Chewbacca and the Plastic Chicken

There are no spoilers in this piece.

Except this: there's a Chewbacca and a Plastic Chicken gag. Yes, in a movie already over two and a half hours long - a bloated beast so mighty I was yawning and checking my watch during the final boss battle - the director sees fit to keep a gag involving a wookie getting guilty at roasting a bird.

It's symptomatic of a major Star Wars problem. Who is its audience? When Lucas tried reminding us all it was for kids in the prequels - you know which character I mean, folks - it was horrible. Why should it be any different now?

No-one in the cinema laughed. And it was a pretty full cinema. In part that's 'cos it's a crap gag. There were better. The "no-one's from nowhere" line was a rib-tickler, I admit, but that's because it's linguistic, not based on wide-eyed mini-penguins designed purely to shift mega-units of plastic tat.

I was twelve when Return of the Jedi came out. I loved it of course, but I remember even then a nagging sense that the Ewoks were rubbish. It begs the question: who are the mini-penguins and plastic chickens for? Not movie-savvie twelve year-olds, that's for sure.

​So it's an OK instalment. Pretty good, even. But if you want to know why Rogue One stands head-and-shoulders above the rest of the franchise... well, among a thousand other reasons, I pick this one: no plastic chickens.