Just in time for so-called “Pride Month,” Disney’s new Star Wars installment, “The Acolyte,” is “the gayest ever,” according to its creators. As predictable as a Star Wars plot, many conservatives complained, Disney has ruined muh Star Wars.
A long, long time ago, I would have agreed.
But now, after rewatching “Episode 4” with my children this weekend, I don’t believe Disney ruined Star Wars. It has always been terrible.
Behind the layers of nostalgia, I saw nothing of the enchanting space epic of my childhood memories but a dumb plot dependent on dumb characters in a dumb universe. I felt shame that for most of my life, I had been duped by the duplicitous Hollywood hype machine. The movie’s financial success has always depended on the campaign to make die-hard dweebs out of otherwise healthy young adult males.
One early critic of the film, science-fiction mastermind Harlan Ellison, recounts having his car keyed by teenagers after publicly expressing his dislike for the film. In his hilariously brutal 1977 review, Ellison excoriates the movie as a “criminal act of artistic prostitution” being nothing but “mindless shoot-em-up and hardware” whose “characters are comic strip stereotypes,” so much so that the “Bad Guy [wears] not merely a black hat but black body-armor and a black death-mask.”
Ellison explains that science fiction is meant for exploring the human condition in the face of new technology and discoveries. He resents how Star Wars made the genre synonymous with mindless special effects. We have Star
