How I became a Star Wars fan?

Star Wars is well loved by many people all over the world. I am a huge Star Wars fan too, but this wasn't the case until year 2018. For many years in the past, I never liked Star Wars. What was the reason for that?

It all dates back to year 2001. In January 2001, I watched the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day on television. This was the first English movie I watched in my life. I really loved the movie, and I was particularly impressed with the boy who acted as John Connor.

A few months later in May 2001, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace was shown on television. The poster of the movie featured a boy, who is the young Anakin Skywalker. When I saw him, I somehow had the wrong impression that it was the same boy who acted as John Connor in Terminator 2.

As a result, I became interested in watching The Phantom Menace. However, it turned out to be a terrible movie. There were no exciting action scenes, and the overuse of CG effects ruined the movie. Worse still, I couldn't understand the plot at all, and I thought that the movie was just about some children playing.

I got so bored that I couldn't even finish watching it. I tried watching it a second time a few days later, but it wasn't any better. This completely ruined my impression towards Star Wars, and I hated Star Wars since then. Whenever I heard anything about Star Wars, I would just dismiss it as something terrible.

This quote from the movie Inception is very true "What is the most resilient parasite? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate." The idea in my mind was that anything about Star Wars is terrible, and that idea stuck on firmly for a very long time.

14 years later in December 2015, Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens was released. It received positive reviews from a lot of people, including my friends and family members. At that time, my immediate thought was that it is just another terrible movie and I refused to believe the reviews.

Some of my friends and family members tried to explain to me that The Phantom Menace is the worst Star Wars movie ever so I should not judge the whole Star Wars franchise based on that movie alone. Eventually, I was convinced to download The Force Awakens to give it a shot.

However, I never bothered to watch it, as I was more interested in other movies. After the actress Carrie Fisher passed away in December 2016, I found out that she acted as Princess Leia in Star Wars. With that, I began to have a bit of knowledge about Star Wars.

In December 2017, Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi was released. However, its reviews weren't as good as those of The Force Awakens. As such, that didn't help improve my perception towards Star Wars. I had a lot of free time in January 2018 and I watched several movies, but not Star Wars.

On 16 February 2018, I and my cousins were in Kulim celebrating Chinese New Year. On that night, my cousins were watching Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back. I didn't join them from the start, but I happened to see the asteroid field scene which seemed quite exciting. I then continued watching the movie with them.

The Empire Strikes Back turned out to be a really good movie. I was interested to find out what would happen in the next episode, so I watched Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi with my cousins on the following night. It was also very good, but I could only watch the first half as it was already late at night.

As I was quite busy in the following weeks, it was only on 1 March 2018 where I could continue watching the second half of Return of the Jedi. Once again, I really enjoyed the movie. However, as I still wasn't really a Star Wars fan, I didn't have immediate plans to watch another Star Wars movie.

On 24 March 2018, I watched A Wrinkle in Time. Although this movie was unrelated to Star Wars, I felt that its climax was quite similar to that of Return of the Jedi, as both were about the use of familial love to defeat the "dark side". This was interesting as I watched Return of the Jedi just 3 weeks ago.

During my Easter break in April 2018, I often searched on the Internet about Star Wars. I found out that a significant number of Star Wars fans didn't like the prequel trilogy (Star Wars I, II and III). Therefore, I decided to just read the plots of Star Wars I, II and III on Wikipedia instead of watching them.

After reading that, it gave me a good understanding about the character of Anakin Skywalker and I became even more interested in Star Wars. I felt that Star Wars III should be worth watching. However, as a few highly-anticipated movies were being released around that time, I wanted to watch them first.

On 25 May 2018, I watched Solo: A Star Wars Story in the cinema. Although it was released on that day itself, not many people were watching it. The reviews of the movie were also not very good. However, I personally liked the movie a lot, particularly the characters of Han Solo and Qi'ra. This was the 3rd Star Wars movie I watched since February 2018.

Then, I watched Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith on 16 June 2018. Despite already knowing the plot, it was still enjoyable to watch the movie. At that point, I had truly become a Star Wars fan. It was hard to believe how differently I perceived Star Wars just 6 months ago.

I followed on with Star Wars IV: A New Hope on 24 June 2018. One week later on 1 July 2018, I watched Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. After watching it, I could finally understand why everyone said it is very good when it was released 3 years ago. I loved the character of Rey in the movie very much.

On 8 July 2018, I watched Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi. Overall, it is a great movie. However, I really didn't like the character of Rose and the scenes on the casino planet, which in my opinion should be removed from the movie. This was the reason its reviews weren't very positive.

After that on 16 July 2018, I watched Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It is a very good movie, although its ending felt really sad. I loved the character of Jyn Erso in the movie a lot. With this, I had watched every Star Wars movie up to that point, except Star Wars II which isn't worth watching in my opinion.

On 30 December 2019, I watched Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Despite its poor reviews, I really enjoyed the movie. It gives my favourite character Rey an emotional and satisfying ending. Rose is also much more likeable this time. Interestingly, the plot of this movie has similarities with Avengers: Endgame, which was released a few months earlier.

Now, I hope that there will be more Star Wars movies in the future.

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