May the Force be Whatever

On becoming a reluctant, late-in-life Star Wars sort-of-fan

Star Wars was a big part of my youth. As I’ve mentioned many times previously, my mom doesn’t like movies (I know) and rarely sits through one, so most films I saw were with my movie-loving dad. And that definitely included Star Wars. The Phantom Menace came out when I was a kid, so we saw it in the theater. We might’ve even seen the original three films (throughout this post I will refer to episodes 4-6 as “the originals” because that’s how I think of them…sorry if that’s confusing but the entire idea of making prequels like 20 years after you made the original films IS confusing! Take it up with George Lucas!) in theaters if they were re-released. Either way, we definitely saw them, and we saw them a lot. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know what the words “I am your father” mean in the context of the Star Wars universe. What I’m saying is…I got the Star Wars appeal. The John Williams music. Carrie Fisher looking fine. Harrison Ford being hot. The Chewbacca noise. I got it.

But I didn’t love it. You guys know I’m not a Marvel girl, and my issues with Star Wars are pretty much the same. First off, too much action! When I say that fight scenes make me fall asleep, I’m not being hyperbolic. The biggest, most dramatic fight scenes with the most explosions are the ones that will send me into a fit of snores. I don’t really know why, but Hollis can attest to this. I can logically understand that there’s impressive choreography or fantastic special effects, but it doesn’t matter to me because I’m asleep.

Secondly, I do not like a giant universe where everything connects and there’s a ton of backstory and you’ve gotta watch the first fifteen movies and a couple of TV series to really know what’s going on. That’s why I watch movies instead of TV in the first place: they’re self-contained! I only have to watch the one! I’ve never been a series completist, not even with books. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but as a kid I would pick up whatever book from a series the library had in stock and not care if I missed out on previous volumes. Even today, I rarely read an entire romance series, and I certainly don’t feel like I have to start with the first one. This is why the only Star Wars property I truly love is The Mandalorian. You can start that show without knowing a dang thing about the universe and still have a good time. It’s just about a single dad and his adorable baby and Werner Herzog getting in the way. To put it in Taylor Swift terms, The Mandalorian is like 1989; anyone can enjoy it. Some Star Wars films/shows are like The Tortured Poets Department: you need an explainer to understand what’s happening.

I pretty much forgot about Star Wars as an adult, other than the time Hollis took me to a 3D showing of The Phantom Menace (I fell asleep behind my 3D glasses). But then…I had a kid.

Something I never really thought about when I got pregnant was that someday, my son’s interests would become my interests. I mean, I thought about it in a vague way, like, “Whoa, what if he’s into team sports and I become a soccer mom despite having a lifelong fear of all sports settings?” But I really didn’t know just how obsessive kids can be, and about the most unusual things. At seven, he’s already been through a lot of phases and has even lost interest in some things and then gone back to them. There’s stuff like Minecraft (pretty typical) and stuff like World War I/history in general (he knows SO much more about WWI than I ever will and I’ve actually learned a lot). Much like me, he enjoys listening to songs on repeat, which means we’ve had phases where the most popular songs in our house were “Never Gonna Give You Up” (I was constantly being rickrolled in my own LIFE!), “Kyoto” by Phoebe Bridgers (went through two phases with this one, years apart), various Garth Coker songs from his favorite video game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and, since the Super Bowl, “Yeah!” by Usher. We’re still in our Usher phase.

Star Wars is perfect for this childlike obsession because it’s kind of made for children—essentially it’s good vs. evil, very clear bad guys except not always, which is again why I like The Mandalorian! And also…there are a ton of characters. Like, so many. And one thing I’ve learned about young kids is that they love a big universe where they can learn about various characters and their unique powers. That’s so much of what kids like…Minecraft. Pokemon. D&D. To take it way back, that’s basically what baseball cards are. We currently have a Star Wars Character Encyclopedia checked out from the library and my son loves flipping through it, telling us random facts about minor characters.

All this to say that he’s into Star Wars big time. Hollis and I recently showed him the original films and he loved them, which makes total sense because they’re nonstop fun and never boring. The characters are larger-than-life. The backgrounds are beautifully hand-painted. The outfits are nuts, there are plenty of cute characters (Yoda, I love you….Ewoks, I love you…), and that John Williams score is iconic. And, again, Harrison Ford is hot! It bears repeating.

We finished the originals just in time for last weekend’s rerelease of The Phantom Menace. It’s the film’s 25th anniversary, but also it was May the Fourth weekend. If you’re not a Star Wars person…people celebrate Star Wars on May 4th because it sounds like may the force, as in….may the force be with you. I don’t really love this because it’s hard to say with a lisp, but then again I’ve rebranded my lisp as cute so I guess I should embrace it.

I was not exactly jazzed about seeing The Phantom Menace in the theater, because I already did that twice and once I fell asleep. It’s just…kind of a boring movie, as a concept. It’s about politics, but not in a fun way. The opening text scroll mentions “taxation” and that’s the moment when you’re like…oh no…what have a I gotten myself into. It’s about trade and the senate and like…you’d think George Lucas would only return to this iconic franchise because he had a story he just had to get out, right? But WHY did that story have to involve trade regulations between planets and a complicated senate situation? Was this the story that was burning in his heart?

Apparently, yes. It was 1999 and no one could—or would!—tell George Lucas what to do! And then there’s the Jar Jar Binks of it all. It’s hard not to view him as an offensively over-the-top racial stereotype, and far smarter people than me have written about him. But I found this interview with Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar Jar, really touching, surprising, and sad. I never thought about the fact that this was the first character in a live action film that used motion capture technology, and I certainly never considered how much work he put into the character’s physicality.

So with my very large popcorn in hand, I was ready to take an $8 matinee-priced nap to the dulcet tones of John Williams. What I wasn’t prepared for was…having kind of a good time? Okay, yes, I did fall asleep once during the big pod-racing scene because that’s action and it was boring. But otherwise, I was awake the whole time. And intrigued! Maybe it’s because I’ve learned a lot of minute details about the Star Wars universe over the past several years (I need a t-shirt that says “Ask Me About the Difference Between Phase 1 and Phase 2 Clone Trooper Armor”), but all of a sudden I was paying attention. And asking questions, like:

-okay seriously…why was the acting like this? I think the only unquestionably good actors were Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor. Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t have enough to do. Natalie Portman…hmm. I do feel in my heart that she’s a good actress (May December hive rise up!) but this is truly bizarre work. Even weirder than Garden State. And just like Garden State, she’s got an accent here! One that is deployed only sometimes. The larger issue, I think, is that the dialogue is VERY bad and stiff. But what do I know? Surely someone on Goodreads thinks my dialogue is bad and stiff too. Who am I to question George Lucas?

-CGI Yoda >:( A thing about me is that I will almost always prefer practical effects and actual puppets over anything CGI. Remember Werner Herzog talking about Baby Yoda, and how he called the crew of The Mandalorian “cowards” when they considered using CGI instead of a puppet? “I have seen it on the set. And it’s heartbreaking! It’s heartbreakingly beautiful. It looked absolutely convincing. It made you cry when you saw it,” he said about the puppet version of Baby Yoda. Well, just call me Werner Herzog (like, please) because I’d rather cry over a real puppet, thanks. But I realize not everyone shares my opinion. I looked up a Reddit thread about CGI Yoda and found this comment: “Homie looks real as fuck, and the emotions in his face just bring him to life in a way that the puppet simply can't do.” Tell that to Werner Herzog, I guess!

-Why did Qui-Gon spend most of the film wear a pilled beige tunic? It wasn’t giving “Jedi Master.” It was giving “high school drama teacher out to brunch.” It was giving “he bought it at Talbot’s ten years ago.” But I guess he doesn’t have TIME to go buy new tunics—he’s too busy fighting the dark side or whatEVER!

-Jar Jar is probably worse than you remember in many ways, and yet…do I love him now? DO I? My son certainly does. He was like, “Jar Jar is VERY clumsy but he accidentally does the right thing.”

I’m not saying I loved The Phantom Menace. I’m not saying it’s my favorite movie. I don’t even know if it’s a particularly good movie. But I am saying…I had the time of my dang life watching it in a large, two-tiered theater with only like eight other people. Maybe I’m just in it now. Maybe the Star Wars universe is now my universe, like how when you’re in high school you take for granted that everyone you know knows all the same people. You’re stuck there, and that’s just how it is. That’s how Star Wars is for me now, I think. I’ve softened toward Jar Jar Binks. I begrudgingly accept the (extremely offensive, I think?) Neimodians. I’m charmed by Natalie Portman’s weird as heck accent work. Forget it, Jake, it’s Star Wars. This is George Lucas’s world and, in 1999, we certainly were just living in it.

But that wasn’t the only Star Wars themed activity we did last weekend. The Columbus Metropolitan Library had a May the Fourth celebration that surpassed any expectations I had. There were giant photo set ups. There were crafts. There was a tie fighter photo op and a….speeder of some sort (please don’t make me learn all the lingo, I’m doing my best). There were also a ton of people in full-on, very realistic Star Wars costumes, and our super-excited son posted for a photo with every single one of them. They were all great and so friendly (or as friendly as you could be when wearing a full-body costume with a helmet), although I did hear another dad remarking, “No one tells Darth Vader what to do.” Accurate!

And it was crowded. So crowded that they almost immediately ran out of supplies for a “build your own lightsaber” craft (my sympathies to the woman whose job it was to tell everyone in line that there were no more supplies left). We saw so many children having meltdowns (we overheard one dad asking his child, who was sprawled on the floor, “Could you please be upset on a chair?” and like…if that isn’t parenting in a nutshell). I saw a woman in a crocheted R2-D2 dress, complete with a headband. There were multiple jawas and they were creepy as hell. I don’t share photos of our kid on my public platforms, but this has me rethinking that policy because I wish you could see the photos of him with the Jawas.

Okay I just zoomed in on the Jawa. Amazing, right? Also why do those stormtroopers look so sad?

Our favorite Barnes and Noble (Lennoxtown represent) had blue milk, a photo backdrop, and a free Lego build that my son absolutely loved. It was, all in all, an amazing day. And it was because of Star Wars! I don’t want to be like, “I loved being surrounded by a ton of people who all like the same thing,” because I don’t really ever feel like that outside of romance events, where I genuinely do love being surrounded by romance fans. In general, I’m fine being all alone with my interests…hence this newsletter. I mean, if someone started a “Strange 1980s Adult Dramas” convention then yes, I would be there in a heartbeat, but otherwise I’m mostly fine writing into the abyss about Children of a Lesser God. But it was a real novelty, and very fun, to be part of something big for once.

But mostly, it was a joy and a privilege to immerse myself in something that’s important to my son. As parents, we get a front row seat to our children’s obsessions, and that’s something I don’t take for granted. It reminded me of a poem by Carrie Fountain, The Answer, which makes me tear up a little (it’s from her collection The Life, which I would highly recommend if you’re a parent). You should read the whole thing, but here’s just a few lines:

Once, my life was neat.

It was a handkerchief, folded,
slipped into a back pocket.

No one had to know
it was even there. Now,

it’s opened. And wasn’t it
this I prayed for in some

distant, quiet place, all
alone, all lonesome and alone?

Wasn’t it God I asked
to allow me the grace

to one day learn the names
of all the dogs on Paw Patrol,

all the ponies on My Little
Pony, all the Pokémon, good

and bad, the Care Bears,
the Transformers, the enemies

of Batman, the friends of
Batman, all the good guys

and all the bad guys forever
and ever, amen? Make it

real. Wasn’t that exactly
what I’d asked for?

That’s it. Learning the names of all the good guys and all the bad guys in Star Wars, all the planets, all the armor. It’s exactly what I asked for. All of it.

So while I would never describe myself as a Star Wars fan…well, I know a lot about Star Wars now, so maybe I should. My son spent most of the weekend rewatching the Duel of the Fates battle, which means I spent most of the weekend hearing that song (Duh duhhhhhh…DUH duhhhhh…..). And you know what? I like it. I love it. To quote Tim McGraw, I want some more of it. We’ve got Episode II on the docket and I’m prepared to be immersed.

I know I haven’t send out a newsletter in a couple of weeks, but I’ll make up for it by sending out another one soon about a movie I found baffling: the Jennifer Lawrence mop movie, also known as Joy, also known as a movie our society collectively forgot about as soon as it was released. That’s right, we’re getting back into the true No One Asked spirit. Please do let me know in the comments what your children (or the children in your life) have introduced you to…I didn’t even get into my son’s John Cena obsession. See you soon. xo

Bonus: here’s a piece that made me laugh.