Like the Original Trilogy, The Force Awakens is More Than a Story
I think it’s important to understand that I believe, without hyperbole, that the original Star Wars trilogy changed my life as a child and helped set its trajectory. It’s also important to understand that I’m not unique in this regard. The same holds true for thousands of others.
I couldn’t tell you why I gravitated to A New Hope as a kid, other than the fact that its setting was interesting, and its merry band of galactic magicians, warriors, and hybrids thereof unlocked my child’s imagination. It was a story of success despite insurmountable odds. As the saga wound on through Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it became less a story about good defeating evil (although that thread of course remained), and more about the blurred lines defining the two.
I wasn’t aware of these things of course, but as I watched the films over and over and over, the magic never fading with familiarity, I came to know them in my heart. I loved Luke and Han and Leia. I loved droids and I loved Vader and Palpatine and Boba Fett. I was indiscriminately enamored regardless of archetype.
As I grew up, my understanding of the story and the characters matured, but still that mattered less than realizing it was more than the sum of its parts: the cool space ships, the before-its-time special effects, the quick sardonic dialogue, and fucking lightsabers man. Lightsabers!
Star Wars is a key, the teeth of which adapt always to my ever-changing creativity and imagination. Star Wars accesses that imagination invariably. At the end of the day nothing else matters to me.
This is a form of magic in a mundane world, to be able to pop in a disc and experience nostalgia and love and inspiration, and never have it dwindle. For all my life, Episodes IV-VI have been an indestructible force of goodness.
It’s important to understand the heights of disappointment the following three films, Episodes I-III, achieved. The world I loved so much had been perverted with crappy CGI and characters who managed to affront every sensibility I had. I saw the films, of course, and it’s not that I hated them, it was simply that they were so far outside the stratosphere of expectation and precedent that it was less painful to simply not acknowledge them. I’ve grown to appreciate those films for what they are — a spirited swing and a miss, but an opportunity to spend some time in an incredible universe nonetheless — but they are a scar. If that sounds dramatic, it is because it is dramatic. Stories matter to me. A lot. And this one perhaps paramount amongst them. Episodes I-III were a grievous blow.
The Force Awakens began to make things right.
It was so many things. An apology. A tribute. A comedy, a tragedy, a hero’s cycle. But most importantly it was a restoration of faith and trust. This was the story I’d grown to adore. These were the characters, and the types of characters, whose figurines adorned my bedroom shelves. This was the dialogue, and the acting, and the artfulness that made it all seem real, made looking up at the starry night sky a story unto itself.
I don’t know if childlike wonder — that pure uncut shit — can be recaptured at my age, but I do know that The Force Awakens is the closest I could hope to come. It recaptured the spirit of the original trilogy, it’s the same blood type. It’s grown up and been stylized to suit the times, but it sacrifices no charm. The Force Awakens possesses the same pathos as A New Hope, and sets the momentum for the films to follow. It made me fall in love with Star Wars all over again, and because of that the components of the film (which I don’t go into here out of respect for those who haven’t seen it) were largely ancillary in importance.
While criticisms of plot, character motive, and direction are perhaps valid, I can’t help but find them monumentally vapid in the shadow of what this film achieved: a true fucking awakening.
