7 Reasons To Give Up Star Wars

One thing the House of Mouse knows is how to turn people into big, emotional saps. They can turn two black circles placed on top of a child’s head into a symbol of youthful happiness rather than the disfigured ears of a rodent. They know how to tug at the heart strings and they know how to make people fall in love with tiny, cute things.

Before The Force Awakens even came out, BB-8 was one of the most popular characters from the movie. People were buying up the radio controlled toys like hotcakes. Again, this is a robot from a movie that people hadn’t even seen yet and they were already smitten. When you look at BB-8, you can see the same mentality that brought us M-O, the little cleaner robot from WALL-E. (This is also, surely, why there will be a Baby Groot in the next Guardians movie, no matter what anyone says, but that’s for another time.)

Star Wars is no stranger to merchandising, by any means. George Lucas made his fortune by retaining the merchandising rights to the franchise. You can name practically any product and there’s a Star Wars branded version of it. It doesn’t stop there. Lucas pushed for Ewoks to play a large role in Return of the Jedi because he was relying on their popularity fueling toy sales. So, no - this is not an issue that is new, but if there’s anyone more ruthless in merchandising than Lucas, it’s Disney.

It seems that every generation gets their parade of Star Wars crap marching down main street. But this is different. Before, there were at least years between movie releases so you could catch a break. Now, we are in for perpetual Star Wars releases and promotions.

As soon as one movie is released, the hype for the next one begins. Rogue One was out for like a month and then the floodgates opened for news about The Last Jedi (at least Disney is preserving the spirit of awfully-titled Star Wars films). If you think that will get on your nerves, step away.