Star Wars has defined me as much as my family, my church, the Beatles, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the Discworld have. Probably more so than most other than the Beatles, who I’ve loved for as long as I can remember. More than church? Well, church was always a thing I did (except for a few years where I toyed with atheism; it wasn’t a success) but Star Wars was a thing I wanted.
Really wanted.
Wanted so bad that my mother reportedly kept my brother up on Christmas Eve after we got home from midnight mass to put together an AT-AT Walker for me to have on Christmas morning.
Wanted so bad I wrote “rules” to a Star Wars role playing game that let me re-enact key scenes from the movie.
Wanted so bad that when The Phantom Menace came out I was one of those people using the awful phrase “raped my childhood.”
With The Force Awakens I was grateful they didn’t ruin Star Wars like the books did. (Vector Prime didn’t inspire me to think “hey this is an interesting direction and challenge” but “they killed Chewie? Star Wars is dead to me! Years later when I heard R.A Salvatore hated doing it and was forced to and chose to drop a frikkin’ moon on him to do the dirty deed, I felt a little better but I didn’t forgive the brand.)
With The Last Jedi I processed the shock of how different the movie was but after a few viewings I understood it better and realized we had the Star Wars we needed, which wasn’t the Star Wars a few entitled pricks wanted.
In the interim I’ve been contemplating what this would be like. This is the closure of a major part of my life. (Seven-eighths, roughly, and that first eighth was early childhood so you can imagine I don’t have many clear memories.) This is part of the story that shaped me, and it is coming to a close. Star Wars isn’t going away. Disney will milk the cash cow as long as we buy the books, games, watch the cartoons, or buy the toys.
From what I can understand there is a Star Wars Celebration going on and I haven’t paid much attention to it. I watched the trailer. I watched one commentary video from a source I didn’t know. I watched the trailer again. There is more news out there than I care to cover right now. I’m trying to capture my feelings, which is taking a bit of context.
Why Now?
Why release the video two weeks before Avengers: Endgame? It’s all Disney all the time now, as big entertainment goes. And this is a teaser for the trailer of the trailer of the movie, so it’s pure hype to get us geeks frothing and I, for one, am frothing.
Then I thought: What if this trailer had been a surprise for everyone going to see Endgame? I’d probably spend the first act of Endgame trying to figure out every damn clue about Episode IX that I just saw. Better to get this squee out of the way before going to see Endgame.
What is “The Rise of Skywalker” anyway?
It’s a great title because it has already spawned a hundred conspiracy theories. (This is a guess, of course. I’m not going to count them.) From what we know, Ben Solo is the last person in the Skywalker Family, aside from Leia and I’m not sure the character will survive the movie, as the great Carrie Fisher is now the late, great Carrie Fisher. (Too soon, I know.)
It could be anything and we won’t know until December 20 which is 252 days away (not that I’m counting or anything).
One of the random flashes on the noise machine that caught my eye was the idea that “Skywalker” would be the name of the new group of force-wielders which would function much like the “grey Jedi” of the old extended universe (but that may be in Disney cannon as well). We know she has the books so it’s kind of like starting over with whatever the Jedi tried to be in the beginning but didn’t end up that way.
Another idea posed a new character, some descendant of Luke or maybe even all the way back to Shmi, but that feels like a cop-out.
It’s not even an easy solution to make Rey Luke’s daughter, because that means he did all that work with her and lied about it. I can’t imagine Luke showing up as a force ghost admitting to that lie the way Kenobi appeared to Luke to own up about lying about Vader.
I had to pause this rant to eat dinner and on a whim we re-watched The Force Awakens so a lot of steam as left my sails. The excitement has already waned, which I suppose is a sign of being tired with the whole mess or this level of fan-geekery to begin with.
Maybe all I want is a conclusion to the Skywalker Saga that feels real, that satisfies, that makes me think “of course this is how it ends.”
But that laugh
But then I remember the laugh at the end of the teaser. Palpatine’s laugh. A brief from the Star Wars thing in Chicago confirmed it’s his laugh. Maybe he’s a force ghost, maybe he’s a flashback, maybe he’s got a bunch of clones like in the old Dark Horse comics. Snoke, possibly, could have been one of those clones and he took a name that he felt was more intimidating than “Sheev”. (Why did they let George name so many characters?)
If there’s some form of prophesy from the prequel trilogy at play, that there would be messianic figure to “balance the force” (whatever that was supposed to mean) and Annakin failed to balance the force, Luke failed to balance the force, so it’s up to Ben or Rey to finish the job. Palpatine burning down the entire Jedi structure was part of it, because the stagnant Jedi had to go. Then the few dark side users had to go, because they also couldn’t really exist without the opposition force. I figure the empire ruled for 20 years with the only known force user: Darth Vader. The Sith, too, for “balance”, have to go.
The best way to bring balance is to forget the whole thing ever happened, which seems to be the case in the sequel trilogy. Everyone thinks it’s a myth. Luke has given up reviving the Jedi, neither Snoke or Kylo have used the word “Sith” but they’re still dark-sider control freaks.
Rey has the books and they can start the whole stupid cycle all over again.
This whole idea of trying to fulfill a prophecy every thirty years or so in the galaxy far, far away means it makes sense that the narrative structure of the films would repeat. Many people complained The Force Awakens was a remake of A New Hope, but really it had vibes from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Early complaints about The Rise of Skywalker being a rehash of The Return of the Jedi are probably easily dismissed on the grounds that we haven’t seen the movie yet.
I know speculation is part of the game, and as long as we keep it part of the game and have fun with it, fine.
I’m going to try not to piss in the pool anymore on this.
Good night.