Thursday, December 14, 2017

Grave Considerations: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Pre-Thoughts





Two years ago, we were introduced to an all-new story in the rich Star Wars universe, one that brought us new heroes and villains, and made us say goodbye to one of everyone’s heroes. It is currently Thursday afternoon, and as of this evening, the next installment of the new Star Wars trilogy, The Last Jedi, will land in theaters. The tension is mounting, and there is a real fear starting to swirl that being on the Internet is putting one in danger of encountering spoilers. Months of ignoring articles and news and ‘news’, only to have things spoiled this close to the first showing? Hell no.

We’re going to see it tonight, and I’ve begun to feel myself all aflutter. Once again, I’m worried, but this time, for some different reasons.


For starters, the only spoiler that this article will contain is that Han Solo was killed in The Force Awakens, and really, if you’re reading this and didn’t know that, I don’t know what to tell you. That one event has been the subject of countless conversations between a coworker and myself for much of this semester, as we’ve engaged in some off-brand group therapy about it. When it happened in the movie, I was absolutely devastated; even right now, two years almost to the day later, I still catch myself getting emotional about it. And now, going in to another new movie, we know that one of the principles, Leia Organa herself, can’t make it into the next movie, but we don’t know how that’s going to be handled. I catch myself getting emotional about that right now. When Carrie Fisher died, someone involved in the making of Episode VIII said that they had figured out how to exit Leia from the series, but as of right now, we don’t know what that means: does she die, does she retire from the Resistance, does she go on vacation to the farm, does she get Duked, for all my G.I. Joe fans out there? We’ll find out soon, but the thought of losing Leia on-screen, just as we lost Han on-screen, is pretty heavy.

We’re also returning to some characters that by now are established members of the Star Wars pantheon as well, as we will rejoin Rey and Finn and Poe and Kylo Ren. Everything about The Last Jedi feels like it’s about filling very, very large shoes. This is the second movie of the new trilogy, and, like it or not, that puts it up against The Empire Strikes Back, legitimately one of the greatest films ever made. This is inherently unfair: there is no possible way any movie can stack up against Empire. It’s not really fair to hold this or any new movie to that impossible standard, but what can you do? While the new characters have all been proven to be pretty cool, and appear to have seamlessly integrated themselves in the Star Wars presence, appearing in comics and stories and games and various marketing efforts with very little friction between their being new characters and the old standards, they aren’t Han and Luke and Leia. They never can be Han and Luke and Leia.

But they don’t have to be. No one is rightly expecting them to be. They just have to be Rey and Finn and Poe. And at that, they’re doing a great job thus far. Kylo, despite his immense personally applied pressure to the contrary, does not have to be Darth Vader, and he can’t be. He just has to be him.

I’m excited. I’m excited to see what happens next, to learn where the saga goes now. I’m excited for what turns out to be hopefully some answers to the mysteries begun in The Force Awakens, even though we all know that not everything will be revealed, and after the final credits, we’ll go right back to waiting two years to get final resolutions. I think that’s one of the worst parts of this, the knowing that all of the anticipation and all of the speculation and all of the inquiries that we’ve endured the last two years don’t end tonight; they merely restart, and two Decembers from now, I’ll sit here and do this whole thing again, but a wiser man from having seen The Last Jedi 750,000 times by then. The waiting is the killer, man. I’m also terribly nervous, because in the last movie, Han Solo died, and I’m not sure I can take having to watch one of my legitimate childhood heroes die again, whether it be Luke or Leia.

And I’m kind of scared. This year has been such a bowl full of diarrhea, just nonstop. I spent so much mental energy over the last three months honestly contemplating, what happens if that moron goes to war with North Korea, and we never get to see the next Star Wars movie? I know. I know that’s really self-centered, but what can I say? Never in my near to forty years have I had to actually worry that something like that was going to happen, and when it comes to Star Wars, I still do, as I’d said last time, with The Force Awakens, hear my late fathers’ voice in my head, saying, “I hope I’m around to see it.” Because work had been so punishingly omnipresent this semester, I was able to avoid so much build up for this movie, and my main source of related talk was a coworker who seems to be approaching this movie with a bizarre sense of apathy. That hasn’t influenced my feelings about The Last Jedi, has it? So much has been going on this year, that there are a number of things that I feel or have felt my personal furnaces cooling for, and there’s no way that Star Wars could be one of them, right? Right?

No way. My biggest fear tonight, going in to the movie, this time, just as last time, and with Rogue One and Revenge of the Sith, is that I’m going to start crying. This entire year, I have dragged myself through one pit after another by telling myself that, at the end of the slog, was the new Star Wars movie. It has been the carrot for so, so many miles this year, and it feels in many ways like it is going to be the grand exhaling, the rush of air from my lungs, that flattens me after keeping my shape for such a long time. Again, I know I won’t be the only grown man in the theater with moist eyes tonight, but I worry that, as has been my thought so many times this year, I won’t be able to hold things back once they start. Like I’ll get so emotional that I’ll have to go out in to the lobby and tear a phone book in half to prove I’m man enough for Star Wars. Lol.

Something that I’m not as concerned about is the direction of this movie. I remember going to see Revenge of the Sith and honestly being worried about what I was going to witness, given the caliber of the Prequels. With these new movies, not so much: after The Force Awakens proved itself to be good, I was able to not be too worried about quality. Star Wars has always been the greatest of all stories in my little universe, and it is really, really good to know that it is going in a positive, quality direction.
 
So, I mean, here we go again, right? All the thinking and all the theorizing, all of it will be rendered void in just a few hours. I’m happy as hell that, once again, I get to see a Star Wars movie for the first ever time with my wife, and that she legitimately seems to enjoy them. They always talk about Star Wars being that generational kind of thing, that thing you give to other people, and I gave it to my wife, and thank goodness it took hold. Not like she wouldn’t see them with me if it hadn’t, but there really is something amazing about being able to share Star Wars with someone close to you. At this point, introducing my kids to Star Wars is about the only reason I can think of that I’d even want to have kids anymore, and frankly, my cat will watch TV with me, so I can tell him about the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise and what the cave on Dagobah really means, so children are obsolete.

Every saga must have a new beginning, and every beginning leads to the second chapter. Recently we learned that the director of The Last Jedi has been tasked with making a whole new trilogy, apart from Episodes VIII and IX, which not only means more Star Wars (yay!), but also much mean that this installment is going to turn out pretty well. We’ll know soon enough, and in the spirit of maintaining the surprise for people as they gradually get to theaters to see The Last Jedi, I’m going Star Wars-silent on the Coffin for a week after tonight. I’ll be posting some things, but nothing Star Wars related. This will give me the chance to focus on some other figures that I’ve got to write up, and will also help me feel like I didn’t say anything about the Star Wars figures that I still have to write on that would spoil anything for any of my readers. I don’t have anything that should fall into that territory, but I just don’t want to  take any chances.

So, once again friends, going to the movies tonight serves as our first steps into a much larger world. May the Force be with you.

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