No Force Required

Most people don’t know this about me, but I have a sixth sense regarding show people. Meaning, when you find out that an actor, actress or performer is an absolute degenerate piece of shit, I already knew from the first time I laid eyes on them, even if it was forty or more years ago.

I was blessed with a father who worked in the advertising industry. He traveled frequently from NYC to Miami, and once before I was old enough to accompany him down south, his chauffeur on a commercial shoot was a young Cuban-American named Emilio. This fella regaled my dad with exciting tales of his band, a Latin-pop ensemble that featured his wife Gloria on vocals. I might be misremembering, but I swear he played dad a tape. (Cassettes were not quite as ubiquitous as they would become just yet.)

“What are you calling yourselves?” my father inquired.

“The Miami Sound Machine,” Emilio replied.

Years later, my dad confided in me that he thought the name was awful, but had been too nice to wreck Emilio’s vibe. “It sounds like an electronic box or something,” he told me. But hey, Dad never made a million bucks in the music industry, so what did he know, right?

This was around 1977. For myself, and millions of other little boys, these were the “salad days”. A year previous was the unanimous celebration of America’s bicentennial, a glorious, halcyon, year-long outpouring of pride and joy the likes of which most of you will never experience. On the way was the highest peak the world of cinema would ever reach, a dizzying creative barrage that would last almost into the middle of the following decade.

But in 1977, nothing mattered but Star Wars.

Suddenly every kid in America ate, breathed and slept Star Wars. Literally slept upon licensed Star Wars bed sheets. Literally ate Star Wars breakfast cereal. Literally spoke of nothing but Star Wars, from the moment they awoke until their parents tucked them in at night. (In Star Wars bed sheets.) Then every kid dreamt of Star Wars, and that fabled galaxy far, far away.

Every kid except me. I didn’t give a shit.

For Halloween in 1977, my folks dressed me up in one of those cheapo vinyl Darth Vader costumes from the 5 & 10. I had no idea who I was supposed to be, but I scored more candy than I could carry while trick-or-treating, and apparently the mask’s tiny mouth-hole completed the illusion as I labored to breathe.

This faded memory matters more to me than anything else related to Star Wars during my childhood.

My dad hated going to movie theaters. We lived in New Jersey, the Jerkoff Capitol of the World, where a day at the movies invariably meant enduring two hours among the shittiest, most obnoxious people imaginable. My dad saw news footage of the never-ending lines of yammering ninnies awaiting entrance to this fucking space opera nonsense and said HELL NO. At first he promised me we’d go when the crowds were less oppressive, which of course turned out to be never. To me, Star Wars became synonymous with disappointment and exclusion from what literally everyone else was enjoying.

I never saw a single episode of the original trilogy in theaters until 1997, when the Special Editions were released. Not The Empire Strikes Back, not Return of the Jedi, nothing. I grew to resent them. I grew to hate them.

I never had a single Star Wars action figure growing up, except for “Snaggletooth”, which I’d swiped from the girls who lived up the street from me, to fuck with them for forcing me to watch Star Wars on pay cable one day. IIRC, that was the same day I put my hand in a loaded, open diaper during a game of hide and seek. I went to hide under a chair and someone had just slid the fucking thing down there instead of discarding it. Like I said; Jerkoff Capitol of the World.

Late in the summer of 1981, my dad capitulated and took me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark during a lightly-attended screening, and Indiana Jones became my childhood hero, rather than Luke Skywalker. Three years later Dr. Jones would introduce me to the concept of the “prequel”, and that September I would discover the greatest robot ever created, in the form of one Optimus Prime. It would be over a decade before I cared about Star Wars again.

People talk a lot these days about “representation”. Maybe there’s some merit to that, because I felt absolutely no personal connection to Luke Skywalker. Unlike me, he was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, so I knew deep down that no matter what tragedies befell him, he would without question emerge as the hero in the end. I didn’t like him, or care what happened to him. I was more curious as to why a faraway galaxy would have Muppets, and why the greatest Jedi master sounded like Miss Piggy.

I liked Han Solo because Indiana Jones reminded me of my dad, especially in Temple of Doom. I didn’t enjoy the three years of wondering if Han Solo was alive or dead; I didn’t enjoy the end of Empire Strikes Back until I got older and could appreciate serial adventure more, with age. I didn’t enjoy how Star Wars was all about Luke, and how every character cared about him unquestioningly. I hated how almost every comic book and movie after 1977 had to have their own ripped-off version of Luke, and how every sitcom and variety show on television insisted on referencing him, or even featuring him as a “guest star”.

I hated Mark Hamill.

When the Special Editions started coming out in 1997, I happily stood in line for each one. I enjoyed each one more than I ever enjoyed the sainted originals, because I could feel in my heart that despite the flaws inherent in the “Specialization” process (and mid-to-late 1990’s CGI), this was the man who created the franchise taking back what’s his. That’s why I saw every Star Wars prequel as early as I could, and that’s why all three went on to become some of my favorite movies of all time.

Movies with whizzing spaceships and robed wizards waving glowing plastic dicks around never inspired me one iota. The idea that one man could create a fantasy world that changes our own reality, forever, has inspired me for as long as I can remember. I owe my entire creative existence to George Lucas. Spiritually, he is as much a father to me as my own flesh and blood, although I may never meet him in person, and he will likely shuffle off his mortal coil some sad future day having not the slightest awareness of my existence.

I know you’ll never understand this. I’ve been on the internet since 1999. Don’t patronize me like I’m a know-nothing.

Mark Hamill will always represent the ruination of Star Wars to me. I don’t hate him, if anything I feel sorry for him. He is an empty shell who has naught but two roles anyone remembers, one of which is a voice in a cartoon. No offense, but with very few exceptions (Carey Means, Kevin Conroy, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, there ya go), I respect voice actors even less than I do screen actors. Show me a noted voice actor and I’ll show you a obnoxious moron with the ethics and politics of a screaming toddler. You like Tara Strong, right? Well then, you like someone who got an Uber driver fired because he liked Donald Trump. Oh, my bad, it was because he “tried to kill her” because he “found out [she and her friend] were Democrats“. I can’t imagine the arcane mind-reading powers possessed by the driver that allowed him to glean such a personal secret; Tara tweeted a video of this vile incident, but later deleted it for some inexplicable reason. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Tara and her friend being insufferable menopausal fuckwits who rant incessantly both online and in person about how everyone who isn’t a far-left liberal is a slime-caked, murderous monster that eats gay babies.

Let’s be honest here folks; that’s the kind of post a clear-minded, intelligent, thoughtful person makes. Those are obviously not the words of an over-entitled, silicone-titted, mallard-faced whore with a life as empty as her barren uterus and a “career” obscured by moss and yellowed cobwebs. I see nothing in that tweet that indicates a spoiled-rotten, miserable harridan who thinks the sun shines out her asshole because she can talk like a baby.

Mark Hamill was only ever famous for Luke Skywalker, an iconic role he took a paycheck to torpedo when Disney and Kathleen Kennedy laid a trilogy-sized shit all over the Star Wars franchise. Now he’s turned on any and all non-leftists, as though his political affiliation absolves him of his catastrophically stupid life choices and repugnant attitude. He’s chosen the false affections of the Democratic party over the genuine love he earned by being part of something larger and better than himself. He told any remaining Star Wars fans who take issue with his words to “go Force yourself“, because that’s the kind of razor-sharp wit possessed by someone who hasn’t mattered since the Carter administration.

You know, the has-been who tried to Force his son’s girlfriend into having an abortion. That Mark Hamill. I never liked him in the first place. Somehow, even before I was ten years old, I knew he was a lowlife scumfuck. I sensed it, like an immigrant Uber driver senses that his two female passengers are unbearable shit-hatted cunts. Innately. I have the gift.

The easiest part of my painful divorce from all things Star Wars was letting go of Luke Skywalker. Despite my admiration of George Lucas, and how his considerable achievements have inspired me in my work, I always thought Luke totally sucked, and never once identified with him nor dreamed of sharing his adventures. I would take hated CGI fuckup Jar Jar Binks over Luke Skywalker any day of the week. Whatever his faults, Binks serves an inarguable purpose in the saga and real-life history of Star Wars. I look at Jar Jar and see how good intentions can pave the road to Hell, literally if you count the fire planet Mustafar, by putting well-meaning but incompetent personalities in positions of power.

I look at Luke Skywalker and I see a man who would burn the world to cinders if he thought it would make that same world love him again, just as he was loved a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I see a man with more fear, anger and hatred than Darth Vader ever knew, who carries on suffering because deep down he knows the extent of his betrayal, all too well. I see a man who will only be remembered for his failures, having willingly macerated his sole success in the eyes of the public to the point of dissolution. I see just another dumbass actor who confused fleeting fame with being smarter than the rest of us.

I can’t even hate Mark Hamill. I don’t even pity him. I just stopped caring about him. It was easy.

No force required.