The Force for Good

Now is the Golden Age of fandom. From Avengers Assembling to Boys Who Lived, everyone now seems to have at least one pop-culture phenomenon in an ever-expanding landscape full of them where they can return, again and again, for enjoyment, excitement, or even escape. A majority of these ebb and flow from the spotlight of public attention (no matter how many Harry Potter themed weekends Freeform Channel tries to flood us with over the course of year), or attract a devoted yet small and insular group of like-minded individuals, but the point is that seemingly everyone can find their own pick on the menu at the moment.

However, one body of work seems to have missed the memo concerning this typical order of things entirely, casting an almost hypnotic effect on humans as a worldwide collective that's gone unbroken since it first trumpeted into our lives more than four decades ago.

I'm talking, of course, about Star Wars, and my suspicion is that no one reading this here needs a refresher on what it's about any more than the average person would need a refresher on, say... well, actually, I'm having difficulty coming up with anything as well-known or pervasive by way of comparison. Yoda, the Death Star, "I am your father" ... these things just seem to exist in the universal consciousness, with no explanation required, in a way that's almost baffling.

For those on the fringes of the Outer Rim who may recognize some of the more iconic things at first glance but aren't necessarily plugged in at diehard levels, Star Wars is back in the news again this week because the ninth and final installment of the so-called "Skywalker Saga" (a.k.a. the story George Lucas began telling way back in 1977) debuts around the world this Friday. It's being billed as the culmination of all eight films that have preceded it... everything from the original trilogy of the 1970s and 80s, the prequel trilogy of the late 90s and early 00s that filled in the back story of the most iconic baddie in all of cinema, the most recent installments under the direction of Disney, and even beyond, to the multimedia universe of spin-offs and adaptations that have sprung up around the central, Episodic films. For the millions of fans of a galaxy far, far away, this week has been circled on the calendar for a looooooong time.

I can almost hear the cynics among us rolling their eyes: "The last one? Really for real this time, the last one? What about the last two times the series claimed it was the last one? Those didn't count, huh?" much in the same way people roll their eyes about KISS announcing a nineteenth "This Is It, ULTIMATE FAREWELL" tour. In the name of fairness, if there's one thing Disney knows how to do, it's make some $$$ (the entertainment mega-corporation acquired total rights to the franchise's past, present, and future back in 2012, to the tune of $4 billion). Any parent who's left a ride in Disney World only to find themselves conveniently distributed into a ride-themed gift shop will testify as much, and one can't see the Mouse House abandoning a cash cow as ludicrously lucrative as Star Wars any time soon.

However, with Baby Yoda spawning new memes on a weekly basis over on The Mandalorian (the flagship show of Disney's new online streaming service), at least three more confirmed original shows coming down the pipeline, a deluge of comics, cartoons, and video games all dominating the market right now, and even a newly-opened theme park area, I'd say Disney's accountants have to be pretty happy with their Star Wars-shaped future. There are other stories to tell in this sandbox now, without needing to rely on the main films about the Skywalker extended family tree as the primary generators of content, so the film debuting Friday - Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, for those keeping track - has an air of definite finality to it.

To be fair, when the memes are this consistently adorable, who wouldn't want more?

Rather than delve into theories about what the movie will likely hold - REY + KYLO, IS IT FINALLY HAPPENING? IS THE EMPEROR ALIVE AGAIN THROUGH CLONING? WILL THERE BE BLUE MILK? - or try and philosophize about Star Wars' standing in relation to other pop-culture sensations before or since, I actually wanted to dedicate this post to what I think is the most important part of the series... the fans.

Through texts and social media posts, I sent out the question to friends and family: What does Star Wars mean to you? What is it about the appeal of this big goofy, wonderful space franchise, do you think?

Boy, it turns out people LOVE talking about Star Wars.

The answers I received back were better than anything I could've hoped. Wandering, passionate, personal, scrutinizing, these responses represent a whole spectrum of perspectives and opinions. If some seem to contradict one another, it just goes to show the range of interpretations Star Wars can offer to audiences. To me, the amount of similarities is what's even more interesting - echoes of people finding common ground and agreement in a time when those occurrences are more and more uncommon. Go ahead and take a read through them, then stick through the end for a final personal anecdote from Yours Truly that articulates my own thoughts about everyone's favorite space fantasy better than anything else I can think of.

WHAT DOES STAR WARS MEAN TO YOU? 

"Star Wars is my first memory of going to the movies. Star Wars is scrounging around my cousin Mike’s house looking for batteries to power up his Han Solo blaster. Star Wars is playing with my X-Wing fighter so much that I repeatedly snapped the wings off, which my dad then had to bring to work to have it fixed on the special machine that specifically fixes X-Wings. Star Wars is having a calendar countdown when the first prequel was about to be released. Star Wars is sitting in Gilday’s dorm with a mountain of beers, watching the entire original trilogy (on VHS) and cheering every time the opening credits started. Star Wars is getting to watch my son run around and fight invisible storm troopers. Star Wars is pretty good."

"Watching it, you see that one person has the ability to spark a change in the course of history. It's their decision whether this change will be for better or worse. Also, laser swords are pretty awesome."

"It shows how if you try to force a natural balance to favor one side, it will always result in disorder, no matter which direction it is pushed."

"Where to begin? I am the only girl out of three children, and I remember watching A New Hope in the basement on VHS, then spending the 15-20 minutes it took for the tape to rewind playing out the action, with my brothers playing Luke & Han. And then, of course, rewatching the movie and repeating the cycle all over again. Star Wars is the only pop culture experience that has stayed with me consistently my whole life, never once drifting into the realm of nostalgia or 'I used to love...' I was born during a decade in which the original trilogy was readily available, then got to experience the prequels as a young child on the big screen as they premiered, and now I get to live through this resurgence of popularity with my fiance. Our biggest argument thus far has been in which order we'll introduce our future children to the franchise... chronologically by story timeline, or by release date? (I'm Team Release Date, in case you were wondering)"

"Nostalgia. Everyone has a childhood memory of Star Wars that you keep near and dear to your heart forever."

"It can be frustrating, actually. Especially lately, but going back decades with George Lucas, it just seems like it's all happening at the whims of whoever happens to be in charge at the time. George Lucas is one of the worst creators around in terms of revisionist history... whether or not Han shot first (he did), Luke & Leia turning out to be siblings, all those controversies that radically alter what's come before them, only for Lucas to say 'Oh, that's what I intended all along, you're wrong to think otherwise.' And then you have something like The Last Jedi, where a director can come in off the street, ruin one of the franchise's main characters because it's where he so happens to think the narrative should go, then that's now the official story... there's a lack of cohesion or respect for the fans from installment to installment that has made me just lose more and more interest in it as it progresses."

There's debate about whether Han shot first or not, but no doubt at all about Patrick

"It says that anything is possible."

"I think it's the fact that the storyline is strong enough to hold the attention of people who may not be your typical sci-fi fans. For people who prefer movies that have 'deeper' meaning, it offers that element if you want to bother looking past the somewhat-hokey elements. While of course the different species and droids and all of that play their part, you can look past all that, and at the heart, there is a compelling story."

"I’ve always enjoyed the science-fiction aspect of the movies, the thought that this could actually be the future, that this could actually happen. The story line of good versus evil, and the twists in between where you have good-natured people that turn away and turn into the dark side. There are different twists, and you never know where it’s going."

"Everything."

"What drew me in was classic evil versus good plot line that also has a ton of grey areas. I think, like most stories, Star Wars is trying its best to show that people are complex, there's always a backstory, and life sucks."

"It's the universality. It not only appeals to everyone, both on a cross-cultural and cross-generational level, but it's one of the only things around today where you can get as much or as little out of it as you want to. I love Star Trek and Game of Thrones and a lot of today's other fictional universes, but you have to invest a lot of time and effort into understanding them sometimes.You can't necessarily just come off the street and enjoy them. Star Wars, you can. There's a simplicity to it that everyone can latch on to. There's a really appealing *pew pew* ray guns and laser swords element to it, playground style, and you can just put it on for a few minutes and mindlessly enjoy the sheer window-dressing craftsmanship on display of other imaginary landscapes, species, technology - BUT, all that said, you can also go deep and peel away at it with a scalpel and examine its tapestry as a modern mythology in a big, operatic sandbox. The ancient Greeks who had all these myths about the bloodlines of Zeus and self-fulfilling tragedies, Shakespeare and his plays about destinies written in the stars and all his comic relief characters... these people would've adored Star Wars. It really is satisfying on all those levels, it balances all those perspectives in a way that not much else can. We're so lucky to have this as something we can pass on to the future as a product of our time."

For being in the first grade at the time, I have to say I made a pretty convincing Sith apprentice

Now folks, turn back your clocks to circa 2005, with the Iraq War raging overseas and Green Day on the radio. I am in the sixth grade, and belong to that group of individuals who, in a word, struggle through their middle school years. Success at my small Catholic middle school is judged by peers according to two main factors: your ability on the kickball field, and your ability to act like you have NO enthusiasm for anything in the world at all, because caring is for geeks only. I am A) asthmatic and can't kick the rubber ball past the pitcher's mound, while others can send it soaring into the outfield ("automatic out!" is usually the signal that I'm stepping up to the plate), and B) deeply enthusiastic about all sorts of things, Star Wars high among them. Couple that with a big heaping helping of pre-teen introversion, and yeah, it's still not a time I look back fondly on, even now.

The Revenge of the Sith will be debuting in theaters in a few months, the final film of the Star Wars prequel trilogy that sees the once-heroic Anakin Skywalker finally transform into the black-armored behemoth the galaxy knows as Darth Vader, and books full of teaser images and concept art have been released to an eager public ahead of time. I've been keeping one of these stashed in my desk, and after sailing through any classwork the teacher assigns, I've been spending my days pulling it out to take a stab at drawing my own versions of the new ships, droids, and costumes it shows inside. There's a corner in the back of the classroom where the teacher, either impressed by or filled with sympathy for these sketches, has set up a makeshift art gallery for anyone to post their creations to. At the moment, it's papered from floor to ceiling with Star Wars masterpieces that I've been thumb-tacking there for weeks, the gallery's sole contributor.

One day, I'm mercifully spared from kickball, because some kind of bad weather is happening outside and we're having recess indoors. On special occasions like this, the divider door between classrooms 6A & 6B (the two halves of St. Margaret's small sixth grade year) is left open, and we're allowed to travel, wide-eyed, between the two rooms, getting a taste of what daily life is like for the tribe on the other side of the island. Realizing this opportunity for the unique market it provides, I pull a desk over near the open divider door, grab a stack of plain white paper, and prop up my concept art book so that there's no mistaking just what it is I'm offering. Forget playing cards, or the huddle forming around the one girl in class whose parents have bought her an early-model cell phone; I scrawl "FREE STAR WARS DRAWINGS" on the top sheet of paper, hang it over the side of the desk as a makeshift advertisement, then sit back and wait for what I know will be a steady stream of classmates who won't believe their good luck about this one-time offer. I wait... and make some hopeful eye contact with some passerby... and wait... "You want one? Oh... ok, no worries, you can always come back tomorrow if you want..." and wait... until recess is over, and I bring the utterly untouched pad of paper back to its storage bin.

I'll stop here to spare you any further tragic details, and leave off with the slightly surprising suggestion not to feel too bad for this young lad when all is said and done. For whatever reason, this incident didn't send him home that afternoon feeling miserable - by the time the next bell rang, the art book was back out again, and new drawings were being produced for no one else's enjoyment but his and the gallery wall's. In doing so, he was immersing himself once again in an epic saga that told how all evils passed eventually, be they Evil Empires or Wars on Terror, or even something as hellish as middle school; the trick was just to not give up on hope in the meantime. He learned that lesson well, and it's never left him since.

(As you can clearly tell)

Near fifteen years later, and while on a personal level I've moved on to a place galaxies away from the 6B classroom - seven marathons now separate me from the asthma of the kickball field, and I'm currently counting down the days until I get to marry a soulmate who actually shared that same recess yard with me - the world at large is seeing more than its fair share of new evils. For some mind-boggling reason, it seems that Nazis are, like, a thing again in society, mirroring a plot development in the Disney-era films that (I'll speak for everyone here) we'd rather have kept in the fictional universe. Vitriol, prejudice, divisiveness seem to threaten with every new venture into the Internet comment section, and a feeling of downright oppressiveness looms over the lives of a dishearteningly large portion of our society today.

But if Star Wars offers any kind of message whatsoever to its millions of fans worldwide, I think it's a rallying call to resist, to rebel against this kind of doom and gloom, to fight it with lightsabers and X-Wings and plain old stubbornness until it passes away, as it inevitably always will. I couldn't be prouder to stand and be counted in a Rebellion like that, with each and every one of my fellow Rebels quoted above, and it's been a joy to have experienced a story that inspires so much hope - A New Hope, you could say - with friends and family right up until the conclusion here.

Grab your lightsabers, folks. Let's get out there and do it all again one last time.

May the Force be with you.