Journey to “The Force Awakens”, or “How I Tried to Love Star Wars”
As of this writing, it’s been about two months since “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” opened in US theaters. Since that time, I’ve watched with passing interest as it broke several domestic box office records. I emphasize this fact because as yet, the movie still sits about $1B short of becoming the current highest grossing movie of all time. That fact hasn’t stopped people from raving about it and as such, I had to go on a media blackout in order to preserve myself from seeing spoilers before I actually saw the film, a herculean task to say the least. The reason for the forced media fast is that I tend to be pretty critical when it comes to film and I didn’t want any preconceived bias when I finally did watch this movie. I wanted to have an open mind my first viewing so that I could bring you as pure a review of things as possible.
The start of this project came when I realized an interesting position that I had inadvertently placed myself in. Not seeing the movie opening night and not partaking in spoiler infested media beforehand, I figured I had a chance to conduct a self-contained social experiment using myself as the test subject. You see, I grew up a Trekkie. I’ve never been a huge Star Wars fan and in fact, I’ve spent most of the previous decade disliking any Star Wars that wasn’t the original unaltered trilogy. This all stems from the fact that I stumbled on to Star Trek when I was only three years old, but I was maybe 10 when I first remembered watching a Star Wars film. And then the first one I saw was “Return of the Jedi” so I missed out on that huge reveal about Luke Skywalker’s parentage. It was spoiled for me right off the bat. I think that series of exposure robbed me of a chance to really form a connection with Lucas’ narrative the way it was intended to be made. And, Star Wars isn’t the first film franchise that I think of when I try to recall science fiction that really challenges me on an intellectual level. Not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s just what I look for in entertainment.
I did start to flirt with Star Wars fandom when I was in my early teens. I remember the hype as people braced themselves for the triumphant return of the original trilogy to the big screen via the Special Edition event. I even attended a museum exhibit at the Smithsonian that year. My grandmother took me to “Empire” when the special edition of that was released. I remember having a good time and that there was a packed house that show. I didn’t get a chance to see any of the other films when they were released theatrically, but about two years later, Star Wars found its way back into my face.
I was 16 when Episode 1 came out in 1999. I was enjoying high school, sort of, and trying desperately to escape that world through friends and such. One such friend worked at the local movie theater and could get free tickets for friends so when someone would inevitably suggest that we go see Episode 1, we would since it was free. In fact, I never paid a dime to see in theaters and I saw it four times. Being young and naive, I found the film entertaining enough. I didn’t try to read too much into it and so I didn’t have much chance to decide that I didn’t like it. The only complaint I had at the time was that there was too much usage of CGI. When 2002 rolled around, I was preparing to serve a two year church mission, but it was released early enough in the year that my high school buddies and I went to go see it as one last hurrah before I left. I didn’t find most of the movie very exciting, but I generously gave it an indifferent shrug and determined to move on with my life.
That attitude came to an abrupt halt while I was serving my church mission. See, missionaries in my church are not supposed to proselyte on New Year’s Eve or Day. As such, my mission leader put together a list of approved movies that all the missionaries could watch that night. I bet you can’t guess which film made that list… Now, that would have been fine except that one of the missionaries serving in an area close to mine hurt his ankle really badly about a week before the new year. In order to keep the work moving, my companion and his companion joined forces and worked both areas while I babysat this guy. As it turned out, he was a huge fan of Star Wars and so he wanted to watch Episode 2 while he was recovering. This turned into us watching the movie at least a half dozen times in three day, probably more. We’d finish the movie and he’d start it again. It was well known amongst the missionaries that served where I did that I was a huge Trekkie and part of me wonders if this guy did it just to spite me, but it worked and those hugely indifferent rose colored glasses were shattered then. I only wished they had done me the dignity of shattering my retinas as well.
This experience sparked a disdain that lasted over a decade. Warning: prolonged exposure to “Attack of the Clones” could lead to permanent Star Wars fandom damage. I still collected a few trinkets here and there, but I wasn’t willing to give it nearly as much quarter in my heart as I had previously. The deluge of hate spewing forth from the Internet didn’t help as that only fed the fire with methodical and thought provoking arguments about why I shouldn’t like Star Wars anymore, at least from my jaded perspective. Thus, it was with a slight feeling of dismay that I got a call from one of the aforementioned high school buddies inviting me to see “Revenge of the Sith” for old times sake in 2005. I attended reluctantly and found that while I didn’t hate the film, it had failed to resonate with me. But 2005 had more in store for me. That was the year that my mother, bless her heart, had decided that what I really needed for Christmas were both Star Wars trilogies on DVD. It was as if Lucas was adding gasoline to my hatred pyre when I saw that he had replaced the old guy with Hayden Christensen at the end of “Jedi”. The one film that I was even moderately fond of and he had ruined it with his prequel ways!
It was at this point that I more or less swore off Star Wars. I owned the DVDs and so I would watch a few of them, occasionally, but never with excitement, only mild tolerance. Then the winds of change began to blow and Lucas sold his company to Disney, who immediately announced a new trilogy. This could mean a fresh start, but the new film had two things working against it. One, I’m a stubborn contrarian for no other reason than I don’t want to feel like a sheeple. When I started getting persecuted by friends telling me that I must add my financial and cultural blandness to their own, I reflexively shut them all out. Two, as I’ve already admitted, I’m a huge Trekkie so I can get my fix any time from the myriad episodes and movies that exist within that universe. All this equated to a man who was, “reserving judgement until I can actually see the film for myself”. But I also didn’t want a huge mob in the theater with me so I had to wait until everyone else got it out of their collective system.
Now in my own defense, I would love to love Star Wars the way some people do. I appreciate the intricacies of multi-franchise fandom and wish to embrace the diversity that accompanies that. Star Wars has just failed to impress me to the point that that has happened. Ergo, the experiment was to see if watching all seven movies with as open a mind as I could muster could change my perspective somewhat and clue me into the thing that everyone I know tells me I’m missing. By the way, not liking Star Wars is NOT a mental disease! I checked! What will follow over the next few days is a log of my experiences watching the films in order and as they are commercially available. Believe me, I know that there are cheats and workarounds for sparing oneself some of the more reprehensible moments in the films, but I’m attempting to be scientific. Therefore, I need a baseline… I’ve formatted each entry with a section of before thoughts and thoughts that I had watching the films for this experiment.
No comments:
Post a Comment