Sunday, December 21, 2014

An analogy explaining my avoidance of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.



               The reason why I have decided not to watch the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars movie or even to see the movie itself can be understood by analogy. Imagine for a moment that two new NFL teams will be created to play in the 2015 Super Bowl. The teams will have a few familiar players but will mostly consist of players new to the NFL. The created teams will not have played in the regular season and thus the fans will not have had the opportunity to develop any familiarity. Why would NFL fans even bother to watch the Super Bowl? The creation of two new teams invalidates the season; all the games and moments and plays the fans watched with a mixture of anger and delight are to come to nothing because no team that played during the season will be playing in the grand finale. This is basically the erasure of history and I imagine it would infuriate the fans. People that are indifferent to the NFL might have trouble understanding the problem.
                And thus this is the situation with the fictional world of Star Wars. The upcoming movie is not following the story set forth in the Expanded Universe novels; the previously authorized sequence of events following Return of the Jedi is being erased, or I should say – has been erased. This is no different than the NFL erasing a season of play and creating two brand new teams to play in a Super Bowl.
                The erasure is not 100% actual since one can still read the Star Wars novels or an NFL fan could still watch previously played games. The continuity, though, is what’s being meddled with – molded – into something new that does not follow what has been set forth. The disruption of continuity affects only those that have taken part in it, so a newcomer to Star Wars would not suspect anything is amiss, nor would a person indifferent to the NFL feel cheated.

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