Impulse

Just got back from see­ing Star Wars Episode III. Yes, it was a bit hokey at parts, half the dia­log wasn’t believ­ably moti­vated, and the act­ing var­ied dra­mat­i­cally from shot to shot within a scene, but I still enjoyed it. I got caught up in the strug­gle, as well as the sus­pense to see which path Lucas would take to the end we all knew. Still, notic­ing how I feel after the movie, the thing that moved me the most was that it’s over.

As with every­one my age, I grew up on Star Wars. Countless lightsaber bat­tles, dreams of fly­ing an X-Wing or the Millennium Falcon, hours spent imag­in­ing what I would have done con­fronting Vader & the Emperor, all these col­ored my child­hood. My first emo­tion­ally com­plex dream was the one in which I became a Sith Lord. Over the years, my friends and I have invented sev­eral of our own pre­quels.
And now it’s over. We have the answer. We know What Happened.
It’s funny how we can’t wait for some­thing to fin­ish, and then when it does, we feel sad­ness. It’s like grad­u­a­tion — we can’t wait to be done with school, yet after the cer­e­mony, when the last mor­tar­board has been tossed in the air, the nos­tal­gia sets in. We remem­ber all the great moments, the won­der­ful feel­ings. And, we don’t want them to end. Now that we’re at the fin­ish line, we want to go back & relive those moments. Yet, we know they’re gone, and that that’s The Way of Things.
To a degree, that’s how it is with Star Wars. I hadn’t real­ized it, but nearly all my life I had been wait­ing for this moment. Not in any con­scious way: there had just been an uncon­scious antic­i­pa­tion that there would always be more Star Wars. But, I know there won’t be more. I feel exactly like I do when I’ve just fin­ished a really good book, closed it, and set it down. Finished.
Of course, “fin­ished” is rel­a­tive, isn’t it? For those who’ve been fol­low­ing my dab­bling in script rewrit­ing, I think I’ve solved the Ewok Problem.
To Be Continued…

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