Why Does Star Wars Matter So Much?

I’m exhausted today, as I write this post. Last Monday, on Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you), my roommates and I re-watched Empire Strikes Back to celebrate. Watching that fantastic movie for the fiftieth time (at least for myself), naturally got us talking about all manner of things related to Star Wars. And then, as seems to be the case recently whenever nerds the world over begin speaking about the storied franchise, we started talking about everything we thought had gone wrong with the sequel trilogy.

That conversation just wrapped up half an hour ago. That’s why I didn’t post anything last Wednesday. Nine straight days to discuss all the issues with the sequel series represents a massive improvement in efficiency compared to where we were right after Rise of Skywalker. January, to me, was mostly a blur of screaming nerd rage and Youtube talking head videos with lightsabers in the background.

…Okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.

But I bet there are more than a few of you reading this that couldn’t help but relate a little to the idea of a never-ending week-long rehashing of all the flaws of the sequel trilogy.

I’m not going to subject you to yet another dude who wants to spend twenty minutes of your time going on about the complete lack of world-building, the flawed vision J.J. Abrams brought to the sequels from the start, or the fact that Rise of Skywalker spent most of it’s runtime trying to negate every major plot-point and theme of The Last Jedi. You have all the rest of the internet to give you that (each letter in ‘internet’ is a different link if you really want to piss yourself off). Instead, I’m going to ask a question that occurred to me somewhere in the fourth day of verbal arguments over the pointlessness of Starkiller Base.

Why do we care so much?

There is a decent chance I’m going to regret typing these words for a very long time, but let’s be perfectly honest here: there are better pieces of science fiction than Star Wars.

The worldbuilding in both the Dune series and the Expanse is supplied with more detail and remains more believable. Blade Runner has way more interesting thoughts about robots and AI. If you’re looking for better sci-fi action The Matrix trilogy has you covered or the Mad Max series could help you out. The Hyperion Cantos melds mysticism and space settings to a much more interesting extent. And while Doctor Who and Star Trek both have dedicated legions of fans ready to get pissed at the slightest provocation, neither can claim the undeniable global and historical relevance that Star Wars does, despite both being over a decade older.

So why Star Wars above all else? Why does the fact that Rise of Skywalker sucks seem to personally hurt me and other fans in a way no subpar episode of Doctor Who does?

There are a couple different plausible answers to this question. It could be the way the franchise has succeeded through almost every media format imaginable from movies to video games to music to books to TV shows to comics. Or that the original film broke out in wild popularity just as The Blockbuster Age began in earnest in Hollywood. And while those theories do help explain the franchise’s continuing relevance and popularity, they don’t tell us why we take these movies so personally. For that, the best answer I’ve been able to come up with is this:

Star Wars is our inheritance.

A New Hope was released in 1977, fifteen years before I was born. But I have vivid memories of experiencing the movie for the first time as a five-year-old at my aunt and uncle’s house in Ohio. My uncle talking about how helpful a lightsaber would be in his carpentry work. I remember my father showing me Empire maybe a year later (my parents worried that movie was too dark for me at the time and I spent a lot of that preceding year bugging them about it), and going on and on about the absolute shock he experienced at the famous ‘I am your Father‘ reveal. Return of the Jedi will always be associated with a family vacation to New Hampshire gone wrong in which I watched that movie at least six times, even as I thought at age six that the Ewoks were kinda stupid. Growing up, the original trilogy was a part of my life, a cornerstone of what a space movie should be, a gift my older relatives handed to me.

After having spoken to both of my roommates and a few other hardcore Star Wars fans I know, it’s clear I wasn’t alone in this. The biggest Star Wars fan I know (he read at least 100 of the EU novels before Disney axed all that and started over and played every single related video game relased) spoke about receiving the VHS boxset for his seventh birthday in a tone similar to that a preacher might use when speaking about discovering his faith. His family all around and just as into it. Star Wars, like religion, like baseball, is something you are raised in.

And this continued, at least for the Millennial generation, with the prequel trilogy. When Phantom Menace was released 22 years after the first film in the series, I had already absorbed the original trilogy in my bones. And I claimed this new trilogy for me. Flaws and all, these were my movies, not my father’s. And while they are very very far from perfect (although the sequels have certainly inspired a re-appreciation of the prequels), they fit. They fit in the universe of Star Wars, they fit the feelings my dad described to me when he spoke about seeing the first films himself as a teenager. They were mine to add to my inheritance, as disappointing as they were at the time, because they still felt like the Star Wars I knew.

Then Disney bought the rights and we all know what happened from there. The Force Awakens was such a calculated rehashing of New Hope it could have just been a shot-for-shot remake done by second year film students and achieved a similar result. It didn’t feel like Star Wars for the next generation in the way the flawed prequels did. It felt like Disney had spent a lot of money on a remake and hoped you wouldn’t notice. The Last Jedi (in my opinion, the only movie in the sequel trilogy that at least tried to be new Star Wars instead of remaking old movies) couldn’t restore that feeling your parents told you about, and you felt at least an echo of in the prequels, despite its efforts. And lets not get back into Rise of Skywalker.

I think that’s why the sequels inspire such zealous hatred and so many video essays and think-pieces (of which I guess this is one. Hi!). It bothers us so much because we’ve realized deep down that Disney sold out our nerdy science fiction inheritance. The Lucas-led-Star Wars, for all its myriad issues, managed to feel precious and personal and tied to family despite the massive materialization and merchandising arm it created. It’s a miracle a film series managed to do that. Rise of Skywalker proves that miracle couldn’t last forever. Just as it proves Disney didn’t have the storytelling and marketing wherewithal to keep something running that one guy out in the redwoods in California managed to make work for almost forty years.

Maybe that means we shouldn’t let Disney own every piece of media in the world. I don’t know. Just a thought.