Skywalkers And Me

Spoiler Alert: If you’re among that small body of people who have both not seen Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (or other films from the trilogy for that matter) and would care about spoilers, fair warning that there are some in this post and you may not want to read on until you’ve caught up.

I’m not a hardcore fan of very many things. Though I’ve read the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books and seen the movies, I couldn’t tell you with much confidence the names of specific background characters or battles. Even for those things that I would edge more toward declaring myself a hardcore fan of, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m more an expert on specific, favorite episodes than the series on the whole--there are dozens of episodes I probably haven’t seen more than two or three times, or in the last decade. Sure, you can say I’m hardcore about professional wrestling, and that’s probably pretty fair for WWE, but though I know more about WCW, ECW, AWA, AEW, TNA, ROH, NJPW, and a handful other promotions with their own acronyms than most people reading this blog, there are no doubt a lot of people I’d readily admit have watched a lot more and know a lot more about these other promotions and wrestling on the whole than yours truly.

So, let’s talk about Star Wars. Like a lot of kids from my and adjacent generations, I grew up with the original trilogy. I was born a few months after Return of the Jedi first hit theaters and in a time when VCRs became commonplace in American homes, I was well-positioned to watch the movies young and then re-watch them until they became a part of the canon of my childhood. I’ll maintain that it’s a consequence of my youth that RotJ was my favorite of the series, and remains my sentimental favorite to this day, even if I’ll acknowledge that The Empire Strikes Back is objectively a stronger film.

The second trilogy rolled out when I was in high school. I didn’t see it in theaters and in that era when the Internet was a thing but not yet an omnipresent force, I mostly avoided spoilers of any consequence before seeing The Phantom Menace via video rental.

I didn’t like it.

I’d loathe Attack of the Clones even more, to the extent that I didn’t bother seeing it until a solid three or four years after it came out, when I rented the DVD via Netflix, and only after a friend had told me it was good enough to redeem the prequel trilogy.

It wasn’t. Though it wasn’t as awful as Attack of the Clones and I suppose it was marginally better than Phantom Menace I still found it pretty bad, and had no desire to watch it a second time.

These pauses and the fact that I hadn’t seen a single Star Wars film in a theater until 2014 probably affirms to those who actually are hardcore fans where I fall in the hardcore pecking order for this series. (And, no, I never read Expanded Universe books or watched The Clone Wars).

I did watch The Force Awakens in the theater, though, and probably would have gone to have seen The Last Jedi, too, had its release not so closely coincided with the birth of my son and onset parental responsibility, exhaustion, etc.

I made a by-now rare trip to the movies see The Rise of Skywalker, in no small part because it’s the kind of film big and ubiquitous enough that dodging spoilers was a minefield--not to mention that it was a movie bound to have its big space shoot-outs and as such, one that was best taken in on a big screen. I walked in with limited expectations, owing to a chorus of voices on social media that had mostly panned the film.

But I liked it.

One of the reasons I hesitate to call myself even a hardcore wrestling fan--despite the volume of hours spread across decades that I’ve spent watching the product, in addition to reading and writing about it, is that I still want to enjoy the show more than I want to critique it. So it is that I’ll forgive flaws in a match like Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam 2019 in favor of loving the overarching story of the undersized hero vanquishing the champion who seems to have him beat from every angle. So it is that I was so disappointed in Rollins subsequently losing his world title to Bray Wyatt in a sad slog of a directionless brawl, made literally difficult to watch by red house lights designed to make Wyatt look scary.

To get back to Star Wars, the prequel trilogy was void of fun or inspiration--it was a melodramatic slog toward a conclusion that the original trilogy had already made it quite clear was coming. I get the criticisms of the 2014-2019 trilogy--that it did not so much take chances as fall back on what had worked for Star Wars in the past, with an eye toward celebrating diversity to an extent in a female lead and people of color in other prominent roles.

But as a fan of those original films--as a kid who believed in the Force and imagined light saber duels and space ships firing lasers at one another--I liked these new films a lot.

And maybe that’s what’s best about being a fan first and critic second, or about being one of the mass of semi-serious fans rather than hardcore ones when it comes to seeing a movie like this. Because my heart did race, and my eyes did water when the cavalry arrives to back The Resistance in Exegol. Because I did breathe a sigh of relief when Rei wasn’t dead after beating back The Emperor, let loose a tremor of nostalgic laughter when Ewoks celebrate from Endor, and felt all was right when Rei took on her surname in the closing moments of the film. Yes, I could see most of these moments coming once the machinations of the screenplay were in motion and knowing the logic of Star Wars films. But for my viewing, there was something that felt less like a problematically predictable film in these instances than a sense of familiarity that comes when interacting with an old friend--a family member, even--doing things the way they’ve always done them.

So it was I left The Rise of Skywalker satisfied. Maybe, even, with a sense of renewed faith.

To close this post, because so many are doing it, and because of course I have an opinion, my ranking of Star Wars films, looking at the trilogies only (full disclosure, I still haven’t seen Solo and though I liked Rogue One a great deal, I only saw it one time, don't remember as well as I'd like, and don’t feel I could fairly rank it at this time).

9. The Attack of the Clones
8. The Phantom Menace
7. The Revenge of the Sith
6. A New Hope
5. The Last Jedi
4. The Rise of Skywalker
3. The Force Awakens
2. The Empire Strikes Back
1. Return of the Jedi