...until I realized I didn't have to care. I don't have to acknowledge the ~new canon~ that Lucas put out.
I don't care, I really don't. And I certainly don't consider it canon. After TLJ, I spent my time laughing at the incompetence of Star Wars being run by trained monkeys. It's a money-printing machine that they threw a wrench in, just to spite a nebulous concept of toxic fans, a nemesis that they themselves created in the process by being assholes.
Disney can't make me watch or acknowledge these movies, but as long as they own the rights, I have absolutely no confidence in them not shitting the bed with any future project. I have absolutely no trust in their stuff and even if it is good like Mandalorian (can't tell, never watched it), I am still expecting a big letdown along the ride. So I won't be able to enjoy any future stuff, even if it turns out promising, since these fools have already shown that they can't handle this franchise without being hateful asshats towards their core audience for no discernable reason. I couldn't enjoy a future installment as light-hearted as I used to enjoy the OT, since to me, it's just a matter of time until some dangerhair gets the ears of some CEO and we get another pail of shit thrown at the screen.
And as long as these terrible movies are canon, every future project is part of this flawed, cynical, nonsensical world and I don't enjoy that. So I won't waste any more time with it, which is the reason why I don't watch Mandalorian, even though it is said to be really good.
I don't waste time thinking about the prequels and the sequels being shit just didn't impact me very much. It's my personal experience, and opinion, that being so utterly fixated on the sequels/prequels that they ruin your enjoyment of Star Wars is a sign of obsession and a lack of maturity.
It's not a fixation or obsession to watch something and then be reminded of the bad end it will take - it's not like I am constantly frowning and mumbling to myself about how they totally raped my childhood by making Luke a loser, but it does take away from the fun a little, when you know the pay-off will suck.
That's why I brought up GoT specifically. Watching snippets of the first few seasons I realized that with every plot-thread and every character, I thought to myself "Oh right, this will lead nowhere" or "This will have a really stupid conclusion". A large part of GoT was the mystery, the intrigues, the scheming and so on, you wanted to see how it will all pan out and who will end up on top. But it turned out that the execution and the pay-offs are so weak at the end that the build-up to it feels hollow now. It's hard to get invested in Tyrion's fate when you know how in the end, he'll just be a dimwit, outsmarted by fucking Sansa of all people.
It has become like one of JJ Abrams mystery boxes, It's hard to become interested in the contents of the box, when you already know it's empty. In GoT it's a bigger issue than in SW, which is why you can actually say the end ruined the whole series, cause you can't choose to "stop" at a certain point to consider it canon, without the story ending midway without a conclusion. In SW, you can do that just fine with the OT, since it's a story with a conclusion and everything later on can't take that away unless you allow it to - that idea isn't new to anyone in this thread, you know.
But when I now think about the joy I had with the OT, there's that small nagging part of me that remembers what they have turned Luke into in the new canon, and that's a bit annoying, not cause I have to treat it as "fact", but rather cause every movie going forward will treat it as "fact".
I'm not "mad" at Star Wars for having bad movies in the franchise (that hasn't been a new concept since the infamous Holiday Special), I am saddened that we lost so much potential and I am reminded of that when I watch the OT now. And it is especially sad to think that SW wasn't ruined unintentially by incompetence, but by malicious intention and contempt.
edit: I think a less wordy version and metaphor that sums it up nicely: Even if I watch the OT now, I can't quite get the foul taste of the sequels and the sheer hatred for it out of my mouth that the sequels left there. /edit
Doesn't mean Star Wars is ruined for me forever, doesn't make the old trilogy ruined or unwatchable, but there is still going to be that small kernel of knowledge what is now considered canon and will remain canon for the foreseeable future.
Frankly, the Special Edition has done more damage to my enjoyment of Star Wars than what Disney has done, since that actively diminished the quality of the OT itself.
I'm not trying to be a jerk about how you feel but it's frankly ridiculous to waste so many internet tears on movies. Star Wars is not a religion and it doesn't fill your bank account. They're entertainment. Some of them are better than others.
You might be surprised to hear that at no point was I losing sleep over bad movies ever in my life or shedding "internet tears".
And you might be surprised even further to hear that entertainment that's no longer entertaining ceases to be entertainment, so that entire platitude is moronic.
Does that mean I want everyone to shit their bed in red-hot anger over a shitty movie made by spiteful people all night every night? Nope.
But when you watch an old movie and know that the ones now holding the rights to it have used their power to shit on everything that you enjoyed in the original movie and do their best to showcase their contempt with every installment, one can't help but feel a little sad at times, since this is now the new course this franchise will take.
But sometimes you have to step back, look at the Extended Universe and all of the horrid badly written trash that Kevin J Anderson shit out or the New Jedi Order or that Knights of the Old Republic II was an unfinished game and you realize...
Well maybe Star Wars was always kind of shit and just because spiteful people did the sequels doesn't mean that the rest of Star Wars that they didn't touch was any good.
Don't forget that before Disney came Lucas, trying to destroy the Library of Congress's copy of Star Wars because it didn't fit his artistic vision. George Lucas raped my childhood and the fact that people are trying to cover up this violent rape just because they don't like the sequels is frankly ludicrous.
I've never read a single SW book or comic, as far as I'm concerned, they aren't even canon to me, simply cause I don't have the slightest clue what is happening in them. So I can't say anything about their quality of lack thereof. I've watched Star Wars maybe once in almost 2 decades, cause I don't own a non-Special Edition, so I'm not even a huge fan of SW in general. I like it a lot, but I wouldn't consider myself a fan, really. But I do recognize greatness when I see it and Star Wars, to me, managed to catch lightning in a bottle and I admire it for that and I am disgusted to see people deliberately ruining it, just to spite their imaginary boogeyman of WHITE PATRIARCHY.
