SPOILER ALERT! Stop reading now if you love "Star Wars" like me, but unlike me want to remain pristine and spoiler-free, like so much untouched sand on a planet with binary suns.
You know what's fun about writing a spoiler alert? When you're spoiler-alerting (actual literary term) a film you haven't even seen yet but have self-spoiled it for yourself by googling details of the best kept-secret in the film, and now you're so depressed about what you spoiled you can't bring yourself to watch the movie you spoiled for yourself.
Yes, I spoiled that scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens for myself.
The morning after the film's London premiere by googling "Does Han Solo die," I confirmed it. My search found confirmation from someone at the premiere that Han does in fact bite the big one, and I found myself thinking about it so much that it made me depressed, which in turn made me hesitant to watch it.
I was so choked-up just reading about Han's death that the only logical next step was for me to head right back to Google and find a clandestine, crappy cell phone camera recording someone got up onto YouTube and watch the actual death scene. What else would you do if just reading about something made you depressed, if not go find it so could anguish over every single detail?
Don't tell me how normal I am; I can tell.
A hilarious side effect of my depression is that in the last several days the huge advertising and merchandising blitz put on this for movie - something that was making me feel like an eight year old kid again right up to the point that I googled what I giggled (actual past tense of "googled") - has turned into a non-stop bombardment of Han's death. Every piece of merchandise only fueled my reluctance to the see the movie I've literally been waiting my entire life to see.
Totally normal behavior for any 35 year old, right? I know.
However, like any good human, I've figured out how to blame someone else other than me for what I did to myself. It's the fact that my favorite character gets killed that has me depressed. Since the filmmakers didn't talk to me about this first, I can only blame them. Honestly, the more I think about it, I'm a little offended that JJ Abrams or Lawrence Kasdan didn't personally call me up and ask me for permission to kill Han Solo.
Don't they know I'm on Twitter and other social media sites? They could have asked me, and who knows? I probably would have given them permission to express their own unique creative vision in a way that appeases me and me alone. They obviously haven't learned the golden rule of the digital age: Content creators are entirely beholden to the comments section.
Despite it all, I'm going to see it. I don't have thirty Han Solo action figures on my wall - that I may or may not have bought as part of some tragically nerdy early onset midlife crisis - because I'm not going to see it. The truth is, I can't wait to get the taste of Jar Jar out of my mouth, Han or no Han.
I think I can smile through the tears if I never have to read about tariffs in an opening crawl again. It would appear to Mr. Abrams the price we pay for a Star Wars trilogy free from the grip of Jar Jar and midichlorians is Han Solo's life, and damn it all if that's not a steep but likely fair price to pay to cleanse our collective palettes.
JJ, you sly dog, you.
I'm going to go buy my tickets now, and we can all just forget about any implications it might have about my emotional maturity that I had such a reaction in the first place, or you know, that whole "thirty Han Solo action figures on my wall" thing, or the "sobbing uncontrollably to The Smiths into my favorite 'Only Han Shot' t-shirt", which I just realized I didn't even bring up until right now.