Everyone Has Their Own 'Star Wars'

Everyone has their own Star Wars. I have mine.

In 1977, I was nine and in Grade 4 at Wynndel Elementary. We lived in a trailer on my grandparents' farm on Kootenay Lake. The closest town was 20 miles away. In the summer, we picked cherries and sold them at a fruit stand on Highway 3A, otherwise known as the Lake Road. Back then, you barely saw anyone you weren't related to. The 'beach people' as we called them, people with summer cabins, doctors and dentists from Cranbrook and Creston who spent their time water-skiing and having barbeques, were the only novelty. At night their kids would stage midnight raids on our cherry orchard and we would chase them with our dogs, swearing ungodly vengeance. But that was about as exciting as things got. Boredom was a real force, something to be actively contended with. The longing for adventure and escape, waiting for something to actually happen, was like a fever.

I don't recall what precipitated the idea to pack up us kids and drive to Nelson for a day to see a film. Maybe my parents had read a Maclean's magazine article, or maybe there were whispers in the air about some new movie that everyone was excited about. In those days, kids weren't consulted about anything. Anyway, one day my parents loaded us into the car, my two younger brothers, my sister and me. We drove to the Kootenay Lake ferry and then continued on to Nelson. The ferry ride and the long drive are a blur, but I do remember waiting forever for the film to begin. We were ridiculously early, so we sat in a park for what seemed like hours. What is indelibly etched in my mind is the opening scene. When the Empire's massive star destroyer blotted out the stars, and the true scale of the film became apparent -- something broke open inside my head. It felt like first love, that moment when things change forever.

Star Wars was the biggest thing to hit our young lives. It infected every kid in my class. I don't know if everyone had this experience: maybe you had to be a poor farm kid, bored out of your tiny mind to get the full scope of it. But at that time, I felt Luke's pain on a gut level. When he whined and bitched at his aunt and uncle about fetching the power converters from Toshi Station, I knew precisely what he meant. At school, everyone borrowed their big brother's motorcycle helmet, fashioned capes out of towels, and reenacted the shit out of the thing. From the beginning, I wasn't interested in Luke or Leia or even Han Solo. I just wanted to be Darth Vader.

The old gang returns

Flash forward a few decades, and here we are with the newest chapter of the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens. The film reminded me of that long ago feeling, the memory of seeing things for the first time. Whether it was Storm Troopers, the cantina scene, Chewbacca, or X-wing fighters, it was all brand new. My brain struggled to take it in, every last detail of dialogue, every corny joke, and every sweep of Vader's black cape. Seeing the old gang again -- and Jesus, they are old! -- provided some strange double vision. I watched both films simultaneously in my head -- the one I remembered and the new one onscreen, like an echo or a ghost.

The new film is set some 30 years in the future. Luke Skywalker has done a vanishing act. The Empire has been defeated and in its place is the First Order, which may sound like a British boy band but is just the same old Nazi-esque stuff of crisp uniforms and harsh speeches. Some things have remained the same. Han Solo is back to his old tricks as a thief and a con artist, and poor folks are still scratching out a meagre existence on dusty and forgotten worlds.

One such scratcher is Rey (Daisy Ridley). Abandoned by her parents and eking out a living by selling scrap parts, Rey is Luke all over again. Meanwhile, in a nice nod to the film serials of old, the Resistance is continuing its fight against the oppressive regime that would seek to crush it once and for all -- a plot device that always makes me think of the Democrats and the Republicans. The secret map that might lead to the location of Luke has been hidden inside a droid, and the First Order lead by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is desperate to find it before the Resistance. Cue the entrance of a storm trooper gone AWOL (played by John Boyega), and everything is there to set the thing in motion.

The film is entertaining, and occasionally even stirring. And while it is obviously made with deep affection for the original, it is, it must be said, a bit tinny. Like our playground reenactments there is something self-conscious about it, especially on the villainous side of things. No one has ever quite measured up to the towering evil of good old Darth Vader -- not even Darth Vader himself could do it (witness Episodes I through III). Every subsequent Star Wars villain, from Darth Maul to General Grievous to the Emperor Palpatine, has proven thin gruel. Here, too, the newest recruit to the Dark Side, Kylo Ren, is more petulant snot-nose than terrifying figure of evil. Maybe he'll grow into his cape but now he seems like a kid with some father issues, who wears a cool black helmet to hide his wet eyes.

A welcome nod to 2015

While the speculation spills out over the Internet in great unending waves, the one thing that seems the most clear about this episode is that the future is women. If the previous films had been about patriarchal lineage, all daddy stuff, at least the new film has the good sense to put a young woman in the driver's seat. Like Mad Max and Ex Machina before it, The Force Awakens gives the power to the women folk. (It is 2015 after all.) Rey is the biggest surprise of the film. She has the courage and conviction necessary to anchor the action in something genuine.

One of the best scenes in the film springs out of the battle of wills between Rey and Kylo Ren. Finally some sexual chemistry! It's been a pretty dry and dusty universe for a while. Here credit must be given to Driver for adding some juice. For many, Driver is indelibly intertwined with sex. The actor came to fame (heh…) plowing Hannah from behind in HBO's Girls. So the first glimpse of his face in the film prompts an almost Pavlovian response. As the universal bad boyfriend, Driver gets ample chance to act up a storm. I found his evil emo-boy strangely hilarious. Maybe it's all the pissy temper tantrums, smashing shit up with a light saber, or the fact that he seems particularly self-conscious about his fashion choices (rubbing and buffing that big black helmet all the time), but I like where he is going.

In short, The Force Awakens does what it needs to do. The familial saga of parents and children, power sought and power won, still sing to us on a genetic level. Time-honoured stuff it is, which helps explain the near torrential flood of folks lining up for hours to see the movie. We need our myths, our hero's tales. We crave them, and this is a good one, tapping into the deep well of the unconscious.

The deluge of interpretations, inevitable backlash, the billions of dollars made, and the next few chapters yet to come will keep us all occupied for a while. On and on it goes. The kid that you were becomes the aging person you are now, and the next chapter must be handed down to the youngsters coming up behind. That is the way it ought to be. Every generation gets a Star Wars of its own. Let the women lead the way!

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