Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a fantastic film and easily in my top three Star Wars movies of all-time (The Empire Strikes Back is top, with this and A New Hope currently jockeying for second and third). One of the reasons I love it is because Rian Johnson has the stones to take this multibillion-dollar franchise in unpredictable and exciting new directions, injecting a load of new themes and ideas and seriously dialing down the nostalgia.
Of course, it’s those very qualities that have made many fans angrier than a wasp stuck inside a Coke can. They like their Star Wars just how it is in their imaginations, and they don’t need no hotshot indie director screwing up their precious head-canon. Consequentially, Mr. Henry Walsh put up a petition on Change.org demanding that The Last Jedi be officially struck from the Star Wars canon. I hesitate to call the people that signed this whiny crybabies but… ah, who am I kidding. They’re totally whiny crybabies.
Things took a hilarious turn today, though, when Walsh posted an update to the petition, showing some signs of regret that it’s snowballed so quickly:
I put this petition up because I was upset and I was on strong pain medication. Last December I was in a vehicle accident and am still trying to get the surgery and such, it really messed up my knee and leg and put me in a wheelchair. If I sit up for a long time it really starts hurting.
So after spending the time to get to the movie, watch it, and get back I was in ridiculous pain. I was frustrated and medicated. So, I made this petition. It was a bad idea at the time and I feel that we are pooling our efforts in not a healthy direction.
Continuing on, he wrote:
I couldn’t get the help on GoFundMe to help pay for my surgery, and yet *this* gets this kind of attention? To the point that this petition has been in multiple news publications at this point? How many other people out there need help and can’t get attention?
I’m not comfortable with that…
I love all of the support, but we also know that Disney isn’t going to do anything, and with so many people, who have much better causes, who are struggling to gain attention it is a shame that this is getting this level of media attention.
Well, we’ve all been whacked on pain medication and done stupid things we regret, right? Turns out this guy’s mistake was acting as the global prism for the bad vibes of tens of thousands of pissed off Star Wars nerds.
But despite this mea culpa, the signatures continue to roll in, with deluded fans hoping (for example) that Disney/Lucasfilm will declare the entirety of The Last Jedi a bad dream of Rey’s, presumably shortly followed by her finding a grinning Luke taking a shower in her bathroom (this is a Dallas reference, kids). Another claims that this is evidence that Disney must have “gotten to” Walsh, presumably fearful of the powers he’s unleashed with his silly petition.
If the fan rage stays this dumb, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is going to be entertaining me long after it’s out of cinemas, that’s for sure.