Star Wars - More than a Saga - A series of Articles. - Episode ! - A Galaxy Far Far Away

I’ve wanted to write this for a while but even in this culture of ‘geek chic’, this could make a few of my coworkers or friends roll their eyes as they may flat out just not get it.  If that’s you…consider this your surgeon general’s warning that the level of nerd/geek/dweeb in this and future articles is going to get pretty high.  Fair warning.  This is my series on Star Wars and what it means to me.

Episode I – A galaxy far far away.

Last night right before bed…I was perusing THE Facebook (yes…since I’m now over 45 I’m legally and morally obligated to call it that.  I also have started to get a hankering for ribbon candy and don’t you even THINK about walking on my lawn) and came across the trailer for Star Wars Episode IX.  The final trailer.  I was surprised.  I’d told myself a few times that it was going to drop on Monday but where in recent years for previous chapters of the saga, I was eagerly refreshing twitter and facebook to get the first link and be one of the first to see it…this time I was distracted.  Distracted by life, my wife, her knee, my belly, the lint lodged into the button of said belly, thoughts of what I’ll sing for the next cabaret and work talent show, editing down the podcast and listening to Martin Sheen talk about issues in Haiti on the West Wing (before finding out about poor Mrs. Landingham…still one of my favorite episodes).

I paused the show (well to be fair…I paused it and saw Martin Sheen looking a bit like he’d just sat on a plunger with the big end up, so I unpaused and repaused and felt MUCH better about humanity), checked the status bar of the export for the podcast, kicked the cat off my belly and down to the floor and divested myself of all other distractions and decided to watch the trailer.  I realized suddenly that my expectations are probably muted a bit. After three misfires of prequels, two hit and miss ancillary films (Rogue One = Great, Solo=Missed opportunity) and a really great Star Wars ‘return’ film followed by what can only be described as a smaller scale, less epic tale that left me wanting two more films instead of just one…I think I’d forgotten something. Maybe lost something in regards to my feelings on this franchise.  However I couldn’t put that thought together really until a few hours later.  Having exorcised all other distractions I settled in and pushed play.  

After watching it…I have to say I was intrigued.  Now any real Star Wars fan will tell you…that since 1999 most of us have felt the same way.  We’d been burned before.  As a ‘real world’ example of this point I encourage you to at some point go take a look at Star Wars Episode 1’s first trailer.  Try to look at it NOT knowing what you know about that movie and try to imagine seeing it after almost 16 years of no new movies.  The feeling I had watching that first trailer was almost hypnotic.  I was mesmerized.  The image of Obi Wan and Qui-Gon lighting sabers, Darth Maul and OH MY GOD…is that a DOUBLE Light Saber?  The robot armies and the obvious voice of the future Emperor.   I can remember all of these beats without watching the trailer because I think I LITERALLY downloaded it to my PC (kids…at this point streaming was something you did when you had to urinate and your buddy was standing in the urinal trough next to you and you thought it’d be funny.  Those days we had to actually DOWNLOAD the trailer…and it took about 7 years) and once it was on there I must have watched it 100 times.  Using Quicktime I was able to pause and move frames to get every nuance.  It was so awesome and the fact was I couldn’t WAIT to go and see it.  Years later I had a similar reaction to the Force Awakens trailer…especially when Han said “We’re Home”.  That trailer again sparked my imagination and excited me to see what they would do with my favorite characters.  However…much like after Episode 1, the failure that is the Last Jedi had really muted things for me.  In the year and a half since its release…I have to realize that I had become disenfranchised (pun intended).  My (to my mind) legitimate issues with the picture shouted down by millennials and other fans who would say things like “well this isn’t YOUR Star Wars…it’s for a younger generation”…and to be honest I think I begrudgingly accepted that.  The thing about mythology is that eventually the storytellers become obsolete, and the ears hearing the stories need something different…so changes are made and with the Last Jedi I’d come to think that maybe my obsolescence had arrived and while I’d go and see Episode IX no matter what…maybe it was time to realize that these movies just weren’t for me and it was time for another generation to take it and make it their own.

It was with those eyes that I watched the trailer and like with the Force Awakens…it was a line of dialogue that made me realize how wrong I (and to be honest…all those who argued with me regarding Last Jedi) were…that this is STILL my saga…and it was soon ending. 

Really out of all the spectacle and splendor…it was one little scene that hammered it home.  At the one minute fifteen second mark we hear Poe (Dameron) asking C3PO who for some reason has removed the back part of his robotic skull and a little ‘thing’ is working in it.  The three humans and Chewie come in and say “So uhhh…what ya doin there Threepio?”  We then see C3PO look and say “Taking one last look sir…at my friends”.  We then see and hear Artoo and Chewie does his ‘roar’ thing and the music swells.

And the tears formed.

Legit.  It started to hit me and then it said it 30 seconds later in text “This Christmas…The Saga will End”. 

Then finally…in voice over…we hear Mark Hamill’s Luke say (as a call back to Ben’s last words to Luke) “The Force will be with you…” and we hear the dearly departed Carrie Fisher (as Leia) say… “Always”.

With that…I got incredibly sad.  It hit like a ton of bricks.

It’s over.  I’m going to see the end of the story.  The end of the Skywalker Saga.  Sure there will probably be other stories in this universe…but my story…my Saga…is coming to an end.

I don’t think I realized until that trailer that this is the end of an era for me.  That these characters and this story have actually helped SHAPE the entire direction of my life.  That images flickering on a screen in front of a four year old’s face that when put in sequence would transport that child to a world with laser beams and lightswords and a magic ‘force’ would fire the synapses of imagination so much that I’d have to go home and have Mom and Dad buy me the 2.5” versions of these characters so that the story could continue.  These characters I grew to care about so much that as a six year old I vividly remember the fear I felt as my hero Luke fought in the dark against the personification of evil.  A fear that gripped me so much that I remember sitting with my ‘cousin’ Ricky at the theatre and hiding under the seat during the dark parts because I couldn’t bear to think something would happen to Luke.  The horror I felt as his hand was cut off and the scream he made tore me to my soul and I legitimately worried that he’d be lost too (like Han).  After such a traumatic moment, to then have my little six year old mind explode when the evil person who did all these things and froze my other favorite character…confesses to Luke that he is his long lost father.  I remember my parents buying me the record with the ‘picture book’ of Empire Strikes Back that I could read along to.  I played it on my Fisher Price Record player until it scratched beyond recognition.  I remember searching every news article for information on “Revenge of the Jedi” and reading the comic books that told the story of the search for Han Solo.  I remember my Dad taking me to the two re-releases of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back being shown in theatres that were like 20 miles away the winter BEFORE Return of the Jedi.  The waiting in long lines to get in because we had heard that the trailer for Return of the Jedi would be at the front (and it was).  The feeling of relief I got seeing that Han was alive…and that Luke would battle Darth Vader in front of the Emperor which to my 9 year old mind I interpreted as “Luke can’t be his son then…it’s all a trick.”  

I remember rushing home in May of 1983 on the opening day of Return of the Jedi after school because I’d just gotten the book from Scholastic press that told the story of Return of the Jedi and how excited I was to read it…but didn’t want to spoil the movie as the first page had a picture of another Death Star and I couldn’t bear to ruin it for myself so I begged Dad to take me THAT night (even though his brother Lee had just come to town for a visit.  I believe he went with us…because Dad wanted to see it too).  I remember the feeling of sadness realizing that at the end of the movie with the celebration…that the movies were done for awhile.  Then I got home and read an article that said that Lucas wanted to tell the story of how Anakin became Darth Vader and he hoped that by the time he finished telling that story, that Han, Luke and Leia (Or Harrison, Mark and Carrie) would be old enough to play these characters again and finish the epic.  I remember thinking I couldn’t WAIT and figured it’d just be a few years.  

These are all part of the makeup of what actually went into forming the person I am today.  The ‘fandom’ of it.  The desire in my head to be whisked away to a galaxy far far away and get lost in the richness of the majesty that was an intergalactic civil war fought by space wizards.

See for me as a little nerdy kid who broke his glasses almost weekly, didn’t have a lot of friends and whose head was literally two sizes too big for his body…Star Wars and the rich universe was an escape.  I realized when I was older why that is so.  In modern fiction today, it seems to be all the rage that characters must be ‘approachable’ so that the viewer can see themselves living in the skin of the protagonist.  Star Wars had that to an extent in that Luke Skywalker started out as a nothing kid on a nowhere planet headed to obscurity.  His voice and plight could speak to (I imagine) 70’s teenagers living in a post war America that was nearing economic collapse during the oil crisis.  Luke was a character with little hope of expanding beyond what he considered to be mundane mediocrity.  He had a talent for flying and a bit of arrogance but because of where he lived and the circumstances of his ‘station’, he could feel those talents wasting away.  It’s only when circumstances fall into place that he discovers that instead of being the son of a navigator on a spice freighter who perished during the ‘wars’; he’s actually the son of a great ‘wizard’ who was an incredible pilot that served with distinction through the wars and was betrayed and murdered by a faceless despot.  He meets this other wizard who knew his father and wanted to take him away so that he too could become a great hero and make a difference in the Galactic Civil War.  The rest of the movie takes us on this journey with Luke where we learn along the way WITH him what happened.  By the two sequels however our POV character had changed.  He wasn’t so much like us anymore.  By letting time pass between movies, he’d grown off screen from this arrogant punk kid who blew up thousands of people working on a space station into a soldier who had realized he had potential and was now given the opportunity to explore that.  In the final installment we are even more detached as our POV character again has changed to become a bit more distant and assured of his place in society.  The previous paragraph is like something a college student might write for his film history class (and I think I did at one point).  However maybe due to childhood loneliness or intense feelings of anxiety when dealing with others…these movies and characters touched something in me.  They made me want to experience what they did…and as they were static…always waiting for me to hit ‘play’ on the remote…it was easy to maintain a ‘pseudo relationship’ with them.  They weren’t dynamic and never strayed from their course.  They were a safe place for me to lose myself in a story.

As it often does with childhood likes and (at least for me) “obsessions”, time salves the longing.  As I grew from fourth to fifth grade and since the movies appeared to be ‘over’ now with only a few TV movies (Ewoks…kill me…) and cartoons (Droids was ok…but again…Ewoks…kill me), in time I moved on.  I discovered GIJoe after reading a few comics and watching the cartoon miniseries and then shortly after I discovered comics in general with DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths and Green Lantern being my gateway drug into the world of ‘paper crack’.  Star Wars became more of a ‘safe haven’ or even ‘palette cleanser’ in that because the story was over…and it still entertained me…I could always go back to it when I just didn’t feel like exploring something new.  With the purchase of a VCR, and HBO…I managed to record all three of the movies at various times in the next few years.  As my Dad could attest…that meant that there wasn’t a sick day or rainy Saturday where I didn’t want to watch the movies.  They became the ‘go-to’ for me.  If I had to be down…I wanted to watch them.  If HBO was playing one and we were surfing…we stopped to watch them.  In time…I’d seen those movies so many times that I could recite most of all three verbatim (and still can much to the annoyance of my bride).

In time I found myself ‘geeking’ on Star Wars a little bit less.  It’d been awhile since the movies were out and no one was talking about making new ones.  I even remember reading an article in like 1990 that Lucas said if he did movies, he’d only do the first three and that Return of the Jedi was the ending he wanted.  I’d come to grips with the idea that these characters I loved were just going to be where I left them. I had NO idea that in 1991 a book was released and subsequent ones each year after.  By that point I was mainly reading DC and X-Men comics and while I loved Star Wars, my sci fi itch was being scratched by a new TV Series called Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I had no idea that what came to be known as the “Thrawn Trilogy” jumpstarted a major interest in Star Wars content or how great it was.  I figured with Star Wars dead…maybe I’d just move on entirely and be a trekkie.

Boy was I wrong…

Thanks for reading Part one.