This piece is a continuation of my series of reactions to each Star Wars film itself. You can read my other reactions here.
For my 40th Birthday, I attended the world premiere of The Force Awakens in Los Angeles. I won’t go into how I wound up in the same theater as George Lucas and JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles to be in the very first audience for this movie - it was a favor by a friend and arranged by my incredible spouse who loves me very much. But it was one of the very best moments of my life, thank you very much, and it made turning forty feel like the start of something new.
That’s not really what I expected turning forty to feel like. I’m not someone who relishes aging (see the newsletter for evidence of how much I cling to my childhood passions), or is terrible comfortable with mortality. I look youthful and have always been mistaken for younger than I am. I was not looking forward to forty.
But then The Force Awakens showed up. The Force Awakens was the seventh Star Wars film, released almost forty years after the original. It shouldn’t have felt like a fresh start. It should have felt like going to the well once too often. It could have felt like someone refusing to just gracefully move on. But it didn’t. Instead, it was a soft reboot, a flashy update, a faithful continuation, and a bold new vision, all at once. The Force Awakens said to me: this is forty and it’s awesome.
The Force Awakens was, and is, a masterpiece of popular art. There’s a reason it shattered all domestic US Box Office Records (it outgrossed Avengers: Endgame by $80 million). It miraculously navigated a middle path between love of the past and embrace of the future.
In order to pull off this magic trick, it rhymes brazenly with the original series, without a doubt. But that’s what was needed for a Star Wars film in 2015. It’s hard to remember now, especially for a generation of Prequel Kids at the center of internet Star Wars discourse, but the general cultural consensus after Episode III was released (one I never agreed with, even as a Gen Xer) was that the prequels were a creative failure and had damaged the prestige Star Wars held in popular culture.
That’s why The Force Awakens begins with the line “this will begin to make things right.” There was a sense that a bond had to be reforged between audiences and Star Wars. Trust reestablished. That’s why instead of big design departures, we see TIE Fighters and X-Wings. It’s why the Millennium Falcon is flown by Han and Chewie again. It’s why the stormtroopers look like stormtroopers designed by Apple. It’s why Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, was brought aboard to co-write the screenplay. It’s why they cast charismatic, movie-ready relative unknowns just like George Lucas did in 1977.
George Lucas would not have made The Force Awakens. (To be fair, he decided not to make Episode VII altogether and sold the company.) I think that’s because George Lucas does not have nostalgia for Star Wars. Star Wars was his life’s work by accident, and his relationship with it always seemed to be that of frustration and impatience. The technology wasn’t good enough, what was on-screen wasn’t what he pictured in his mind, editing was too slow, too much studio interference. His genius was as much a product of his pure stubbornness as his storytelling acumen. We have him to thank him for moving the art of making movies forward, but it was because he was so frustrated with the art as it existed. (Check out the Light & Magic Documentary if you want to see just how little nostalgia he had for film itself.)
That same stubbornness meant he bristled at aiming his work at the twenty-year olds that were Star Wars' most dedicated fanbase in 1999. He wanted to make the prequels for a new generation (which proved prescient), but he also wanted to to satisfy an unfulfilled vision. Read the original The Star Wars screenplay (there’s a great graphic novel version) and you’ll see that he always wanted to make something more like the prequels than the beloved original trilogy.
The Force Awakens does not come from a place of stubbornness. It’s made to delight, to invite, and yes, as a Star Wars Celebration. It moves fast, it’s light and funny. It gives us poignant counterpoints to the original (Han as a believer, Luke in exile) and also leaves some characters entirely alone (Leia is Leia, C-3PO is C-3PO, Chewie is Chewie).
The Force Awakens sees Star Wars the way the audience sees Star Wars. It’s entirely aligned with the audience’s excitement about seeing these characters again. It feels, because of this, joyful to watch and looked joyful to make. The whole thing has the vibe that Finn brings when he shouts “Are we really doing this?” No one expected a sequel to Return of the Jedi. Then, all the sudden, we were watching it, and it was soaring and familiar.
So what’s radical, what’s new, if this is largely a retelling of an old story? How can it feel like a new song when it’s playing so many of the same notes?
The casting, everyone.
Diversity (and I don’t want to be too controversial here) is an absolutely wonderful thing. It does profound good in the world. Star Wars was always made with an eye on justice, equality, rebelliousness, and feminism; so it was right for the series to step into this era’s vision of those same ideas.
Making its hero a Luke Skywalker-Han Solo hybrid named Rey, a young woman of extraordinary powers and a lost past, The Force Awakens gave young women watching the series a non-princess archetype to embrace. John Boyega, with his increasingly natural hair and his dashing, hilarious performance, gave young Black boys a Halloween costume all their own. Heroic and charming Poe is the rare Latino in the Star Wars galaxy. In a series with this much cultural prominence, representation is essential. It tells a generation of young people that they, too, can see themselves reflected in our societies central myths.
What else is radical, at least to me, was that The Force Awakens treats the heroes of the original trilogy in the same way we see them in the real world: as legends. When Rey says “Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth!” with a gleam of excitement in her eye, it’s a sign we’re watching a very new idea in Star Wars.
In the original trilogy, the past is entirely new to most of the characters. Obi-Wan isn’t a well known hero to Luke, he’s never even heard of the Force. Everyone is introduced, and there are no references within the series of the characters being awed by being in the presence of someone important. The prequels are the same way. But in The Force Awakens, Rey and Finn freak out when they realize they’re talking to Han Solo. Luke is a cross between Merlin and King Arthur. Leia is surrounded by young Resistance fighters who treat her with reverence. It’s not just the filmmakers who see Star Wars the way we do: it’s the characters too.
When I turned forty, there was a temptation to calcify. To say, I am who I am. To say, I’ve reached middle age, I like what I like, I think what I think, and that’s that. And then there’s that other festering call of the mid-life crisis: throw an expensive tantrum against aging, pretend you’re young again, try to fit into the clothes you used to wear, get that weird tattoo you coveted in your twenties. Or, even worse, you can become someone skeptical of all progress, treat new ideas as implicit threats or critiques.
But there’s another way to mature, it’s artfully embodied by The Force Awakens: you can embrace what you love about yourself, and continue to grow. We can celebrate our past and all the things we loved as we grew up; and we can get excited about our future, and the possibilities of the unknown and the new. Be free to learn new ways of seeing the world and being in the world, but don’t reject what made you who you are.
I’m almost fifty as I write this. Or at least, I’m forty eight and a half. And I think my forties have been filled with learning: about privilege and gender and race and what’s fragile and what isn’t in me and the world around me. But I’ve also had the pleasure of really becoming who I am. I spend less time worrying about how others perceive me or if I’m good enough, and I just get on with the business of being whoever my life has produced. This has manifested in a guy who still watches all his favorite movies from the 80s, but remembers to put his pronouns in his emails at work. A guy who doesn’t care anymore if he looks goofy in shorts, but does care if he’s being inclusive in his life and friendships. Now, I really do feel like better man than I was before, because I’ve listened to wiser people than I am about how the world feels to them, but not a different person than I was, because I’m still just this same nerd.
That’s what I saw in The Force Awakens. It felt like it loved being itself and cheered for Star Wars as it’s always been; even as it made room for new faces, new voices, to make Star Wars a truly twenty-first century version of a long time ago.
May we all age so gracefully.
Stormtroopers designed by Apple is such a great description.
Really enjoyed reading this. As someone who grew up Star Wars, watching me two sons (ages 10 & 6 at the time) watch this movie with awe and wonder rekindled my love for a galaxy far, far away. Thanks for sharing your memories.