Star Wars ‘fans’ need to grow up or move on

It’s been well publicized that Star Wars actors Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran were cyberbullied until they deleted their social media accounts.

As bad as that is, what happened earlier this month during Star Wars Celebration is even worse.

For those who don’t know, Star Wars Celebration is a semi-regular convention designed to celebrate all things Star Wars (and some Indiana Jones since there’s a new movie coming out this year). This year’s Celebration took place April 7-10 in London.

While I couldn’t be there myself, I watched what I could online and it looked like it was a great event with a lot of awesome announcements, including the reveal of three new movies.

Not everyone was as happy about the event as I was though. On Twitter, someone using the handle @AvengeStarWars was so upset with what he was seeing at Celebration, and I’m guessing how Disney has treated the Star Wars IP since they purchased Lucasfilm from George Lucas in 2012, that they actually encouraged people to go to the convention and kill Lucasfilm employees and fans of the Disney era of Star Wars.

“With Lucasfilm having somehow hit an all-time low, I believe now is the time to act against them and their supporters,” they tweeted. “While it is too late to save Star Wars, we can make (expletive) sure we avenge it and hit these (expletive) where it hurts.
“While obviously I can’t be in London myself, I’m sure at least one person there would be willing to help this cause,” they continued. “Of course, we can’t get rid of EVERY single Lucasfilm employee and shill, but hopefully if one of them falls others will resign out of fear for their safety.”

I love Star Wars. The first movie came out when I was five months old, so it has been a part of my life since basically the beginning.

I cannot imagine what was going in this person’s mind that they actually thought not liking a TV show or movie was worthing killing or inciting violence over. I was and still am extremely disappointed with how the final film, The Rise of Skywalker, turned out. But that doesn’t mean I want to go after director JJ Abrams because of it.

Thankfully nothing happened. No one took this misguided person’s plea to heart and acted on it. The person’s Twitter account was banned, along with several other Twitter accounts they created after being banned.

The FBI was contacted and I hope this person is arrested and charged with making terrorist threats, because that’s what they were doing.

If you read my column long enough you’ll see that the message I try to get across the most is to just be nice to one another. We don’t all have to have the same beliefs or like the same movies, but don’t lash out or threaten violence against someone if they don’t share the same opinion.

At least the replies to the person’s post on Twitter were entertaining.

@_WrongHordak had one of my favorites: You’re a good example of why parents should monitor what their kids post online.

@SnyderVMarvel I think summed it up the best: It is a fictional series. If you are not happy about it, just move on.