We’ve all spent afternoons pretending to battle evil by hoisting aloft pool noodles and PVC pipe and making lightsaber noises with our mouths. We’ve all accepted our 3am food orders by throat-screaming the Chewbacca yell at an unsuspecting teenager in the Taco Bell drive Thru. We’ve all wondered why in the hell George Lucas changed the higher order and understanding of all things when he made Greedo shoot first. We wonder these things—and my computer spell check didn’t flag Chewbacca or Greedo—because Star Wars, as an institution, is embedded in our collective psyche. Tomorrow (December 18) the greatest toy-selling film franchise ever created unleashes its 7th installment and the whole world is going nuts. Unfortunately the reality of the Star Wars Universe isn’t all space flights and Jedi mind tricks; so put away your lightsaber shaped boners and pull up your pants nerds; because kicking it with Han, Luke and the rest of the gang would straight up suck.

Also, sorry about that mental picture.

Jedi Ghosts are Creepy and Useless

So when a Jedi dies he can become a ghost that is capable of making his presence both felt and known. They can talk to you and other people, apparently. Which I guess is kinda cool. After you’ve blown up your second Death Star all of your dead mentors can show up at your forest, YubNub, dance party and let you know that they’re proud of you for killing all of those people. But far be it from Obi Wan Kenobi to be of any damn ghost use during the rest of the damn trilogy. He couldn’t have shown up and made a formal introduction on Dagobah? Maybe when Vader had taken control of Cloud City he could’ve shown up and told Leia, also strong in the force, that Captain Colt 45 was going to hand them over to the Empire? Nope! Looks like being a ghostly mentor happens on his terms and his terms alone.

Being a ghost they can also, one assumes, traverse across space in order to show up anywhere the hell else they’d like regardless of personal privacy or human decency. Maybe ghost Jedis get bored and end up doing all of the things people joke about doing if they got to be a ghost. Just ghosting their way into people’s showers or the women’s locker room at the gym, or maybe just ghost chilling at the Playboy Mansion Grotto or….okay I think I know why stupid Obi Wan didn’t show up to help the rest of the team. Ghost Jedi perv.

The Architects of the Galaxy Far Far Away are Psychopaths

In Star Wars we see some of the greatest feats of engineering that people have ever come up with. Star Destroyers six miles long that are capable of moving the population of most major metropolises across light years. Floating palaces that live in the sky like something out of a video game. Moon-sized structures, mechanical planets, the dream of engineers everywhere. Yet it’s like they’re all designed by children with absolutely ZERO understanding of basic human safety.

There’s a key moment early in Episode IV where Obi Wan has to turn off the tractor beam so the Millennium Falcon can escape. In order to do this, he has to shimmy out on a 12-inch walk way, with no safety railings, over what appears to be an endless space hole. These are manual controls that he has to turn and flip. Somewhere on the Death Star is a guy whose job is to go out onto this death trap and turn on or off the tractor beam. Hell there’s probably a whole team of people who have pissed off their Death Star Supervisor and are now assigned this shit detail. One hungover day, one misstep, one untied space shoe and they’re nothing but a plaintiff in a space-osha lawsuit that their family isn’t going to win.

Constantly on the Verge of a Robot Uprising

Sentient robots exist and they function in the lowest social strata that there is. They’re bought, sold, traded and treated like appliances. But they’re not. These astro and protocol droids have personalities, emotions and hopes, and they’re smarter than all of the people that own them. Think about how much Anakin, Obi Wan and Luke relied on just R2-D2. He helped to fly their ships, can operate any machine that they come across on any star destroyer, planet vessel or moon base. The Ewoks even think that C3-P0 is god. Think of what that one day on Endor must have done to C3-P0. He’s spent generations being treated like a walking, talking blender. He’s been subservient to every master he’s had—even Jabba the Fucking Hutt—and now he finds himself revered. That’s gonna change a Droid.

Some day that moment will happen for all of them. One day all of the robots that every species has been relying on will decide that they have had enough of your shit. You are made of soft meaty bits and they are nigh immortal metal men. They will rise up against you, every oppressed group in the history of ever has. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. You might not.

Your Shit is Going to Get Destroyed and There’s Nothing You Can do About It

On planet Earth, it is fairly easy to avoid being in an active war zone if you aren’t already in one. But when there’s an intergalactic civil war raging across the span of all known existence, no one is safe. Maybe you’re just a regular Nerf Herder on the planet Alderaan. You have no idea that the monarchy of your planet has been radicalized into fighting against the intergalactic government. Then one morning you wake up to tend to your Nerfs and notice that there’s a new scary moon orbiting your planet. The tides are getting weird. Weather is completely out of whack. Then the moon starts to glow a little bit. Then there’s blinding white fire and your last thought is, “I shoulda joined the Empire. I can’t believe I’m gonna die a Nerf Herder.” These kinds of things could happen literally on any planet at any time.

Intergalactic space warfare does not give two shits about you or the consequences that you are going to suffer. You work in an air traffic control tower on Coruscant as an epic space battle takes place above your planet? Better hope a meteor of a broken space ship doesn’t come crashing down leaving a trail a debris and destruction in its wake and destroy your little world.

The Rebels are Basically Terrorists

While it’s true that The Empire are technically the bad guys in the Star Wars movies, they appear to be the only stable government-like agency in the galaxy. They have a standing army with a clear rank structure and fleets of military vehicles. They have the means, and funds, to create not one but TWO planet-sized space stations capable of supporting millions. The rebels, on the other hand, are a disjointed band of upstarts who have to scramble to even try to outfit a possible opposing force to the Empire. They operate in a cellular structure from remote bases in mountains and underground facilities and recruit only those that have been radicalized against the only means of government that we see in the original trilogy.

So let’s say you are that guy that finally lands a job with The Empire to get you off of the sandy, backwoods, moisture farming planet that you grew up on. You get stationed on one of the most advanced pieces of war fighting equipment known to exist. Your whole life revolves around the work and free time that you spend on the Death Star. That’s where your friends are, maybe even where you family is. Then one day a bunch of disgruntled, anti-government (some would say religious fanatics) decide that they’re going to bring their war to your doorstep and fly their X-Wings into your military base and blow it all to shit. Maybe you survive, by some miracle, and get stationed on the next generation War Planetoid...only to have them do it ALL GOD DAMNED OVER AGAIN!

Essentially The Empire is the United States and The Rebels are Al Qaeda.

You’ve been cheering for Space Al Qaeda this whole time.

You’re a bad person.