30. SERIAL BALKS: Any franchise film featuring an exceptionally deceptive character.
Dear fat little big glasses wearing me of 1977,
Some day, you are going to grow up and the thing you love most right now, Star Wars, will suck.
This may seem impossible to you right now.
As a five-year-old, you are loving everything about the movie. You’re waiting to get the toys. You heard that there may be a second movie. Maybe even more than that.
Oh, little husky tub spectrum surfer, someday, Star Wars will have new TV shows all the time, and you won’t watch any of them.
You worry, at the old age of 54, that you’ve become cynical. Jaded. And sure, you’ll love The Mandalorian and Rogue One, but there will be an entire Solo: A Star Wars Story movie. Yes, all Han Solo and most people will hate it. This suck wil start next year when, for Christmas, you will get a TV show of Star Wars. Bea Arthur will run the cantina. Chewbacca’s father will watch porn. And yes, Empire Strikes Back will be the best movie ever, but halfway through Return of the Jedi and you’ll wonder, “What are these Ewoks?”
Will Star Wars suck? Or have you just given up on getting excited about things?
Will you still go out at midnight and buy all the prequel characters, only for Ric Ollie not to be the new Han Solo you hoped for?
And will you still occasionally talk like Sepulba, despite your Gen X pose of saying, “Well, you know Lucas ripped off Jack Kirby and Kurosawa…”
Oh, sweaty half-shaved-head goofus, you don’t even know about podracers or Midi‑Chlorian counts or Snoke or who the Emperor is, much less that the Emperor has a zombie planet with zombie Star Destroyers. No, you are blissfully, happily reveling in what movies can be.
1977 will be a year for movies unlike many others. Close Encounters, Saturday Night Fever, The Spy Who Loved Me, Smokey and the Bandit, The Sentinel, The Farmer, Eraserhead, The Car, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Orca, Sorcerer, The Kentucky Fried Movie, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Suspiria, Shock Waves, Alucarda, Cathy’s Curse, The Child, Death Bed, The Incredible Melting Man, The Psychic, Rabid, Shock, Tintorera, Hitch-Hike, Ruby, Hausu. Star Wars wasn’t the only movie released in 1977. So many of these movies obsess me to this day.
So why am I still so hung up and sad about Star Wars?
Because I stood outside in the cold December air after watching the last Skywalker Saga movie and thought, “Is that it?”
Did I check out right from the beginning, when Leia Organa used the Force to fly through the void of space?
How about Luke Skywalker, who seems like a completely different character in each of these sequels —now a bitter old man—I get it, Wormie—who just wants the Jedi to die off?
And why are Finn and Rose, who we once thought of as equals to Rey in the other films, now just getting sent off to do space missions like when the Justice Society would all fly off on different missions in Gardner Fox stories?
But no matter how much I dislike a movie that kills off the sacrifice of Darth Vader to stop the Emperor, who “got better” in this one and started bringing back every bad guy, well, there is one thing I love about this movie.
DJ, played by Benicio del Toro.
DJ isn’t your typical Star Wars hero—he isn’t a rogue with a heart of gold like Han Solo, nor a villain driven by dark side ideology. He is a cold, cynical slicer, a hacker locked in a drunk tank when Resistance fighters Finn and Rose Tico break in looking for a master codebreaker.
His name isn’t even DJ. That stands for “Don’t Join,” based on his undying belief that war is a racket and taking a stand for either the Resistance or the First Order is a sucker’s game. During their stealth mission aboard a stolen luxury yacht, DJ shows Finn that the ship’s owner sold weapons to both the First Order and the Resistance. In DJ’s eyes, the Empire, the Rebellion and the First Order are just made-up labels used to justify an endless, profitable military-industrial machine. After sneaking Finn and Rose onto the First Order flagship Supremacy to disable their tracking device, the group gets caught by Captain Phasma. True to his word, DJ immediately sells out the Resistance’s escape plan to save his own skin and collect a fat payday. When Finn calls him out for turning his back on what’s right, DJ simply shrugs with a classic line: “Maybe.”
DJ is the first and only character in Star Wars that I know of that just doesn’t give a shit. This doesn’t make you a powerful Force user, but let’s face it: the Jedi scrwed everything up, Palpatine was like Trump but actually smart, and the prequels don’t get good until Order 66 gets called down.
But DJ? I like that he realizes this is a show and knows only he can take care of himself.
So yeah, Kylo Ren, Snoke getting cut in half seconds into the movie — Star Wars has a fetish for both wiping out its lead heels and also chopping dudes in half or cutting off their arms or, if you’re Jango Fett, losing every body part at once to fan service Mace Windu, who, trust me, isn’t dead — and an ending where Rey takes the name Skywalker and you think it’s going to be this big Morricone-scored moment of magic and no, it’s a fart in church. Worse, it’s a fart into your hand, and you’re compelled to smell it.
The funny thing is, I’m a mark. I’m still going to see any Star Wars-related movie. But I wonder: will any of them impart the childlike wisdom you are feeling now, not even six Sam?
I hope so for both our sakes, you little nerf herder.
