I
THIS IS ABOUT STAR WARS AND CONTAINS SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF
YOU HAVE NOT SEEN STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS. MY THOUGHTS CONTINUE
BELOW THIS MUSICAL INTERLUDE. FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND YODA DON'T CONTINUE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE THE MOVIE SPOILED. There. Can't say I didn't try and warn you.
In the past 10 days, I have watched the original trilogy. I have reread Star Wars Aftermath. I have devoured every article and analysis that I could about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I saw the movie three times in four days and have stopped myself from going at least two other times. I haven't been this deep into my Star Wars fandom since the awkward two week period in the summer after sixth grade when I tried to get people to call me Anikan Solo.
Yes. That happened.
I've tried to sit down a write what I loved about the film. What I didn't like and what I didn't want to allow logic (like physics) or naysayers (It's just Star Wars over again!) take away from me. In spite of it all, I wasn't truly compelled to write. Until I read a very honest and well written article by Rob Bricken on Gizmondo entitled "There's One Thing I Totally Hate About The Force Awakens"
It's a well written piece and I understand his complaint. That the update tears away the happy ending of Return of the Jedi from Luke, Leia and Han. That the victory at the forest moon of Endor was short lived and that war still rages on. It was something that even the author admits was necessary for the plot to move forward. Yet it was hard for him to accept - in Bricken's words;
As someone who grew up on Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, retroactively qualifying the Rebels’ victory over the Empire and the accomplishments of the original trilogy is distressing enough. But what really upsets me about The Force Awakens is how it reveals (determines?) that despite all the conflict they faced, and all the victories they won, Luke, Leia and Han’s lives after the Original Trilogy were basically miserable.
Miserable. Damn. That is a harsh reality.
I often learn the most when I understand my own reality when I have a point of reference. A lighthouse when at sea. A north star. A constant. In a way that's why a part of me still believes deep down in some sort of soul mate or true partner. I don't always know what I want until I lose it. I most often understand where I stand when I know the room. I didn't realize what I loved about The Force Awakens until someone said they hated it.
Whoa. So that means that I love that Luke, Leia and Han's lives were miserable? What kind of jerk am I?
No.
Well I'm probably a jerk but for so many other reasons. No. What I loved about The Force Awakens is that it took my iconic heroes and characters and made them more real. It made them flawed. It made them more human. It made me love them more.
Yes. Luke failed. He tried to return the Jedi to their former glory and he accidentally unleashed emo Vader on the universe. Leia lost her son and threw herself into work and in a way, lost herself. Han didn't always talk himself out of it. He didn't know how to be a perfect father and when his son rejected him and Leia, he ran, he went back to his scoundrel space pirate ways. If the story ended there it would be miserable.
It didn't. Han had a chance and reason to come back. Yes it was a familiar reason. If there are two constants in the world of Han Solo they are Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon. His recapture of the Falcon upsets his scoundrel world once again. Han is given the chance to make a difference again. To borrow from another recent space epic, a chance to give a damn. Once again, his true heroic self rises to the surface. Finn and Rey are his new chance and he runs at it. Even if he complains the whole time.
Han finally faces Leia after what had to have been a long separation. The scene were he brushes off a panicked Finn and stands before the landing ship was awesome. If you've ever been in the situation of facing an angry ex who might rightly hate you - then you know that moment was braver than any Kessel Run.
Han's death, which brought me to tears the first two times, works because it's the death of man who would lose his life than completely give up on his own son. The scoundrel Han would never have walked out on that bridge. Han, the father, couldn't do anything else.
Leia seems to have pushed emotion and connection aside. Losing her brother, her partner and her son in quick succession can have that effect I assume. She's a General now. Not a Princess. And there's a hell of a lot more Eisenhower than Elsa in her. Her emotional restraint with Han is torture. He and I and maybe the audience, wanted her to lash out at him. Be angry for running away. Yet her concern is not giving up on their son. She asks Han to bring him back. Probably knowing that's a one in a million chance. She too can't give up on her son.
Luke. He's barely in the damn movie! What is there to analyze? He doesn't even speak a word. He ran to the wilderness. He became a hermit like Old Ben Kenobi on a faraway hidden world like Yoda. He saw that darkness that he had wrought and could not abide it. He gave up. He was just a kid from a dessert world who should have stuck to shooting womp rats in beggar's cannon.
Yet potentially the greatest hook for a sequel ever, Rey stands arm out, offering Luke his saber and another chance. A chance that Ben Kenobi barely got to experience and one that Yoda was too old to experience. Another chance at redemption. An apprentice. The opportunity to right a wrong even as Obi-Wan had done and hopefully much more.
If you see only the misery that came after Return of the Jedi, I can see why you would hate one thing about The Force Awakens.
If you can see your icons, fall and get back up. Fail and keep trying. Never give up hope in their loved ones in spite of logic. You can seem more of yourself in them.
I fail routinely. I fall. Sometimes I even get back up. I don't need my heroes to have happy endings. I don't need a bonfire and a band of misfit teddy bears playing the bongos (but my birthday is in like a week...). I don't need the shiny happy ending of Return of the Jedi.
I want it. But I don't need it.
I need to see flaws. I need to be inspired to keep doing in spite of failure. I need to have hope. To believe in family. To trust in love.
No the themes of The Force Awakens are not what I wanted. They are what I needed.
That's why I love it.
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