Wish-Fulfillment, Classic Star Wars Style

*warning, contains massive spoilers*

I loved the new Star Wars movie with the passion of a super-fan seeing a beloved universe reverently and exuberantly brought to life.

And when I say super-fan, I mean it. I read most of the canon books as a kid, including the Timothy Zahn and Barbara Hambly contributions. I had a Star Wars weapons index that I memorized, and I actually wrote a few snippets of truly horrible fan fiction. I was that kind of fan.

The first time the X-wings appeared on screen in the new movie, I actually teared up a bit. No, I’m not joking. Don’t judge me.

The original trilogy, which I re-watched again this weekend before going to see The Force Awakens, has stood the test of time. Unlike the prequel trilogy (let us never speak of those abominations again), the originals hold up because they have good actors with excellent chemistry, a self-effacing sense of humor, and a direct line to Joseph Campbell. The Force Awakens gets that balance right again, and it also brings the universe into the twenty-first century. The new movie officially passes the Bechdel test! General Leia Organa (not Solo) actually looks her age, there is a female villain in actual armor, and nobody wears a slave bikini. And I cannot describe how happy I am that there is not a single white man in the central character trilogy of Rey, Finn, and Po. Hallelujah, praise the Lord, Star Wars has seen the light!

As we walked out of the movie theater on Sunday night, my friends and I (and probably everyone else) were madly speculating about one of the big questions left open at the end of the movie: who are Rey’s parents? Personally, I think she is Luke’s daughter, for a bunch of reasons. His lightsaber calls to her, she looks just like him (both features and costume), she was old enough when her parents left that if they were Han and Leia she would have recognized them, etc. But everyone seems to agree that she must be somebody’s kid — that is, somebody important from the Luke/Leia/Han generation.

But when I voiced this theory, one of my friends said he hoped that isn’t true. Wouldn’t it be better, he said, if Rey is just some random girl? Because if the Jedi hero could be anyone, and not just a member of the Skywalker dynasty, we can all indulge in the wish-fulfillment of imagining the hero could be us.

But the particular kind of wish fulfillment Star Wars has always provided is not the rags-to-riches, anyone-can-be-a-hero type. Instead, it’s the fantasy of the orphan who dreams that she will find her family, and they will be extraordinary. Star Wars gives us the ugly duckling myth— the misfit kid who turns out to be destined for greatness.

As Rachel Kadish pointed out in a New York Times op-ed titled “Childhood Heroes: Once Self-Made, Now to the Manor Born,” many modern superheroes do not gain their powers through radioactive spider bites like the comic book heroes of the mid-twentieth century. Instead, they are born special, and their coming of age stories revolve around joining an elite group of special people. Their greatness is discovered, not created.

And Star Wars fits right into that tradition — arguably, it was instrumental in starting it. Like Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker grows up as an ordinary kid in an ordinary place. But they both find out that they are in fact extraordinary, with parents who are not only famous but magical. Star Wars has always offered that particular fantasy. It is about sons dealing with their fathers’ legacies, and snotty kids growing into their birthright as great men.

At first glance, it looks like The Force Awakens is offering this particular kind of fantasy once again. But there is a difference. Luke had no powers at all when Obi-Wan picked him out of obscurity on Tatooine, and he needed to be taught by both Obi-Wan and Yoda before he could use any of what he was born with. He’s also a bit of a brat, thinking only of himself until long after his aunt and uncle are killed. Rey, by contrast, is scrappy, confident, and fiercely moral from the first time she appears on screen. She protects the helpless even when offered a substantial incentive not to. Even when she barely knows what the Force is, she uses it to match wills with Kylo Ren and win, and she wields both lightsaber and blaster with deadly (and somewhat implausible) skill. She obviously has innate abilities, but what she does with them is shaped by a fully-formed character and set of experiences.

And, when you think about it, that has always been the core message of Star Wars. The Force contains both Dark and Light. No matter what talents people are born with, everyone faces a choice between right and wrong. Nothing in blood or upbringing can influence that choice — Anakin (who became Darth Vader) begat Luke and Leia, who begat Ben Solo (who became Kylo Ren, Darth Vader 2.0). Raw power may be passed through bloodlines, but power is inherently neutral and can be used for either good or evil.

In other words, with great power comes great responsibility. I guess Star Wars has a lot in common with Spiderman after all.

And in all this talk of Rey and her parentage, I have been forgetting Finn. In many ways, he is the opposite of Rey. She leaves a chaotic and lonely childhood and finds companionship and unity of purpose with the Resistance, while he leaves a life of comfortable conformity to find individuality and personal conviction.

And Finn is a by-the-bootstraps hero that comic book fans would recognize. When we first meet him, he is nameless and faceless, indistinguishable from the other storm-troopers. He becomes a character only when a dying comrade smears his helmet with blood — he is literally marked by the violence and trauma of his first battle. Finn becomes a hero not because of his parentage or upbringing, but by virtue of formative experience and conscience. He doesn’t even have a name before his major act of defiance against the First Order — he identifies by a number until Po decides to call him Finn.