In May of 1977, movie going was altered by the visionary director George Lucas when Star Wars was released. From the word go, or more accurately, the words Star Wars flashing in bold yellow lettering across the screen, and John Williams’s grand, blasting trumpet fanfare, it was instantly apparent that the sci-fi/fantasy world would never be the same.
In January of 1997, Star Wars: A New Hope was rereleased to celebrate its 20th anniversary. My dad could not WAIT to take me to see it. But I had zero interest.
Growing up, my dad was forever watching the latest Star Trek series. I had seen a few of the movies, and they did absolutely nothing for me. Possibly the first time I fell asleep in a movie theater was during Star Trek VII: The Undiscovered Country.
In my young mind, Star Trek and Star Wars were interchangeable. I couldn’t keep them straight. And I certainly couldn’t understand why my dad thought I was going to love this movie so much.
Even my mom was somewhat excited to see the movie in theaters again. Why? Wasn’t it just going to be more sciency b.s. and negotiations between alien races? Eh. Eleven-year-old me wasn’t into all that.
But I went along anyway. If I fell asleep in the theater, well, there are worse places to take a nap.
And then.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
TRUMPETS BLARE A SPECTACULAR FANFARE! “STAR WARS EPISODE VII: A NEW HOPE” SCROLLS UPWARDS THROUGH THE VASTNESS OF SPACE. EXPOSITORY SENTENCES SETTING UP THE ACTION MOVE THROUGH THE STARS.
Is there a more iconic movie beginning in film history? Will there ever be?
Look, for starters, John Williams’s entire score for the movie was a genius move, creating works of music so integral to the story beats that you can hear them even in movie stills. “Star Wars Main Title,” “The Imperial March,” “Binary Sunset,” “Duel of the Fates.” How often does the general public know such a plethora of names for the classical score to a movie series?
Recently, movie showings accompanied by symphony orchestras have toured around the country. Jon and I saw A New Hope in 2022, and we were amazed by how much of the movie contains music. The symphony members didn’t get a break for at least 45 minutes, and even that was brief.
The opening crawls of Star Wars movies are another of those unique features that sucks you right into the stars. They’re a strange storytelling device, providing exposition that moviegoers have to read before the action kicks in. Doubtful that another movie can pull something like that off ever again, but for Star Wars, it’s an expectation.
Then, after a downwards camera pan, an almost comically large spaceship zooms by and captures a smaller one to the tune of booming brass. The juxtaposition of the looming, large ship to the small is a visual clue as to what’s going on in this movie.
The plot of Star Wars is about as straightforward as you can get - good vs. evil, and the good guys win. (Plot twists are reserved for the sequels.) A young, inexperienced farm boy rises to greatness. A scruffy looking scoundrel comes around and decides to help a band of scrappy rebels. A snarky, sassy, beautiful princess half-rescues herself and helps lead those rebels to victory.
I don’t know exactly what it was - the quipping between the droids, the snarky, feisty Princess Leia, the sweeping shot of Luke staring into a binary sunset, the pain of wondering if his dreams would ever be realized evident in his eyes, lines like, “Everything’s fine here, we’re all fine. How are you?,” the elegance of the lightsabers... But Star Wars cast its spell on me like I’d never imagined.
Something unnameable in that movie viewing captured my heart. It must have been the entire experience that caused me to fall. I don’t know. I do know I ran to KayBee Toys and bought whatever action figures I could, which, incidentally, were Obi Wan Kenobi, Jedi Luke Skywalker (I thought there was something wrong with his paint job since one of his hands was black; it would make sense two months later), Bousch Bounty Hunter Leia (so that spoiled some Return of the Jedi secrets), and a fourth - maybe it was R2-D2? The action figure collecting would continue for years, and my collection combined with my husbands’ is something to behold.
February 1997 brought The Empire Strikes Back (though the big Daddy reveal was ruined about a week before it when I heard “The Star Wars Cantina” on the radio), as well as a set of the entire original trilogy on VHS. I watched the first two on repeat for the rest of the month, but I saved Return of the Jedi for theaters in March.
Incidentally, I felt Jedi was a fitting ending for the series. I have no qualms about it not being darker, no problem buying into Ewoks defeating the Empire. Everyone went out with a smile, including me.
I’ve been a die hard fan ever since.
Before The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, I watched a Star Wars movie every Saturday morning. I kept a tally of them so I could divide my viewings evenly. A friend lent me Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire book trilogy, which introduced me to another fantastic Star Wars woman in Mara Jade. (I am STILL waiting for the new expanded universe to work her in!)
The release of the prequels was surrounded by a long term excitement that these days, with the abundance of Star Wars content being released, is nearly impossible to describe. A generation of fans had loved the movies for so long with only sparse hopes of live action film continuation. Having their dreams realized after over 20 years, many of them able to bring the next generation of family and fans with them, was a long awaited homecoming.
I saw The Phantom Menace with my parents on opening day. My dad embarrassingly cheered aloud even when the 20th Century Fox logo and fanfare played. And again when “A long time ago…” faded i onto the screen. We won’t even talk about the eruption when the music and crawl started. Ugh. Why was a grown man hooting and hollering like a small child meeting Mickey for the first time?
Except - he wasn’t alone. The theater was filled with adults cheering and tearing up. By this point, I had been in love with Star Wars for two years, so I was also excited, but not in the same way these fans were. I couldn’t be. I wasn’t alive when any of the original trilogy was released. I hadn’t waited like they had. Two years was nothing compared to 22.
After my initial viewing of The Phantom Menace, I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was a tiny bit off, but I set that aside. It had entertained me, and my dad had loved it, and despite whatever negative you can say about the movie (like what business does a kids’ movie have being about space taxes?), it feels like a Star Wars movie.
Ah, the prequels. Though they weren’t the beginning of Star Wars fans hating Star Wars movies (that would be Return of the Jedi), they deepened the divide. Is there a fandom that is so powerfully negative about its own intellectual property? Very possibly not.
And it makes sense. Though I loved Episodes I, II, and III when I saw them, even declaring II my favorite of all the SW franchise for a brief time, they’re actually… well, they’re not great. The acting is wooden, probably due to George Lucas’s stiff dialogue. Lucas did not actually write Empire and Jedi, and Harrison Ford famously ribbed George for how unsayable the dialogue in the original movie was. But he wrote and directed all of the prequels as, by that time, most people wouldn’t tell him no. The plot points happen because they have to, not because of organic storytelling. Character development isn’t at all present. One of our favorite YouTube videos spends 1 ½ hours making fun of each prequel movie, and it poses a problem to fans - Name a character trait for Padme that isn’t her job. It’s a trick question - you can’t.
Debates (okay, hardly debates; more like screaming opinions at each other without a lot of intelligent assertion) still rage today about the worth of the prequels. Some find them to be beautiful pieces of art that push the boundaries of what movies can do with CGI and that satisfy fans’ curiosities about the former Republic and its downfall. Others see them as poorly acted, poorly written movies that only have actions occur because they need to rather than because they are driven forward by characters’ choices.
My own opinion of the prequels has see-sawed severely. I loved them initially, realized how truly awful they are when I revisited them some years later, and, through the magic of fan editing and the eyes of my own child, have found an appreciation for them once again. Yes, they’re a tough swallow in their original forms, but there is quite a lot of good to be found in them. With some polishing, traces of the original trilogy magic can be found.
Fast forward to October 2012, when Disney announced it had purchased Lucasfilm. Only three years passed between that deal and the release of Episode VII: The Force Awakens. This time, fans only had a decade-long hiatus after thinking things were over before they could return to Star Wars on the silver screen. Of course my husband and I were there on opening night. This time, we came out of the movie with raised eyebrows, saying, “I think that was good.” The false first responses the prequels gave us forced us to approach these with healthy skepticism. We then went to see the movie every day that weekend, plus three more times over the next few months. So yeah, we loved it. The biggest criticism of this one is how it essentially rehashes the original movie, and that’s valid enough. Bad guys, good guys, desert planet, main character’s rise to greatness, blowing something big up at the end.
But the formula worked the first time, so why not the second? Besides, Force has a lot that the original has going for it. Fun, great music, quippy dialogue, and characters who steal your heart. I wanted to know what would happen next. Would Rey bring the Jedi order back? Would Fin’s turn from the First Order stick? How high in the ranks would the great leader Poe Dameron climb? Would Kylo Ren be redeemable after killing a beloved original character?
In Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson led the audience on an unexpected goose chase, deepened existing character traits, and introduced even more new characters who spiced up the story. While some fans couldn't forgive Johnson’s portrayal of jaded, secluded, straight-from-the-teet drinking Luke Skywalker, we found it far more interesting than a know-it-all Luke, which would have rehashed Yoda in Empire. The movie provides an interesting exploration of what can really happen when you meet your heroes or when the main characters don’t succeed at absolutely every mission they set out on. If Force Awakens could be accused of being too similar to previous installations of the series, The Last Jedi took bold, unpredictable strokes - and a lot of fans didn’t like that, either.
Meanwhile, after seeing this movie 8 times in theaters and several since, it remains one of my favorites. And trust me, the movie theater experience of this one was unparalleled. After our first viewing, Jon and I looked forward to the reactions of others at certain pivotal moments as much as the movie itself.
Not to mention, that lightsaber fight with the Praetorian Guards? Second only to Luke vs. Vader in Jedi. So. Damn. Entertaining.
After a fun set up in VII and a fascinating installation in VIII that left me with so many intriguing questions, I went into Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker with likely unreachably high expectations. After all, I reasoned, the first two had been so fantastic, this last one could NOT disappoint.
In the words of ObiWan Kenobi, I was wrong.
After digesting the immense disgusting disappointment Episode IX elicited in me, I wrote a 3 page blog post on my old blog where I broke down the worst parts of this movie in too much detail. (You can find those here, complete with a lot of typos: part 1: https://shaunaivoryauthor.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problems-with-episode-9-part-1.html?m=1; part 2: https://shaunaivoryauthor.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problems-with-episode-9-part-2.html?m=1; part 3: https://shaunaivoryauthor.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problems-with-episode-9-part-3.html?m=1)
But to sum it up, something I wrote immediately afterwards:
“I hate this feeling. I feel empty and heartbroken. Betrayed by a series that I loved for 22 years. I hate that a movie could make me feel this sad. It’s just a movie, right?
Except it feels like more than that. It’s something I’ve loved deeply for so long. The characterization has always been enough to deepen the sometimes shallow stories, particularly in the original trilogy. And in episodes seven and eight. God, did I love episodes seven and eight. We rewatched them this week, and I came to terms with the fact that I love them as much as the original trilogy. Sure, there are some minor flaws, but that’s true of every Star Wars movie. The Dianoga in the trash compactor? A lot of Han and Leia floating in space in Empire? Jabba’s Palace to some extent in Jedi?
But those things are all forgivable. The Rise of Skywalker is not.”
However, before I went to see the movie that has disappointed me more than any other in my lifetime, I wrote this:
“…tonight it all ends. Tonight, the Skywalker saga will conclude. It’s breathtaking to think. Did George ever imagine the impact he’d have on so many people all those years ago? Did I ever imagine I’d be this in love with Star Wars?
I know the franchise has been polarizing of late, but I hope those who loved it once can always find a place for it in their hearts. Can always remember the magic it brought them as a child and can find a way to relive that magic again.
Tonight it will end, but Star Wars will never be over.
May the force be with us. Always.”
And so, with that in mind, I do feel guilty sometimes for preaching about how much I hate Episode IX. I have been known to tell people who've never seen it not to bother. And to tell those who’ve enjoyed it that I’m jealous of them as they got an ending that didn’t leave them as unsatisfied as I’ve been with it.
But I was right that Star Wars will never be over. Disney will see to that. Sure, some shows are polarizing, like Andor (thumbs down from our part), Book of Boba Fett (meh), and Obi-Wan Kenobi (we enjoyed that), but for all of those, there is The Mandalorian. (My husband regularly says whenever we see something featuring Baby Yoda, “I am Star Wars now,” which he is, and which I’m okay with.) And that’s kept me excited about upcoming shows and recently announced movies.
So in the end, when I think of Star Wars, I think of attending Comic-Con dressed as Han and Leia.
I think of entering my wedding reception under an archway of lightsabers to the Star Wars main theme.
I think of a trip to Toys R Us at midnight just before Episode III was released to buy the latest toys. Getting Ashley Eckstein’s blessing cosplay Ahsoka Tano. Learning lightsaber choreography with the Jedi of New York State. Teaching Star Wars camp to kids who beat the heck out of each other with pool noodle lightsabers and wrote their own movie scenes in a far away galaxy. Cuddling up to Kylo Ren in Disney World.
Chatting with Vi after a spin on Smuggler’s Run. Our second trip on Rise of the Resistance (better than our first). Fireworks over Batuu to end our first trip to Disneyland.
Lily falling in love with Phantom Menace. It will be the magic of experiences shared with a community of friends and family.
No other movie could top that.
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