Can we talk about how Star Wars is dying in our hearts?

All images 2018 © & ^TM  Lucasfilm, Disney

I WAS BORN IN THE 1970s.  I was born before Star Wars premiered in May of 1977, but I wasn't even three years old.  Therefore, Star Wars was a part of my life from my earliest memories, but not in the sense we have about it now.  The concepts and characters in that space opera blockbuster were images that formed in my young, toddler mind before I even knew their names.  Images of lightsaber battles, giant spaceships, and weird aliens bombarded my imagination and gave me hours of ideas for play.  You could argue that Star Wars explained the innocence of good and the absolute darkness of evil; these were embodied in the characters of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.  Luke was a young boy who was taught to tap into great power by a kindly grandfather while Darth Vader was as cold and dark as the vastness of space.  I understood good and evil before I understood the concept of God.  Star Wars explained the valiant sacrifices needed to secure freedom from tyrants.  Star Wars illustrated that anyone—even a wanted man with seedy connections to the underworld—could rise-up and become a hero.  Star Wars had that kind of impact on people like me.  Therefore, it is no wonder why people my age have grown to loathe and resent the franchise as it is today.  In short, Star Wars has become a mockery what of it once was.  Allow me to explain...

A Long Time Ago...

     Like I said—I was born in the seventies.  I'm in my forties now.  Star Wars was a part of my early life, but it abandoned me in my middle teens to a degree I forgot it ever existed, and then Star Wars came back after I was a grown man.  I didn't need Star Wars, but I was glad to have it back.  Despite being an adult, I was brash enough in my young adult life to forgive Star Wars for leaving me.  I was elated and didn't care how Star Wars didn't love me back.  Star Wars was back, and that was all that mattered.  I had a young family, and I was happy that my son would have a chance to grow-up under the same night sky and dream of epic, galactic battles and travel to strange worlds.  I believed the Force would be strong with my son, but Episode I - The Phantom Menace proved his midichlorian count wouldn't be enough to sustain his love for the saga.  

Midichlorians—what the hell was George thinking?

Here is a rare photo of the Imperial Emissary and Lord of the Sith 

thinking about underwear choices for boys in the early 1980s.

"So long as it's functional and fun, I'm okay with my face on the shirt."

     By the time The Empire Strikes Back had its run in theaters, the concept of Star Wars had already become an international sensation and held deep meaning to boys who spent their Saturdays watching morning cartoons.  Commercial breaks were full of Star Wars action figures, vehicles and play sets where kids acted out scenes from the movies or created their own stories.  At the end of the advertisement, each toy from the commercial was plainly seen and identified so kids could tell their parents what they wanted for their birthday or what they wanted Santa Claus to bring on Christmas Eve.  The merchandising for the Star Wars saga was, in itself, a phenomenon.  Aside from toys there were lunchboxes, calendars, posters, key chains, video games, puppets, those book and record read-a-long things, shoes, even "Underoos - the Underwear That's Fun to Wear" were a thing.  I'll never forget the Underoos as being solely responsible for getting my kid brother to graduate from training pants to underwear (my mom took the three of us shopping, and bought Underoos for me and my older brother.  My younger brother demanded he have his own Underoos, too, but mom refused until he could be potty trained.  When we arrived home, the runt ran to the toilet, did his business, and proudly proclaimed he could be a big boy, too.  So, back to the store we went).  As you can see, Star Wars had an effect on kids in a big way.  

Scarred for life:  Darth Vader, the severed hand, and the plot twist that hurt the inner child

Battered, beaten, but never defeated.  Luke Skywalker prefers

a life of dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery.

     My childhood was altered at the revelation that Darth Vader was the father of Luke Skywalker.  As I've mentioned, I did not have a father in my young life, and I felt a connection to Luke as a kind of kindred spirit.  I put myself in Luke's shoes as he clung to the antenna array in the core of Cloud City; my blood ran cold as the battered, young Jedi screamed and refused to believe the embodiment of evil was, in fact, his father.  I never doubted Vader's words (though some of my classmates rejected the prospect; Darth Vader was a manipulator and driven by evil). : she left him).  In my young mind, my father was evil and beyond redemption—and so was Vader.  I believed I would choose death over siding with my own father, so I understood why Luke let go.  Though Luke was rescued by a Force-sensitive (DAMN YOU, MIDICHLORIANS!!!) Leia and a (still-untrustworthy) Lando Calrissian.  In real life, my father was a violent drunk and drug abuser, and spent a lot of time in-and-out of jail, and I grew-up without his influence (my mother did what many women don't do:  She left to save all of us from what would have been a life of misery).

     As a representative of being a boy in the early 1980s, we were shocked at what we witnessed on the silver screen, but all of us came to accept the reality.  We grew-up a little bit that day as the story took a dark turn.  Lando's betrayal, Han's carbon freeze, the mysterious Boba Fett, the Empire's high turnover rate for ship captains, and the fate of the tauntaun in the Hoth wastelands were all subordinate to Vader's reveal.  We were relieved when Luke was given a robotic hand (which made perfect sense to us) and stood beside Leia and the Droids aboard the medical frigate in the final scene of the film.  The group observed the galaxy from the outer rim, and the stars shone like a western sunset.  Somehow, we were filled with hope.  Yes, Han was taken away, but we all knew they had a plan to get him back.  Things would be alright.  In spite of everything, we had hope.

The Jedi returns, and he brought hell with him

Carrie Fisher was giving us dream fuel.

     When Return of the Jedi was released, I was just shy of ten and in full command of my emotions regarding Star Wars.  Luke learned a lot from Obi-Wan and Yoda, and when we saw the flash of his new, green lightsaber, we all knew shit was about to get real for anyone who stood in the way of our heroes.  Luke had faced Vader before and learned the truth; now the Empire was out of surprises for the young Jedi.  Clad in black, we watched the son of Skywalker cut down Jabba the Hutt's hired clowns like weeds.  Boba Fett and Jabba met their fate, Leia jump-started puberty for millions of young boys, Han was freed from carbonite, and Artoo demonstrated his undercover acumen.  Mic drop like a boss:  Han and Chewbacca, Leia and the droids, Lando, and Luke streaked off the planet of Tattooine like triumphant heroes.  Now, off to kick the Empire's ass!
     This movie had everything a boy wanted.  Aside from the aforementioned slave outfit on Carrie Fisher, there were flying motorcycles, explosive sabotage, subterfuge, and spear-chucking teddy bears.  It was strange to see our heroes in the midst of a giant forest, but we were thrilled with what we saw.  Riding speeder bikes through a through a thicket of towering trees was thrilling to behold, and through it all, our heroes were stomping the Empire.
     The entrance of the Emperor stopped me cold.  So, Darth Vader wasn't the most evil person of all?  We learned the frail-looking old bastard with a cane was pulling the strings all along.  Speaking of Vader, something was...off about him.  In The Empire Strikes Back, we witnessed Vader commit a series of cold-blooded, Force-choke assassinations.  It appeared Darth had zero tolerance for ineptitude, but things seemed to change after he told Luke the truth.  In the first scene of Return of the Jedi, we saw Vader come aboard the new Death Star, where he was met by a military formation and a befuddled commander (who probably assumed he was about to die in front of his men).  When Vader dismissed the commander's pleasantries and got down to business, we understood an internal struggle was brewing under the black-clad dark lord.  The boss...the BIG ONE...was coming to town, and Vader needed make sure the floors were properly swabbed.  As Emperor Palpatine arrived, we witnessed an exchange between him and Vader that confirmed our suspicions; something was afoot, and Palpatine knew it.

If I don't kill you here, you're going to make me 

look like a wimp to the boss!

     Down on Endor, Luke gives himself willingly to the Empire as a sign of faith to his father.  He knew Vader wouldn't kill him outright, and we saw Vader get rattled at the sight of his son.  Despite Luke's ambition, his bold-faced attempt to turn Darth Vader back to Anakin Skywalker was overplayed.  Though rattled, Vader clung to the Sith like his son clung to an antenna at their last meeting.  Such awesome storytelling.  In the end, Vader was redeemed in the eyes of his son and in the spectral eyes of the Jedi who came before him.  I believe every child cheered as Darth Vader seized control of his own destiny before he flung the Emperor to his own death.  We knew he doomed himself to his (now-former) master's fate as the uncontrolled Force lightning coursed through his armored, cyborg body.  The squeaky, rattled respirator foretold his fate to us before the mask came off, though finally seeing the pale face of Luke's father was a nice way to end Vader's dark legacy.

We knew it was over, but didn't know it was over

     As the credits rolled at the conclusion of Return of the Jedi, we were expecting more from George Lucas.  There had to be more stories to tell.  What about the rest of the Empire?  Will Han and Leia get married?  There had to be another war in Star Wars—there were freaking STAR DESTROYERS in orbit above the forest moon of Endor, and the clownish Rebellion were having a bonfire keg party with the hairy locals in the woods.  Where is the follow-up?  

Once the truth of Luke and Leia was known to Han, all plans

of going back into space to fight the leftover Imperials 

left him.

     Turns out, there wasn't one.  Sure, George Lucas allowed his creations to be used in a couple of Saturday morning cartoons (Droids and Ewoks were some flash-in-the-pan shows, but did not forward the story of our intrepid heroes at all), and don't get me started on those horrible Ewok movies.  George Lucas made some fast money and offered nothing substantive in the exchange.  I caught a news clip after Jedi left the theaters where George Lucas declared he was finished with Star Wars.  That was it.  1983 saw the end of Luke, Han, Leia, and the rest of the story.

What?  The Empire has an Heir?

Don't be too proud of this literary terror 

you've constructed—the ability to write

a bestselling novel is insignificant

next to the power of Lucasfilm.

     Because Star Wars was out of my memory before I was ten, I had other pursuits—namely girls—to occupy my time.  I was sixteen before I saw Luke Skywalker's face again.  Sitting in a morning class in my sophomore year of high school, I saw a book on a classmate's desk:  Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.  On the cover were the portraits of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia along with the droids I knew and loved from my childhood.  However, standing ominously in the foreground was a blue-skinned, red-eyed man clad in a white, Imperial officer's uniform.  The blue man had an arrogance about him that was common among the high-ranking in the Emperor's military.  I immediately knew he was a threat.  I forgot about the years of silence among the stars and made it a point to rush off to the bookstore immediately after school.  By the time I graduated from high school, I was fully immersed in the Star Wars universe once again.
     Books in both hardcover and paperback were being released on a semi-regular basis from brilliant minds such as Zahn and Kevin J. Anderson.  However, not a peep was heard from George Lucas.  I learned later these books I had come to love and use as a replacement for a new cinematic trilogy were not canonized by Lucasfilm (in other words, kids, you are free to enjoy the books, but know that these stories are a fiction-within-a-fiction and will have no bearing on Lucas's characters from the original series).  I felt like I was wasting my money with every new book I bought that bore the Star Wars logo.

False hope, 1999, and the bomb in a Jar-Jar

     I enlisted in the military after high school and entered adult life.  One day in the late 1990s, I was traveling through Dallas when I saw a billboard bearing Darth Vader's helmet and the ominous words "Coming to theaters...one last time."  It was enough to set my heart on fire, and the message was not lost with me:  Star Wars was going to make another theatrical run!  But what did "one last time" mean?  Is George Lucas going to show his blockbuster series just once more before he has the film shipped to an underground bunker, never to see the light of day again?  Before we learned the truth, and before the films hit the theaters again, the brilliant minds at Twentieth Century Fox decided to re-release the trilogy on videocassette, and six months later, the films would be re-re-released in special edition, letterbox format and digitally remastered in THX sound! (!!!)  I started to think I was being "had" by the geniuses in Hollywood and Skywalker Ranch.  Star Wars merchandise returned to stores, and a full-blown Force fever had crept back into the American consciousness.  Then, we found out the original trilogy was returning to theaters with some added tweaks and enhancements.  So, they released the trilogy on video in its unaltered form, then it came back to theaters in its "retouched" form (including a decidedly different musical number inside Jabba's palace).  Lucas was photocopying old money and people were buying it!  However, aside from the aesthetic enhancements, nothing actually NEW was being brought to the star chart.
     In 1999, we were introduced to a cute, pint-sized, pre-Darth Vader wearing the skin of Jake Lloyd.  I'll never forget my mother-in-law's face when I told her the truth about Anakin.  She told me my (20 years my junior) brother-in-law absolutely adored Anakin Skywalker in Episode I.  I replied with "well, don't let him get too attached—he grows up to become Darth Vader!"  I guess Lucas wanted to wound two generations with the same weapon.  And then there was this jackass named Jar Jar Binks.

Drugs and podracing:  not even once.

     I get it:  the Ewoks were used as a marketing tool for monetizing a cute Lucas creation.  The brains at Lucasfilm made a killing with Yoda hand puppets, and no kid wants to snuggle with an obese, frog-eating slug like Jabba the Hutt.  With no recourse, the Ewoks were born.  They were cute, and they were fierce on the battlefield with a rock bolo and some sharpened tree trunks.  However, this creature from Naboo's underwater kingdom can kick rocks.  Not only was he stupid in speech (no, Chewbacca cannot be compared to this wretch), he acting like he was freely sniffing glue, to boot.
     As a final insult, we learn midichlorians, a strange antibody or probiotic of some sort, are responsible for allowing life forms to raise spaceships from stinky bogs, talk to shimmering ghosts, and use laser swords.  No matter how connected you are to life through years of yoga, if you don't have a colony of musical pool chemicals swimming like salmon in your bloodstream, you're not part of the Force club.  We also get to (briefly) meet a horn-headed, red-faced, black-clad badass named Darth (!) Maul.  We also get to introduce Darth Maul to his free-falling legs.  Oh, and Liam Neeson dies—yay.  I wonder if Padawan Obi-Wan took the time to whip-out the midichlorian scanner to sample Qui-Gon Jinn's blood to find out if he was wasting his time racing around the galaxy like a stoner following the Grateful Dead?
     Let's be honest, Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (the actual name of the original movie from 1977) wasn't a shining example of quality acting, the addition of Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing gave the film the gravity it needed.  Both were veteran actors who brought real acting talent to the screen in the first film.  However, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGreggor, and Natalie Portman were established actors as well who were held-back by shoddy lines that were unintentionally comical.  Even the addition of Ian McDiarmid, who played the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, could not give this film the credentials it so desperately needed.  I went into the theater to see The Phantom Menace with a heart full of hope, and I left with the feeling that I was betrayed yet again.  This time, the events I witnessed were part of the Star Wars canon; this meant Jar Jar Binks and Darth Maul's premature death was legit in the eyes of the Force.  Give me Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade from Zahn's books over this cinematic drivel any day.

The prequel beatings continue

Phil learns a hard lesson about respecting ghost peppers in 

this week's after school television playhouse.

     The turn of the century saw the release of the final two films in the prequel trilogy.  We witnessed the early beginnings of Boba Fett, the birth of Luke and Leia, the death of Padmé, some dude getting hacked and burned before getting an upgrade, and the tying of loose ends like C-3PO's memory wipe.  Oh, and largely forgettable characters like General Grievous and Count Dooku (whose names both sound like something a man experiences after a Taco Tuesday).  Kids just weren't nuts about this prequel.  By the time the third movie of the new trilogy was released, neither of my sons were asking for Star Wars toys like I was when I was their age.  Nobody feared Count Dooku in Star Wars, but did have a bit of fearful respect for Christopher Lee's other (simultaneous) bad guy acting gig as Saruman.  After Revenge of the Sith closed, many of the questions were answered, but guys like me felt empty.  Maybe Star Wars was better left alone?  Of course, Hollywood had their own ideas.

Enter the House of Mouse

     Admit it:  Disney makes some good movies.  Walt Disney Pictures knows the formula to engage kids and adults alike.  A Disney movie is guaranteed to fill a theater and stock shelves at the toy store.  So when Disney bought Star Wars and the rest of the Lucasfilm stable, I knew they were going to cook-up something good.  My hopes were confirmed when I read that Disney planned to produce no less than five Star Wars movies and possibly more.  Things looked good with Episode VII - The Force Awakens despite the whiny-assed Kylo Ren and the un-Solo-like death of Han (come on!)  I was willing to accept the characterizations of these new additions, and I felt like the series had wings.  Rouge One:  A Star Wars Story did not disappoint, either.  It took the release of Episode VIII - the Last Jedi to piss me off.  I'm still trying to come to grips with it, but none of it felt right.  It appears Luke is a jerk who cannot see past his failures, Jedi training will now be via self-help books, and Leia can survive the vacuum of space (but we probably won't see her again).  Oh, and Porgs are cute and fun to eat.  The mysterious Snoke was a plot device with no real substance after all, and Ren is still a colossal douche bag.  One thing the series is doing right is the inclusion of Rey (who my young daughter adores.  She even has a lightsaber) and Captain Phasma—two characters that draw-in a new demographic to the Star Wars saga like Leia and Mon Mothma never could.  With Rey as a principal action character who will arguably struggle more than Princess Leia ever did, girls around the world will adopt Rey as a heroine to them.  However, the deaths of Luke and Han, coupled with the loss of Carrie Fisher haved doomed the series.  We are two films into a trilogy where all of characters are still largely unestablished and unrelatable.  While Chewbacca and the droids are still kicking, they have become more marginalized than ever.  Gone are the days of the 3PO/Han Solo dynamic.  With no one to play off of, old "Goldenrod" has been relegated to sitting in the corner with the hydrospanners and dust mites.  The Empire has become The First Order (which sounds menacing), but they are led by a whiny punk who suffers from fits of uncontrollable tantrums.  Not a single mention of Lando Calrissian (who has plenty of room for characterization) is made as a bridge between the original and modern trilogy.

No spark left

     So, the guys whose very lives were shaped from their earliest memories of good versus evil against a galactic backdrop have been forsaken for a new breed who acts largely indifferent toward the franchise.  Star Wars is a thing my kids take part in because their dad loves the saga.  With no intrinsic love of the series among a grassroots group of young people, the entire franchise will go the way of Gunsmoke!:  older people will talk about how good it was, but it won't be relevant in the modern age.  Sure, Star Wars is a sure thing at the box office, but the cultural impact is lost.  I do not wish to grouse like an old man who is pissed all of his favorite music is being covered by a pop band; I want Star Wars to continue and grow to influence a generation the way it influenced mine.  But growth at the sake of losing your core is like building a mansion on a Dagobah mud hole.  With Yoda being long dead, who will raise it from the depths?  Someone better break out Qui-Gon's midichlorian extractor and take some samples.  - The Atomic Father
Agree?  Disagree?  Got a Star Wars joke to tell?  Please comment below and share this story!  Let's start a dialogue about how this franchise has changed, and what can be done to inject new life without further sacrifice.

Other articles of interest:
How to be a good dad with other dads are bad dads.
Build your kid a computer for less than $50
Comic books make kids better readers