A long time ago, in a movie theater far, far away a story was told of a young farm boy who would grow up to battle the dark side and defeat the evil empire. A fan base was born, the Star Warians. Today, those same Star Warians are introducing a new generation to the Star Wars world. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened last December to record numbers and attendance. Directed by JJ Abrams, not much was known about the movie aside from a bad guy - Kylo Ren - trying to take over the galaxy and new good guys - Rey and Finn - working to stop him 30 years after Luke, Leia, and Han destroyed the Empire. There were some familiar faces along the way - Han Solo, Chewie, Princess Leia - and some new ones that will soon become household names - Poe Dameron, General Hux and BB8.
The Force Awakens starts off like every other movie with the title screen and the familiar theme from John Williams radiating through the sound system. The story is set right away with the first line of the opening crawl - “Luke Skywalker has vanished.” And now the Star Warians understand why there are 3 new movies being made in the next 3-4 years. The Force Awakens does indeed awaken the force in every single Star Warian throughout this galaxy.
Star Wars is the epic battle between good and evil and has reigned supreme in the entertainment world. This author has even written collegiate essays about how the Empire Strikes Back is really about the tensions between Russia and the rest of the world during the 1980s. Everything we watch, everything we read can have a certain Star Wars too it. Take Grey’s Anatomy for example. Meredith Grey is Luke Skywalker, going on her own epic journey to find herself and her true purpose, losing people along the way and growing stronger and wiser because of it. Webber is a version of Obi-Wan, guiding Meredith through the world of medicine; Cristina is a version of R2D2 the loyal friend giving her the best advice; Alex is C-3PO because who else would he be; and so on and so forth.
What makes that interesting for this generation is they are more exposed to entertainment than their parents were so they might have already seen this hero battling the dark forces storyline before. Because all 3 trilogies in the saga came out at least 15 years apart it gave people enough time to forget and even miss the hero/knighthood type storyline. This generation hasn’t seen this hero storyline on such a grand scale before and that could be the game changer.
Another game changer which might help the new generation and my favorite is the emergence of a main character in Rey, a girl who is not a princess and doesn’t pretend to act like one. She is a scavenger who becomes entangled in this mystery of Jedi Knights the same way that many young men and women are now being introduced to the Star Wars world. She is just as dumbfounded with everything as I am sure the new generation will be upon seeing. She is also a she. From the emergence of the movie poster it was clear that she is one of the biggest if not the biggest character in this new trilogy. Many people (older generation of Star Wars fans) were concerned about putting a female as the lead but as a female, sometimes we are the strongest in movies like this because we can see through things that others can’t. Women have an intuition that men don’t have in movies like this. Plus Disney will gain a larger female fan base which will earn them more money.
To touch on Rey for a second, she is my favorite character in the entire movie. She doesn’t need a man’s help for anything. Not to scavenge, not to run from fire, not to battle the biggest bad guy the galaxy has seen in the last 30 years. She has had to live on her own for the majority of her life trying to find her place in this infinite world. She is stronger than she knows, more important than she understands, and has the ability to make something of herself when there was nothing. That I am sure will resonate with every new fan, not just the female base.
This generation that is finally getting to understand the world that is Star Wars has an interesting task ahead of them. They are starting to see the final 3 episodes in the Star Wars Saga. They are seeing the result of the other 6 movies before they get a grasp on what the Star Wars world is like. Is that good? Is that bad? Will they have the same experience that their parents did in the late 70s and early 80s when they saw the middle trilogy first? Only time will tell. But if the record breaking numbers from the movies, merchandise and the world are any indication, this generation is giving into Star Wars just like the rest of us did.
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