Star Bores, Episode Dumb: The Fandom Menace

  Have you ever had a randomly associated thought take over your brain? The kind of idea that just stands in the waiting room of your frontal lobes, yammering like an excited two-year-old until you agree to tell someone else about it? Well, it happened to me today at work.
  The paperback edition of the novel based on Attack of the Clones came out today. Since working at a bookstore finances my bastardly activities, I became intimately familiar with it as I stocked several dozen copies. While my hands were occupied with this retail drone duty, I began to reflect on what I call The Star Wars Problem; i.e., why do the new films suck such gargantuan ass?
  I've pondered this vexing question on several previous occasions. I sat through Episodes I and II in the theater, and I've watched snippets of Episode I on video. I sat through endless hours of watching my old roommate play an Episode I-based video game on his beloved PlayStation, and had my ass handed to me by snide computerized opponents when I succumbed to the temptation to try my hand at the pod racer simulation at the bowling alley across the street. During all of these activities, I found myself lamenting the sad state of the film franchise. I've been through the usual laundry list of complaints, which usually goes something like this:
- No Han Solo.
- Great actors, who were apparently told to not act even a little bit.
- Scripts that answer lingering questions from the original trilogy... with more questions! (Midi-chlorians, my pasty white ass!)
- No Han Solo.
- A general wiping away of the human elements of the story in favor of (albeit amazing) special effects, digital characters, and (albeit really, really cool) lightsaber battles.
- Jar Jar Binks, who not only proves that George Lucas is a front runnner for densest white man on the planet, but typifies the awful things that happen when any entertainer becomes so influential and powerful that everyone around him is too intimidated or obsequious to look him in the eye and say honestly, "Michael, another nose job is a really bad idea."
- Advertising based around villains who have less than a dozen lines, and die by the end of the film.
- No Han Solo.
  Before you get your Wookie on, I freely acknowledge the utter lack of an original complaint in that list. Chances are good that a Google search will turn up a jillion and three fan sites saying much the same thing. The point is, they aren't new to me either. I'd been over them in my mind a few dozen times, and I still wasn't completely satisfied that I'd hit on what made the new films so unsatifying. Then, today, while I was tucking the novelization on to the shelf, it finally hit me.
  The problem is the Jedi.