'SWOUNDS, WHAT A DORKNERD.

The thing that makes nerds insufferable -- that promotes them to dorks, in fact -- is their complete lack of perspective, their inability to remember that it's only a comic book, a video game, or whatever. Take G. Shane Morris at The Federalist and his angry cri de cœur, "‘The Last Jedi’ Blasts The Heart Out Of Star Wars By Declaring War On The Past." If you thought your old lab partner was a pain in the ass raging about the lack of Lucasworld verisimilitude in some Star War thing -- maybe the grain of the robe on a Jawa doll or some shit -- get a load:

The appeal of Star Wars has always been its extraordinary heroes. When we first meet Ben Kenobi in “A New Hope,” we lean in and our arms prickle as he gazes into the past and murmurs, “Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.”

Right up there with "This town needs an enema" and "To infinity and beyond." Yuh can't beat the classics!

...Contrast this with a pivotal scene in “The Last Jedi,” in which Luke and ghost Yoda burn down a gnarled tree that housed that last books of the Jedi library. “Page-turners they were not,” quips Yoda, who then chuckles as he watches the flames. Nobody, evidently, needs any of the wisdom in those books, or of the ancient religion they represent. 

This kind of lighthearted immolation of the past permeates “The Last Jedi,” which may be best summed up as a cinematic act of demolition. The movie doesn’t just kill an absurd number of characters. It represents a rejection of “Star Wars’” core concept: that in a galaxy full of mind-and-planet-blowing machinery, there is a power older and greater than any technological terror—a power wielded and taught by certain extraordinary individuals whose moral choices can change the fate of the universe.

You don't understand, he rages through hot tears. It's not just a Hollywood franchise, it's a celebration of the high school English teacher who told me I was special!

This being The Federalist, we eventually have to go here:

“The Last Jedi” transforms Star Wars from a space-superhero story into one consumed with what C. S. Lewis calls the “I’m-as-good-as-you” spirit. It’s a spirit all too common in our time, when “equality” is the sole remaining virtue, and young people rally to topple statues of historical figures about whom they know next to nothing.

You stupid hippies don't respect anything -- not my favorite proto-Douthat, and certainly not Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest! 'cause Star Wars is really about The Lost Cause, and The Force is honah, suh!

It's a pity we don't have adult lockers to stuff them into.