Is Star Wars ruined?

Transcript

How do folks in the chat feel about Star Wars? Because I’ve always been a little bit indifferent to Star Wars, and I feel like that makes me a bad sci-fi fan. But maybe it’s just because I’ve witnessed what they’ve done to Star Wars.

I feel like the thing about Star Wars too—you know, we’re in this era where—oh yeah, Ryan, Fuel in the Tank, says, “My first sci-fi love, but getting bored of it.” I think there’s also just—I don’t know, maybe this is probably another big, deeper conversation, but there’s definitely been some kind of death of cultural criticism or something.

Oh, Aaron says, “How is Luke Skywalker the protagonist?” Yeah, Luke Skywalker is a very funny protagonist. He’s not really the most thrilling, but I guess maybe that’s what makes him good. He’s kind of like, you know, he’s learning, and you’re learning along with him.

But I think there’s kind of been this thing where—sorry, speaking of the death of cultural criticism, there’s been the jokes about very far-right, fascist-friendly political thinkers who love Rage Against the Machine or something like that. There’s a whole slew of people who don’t realize that Star Wars is a deeply anti-fascist story. And so I think somewhere along the way that kind of got lost.

And I mean, it’s the same—I love Warhammer, games of Warhammer. And the main characters in it are terrible. The Space Marines—it’s a complete fascist, dictatorial, intergalactic government that’s taking over and killing everybody on every planet. But there’s a lot of guys in that space, specifically guys, who are just like, they’re the good guys. And you’re like, no, this is satire. So I think maybe that’s what’s happened with my love of things like Star Wars: it got ruined by maybe some of the fandom or something.

Yeah, it says, “Great, but too many spin-offs, and starting to fall flat.” They’re hit or miss. Yeah, I haven’t watched most of the recent stuff for Star Wars, so I’m behind. I did play—more nerd talk—there is a really good trading card game, in the vein of Magic: The Gathering, that’s called Star Wars: Unlimited, which I think is an incredible game. Great artwork in it, very unique artwork. I think it’s actually worth looking at just for that. Let me see if I can find some stuff. They did really interesting artwork in it that, for me, was the big standout. They did a much more graphic illustration style that I think was really neat. But the game I think is actually incredible.

Let’s see if I can find some good imagery of cards here. So you can kind of see in here they did this really cool, a little bit more comic book style, but super graphic. I think it’s really interesting what they did. Definitely more unique in the space. A lot of people either loved it or hated it, but I think the card game is great. I think it’s one of the best card games ever made, but I just can’t get into the Star Wars theme to care. I actually just sold all my cards off for it.

But it’s funny—this is branding talk here. The idea of putting out a trading card game is just insane. It’s so expensive. You have to sell millions and millions of copies of it in order to make any money. And all you have to do to differentiate yourself, really, in the end, is obviously the gameplay mechanisms, but the look of the cards. That’s truly it—that, and how people relate to the stories that those cards tell. And the problem with Star Wars is, for most people, that story only goes so deep.

So, okay, you guys are all talking about Andor. That’s the thing I need to watch. Oh, sorry, I’m going to put Firefly to the side, and I’m going to watch Andor finally, because everyone keeps saying Andor is this great rebel story. So okay, I’ve got to watch it. Dang. That’s what’s coming up next, then. It sounds like Andor’s pretty revolution-minded, which maybe we could use a little bit more of in our lives these days.

I do think that’s one thing that sci-fi does that I think more brands could do: accepting that the world is inherently political. Sci-fi challenges that. I mean, it is always cultural critique, and it always inherently challenges the present and how we do things. Yeah, Ryan says it feels like an extremely relevant show to be watching right now. And I think brands could stand to actually accept that branding and advertising are inherently a part of our political landscape, the same way anything is.

I think it was Jared in the chat who turned me on to it: Ian Anderson from The Designers Republic just gave a talk. It was like a Zoom meeting thing, and I’m bummed because I missed it, but I’ve seen some clips come out of it, where they asked him if design is a political practice. And it was really fun to hear him talk about it, because he comes up from a very working-class British background. And so he has this mindset that if you weren’t worried about politics, it just means you’re a little too posh, because the politics are happening to you whether you like it or not.

And that’s kind of the way he approached all design and branding: it should all be propaganda for something. That’s what it is. It’s inherently like you were putting something out with a political statement. And it’s the classic question of whether art can be political or not political. But maybe that’s a conversation for another time, the politics of art and design. But I might not be smart enough for that one. We’ll see. But all right.