The five stages of Star Wars fandom grief.

I am a Star Wars fan. And when I use the present tense there, it's in the same way that people refer to themselves as recovering alcoholics even when they haven't had a drink in 10 years. To call myself a superfan might be a bit extreme, as I've seen cases of Star Wars addiction much worse than my own, but I was in pretty deep. In high school, I read more Star Wars novels than I did regular books?somewhere around 15?and I own three copies of each of the films' soundtracks. I even won an award from almighty Lucasfilm itself for the hours I spent making a Star Wars fan movie.It's been a rough dozen years for us Star Wars fans. The release of The Phantom Menace split the community in half, the gushers (people who loved it) and the bashers (people who didn't). If you can't tell from my equating fandom with alcoholism, I am a basher. Each of the next two movies, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, was worse than the last, and it became increasingly hard to identify as a fan. After all, the whole franchise was based on six feature films, and I hated half of them (and only sort of liked Return of the Jedi).Then I had my chance to express my angst to the nation. About two years ago, a team of documentary filmmakers asked me to be in an upcoming project, The People vs. George Lucas. They were chronicling the disillusionment of hard-core Star Wars fans, and wanted me to talk about my reaction to the crappy prequels and special editions. I considered doing the interview, but never got around to it. The whole thing seemed like a lot of trouble, and besides, I just didn't care anymore. It occurred to me that, as a Star Wars fan, I'd gone through the famous five stages of grief. The sci-fi universe that was at least partially responsible for my not kissing a girl until college was gone, and I accepted it.

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