-encoded answer re: what do to with Leia in Episode IX.

Va Rcvfbqr VK, Yrvn vf arire frra, ohg ng nyy gvzrf fur vf fhccbfrqyl yrnqvat gur Eroryyvba sebz nsne, va uvqvat gb nibvq Svefg Beqre nffnffvaf. Cbr, nf gur uvturfg-enaxvat erznvavat bssvpre bs gur sbezre Erfvfgnapr, vf va punetr “ba gur tebhaq,” ohg guebhtubhg gur zbivr ur erthyneyl pbzzhavpngrf jvgu Yrvn gb nfx jung gur Eroryyvba fubhyq qb.

Gbjneqf gur raq bs gur zbivr (ohg orsber gur svany onggyr), Cbr geniryf gb gur uvqrbhg gb pbafhyg jvgu Yrvn crefbanyyl, naq vg vf ng guvf cbvag jr qvfpbire gung Yrvn qvrq orsber gur ortvaavat bs gur zbivr – gur “uvqrbhg” vf npghnyyl ure tenir – naq gung Cbr unf npghnyyl orra fcrnxvat jvgu Guerrcvb, jubfr ibvprobk jnf zbqvsvrq gb cebqhpr Yrvn’f ibvpr (lrf, guvf ovg vf n yvsg sebz gur Urve gb gur Rzcver obbxf ol Gvzbgul Mnua), naq ng guvf cbvag gur nhqvrapr jbhyq erpbtavmr gung nyy “Yrvn” jnf qbvat qhevat gur ragver zbivr jnf nterrvat jvgu Cbr’f fhttrfgrq pbhefrf bs npgvba, orpnhfr Yrvn haqrefgbbq gung Cbr vf gur angheny arkg yrnqre bs gur Eroryyvba, univat yrnearq gb pbadhre uvf ubgurnqrqarff ohg nyfb arrqvat gur pbhentr gb or ubgurnqrq jura arprffnel (naq qhevat gur zbivr Cbr fubhyq cebonoyl or jnel bs qnevat cynaf abj, tvira ubj onqyl ur shpxrq gurz hc va YNFG WRQV).

NQQRAQHZ: Vs gurer vf ab cyna sbe Ynaqb Pnyevffvna ng guvf cbvag va Rcvfbqr VK, vg jbhyq or rkpryyrag gb oevat onpx Ovyyl Qrr Jvyyvnzf naq unir Ynaqb or Yrvn’f “ercerfragngvir” jvgu gur Eroryyvba, urycvat pbzzhavpngr jung Cbr guvaxf gur Eroryyvba fubhyq qb gb Guerrcvb, jub gura nterrf jvgu Cbr’f pbhefr bs npgvba. Nygreangryl Ynaqb pbhyq or fvzcyl gryyvat Guerrcvb jung gb fnl ng gur uvqrbhg, ohg va rvgure vqrn gur onfvp cevapvcyr erznvaf gur fnzr: Yrvn gehfgrq Ynaqb (ure ynfg fheivivat aba-Jbbxvrr/qebvq sevraq) gb nffvfg jvgu ure svany jvfurf.

Gur cbvag bs nyy guvf vf gb svavfu gur fgbel guernqf gung jrer ortha va SBEPR NJNXRAF naq YNFG WRQV, juvpu vf: lbh qba’g arrq Una naq lbh qba’g arrq Yhxr naq lbh qba’g arrq Yrvn naq lbh qba’g arrq crbcyr gb or urebrf sbe lbh. Lbh arrq gur pbhentr gb or lbhe bja urebrf, naq gur gehfg va lbhefryirf gb yrg lbhefryirf or gubfr urebrf, naq gur byqre trarengvba’f wbo vf gb tvir lbh thvqnapr naq gura trg bhg bs gur jnl naq yrg lbh qb gur jbex.

(Guvf vqrn nffhzrf gung gurer vf na npprcgnoyr zvavzhz bs cerivbhfyl erpbeqrq fcrrpu sebz Pneevr Svfure va beqre gb pbooyr gbtrgure rabhtu Yrvn qvnybthr gb znxr vg jbex, ohg V qba’g guvax gung fubhyq or gbb zhpu bs n ceboyrz.)

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