Editor’s note: While we did our best to ensure we avoided specifics, there are parts of this essay that reveal details that some might consider spoilers for ‘The Force Awakens.’ This will be your final warning.
This weekend, and for the foreseeable future, intersections that lead in and out of multiplexes across America will be crowded, lined bumper-to-bumper with cars filled with people of all ages and walks of life, nearly all in a varied state of breathless anticipation. For the first time in 16 years, people are are excited about Star Wars.
Their excitement is well-deserved – as our own Danielle Houtkooper explains – this isn’t just another revisitation to a popular movie franchise, Episode VII: The Force Awakens is a return to form for the Star Wars approach to adventure serial filmmaking. Co-writer and director J.J. Abrams took this framework and filled it in with a petition in the form of hundreds of thousands of internet comments – a kind of fan-service funnelled through the studio system to placate an entire generation still trying to shake off the presence of Jar Jar Binks and the mention of midichlorians analyzed in a goddamn makeshift Gillette razor.
A Less Civilized Age
With the culture of Star Wars fandom, best described as increasingly-rabid as the latest premiere date approached, early screenings, limited to a handful of critics, created a three-day gap last week leading up to the official release. It was in that three-day gap that the ugliness of online culture came to surface. In a kind of pendulum-swinging reaction to fans elated to revisit a much more lived-in feeling sci-fi universe that outlined their childhoods, suddenly 20-odd words giving away all the “wow!” moments in the film were being purposefully littered across comments sections and message boards on anything remotely Star Wars related.
Suddenly, warnings erupted on social media, warning those unaware how to avoid these plot-ruining word-bombs. Scores of people either signed off or temporarily disabled their accounts in order to prevent any possibility of stumbling across them by accident. It was the internet on high alert. It was paranoia justified by vile behavior. It was fandom eating itself in a completely unprecedented way.
Myself, being both a Star Wars fan by birth (I was 2 years old when my mother took me to see The Empire Strikes Back) and lover of the movie-going experience on a whole, in the days leading up to Spoilergate I’d elected to go into The Force Awakens knowing nothing beyond what trailer I might accidentally see on TV. As an entertainment writer by trade, it posed a moderate challenge, considering some of my virtual workrooms were littered with this information.
While I had somehow managed to tactfully avoid anything that I thought might ruin any surprises in store, it was a few hours before the showing I was attending at noon on Friday when I stumbled across the spoiler. Like Orpheus turning around too quickly, my spoiler-free experience faded like Eurydice back into Hades, never again to be recovered.
To make matters worse, it was a post made by a former co-worker out of spite for someone else spoiling, ironically, The Walking Dead for them. Predictably, the comments brought out the worst of a generation defined by their infantile behavior, where the goal was to find out who could be the worst person in that particular thread, (it was an all-way tie, incidentally) which included a lackadaisical outlook from the one who started it all, who’s actual response to the whole ordeal they’d purposefully started was, and I quote, “¯\_(ツ)_/¯”.
So, my diligence was shattered by the arrogant disregard and inherent selfishness that millennials are notorious for. This was amplified by the narcissism and self-importance that seemed to necessitate a desire to put a digital megaphone over a personal, petty argument, completely uncaring of who would be affected as a result. (Also likely, the accompanying misery in which this former co-worker will remain while working at a terrible job with a shitty company that makes them work holidays for the rest of their natural life). In the end, it didn’t matter, as it wasn’t going to be enough to ruin the experience for me.
A copy-and-paste comments section carpet bombing, while still aggravating, but more so perplexingly childish, even for a generation that frequently lists “being coddled” as a job requirement, would prove to be insignificant next to the power of multiple generations of fans that started with those who stood in line that fateful summer in 1977.
“And was suddenly silenced.”
After waves of showings Thursday night, reactions were overwhelmingly positive (yet mostly restrained in giving specifics, because it’s extremely easy to not be a terrible fucking person). Moreover, it seems that Abrams finally made the Star Wars movie he was trying to make when he made two shitty Star Trek movies. The score boomed throughout the lobby of the theater as people filed in. Sitting in the very back left corner, I watched the seats slowly fill in with fans, young and old. As the lights dimmed seconds before the blue Gothic font faded in to give us our time (a long time ago) and place (a galaxy far, far away), it was electric.
Until a young kid broke the silence, loudly reminding everyone that this was the time to be quiet. The timing was extremely fortunate, getting it out just in time for it to be moderately charming without interfering with any of the spectacle that was seconds away froms starting. Most everyone got a good chuckle seconds before the opening title card thundered onto the screen, which of course lead to a round of regaled cheering. Moments like these were the very cornerstones of fandom.
Despite how they’re regarded now, these moments were there in the prequels, at least in the beginning. After everyone who’d grown up knowing Star Wars came to the consensus that The Phantom Menace was a resounding disappointment, the subsequent two installments each became their own increasingly tepid versions of “well, maybe this one will be better.” It was around this time that the “rape my childhood” euphemism began being tossed around, as creator George Lucas remained steadfast in declaring it his story to tell while shaking its fan-base to the very core.
In the meantime, reviews criticizing the movie rivaled the length of the movies themselves. The two trilogies were re-ordered to sharpen the narrative. Critics went on elaborate fan-fiction tangents of “this is how it should have been done.” Excuses were made, films were revisited, and ultimately questions about the validity of the harsh criticism against them as a body of work were forcibly reintroduced into the discussion.
Now, after George Lucas gave everyone a $4 billion bow-out a few years back, and Star Wars was absorbed into the homogenizer of dreams/money printing machine of Disney, the moving parts were assembled. Rights would be wronged. Balance would finally be brought to the force. The un-raping of childhoods everywhere would commence.
“No. There is another.”
In the end, by remaking the first and third acts of A New Hope, leaving the second act free for Abrams to create a nonsensical chase sequence involving some ridiculous fucking CG monster, the film doesn’t just aim to please, but was created solely with the ideal to win back the fans disenchanted by the prequels. Of course, it succeeds. Abrams is, on his own, not creative enough to helm a franchise of his creation, and has built a rather successful career on appealing to the lowest common denominator after taking over franchises built by others.
He actually does one better in The Force Awakens by building a bridge between the beloved classic trilogy to the latest installments. The name ‘Luke Skywalker’ is the first thing mentioned in the opening star-scroll. Han and Chewie’s introductory shot was a deliberate execution of blatant pandering to a jaded and cynical fan-base (it should be noted, too, that it was widely successful). Leia Organa, shunning the title of Princess for General, dressed in military garb, still leading the resistance while traveling with the socially awkward C-3PO.
Despite the fact that I, as much as anyone, appreciated the novelty of a story that felt like a continuation of one that was left concluded 32 years prior with Return of the Jedi, there’s an unexpected side effect. While the actors playing Rey, Finn, and Poe (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac, respectively) seem to be having genuine fun giving life to their characters, Han and Leia are left to wander around, feeling completely out-of-place despite returning to a franchise they were there for the founding of. Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Han Solo comes off as so disinterested in being there that his presence felt like an outright distraction, despite the laser beams and spaceships constantly whizzing by.
It’s also hard not to see the metaphor for The Force Awakens’ larger macguffin, the location of Luke Skywalker, the golden hero of the classic trilogy, as a franchise actively seeking what once made it great. This, juxtaposed against countless shots of deteriorating Imperial war machines, now used as makeshift shelters and targets for desert scavengers, was itself a commentary on the state of Star Wars in general. Even Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren looks for guidance from the melted helmet of Darth Vader, seeking pointers on how to be a better bad guy.
Still, the real reason for The Force Awakens success is the trio of new characters who are dropped into this world with little to no backstory, undoubtedly left to be peeled away at the two follow-up installments. They feel connected to the universe around them without unnecessary exposition. Contrary to more modern science fiction like Inception and Looper (the latter, incidentally, was directed by Rian Johnson, who is next up to direct Episode VIII), both of which explained themselves to death up all the way through their final moments. Wherein here, even all these years later, we simply buy into it, and, in part because of Abrams nostalgic pandering, it absolutely works
Then, after the credits began to roll and the theater slowly emptied out into the lobby, the strangest thing occurred to me – George Lucas was right.
Not about everything, mind you, (Greedo shooting first is still a sore spot with me, like many others) but during those six years between The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith, when those like me who’d grown up wishing to pilot the Millennium Falcon or swing a glowing blue lightsaber were throwing up their arms in frustration, Lucas simply iterated that he was making movies for kids. After all, of those classic trilogy-loving friends of mine that had kids of their own, those kids will cite a prequel installment like Attack of the Clones as their favorite over The Empire Strikes Back. While there’s an innate reflex in older generations that wants to explain to these kids that they’re wrong, the simple fact is, they’re not.
So, as I was washing my hands in the bathroom, I overheard a discussion between two men close-enough to my age giving the newest installment overwhelming approval, before it descending into meticulous semantics and complicated musings over the dreaded spoilers. Of course, I heard myself in their conversation. Just enough to serve as a reminder of the truly insufferable nature of fanboy culture, of which I am most certainly a part of.
Then, as I left, a young kid, possibly the one who told the entire theater that it was the time to stop talking, was standing in a hallway, not waxing intellectual on the nature of spoilers, not actively analyzing any callbacks or any hidden messages in the film’s subtext, but simply humming the Star Wars score with a smile on his face. This kid, and millions of others just like him, is who these films should be made for. The rest of us are simply trying to argue our way back to that point, that one perfect moment when you were young, and had just seen a Star Wars movie for the first time.
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