When you leave the theater after seeing Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker, you’ll have just watched the final chapter in the Skywalker family story as we know it. Star Wars will carry on with new stories and fresh directions, but nothing will ever be the same again for its multigenerational fan base. With all the questions and fan theories swirling around The Rise of Skywalker, we can be sure of only one thing: It will be divisive, so prepare for weeks, if not months, of very public feuding. For being fans of movies dedicated to the idea of “passing the torch” and bringing up the next generation of heroes, they have done a remarkable job of missing the point of the saga they so love.
Star Wars fans have forgotten to grow up.
In a recent interview, actor Richard Grant (who will play a First Order general in the new film) spoke to this complex within Star Wars fandom, saying, “Inevitably, there will be a Game of Thrones syndrome to Star Wars because you can’t please everybody all of the time.” He went on to say, “People feel incredibly passionate and possessive about it,” which is putting it mildly for Star Wars fans, who say things such as “GEORGE LUCAS RAPED MY CHILDHOOD,” “KATHLEEN KENNEDY RUINED STAR WARS,” and “DISNEY KILLED STAR WARS.” These colorful lines are just a glimpse of what you can find on YouTube from fans boasting hundreds of thousands of video views for their monuments to aggrievement.
Every millennial fan knows this has been going on since the prequel trilogy began in 1999 with The Phantom Menace after being treated to complaints from older siblings or friends who saw George Lucas’s latest work and moaned, “This isn’t my Star Wars.”
Possessive indeed.
The latest films, following Disney’s absorption of the franchise, have taken the issue of Star Wars’s intergenerational legacy quite seriously in their stories. You can’t get much more literal than the Skywalker lightsaber being handed down from one character to the next, each time for a new generation of young fans to see. Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo Ren are all living in the shadows of legends, trying to find out where they fit in a world built by Anakin and Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. It hasn’t been easy for them — and certainly not for the fans either.
You can’t quite put into words the pain felt by the Star Wars faithful when Han Solo was murdered by his son, Kylo Ren, in 2015’s The Force Awakens. Two generations watched their hero die without so much as a fight, and then came Luke Skywalker’s somewhat similar exit in the follow-up, The Last Jedi. The gang never got back together. And yet, Star Wars has spoken to this pain in every trilogy since 1977. On Yoda’s deathbed in Return of the Jedi, he told Luke to “pass on what you have learned,” and so he did. Luke was not ready, nor was Obi-Wan when he had to step up to shepherd Anakin after Qui-Gon Jinn’s death. Rey was never ready for her trials either. This is Star Wars: untimely death and the call to action for young heroes, a call to accept responsibility and face down evil.
So, if Star Wars has always been about generational change, why can’t its mass of fans all just sit down and enjoy new Star Wars movies with new characters carrying the saga’s legacy? Well, because Grant was correct about their possessive attitude when it comes to Star Wars. Yoda might call it attachment and “the shadow of greed, that is.”
In Revenge of the Sith, Yoda counseled an anxious and fearful Anakin on his nightmares of death and loss. Yoda told him to “let go of everything you fear to lose.” For these perpetually disaffected Star Wars fans, it’s their childhood they’re trying to hold on to, and it haunts them.
When people talk about #StarWars , they talk about their childhoods. Their best memories. The people they loved and shared it with.#TheRiseOfSkywalker brings back all those feelings. And then some.
I absolutely loved it.
And now I feel … pic.twitter.com/5wkQh6v97G
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) December 17, 2019
The nostalgia that surrounds Star Wars is something of a mirage. The original films are not just films; they symbolize the imagination, wonder, and innocence that for most grown-up fans is gradually fading from memory. Scan through some of the aforementioned YouTube videos from fans, and you’ll see mostly young men in their 20s or 30s sitting in dimly lit rooms full of toys and posters and raging against some new movies that are objectively made for 8-year-olds just as much as they are made for them.
There are good-faith arguments you can make against the quality of Disney’s Star Wars trilogy, just like with the prequels, and that needs to be acknowledged. But the keys to the joy of Star Wars are not being held captive by Mickey Mouse; they’re in the hands of our sons and daughters and always have been. As the millennial generation has come of age, for a variety of complex reasons, it’s not having children. This is the real problem for Star Wars because its strength and eternal life at the box office rely on parents figuratively passing Skywalker’s lightsaber to their offspring.
If that stops happening, Star Wars has no future beyond standalone films to satisfy the cries of a generation that refuses to grow up.
Star Wars is a beautiful and paradoxical franchise that has united multiple generations in a shared love for a mystical Force, yet it still continues to divide fans along those same generational lines. Maybe you haven’t loved Star Wars since Disney took over; maybe you’ve been jaded ever since Jar Jar Binks first stumbled onto the screen. But when The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters and you’re watching the saga come to its surely thrilling conclusion, take a look around you at the children in the audience.
If they’re transfixed and enjoying the movie, it may be time to consider that the problem is not and has never been “new” Star Wars movies. It’s you.
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is the spokesman for Young Voices, host of the Beltway Banthas podcast, and an entertainment contributor for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
