Head canon: Star Wars edition

Polish Star Wars poster?

I like the idea of head canon, especially as I get older, and the franchises I loved get longer and longer in the tooth. 

It's inevitable that franchises will have ups and downs, golden eras and dark ages, fabulous creative teams and capricious greedy studio hacks who care nothing for the material, have nothing to say, and just want to milk it for every penny they can get their grubby cheeto stained fingers on. 

Or is it me with the cheetos? Whatever.

So I thought I'd put together a list of my own head canon. 

There's different international flavours of Star Wars, so why not my own? Copyright, that's why! 

First up is Star Wars, because, honestly, that one is pretty easy.

My official (and completely irrelevant outside of my head) list: 

• Star Wars (just Star Wars, not the Very Special Edition with Blossom)

• The Empire Strikes Back (original cut)

• The Return of the Jedi (original cut, but only half of it)

• The Mandalorian season 1 (some of it) and season 2 (a little of it)

• Andor (all of it)

I'm not really a fan of the prequels, but George Lucas deserves his due: he didn't blatantly rehash the first trilogy, lazily reordering elements. He added to the whole, and he didn't blow up another d*mn Death Star (okay, that Trade Federation control ship came close). Still, it wasn't the creatively bankrupt hack job the sequel trilogy was.

Just as The Force Awakens regurgitates A New Hope, The Last Jedi recycles The Empire Strikes Back. It's so obvious, yet no one sees it (or they don't care). I still don't get why people swoon over this lacklustre film. It doesn't 'democratize' jedi or force powers: the jedi were shown to not have kids in the prequel trilogy already. Lucas set that up, so why this film gets the credit I have no idea. 

Star Wars unlike you've ever seen it before!

And as bad as I find Last Jedi, the Rise of Skywalker is an irredeemable, unwatchable abomination about which nothing further should be said.

Sadly, younger fans HATE Andor, they find it slow paced, boring, and insufficiently superficial with lots of bling bling. Not enough Death Stars blow up, and there isn't enough ostentatious back flipping. They'd probably prefer Swan Lake with lightsabers. 

Me? I think it's fascinating, smart, historically informed, and well constructed. It has slow builds that yield big payoffs. It's brilliant, far better than anything else put out since Empire Strikes Back. 

That said, Andor's NOT a kids show. Lucas famously declared himself a toymaker who also made movies (mostly to advertise the toys) and that the films were made for specifically for children. I think he's mistaken, in that the first two films are actually all-ages (despite muppet Yoda), and it's only with lame Ewoks and subsequent prequels that it smashed right into children's faces, rather than a general audience's. 

My head cannon reflects this. 

From Samurai rip-off to Samurai-in-Spaaace!

How the h*ll Andor ever got greenlit given the franchise focus on kiddies I can't explain, but it makes up for a lot Disney has put out. Not enough, mind, I'm still a disgruntled old fan who regularly yells at the younglings on his lawn (at least I don't dice them with a lightsaber, unlike Ani 'Are you an Angel' Skywalker), but a lot.

The Disney era for Star Wars has a few other highlights: they've put out some cool games (Rebellion, X-Wing, Armada) and... uh, okay that's about it. 

I've aged out as an audience member. As the feral kid says, it just lives now in my memories.

Oh, Feral Kid... what wonderful memories you have!