Story Wars: Return of the Junk-Fi

The older I get, and the more I watch Star Wars movies, the more I root for the Empire. What exactly are the rebels bringing to the table anyway? Disorder and a couple of argumentative droids?

If you're a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder like me, then you probably have seen the new Star Wars trailer. And unlike every other stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder out there, I am not going to guess what the movie is about having never seen it. But then again, since Star Wars is filled with so many contradictions, why not its fans as well?

However, it does make me wonder, Are Rey and Ben uniting to defeat the emperor reflections of J. J. Abrams' hopes about Democrats and Republicans uniting to take down the President? Is this meant to be another preachy attempt to force modern sentiments on the masses like the last movie was? Could this movie really be about the impeachment of Emperor Palpatrump?

Maybe I'm just too cynical with modern Disneywood, but Star Wars has become just so dumb it does make me wonder. What ever happened to the good ol' days of the Star Wars' Holiday Special when all of the writers were on major drugs and couldn't put two coherent sentences together, and we all forgave them because they did the best that they could under the influence of a massive amount of crack cocaine? Have no illusions, they're still on drugs but apparently the ones that make you hallucinate that the modern political atmosphere actually has something meaningful to contribute to the Star Wars universe. The attempt to interject vacuous morality in Sci-Fi lately has caused me to think that a new category should be created called, "Junk-Fi." Junk-Fi is any Sci-Fi movie that prioritizes its message over the quality of the medium through which it is communicated. So far, the last movie was the best example of Junk-Fi I can think of. It may be that this next one will be the same. That message, of course, is that humanity must unite to overcome its adversaries, which are all essentially physical manifestations of death. Both the lack of reality of the message itself, but also the poor quality of the story used to convey that message, sadly, seems to be the future of these movies.

Oh well, at least they have lots of lightsabers and explosions while they attempt to show us that we must all unite as one big brotherhood of man if we are to defeat our greatest foe, i.e., another man. I love the hypocritical contradictions in this series. It reminds me of Obiwan saying, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." LOL. That's an absolute statement followed by numerous absolute statements about good and evil there, Yoda.  Did I mention I'm rooting for the Empire?

This is a common theme lately. Let's all unite against our common enemy. Togetherness. We can be heroes. There are two prominent narratives at play in our stories: "the narrative of the hero" and "the narrative of the heroes." The narrative of the hero works well in a Christian context where Christ is the hero who engages the enemy and saves humanity. The narrative of the heroes is where humanity unites to save itself. Christ isn't needed. Humanity uniting is the key to defeating the darkness. I see this narrative in most of my kids' shows now. It has taken over the narrative of the hero. The Avengers becomes a bigger hit than any of the single hero movies, although they are still there, since down deep, we all know that humanity uniting isn't going to cut it. But it's a fantasy that is pervasive among modern stories that doesn't really appear all that much, if at all, in past stories of the world throughout history. Maybe the story of the heroes is a modern invention of the positivity movement, or an illusion of an activist culture that has come to believe that they can change things for the better by holding sit-ins and yelling really loud together. But after the marches are over, the darkness still remains, and all that is left is a monument of garbage that litter the streets, memoralizing their involvement in the movement to make things better. Death still comes for us all, and every human who has ever lived, lives now, or ever will live, cannot escape it by joining hands. Every last one of them will be overcome by it. Only "the Hero" has prevailed, and so only "the narrative of the hero" is accurate to real life. "It's an older code, but it checks out." So I hope if this is another, "Let's all unite" narratives that feature heroes instead of the hero, the Empire wins because that is what will truly happen in reality without Christ. Now that's a movie I'd give up an afternoon of bulls-eyeing womp rats in my T-16 for.