How to downplay your earlier enthusiasm if the new Star Wars film sucks

We all know it might happen, and you need to be ready if it does. Here are four excuses to downplay your earlier enthusiasm and mask the gaping hole in your heart left by JJ Abrams and his dream-wrecking pile of Wookiee turd (if indeed that’s what it turns out to be).

“It’s not as bad as The Phantom Menace

This one’s easy to remember, and will almost certainly be true. Avid readers of ThermoCow will also be able to praise the film’s relative merits compared to Star Wars Verses Godziller, Star Wars: Principles of Interstellar Banking and Finance, Star Wars Episode Se7en, and Star Wars - J J Abrams presents J J Abrams' Lost in Star Wars.

“Star Wars? No no, I like Star Trek

If your friends know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek, chances are they will be complicit in your misery and unwilling to call you out on this blatant lie. For everyone else, you can rest easy knowing that the most recent Star Trek film has a respectable 7.8 rating on IMDB. “May your life be long and with prosperity”, as we Trekkies say.

“It’s a fantastic movie, provided you’ve read, seen and played every single work in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.”

While this excuse may make you look deluded, at least you won’t have to deviate from your earlier messaging. The new Star Wars film is good, dammit, but everyone else can’t appreciate that because their Star Wars knowledge is inferior to yours.

Note: The Star Wars Holiday Special is considered part of the SWEU, falling into the Star Wars Legends category (previously C-Canon). You will have to come to terms with that on your own.

“I was only getting excited ironically”

Hipsters have made it cool to do something for the sole reason that you don’t enjoy it. This is apparently called irony. Why not claim that you were being ironic, and that your recent enthusiasm for the new Star Wars film was, like, an expression of your anti-Star Wars manifesto, and that you were totally saying something about consumerism in a hyper-conformist world of corporatised art? After all, it’s impossible to be disappointed if you never have opinions of your own.