I can't say I've ever been a Star Wars fan exactly, but I always found it to be interesting until Episode 8.
I saw the prequels as they came out in the cinema, but I was too young to really take it in. That and I wasn't really interested. My mum took me to see Phantom Menace and I remember ignoring the actual movie to roll on the floor instead. I went to see Clones and Sith with friends but we only really went because we felt like we had to, you know? It was Star Wars, this big thing they always talked about on TV "Best [X]" lists. I never really took any of them in.
The first Star Wars media I ever really appreciated was KOTOR on the Xbox. I thought that was the ****. KOTOR 2 was ****ing awful though (Obsidian have never made a good game, fite me). I also played the LEGO Star Wars games and loved them, too. Those games were my main exposure to the franchise for years.
I never even saw the original trilogy until about 2006 or 07 when a friend lent me all six movies on DVD. I watched the prequels and thought they were pretty bad, but enjoyed the vague nostalgic feeling I got from seeing them again. I've never seen the theatrical versions of the original trilogy, only the 2004 DVD re-edit of the 1997 special editions. I have never in my life seen Han shoot first. I liked them, though. They were solid, well written, well directed.
I was never excited for Force Awakens but I was interested to see what Disney would do with it. They played it as safe as could be and more or less remade A New Hope. A lot of people were upset about that but I was never really bothered. A New Hope didn't mean anything to me, I had absolutely nothing invested in the series, and it made sense to me from Disney's point of view. They need to get a new generation of fans interested in Star Wars while also reassuring the existing ones that the prequels weren't about to happen again. What better way to do both than by making A New Hope again? After seeing the film I was interested in how they would make it their own with Episode 8.
Then I saw Rogue One. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. There is nothing — nothing — in this movie to enjoy unless you cum at the sight of Star Wars iconography. It's incomprehensible to me that a studio as big and experienced as Disney could produce something so bad on every level. It sent a clear message that Disney saw Star Wars as a source of free money, that they believed they didn't even have to try to make decent content, that money would pour in from the brand name alone. But that was a spin-off movie, not part of the main focus, the sequel trilogy, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
I hated The Last Jedi within five minutes. The title crawl alone made me wary, but the whole thing with Poe pretending he can't hear Hux and then dropping a really awkward and poorly written "yo mama" joke was the moment I knew I was going to hate the next two and whatever hours. I didn't like anything in the movie and I kept looking at my mate like "Are you seeing this ****?" Everything to do with Holdo, everything to do with Rose, everything to do with Kanto Bight, everything to do with trying to force grey morality into a series that has typically dealt in black & white, all of it was just ****ing awful. There was one moment when the film could have won me back just enough to maybe go see Episode 9, when Kylo Ren asked Rey to join him. Suddenly my interest was piqued. Here was a chance for the writer to actually explore the grey morality he was hamfistedly trying to explore earlier, a chance to set up a real character driven conflict for the final movie, to subvert expectations in a way that added something instead of just removing something.
But no. Rey just says "No, I'm the good guy, you bad," and leaves, I guess. We never see her leave but then she just shows up in the Millennium Falcon later when the plot needs her to. So we're left in a situation where Episode 9 will be Rey fights Kylo Ren and wins, the end. Spoilers, I guess. There's nothing interesting set up, nothing I care at all to see happen, and I no longer trust Disney to produce a film worth watching. The fact that the sequel trilogy wasn't planned out at least in broad strokes before they made Force Awakens is baffling to me. They gave the second movie to Some Guy and he just cancelled all the little set ups JJ Abrams left for him and replaced them with absolutely nothing. Snoke? Plllp doesn't matter. Rey's parents? Plllp doesn't matter. The Knights of Ren? Plllp Knights of Who? Get a life, dude. Episode 9 will be nothing more than a corporate-written, by-the-numbers snooze-fest that fanboys will finger themselves over and small children will like because colours and movement. I have no interest in it, or anything else from this franchise while Disney are in control.
So, while I wouldn't say I was ever a fan of Star Wars, I would say that since Disney took over my interest in the series has been killed. Just like the past.
Mark Hamill didn't deserve this.