How ‘The Force Awakens’ Redeemed Star Wars For Me

[Note: this post is free of plot spoilers.]

I know it’s heresy (especially for a speculative fiction writer), but I’m admitting publicly that I’ve never liked Star Wars.

Until today.

I saw Star Wars for the first time in 1977 in the theater. I was ten, and while I thought it was cool, I really didn’t like it.

It had cool special effects, and I liked Leia and Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 a lot, and I thought Darth Vader was super creepy and fascinating. But as a movie, as a story, there wasn’t anything for me to connect with.

Making matters worse, perhaps, my parents gave me a Princess Leia doll, but I didn’t really know what to do with her since I didn’t have any other Star Wars toys (those were for boys), and alongside my Barbies she was the tall freaky girl who couldn’t wear any of their clothes. Worse, once you undid her donut hair, you could never fix it again. (Meanwhile, my Bionic Woman doll, although likewise larger, had bionic parts and supersonic hearing, and was always the badass who saved everyone in my crazy convoluted tales of mayhem).

Doll or no doll, I just couldn’t get into Star Wars. Nothing changed when I saw Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. They just didn’t work for me.