I should start by saying that I am maybe the least picky Star Wars fan ever. As I will describe to just about anyone who doesn’t ask, my interests have migrated away from the Star Wars movies themselves, which we watched on VHS every weekend for a time when I was a small lad, to the fan projects in my young adulthood. When I had seen Blue Harvest for the first time, I felt like I didn’t need to watch the original trilogy just as much, because I had the Silver Age meta-critique of my favorite pop culture. And then when I was finishing out college and fans were successful in stitching together two of the movies by distributing 10 second assignments to thousands of people while preserving the audio track, I have yet to witness something so enterprising and pure and joyful than Star Wars Uncut. When Kennedy et al. wanted to take another crack at the franchise, every movie felt like a gift, especially the ones without space wizards or incest romance plotlines. Rogue One, which spawned Andor and gave us Bill Burr’s years’ in the making from-joke-to-screen extended cameo AND a whole second season full of hits, The Last Jedi which retcons decades of space warfare for one cool effect but otherwise dramatizes the world’s slowest police chase, and even Solo all feel like unexpected labors of love crafted for a bunch of fans who have grown rancid over the years. To be clear, I collected the cards purely as a means of draining my parents’ will to live and I have absolutely no interest in the extended universe beyond its ability to flag for me people who probably won’t take care of me emotionally, but the movies and the fan made indie projects, short films, and crowdsourcing is a point of joy for me. (And no, the animation style for all those weird 3D backstory cartoons really turned me off and I’m really happy for you that your standards are so low, but I’m not interested in learning about the dark backstory to some sideline character through a child’s Minecraft-level project.)
Which is all to say, the television shows never felt like oversaturation for me and you never forget your first when it comes to Baby Yoda and the Internet’s daddy. Like, I get that we all ought to let the second season be bleached from our minds, but if all you want to see is the greatest hits of Baby Yoda mercilessly eating creatures cuter than himself and hours of everyone else in the world lowering the bar for what constitutes as “difficult” or “heroic” for this babe magnet, then you have got yourself a movie. Like, reporters at one point were literally crafting friendship bracelets for this little guy–and giving him lemons to try just to see his reaction! The movie is kind of hilariously harebrained, reductive, and repetitive, but in its defense: 1) it is the shortest Star Wars movie in a generation, 2) there is no incest subplot, 3) monster fights are fire, 4) bounties are taken, also fire, 5) the Big Bads are so sneaky and surprising, 6) some of the sight gags are so cruel they’re funny, and 7) Baby Yoda gets to be the sassy little bitch you’re hoping for.
Mom’s review was so savage I feel like I should record it here just as a gut check. It went something like, “I know what you’re thinking but don’t take [your gremlin] to see this. There are a bunch of scary monsters. Pedro Pascal is literally in like two minutes of this thing where he takes off his helmet and otherwise it’s a stuntman.” And then to cap it off, when I laughed at that, she said, “Even Dad agrees and he was awake the whole time.” So to be clear, my Mom, who couldn’t even stay awake for the whole movie, wanted me to know that even though she assumed I would bring a small child to see a mercenary deep six a bunch of aliens, that I shouldn’t, because a) that small child wouldn’t be able to see Pedro Pascal’s face for very long and b) the monsters would be scary when they died. Anyway, kid is going this week and I’ll report back on the nightmares created.
