Chewie and Han are home
[SPOILERS FOLLOW!]
As you’ve probably heard, there’s a new Star Wars movie out.
I saw The Force Awakens the day it opened, and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t really planning to write about it because I didn’t think I had much to add to the conversation given my relative lack of knowledge and passion about the series.
You see, I’m not really a Star Wars fan. Not that I’m anti Star Wars, you understand. I’ve seen them all but I’m not a dedicated, know-it-by-heart, love-it-to-the-core true believer.
Yet there’s an aspect of The Force Awakens that I haven’t really seen being discussed much that I thought was the most interesting thing about it. It’s to do with fandom itself. So, since I’m no stranger to fandom per se (hi, Lebowski Fest!), I’m writing something after all.
Ever since it was announced that Episodes VII to IX were in production, all involved have gone to great lengths to stress that, unlike the calamitous prequel movies, the sequels would be in tune with the classic Star Wars look and feel cherished by so many.
These movies would be made by fans for fans. But the connection goes deeper than that. The Force Awakens is a story about fans.
That first struck me when the first full trailer for the movie was released – the one that saw anticipation kick into overdrive.
This trailer was littered with relics from the original movies, presented as landscape-defining behemoths (Imperial star destroyers), venerated fetish objects (Darth Vader’s melted helmet) or soaring emblems of power (X-Wings and TIE fighters).
The events of Episodes IV to VI, we gathered, had become mythic within the Star Wars universe itself. Our new heroine Rey says “there are stories about what happened”. Han Solo appears on screen for the first time in decades to assure her: “It’s true. All of it.” The choir rhapsodises. The stars burst. The Millennium Falcon flies again. “The Dark Side. The Jedi. They’re real.” Or, to put in another way, as Han does: “Chewie, we’re home.”
The genius of this dialogue was in its doubleness. It was apparently addressed to Rey but it was really addressed to the trailer’s viewers – the fans. We know it’s been a rocky road, the new film’s makers were saying, but you were right to keep the faith. We know what you value and we will honour it. Believe again.
It instantly made me think of a moment from Galaxy Quest. In this charming 1999 science-fiction action pastiche, a bunch of actors known for their roles in a Star Trek-style TV show find themselves roped into combatting real-life intergalactic baddies. At one point, they recruit Brandon – a fan of the show whose encyclopaedic knowledge of its fictive world has previously been scorned – to help them out.
Anyone who’s ever been a fan will identify with Brandon’s triumphant I knew it! There’s an emotional truth to our devotion to story that makes mere facts and reality seem weak. Who wouldn’t want the comforting fantasy to be confirmed as truth? It feels like… Well, like home.
Now The Force Awakens is out and it shows the same appreciation of fandom as its trailer – and then some. It’s been widely noted that the movie is effectively a reprise of the original films in all kinds of ways, from the overlap between Rey’s journey and Luke’s to the repetition of the Death Star narrative to the liberal sprinkling of familiar design elements and lines of dialogue, along with dozens of other more or less explicit homages.
To Star Wars fans, then, The Force Awakens feels consistently, reassuringly familiar – perhaps even samey. Home with a vengeance.
Yet, ironically, this very sameness is the thing that is most distinctive about the new film. The Star Wars universe has always had one eye on what came before – its detailed internal history is, after all, crucial to its success – but this sense of conscious emulation seems new.
New but consistent with the action it describes: conscious emulation is the prime motivating factor for the key characters in the plot. The Force Awakens is a story about Jedi fans versus Sith fans. Rey and Kylo Ren aspire more than anything to walk in the footsteps of their predecessors – a devotee of Luke Skywalker versus an acolyte of Darth Vader, against a backdrop of the military equivalent of tribute bands to the Rebel Alliance and the Empire.
The world of The Force Awakens is one in thrall to the past.
It’s a logical development in a Hollywood culture that prizes the adaptation, the reboot and the remake above all, rejecting the genuinely innovative and rewarding the ability to satisfy pre-existing expectations.
It’s quite consistent, then, to offer up a world in which high politics and fan fiction are more or less synonymous, and working knowledge of canon lore the ultimate virtue. What greater qualification could we ask of Rey, for instance, than her instinctive knowledge, without having to be taught, of how to fly the Falcon and use the Force? We see in her the elevation of the Brandon-type devotee from valued helper to central hero: the apotheosis of the fanboy (or girl).
But it’s not all good news for fandom. Since The Force Awakens was released, many have scoffed at the fact that the First Order – which seems to revere the Empire as an institution no less than Ren reveres Vader as an individual – for embarking on a third Death Star-style project that seems wilfully blind to the failure of the first two Death Stars.
Apart from the fact that imperial hubris of this kind is all too plausible (hi, proposed invasion of Syria!), such scoffing overlooks the opportunity to read this clunky plotting as an inadvertent warning against the excesses of fandom. Be careful what you worship.
Indeed, it’s striking that the most fanboyish character of all is the bad guy: Kylo Ren is really into his collectibles and cosplay. And things don’t go so great for him – or for the First Order.
Perhaps there’s lesson here. Like the idea that loving fantasy is great as escape or inspiration but when it’s allowed to substitute for reality, bad shit goes down. It would be nice if Episodes VIII and IX dare to move out of the shadows of their predecessors and try something new.
It’s good to have a home – less good to be a shut-in.
