THE MARQUEE
Forty-two years. Nine movies. One enormous Star Wars fan
Episode I: A long time ago, in a drive-in far, far away ... It was the summer of 1977. In the back seat of a blue Pontiac station wagon, parked at the Midland Drive-in in Ontario’s cottage country, a seven- yearold future film critic and Jedi wannabe was about to have his young world rocked.
The story unfolding on the screen was Star Wars. I’d never seen anything like it. The music, the aliens, the spaceships, the exotic locations — and all of it rusted and worn out and lived-in, just as you’d expect of a saga set a long time ago. And timeless — by the end of that year, it felt as though Darth Vader and R2-D2 had been with us forever.
Full disclosure: I fell asleep partway through the film, and woke up when the Death Star exploded. But I’d seen enough to feel what a million others felt that summer — this movie was talking to ME. It wouldn’t be long before I saw it again. And again ...
Episode 2: Taxat ion and Trade Routes
By the time The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, I was a 10- year- old with a collection of Star Wars figures and bubblegum cards, as well as stickers, books, bed-sheets, a lunch pail and my own glow- in- the- dark plastic lightsabre.
I drew TIE fighters in my notebooks at school, built Lego landspeeders and star destroyers — this was long before Lego realized it could sell such kits pre- designed — and spoke knowingly of the Dark Side. Although I had not yet begun to question the existence of God, I had managed to reconcile my Catholic upbringing with a simultaneous belief in the Force.
Episode 3: A Force Awakens
In the summer of 1983, I took my first girlfriend on my first movie-date, at the Cedarbrae six-plex in Scarborough. The occasion was the release of Return of the Jedi, which felt like it might be the last Star Wars movie ever made. She and I didn’t last, but my relationship with those movies has.
The year also marked the launch of First Choice, an early pay-tv service that featured Star Wars in heavy rotation. I watched it so often I can still quote swaths of dialogue, something I did, to great geeky delight, with Anthony Daniels during a 2015 interview. Imagine running lines from Star Wars with the actor who plays C-3PO!
Episode 4: A New Hope
The summer of 1999 brought the release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Anticipation was so high that the release of its trailer boosted the fortunes of The Siege, as fans bought tickets to that movie just to watch the previews. ( Those who tried to get their money back after the trailers were stopped by a hastily introduced rule.) On May 23, my fiancée and I went to a crowded screening at the Varsity in Toronto.
“The hairs on my neck stood on end while a literal chill went down my spine, as the crashing chords of Star Wars hit the suddenly cheering crowd,” I wrote in my diary that day. And like a lot of fans who couldn’t quite believe how bad it was: “I enjoyed the film immensely, and will enjoy seeing it again. Despite the mediocre reviews, this is part of the larger story of Star Wars, and it will fit in quite nicely. I loved it, and so did the younger Chrises who took a peek through my eyes.”
Or to quote Scott Feschuk from the ( just launched) National Post that week: “As I watched, I was guarding against thinking it was good simply because I wanted it to be good, or because the hype had conditioned me to think it good. At the same time, I was taking care not to judge it bad solely on account of it not being very good, or because the hype had made it impossible for it to be as good as I might have hoped All I know is that I’m really looking forward to looking forward to Episode 2.”
Episode 5: ‘I have a bad feling about this’
In 2002, I drove with my wife and some friends all the way to Toronto’s northwest corner to see Episode II: Attack of the Clones on a new digital projection system — which broke down an hour into the screening. Fortunately, there was a brand new place nearby called Krispy Kreme, which soothed our disappointment. A week later, I watched it on film. ( Remember film?) “An exciting movie and far more interesting than Episode 1,” I wrote at the time, already downgrading the previous chapter in my own history.
Episode 6: The Last Jedi
The final part of the prequel trilogy felt like the end of the saga. I caught an early press screening of the film in 2005, sitting next to film critic Katrina Onstad, who doesn’t have a geeky gene in her. At one point, she openly scoffed: “Yoda — he has so many powers — except the power of grammar!”
Trying to like it more than I actually did — those digital battles in the droid foundries went on forever! — I wrote: “It was a good movie in the second half, when Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side and becomes Lord Vader.” But it was a loooong first half. And that dialogue! Obi-wan: “Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!” Anakin: “From my point of view the Jedi are evil!” Who talks like that, in the middle of a lightsabre fight no less?
Episode 7: The Rise of Sta r Wa rs
The latest trilogy – The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker – after a decade without a new Star Wars movie, represents something of a Renaissance. Creator George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, opening the way for new voices to take control of the Star Wars universe. And for this fan, that has largely been a good thing.
Sure, 2015’s The Force Awakens from J. J. Abrams felt like a beat- for- beat retread of the original. But isn’t that what fans had been doing in their living rooms, garages and ( eventually) Youtube channels since the beginning? Here was a chance to see a fan “do” Star Wars not at the Thanksgiving dinner table after one too many glasses of wine, but on a budget of $300 million.
It was also the first Star Wars to debut in the full glare of social media, which amplifies the lovers and the haters alike. As I trollingly wrote at the time: “You can’t review The Force Awakens the same way you would Citizen Kane. One is a timeless classic, breaking new ground in filmmaking, built around a simple, delicious secret not to be revealed. And the other is Citizen Kane.”
Full marks and two droid- thumbs up from this fan.
Episode 8: The Rogue One
2017’s The Last Jedi proved a divisive and awkward middle chapter, with its strange emphasis on spaceships running out of fuel, and a needless quest to a weird casino planet teeming with wild horse- oids. But, bracketed by the release of Rogue One a year earlier and Solo six months later, it also helped cement the idea that there could be too much of a good thing. And as I noted in my review, “Too much of a good thing” is such a mild critique you could almost put it on the movie’s poster.
Episode 9: The Force Will Be With Us, Always
For the third and final (?) time comes a new Star Wars film that feels like the final chapter. Critics are all over the map (of the galaxy) on The Rise of Skywalker, which at the time of this writing was at 58 per cent at rottentomatoes, despite my own five-star boost.
I can’t help myself. My highlight of 2019 was piloting the Millennium Falcon at Disney’s newly opened Galaxy’s Edge. My favourite Christmas gift of 2015 was a Falcon drone — even better, my kids think I bought it for them! Friday nights I gather with my family to watch The Mandalorian, safe in the knowledge that there will never be another Star Wars Christmas Special. And like every other Star Wars film, I’ll be watching The Rise of Skywalker again.
I think it holds up, but in some ways it doesn’t matter. Star Wars fans have learned that you take the good with the bad, the dark side with the light, the Gungans with the — with whatever species Yoda is. I love the latest Star Wars, just as I’ve loved all the others, and I reserve the right to call them out later for their weaknesses. If Darth Vader can have a change of heart, anyone can.