My 42-year Star Wars journey comes to an “end”
Middle-aged me looks back at what the famous space fantasy meant to little-boy me
Star Wars changed my life.
That’s not an exaggeration. When I saw it (and by “it” I mean the original Star Wars movie, later renamed A New Hope) at the Stockdale 6 movie theater in Bakersfield, California, in the fall of 1977, something changed in my 7-year-old brain.
It put me on a new path. One that would ultimately lead to film school, time in Hollywood, my creative career, and even the city I now call home.
So, with the release of The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth movie in the Star Wars trilogy of trilogies, it feels almost mandatory to reflect on what the franchise has meant to me over the past 42 years.
The Original Trilogy
It’s almost impossible to explain to young people today what Star Wars felt like in 1977. Now, 7-year-olds make more sophisticated movies on their phones.
But in the late 70s, it was revolutionary. The special effects were like nothing we’d seen before, of course, but it was the world-building that really sparked my imagination. They had created an entirely new universe, with its different creatures and technology and customs and even religion. And it was well-worn and treated as if it were historical fact instead of science fiction.
I remember coming home from the matinee showing, grabbing all the beach towels out of the cupboard, and covering up our backyard jungle gym to create the inside of the Death Star. I wanted to spend time inside that world.
In the late 70s, you had to WORK to do that. Today, you can saturate yourself in the experience of a film immediately after you leave the theater. But in 1977, there was no Internet.
My most prized possession became my The Story of Star Wars cassette tape. This audio retelling of the movie, narrated by Roscoe Lee Brown, became my way to “watch” the move over and over again.
Essentially a radio play, I’m convinced that the story became so rich in my mind because I filled in so many of the images myself as I listened to it over and over and over again. Essentially, I became a co-creator of the Star Wars experience.
Much has been written about the toys and the merchandizing and I had my fair share once that stuff all came out. But that was months later. In the immediate aftermath, I sought out every book and article I could find about the behind-the-scenes story. For me, the HOW became as fascinating as the WHAT.
I devoured books and magazine articles about George Lucas, the original production art, making-of stills and stories, and anything I could get my hands on about the special effects. Pre-Internet, this took some effort and the hunt for that information at the local book store became part of the experience.
The surprising success of that first movie is well documented and the three-year wait for The Empire Strikes back gave me time to fully dream about what the world might be beyond what was introduced in the first movie. Today, there’s so much canon in the Star Wars universe, the history is almost too dense. But back then, the anticipation of what else might be out there in that world was thrilling.
In 1980, I still remember being on the school playground when some dickhead classmate of mine who had seen Empire before me said, “Oh, Darth Vader is Luke’s father.” What. The. Fuck?? I didn’t believe it. And, it should be said, lots of grown ups didn’t believe it either. Until Return of the Jedi came out three years later, there was still a lot of debate as to whether or not Darth was lying or not.
10- and 13-year-old me thought Episodes 5 and 6 were as amazing as the original. I thought Empire was incredibly cool, but I’m not sure anything caught my imagination quite as much as Jedi’s rancor pit in the desert of Tatooine.
(Years later, after film school and the prequel trilogy, I came to appreciate that Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand probably deserve a ton of credit by bringing a different perspective to the director chair for the second and third movies. They told a continuing story but weren’t afraid to push and try new things and the trilogy was better for it.)
It was also the first series of my life that told a complete story over three different movies. Now, it seems like EVERY movie is a sequel to something; back then, there was novelty in going to the theater to meet up with familiar characters.
The year that Jedi came out, Lucas’ biography, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas was also released. I devoured it and, as if there was any doubt at that point, I knew that I was going to go to film school and make movies, just like my hero.
The Re-Release and the Prequels
Fast forward to the late 1990s and the news that they would re-release the original trilogy in theaters for the 20th anniversary.
At the time there was talk of Lucas “updating” the movies, but I’m not sure that I really grokked what that meant. Late-20s me was just excited to see the films on the big screen again.
And when I did, it was exciting…but different. Growing up, we all have those moments where we re-see something from our childhood and it doesn’t have the same impact it did on our younger selves. And, after years in film school, I watched all films with a more critical eye.
Plus, some of the new CGI “improvements” looked…goofy. I guess they were technically superior to the low-fi effects of the late 70s and early 80s, but they also seemed more artificial and soulless. (Little did I know what this would portend for the prequel trilogy Lucas was working on at that very moment.)
But nostalgia is a hell of a drug and I got myself to the theater to see the Special Edition releases in January, February, and March of 1997.
I was excited to see what Lucas would do with the prequel trilogy. In his biography, there had been an extensive exploration of Lucas’ original treatment for the saga and how it would stretch out over nine chapters. The first three movies had been the middle three chapters and the next trilogy would tell the beginning of the story.
At the time that I’d read that in 1983, that seemed insane and impossible. A nine-movie series? Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. And now, the second trilogy was about to happen.
In 1999, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace came out. I don’t really need to write a thing about the experience of seeing it; perhaps no movie in history has had more ink spilled to describe the profound disappointment. Lucas was given carte blanche and that first movie is a classic example of how creative limitations and debate can be a good thing.
For me, the defining characteristic of the prequel trilogy is that its soul is different than the original. Whereas the original trilogy traced its DNA back to Saturday morning serials — swashbucklers, westerns and other episodic genre pieces — the prequel trilogy took its inspiration from video games.
Even today, watching them feels like you’re watching video game play, not a film. They are, largely, about exploring what was possible with the technology of the day. They are less concerned with story or character or…a coherent plot.
Was I bummed? Yeah. But I was also about to turn 30 and, while it was still a defining part of my childhood, Star Wars was hardly the most important thing in my life at that point. I couldn’t work up the outrage that some of my peers had toward the prequels.
Maybe more out of obligation than desire, over those six years, I did see all three of the prequels in the theater when they came out. During one of them (maybe the second?) the film broke half-way-through and they told us that they were going to restart it from the beginning. There were literal groans in the audience.
I will say that all these years later, I appreciate that Lucas was trying to do something new. He’s pushing in those prequels — both in terms of technology and world building. Now, I don’t agree with lots of the decisions, but I can appreciate the vision and effort.
The New Trilogy
When Episode 7: The Force Awakens came out in 2015, I knew I’d see it. Thirteen-year-old me still remembered reading about the 9-chapter treatment in Lucas’ biography; I had to see how it all wrapped up.
Again, much has been written about the new trilogy that I don’t need to re-hash. I think the new movies are…fine. I don’t have anywhere near the same emotional connection to them as I did the original trilogy; but that’s to be expected. I’m not a kid any more.
But I do find their lack of ambition to be a little sad. Whereas the other two trilogies looked to other genres for their inspiration, the new trilogy simply tried to clone the original three movies. But it’s hard to get excited about a copy of a copy of a copy.
For my money, Episode 8: The Last Jedi is the most interesting of the three. Not wholly successful, at least it takes a few risks. And while I like J.J. Abrams and think he was handed an impossible task, his filmmaking tics rear their head in a big way. (This spoiler-filled video essay does a good job explaining those tics.)
But a few days ago, I sat in the dark and watched Episode 9 wrap it all up. I was largely satisfied and the ol’ eyeballs may have moistened a time or two. The nostalgia beats in that final chapter fed my 7-year-old lizard brain. I think they closed it out about as well as they could have, given all the boxes they were trying to check.
Plus, now almost 50, it’s hard to get too worked up about a multi-billion dollar movie franchise. I think I may have felt as much relief as joy now that the nine chapters are now, officially, closed.
But there’s no doubt that, whatever I think of the current movies, Star Wars played a huge role in my life. It drove me to study filmmaking and pursue a creative career, something that let me to San Francisco, pays my mortgage and feeds my kids, today. Plus, living in the Bay Area, it’s still a thrill to me that I have friends and colleagues that work at ILM and Lucasfilm.
Star Wars Rebels & The Mandalorian
A funny thing happened as the Star Wars movies got increasingly disappointing over the past 40 years—the Star Wars TV series got AMAZING.
In a way, it’s not surprising. The episodic Saturday morning serials that provided inspiration for the original movie are a better storytelling template for this universe. These stories want to be bite-size narratives that can explore a singular topic or idea and then move on to something else.
Star Wars Rebels, the animated series, made me re-fall in love with the Star Wars universe.
The four-season series takes place in the years between Episode 3 and Episode 4, and is one of my favorite shows of the last few years. Me, my wife, and my two kids watched every episode — and there are few things that are equally compelling to a 7-year-old and his formerly-7-year-old father.
The success of that series bears a great deal of debt to executive producer Dave Filoni. (If you’re a Star Wars nerd like me, you should read this profile of him from Vanity Fair.) Filoni studied at the foot of the master, George Lucas, and seems to have learned all the best lessons from him and avoided all of the pitfalls.
(Filoni cut his teeth on The Clone Wars animated series. Some people dig that one too, but its DNA is so closely aligned with the video-game frenzy of the prequel trilogy, I much prefer Rebels, which owes a greater debt to Episodes 4, 5, and 6.)
It was little surprise to me that Filoni is also a producer of the new 8-episode Disney+ series, The Mandalorian. It is terrific.
Created by Jon Faverau (who knows a thing or two about genre story telling from his time in the Marvel universe) and Filoni, it’s the best thing in the Star Wars universe since the original trilogy.
The Mandalorian knows exactly what it is: an episodic space western. It honors the western genre from which it takes its inspiration and the original trilogy universe from which it was born. It takes the time to develop character and it’s not afraid of real humor, which made the original films so much fun.
Plus, production wise, it’s not showy about its technical prowess. Of course a computer can do anything you want these days. But that doesn’t mean you have to use a hammer for every nail. As a result, the breakout character of the series is (*gasp*) a puppet. That’s a delicious irony.
And, (nerd alert) if you’re a Rebels fan like me, it’s rewarding to connect some of the dots between the two series; dots that don’t have anything to do with anybody named Skywalker.
So, I think the future of Star Wars is probably in episodic series on “TV,” whatever “TV” means these days. And I think the future is bright; you might say I have “new hope.” (Sorry, not sorry.)
That makes 7-year-old me and 50-year-old me very happy.
John Kovacevich is a writer and creative director based in San Francisco.
