I was six years old.
I was at my grandmas house, and there was a movie playing on the TV that was really confusing me. Everything on screen was desaturated and a little dingy, from the swamp where the scene was taking place to the man on wearing cargo pants and a tank top. At first I ignored it, because the dialogue and the music were all serious and “adult” sounding, and there wasn’t anything exciting happening. But after the man fished a beeping little robot out of the mud, ate lunch lunch with a muppet and lifted up a space ship with magic, I knew something was up…
It was weird.
At 6 years old, I only saw muppets on Sesame Street and magic in Disney movies. They were bright colors and shiny lights used to hold my attention for 90 minutes at time. They weren’t things anybody took seriously. But this movie, whatever the heck it was, was different. The muppet was making jokes, but IT wasn’t a joke. The magic was cool, but it wasn’t bright and flamboyant; it just… was. That’s what stuck out to me: all these things DIDN’T stick out. They weren’t there just to distract me. They were taken seriously, as if they made all the sense in the world. As if they could be real.
I didn’t know it then, but I had just had my first taste of Star Wars. and nearly two decades later, I’m still in love. For largely the same reasons that initially drew me in. Star Wars created a fantastic, impossible world, and convinced me of its every detail. Every character has a story. Every symbol has a meaning. Every facet of their magic, which I later came to know as the Force, has history and meaning and function.
That’s where the real magic of Star Wars lies for me. Star Wars can be anything and go anywhere. It relates to everyone, because it isn’t just a story – it is, literally, an entire universe with endless possibilities. The films may focus on the heroic, galaxy changing actions of a brave few, but just on the fringes of that tale are doorways into millions of others. Stories of political drama, social tension, romance, philosophy, military exploits, and everything in between. The mark on Boba Fett’s armor? It’s got meaning. That random alien in the Mos Eisley cantina? It has a backstory and three novels. That cool looking blaster Chewbacca uses? It’s called a bowcaster and has a fully fledged prouduction history. As a kid, it was like a dream come true I could think of any crazy scenario I wanted, and I could probably justify it somehow using the Star Wars fiction already in place.
Not everyone likes Star Wars. And I get that. It’s been the origin of many stories, but not all of them have been good. In fact, there are a lot of things that Star Wars has done that have ranged from disappointing to pretty bad. Like half of their movies, most of their video games, and that Christmas Special. But the world of Star Wars is big enough to hold those bad things with plenty of room left over for the good. And what’s good about Star Wars is REALLY good. And what’s good about Star Wars isn’t going to get worse because of the bad. Yoda isn’t nullified by Jar-Jar. But it is rare that we get to experience a world that is as complete as the one George Lucas created almost forty years ago, and that many others have been expanding on ever since. It’s not a perfect world, but it is a deep and complex one, and doesn’t look to be shrinking any time soon.
Go celebrate the rest of Star Wars day, and May the Fourth be with you always.
Message Perceived 