I continue to be a Star Wars fan.
It’s actually difficult to some degree to be one because there aren’t a lot of places you can go and talk about it without running into the aggrieved levels of hate about the franchise, which for some people extends back to the Return of the Jedi and Ewoks, a travesty that has earned ire for decades.
I’ve talked before about the meaning of the films in my life but it extends beyond the films because I grew up in its heyday, playing with the toys, having the comics, the couple of novels that were produced. I put my Adventure People and GI Joe figures together with them and had hundreds upon hundreds of hours of imaginative stories to be told just from that alone. When the new film series started and we had that first trailer, I sat there watching it with my mother who along with my father took me to see the original film in Boston when it opened. At just seven years old then, it put me on the path that has me here in my interests.
But watching that trailer? That swell of emotions in seeing it come to life and the small moment with Harrison Ford? It took us both back to that far more innocent time in my life.
And that is Star Wars to me. Even through all the things that it has been in online culture since the earliest of days, it’s an innocence. A fairy tale writ large and complex because of the ongoing expansion.
Rise of Skywalker for me is the third act of the third act of a nine film series cycle. It is, in essence, the final twenty or thirty pages of a sprawling nine-book series. It’s just adrenaline, action, the final epic moments, the last moment reveal. The confirmation of heart and the need to stand up for what one believes in no matter the cost.
I completely get the issues most people have with the film. I’ve voiced many myself and I dislike a number of choices made across this current trilogy. And I felt the same with the prequels and a part of the original.
Yet, here I am, 43 years later, watching this film with my 19-year-old daughter who is just as big a fan as I am. And I had that realization earlier in the week before seeing the film that there are four distinct generations of fans for this. Each trilogy is a starting point for many and there’s a generation that grew up on The Clone Wars, getting weekly installments of purely distilled Lucas-ness in the old serialized fashion thanks to Dave Filoni. And each of those generations are taking in the film through very different lenses, which is why I like reading their feelings about it because they’re not looking at it the same from one generation to the next. I get a lot of good discussion out of my daughter with these things because we both have such different origin points and awareness of things that it makes it engaging.
But here I am, at the end, and thrilled. Thrilled for the closure. Thrilled for the experience. Frustrated with things to be sure as well, but very thrilled to see what comes next. We’ve got a whole new expansion that will come because of the closure of the films. The novels are being lined up to fill in the gaps. Possibly more Disney+ shows will explore the in-between era as well. We’ve got another season of The Mandalorian coming, an Obi-Wan series and the one I’m super excited for with Cassian Andor. And there will be more.
And that childlike fairytale mindset will hold for it with me. I’ve always placed this franchise out of my usual criticism of film because these are not just films to me. They, as a start and as a whole cycle, defined and altered my life in a way that many will find similar but also find hard to put to words. These works have deep in the DNA meaning to me and that doesn’t mean that they’re free from criticism. It just means I go at it from a different perspective, and one without hate, because hate leads to the Dark Side.
