Capitalism realized a while ago that a huge swath of young millennials and elder Gen Z are just broke enough to not comfortably start a family or buy a house but just flush with enough cash to fill the emotional holes left by shitty boomer parents with overpriced children’s toys.
https://bsky.app/profile/wapplehouse.bsky.social/post/3ly23expml22j
lmao imagine being "really into Star wars" in the year of our Lord 2025
If you had told the early teen me in 1977 that Star Wars would still be incredibly popular in 2025 - I probably would say "Super cool!" But then just a few seconds later I might say "Why?"
You're my late mom's age. She wasn't all that wowed by SW when she saw it in theaters, not like Jaws or The Exorcist which scared the shit out of her.
I'm sorry about your mom's passing.
I saw Star Wars and Jaws at movie theaters. Star Wars blew my mind. Jaws scared the crap out me. For the life of me - I can't remember exactly when I saw The Exorcist. It came out in 1973. Did I see it before the other two? After? In any case - the vital thing is I watched it on tv. I must have secretly watched it late at night on Creature Features. And in the fat-back tv era - the tv experience was shit. The resolution was low. Maybe like a sort of crappy 480p rip today? Broadcasts were "edited for tv" and there was pan-and-scan. At best watching a movie like The Exorcist was 1/10th as powerful as watching it at the movies.
Unlike the other two - I thought it was "scary" but I quickly forgot about it. Decades later I watched it at home and I really liked it. Right now - I'm thinking about watching it again. Maybe I can't. I used to love horror - cough - to death. The problem is that I've watched 100s of hours of terrible, shitty movies and tv series that ripped off The Exorcist in a way that might make it hard for me to enjoy it now.
An example is a series I watched where possessed people spewed CGI vomit that flowed upwards so it covered the ceiling. For fuck's sake. That's not scary. That's silly and dumb! [Ninja edit. Maybe it was Outcast?]
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Thanks. Yeah she saw a bunch of classics in the theaters with my aunt and uncle. Vomit that flows upwards? Bone-chilling.
Google rant
As is my custom - I thought got all the details wrong. It turns out - I was spot on. The series I was thinking of is called Outcast and it has 20 episodes. Never mind the vomit - can't find a CGI screengrab of anything from that series and I can't find anything useful at all. Incredible. Every time I think google can't get more garbage-y - it surprises me and it beats my expectations. Top-notch, google - top-notch.
Eh, there's older franchises, by like A LOT. None quite as big as Star Wars but close. Heck one is quite popular here (technically)
I think if I lived in 1977 and was told the same thing I would just assume the movie turned into a SciFi TV show, not that it's become a sprawling slop empire of mid-overall-quality (with the very occasional banger). Though I think it would be hard for someone in the 70s to imagine modern media enshittification.
I would have been equally surprised that Star Trek was super-popular in 2025. How? In 1977 - I thought of the series as "really old". And it was in ~10 year old reruns after all. If I thought about "trekkies" at all - I surely thought of them as dumb dorks. Plus the first trek movie was two years away.
Andor seems to be good, so there's that. But yeah, cursed franchise.
Andor is too good for Star Wars. Watching that show, any time I thought about how it was all building up to Rogue One it took me completely out of the experience.
andor should've been a star trek show, and those nu-trek shows should've never been made