Star Wars and The Gift of Nostalgia

Last spring I took our entire family to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in theaters for its 25th anniversary re-release. Everyone had a wonderful time (if you’re unfamiliar with my opinion of that movie and the prequels in general: abandon all hope, ye who enter here). We got to do an encore last week, as Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has been likewise re-released for its 20th anniversary. Again, we loved it. With both films, I was impressed by how well the visuals, music, and storylines hold up today, a very different cultural moment than the early 2000s.

But that’s a different post! :)

The real reason to pay for tickets and popcorn to a twenty-year-old film is, of course, nostalgia. There’s no other pitch. And I confess this much as a self-identified Concerned Person regarding what some have called “the stagnation” of popular culture. Disney, which purchased the Star Wars franchise in the silent period between Episode III and Episode VII, is the chief offender here. It has invested billions of dollars in nakedly nostalgic projects, such as doing shot-for-shot live action remakes of its animated classics, or milking franchises like Star Wars and Marvel for all their worth, even to the alienation and boredom of their fans.

As

Ted Gioia

has written, nostalgia dominates the music industry as well. Spotify members spend most of their listening pleasure on the same albums and tracks they’ve listened to for years. I hesitate to criticize J.K. Rowling, who may go down in history as one of the most important people of the 21st century, but her Harry Potter universe’s omnipresence in media, and the tireless but shallow efforts to generate revenue through worse and worse spin-offs, are symbolic of the problem. And outside of entertainment, the relatively uninteresting last decade from the likes of Apple reenforce the sense among many that American energy and creativity seems to have peaked somewhere in the past. Based on what we see now, our best creations, the universes and technologies and songs that create memories rather than resurrect them, feel behind us.

Like I said, I identify as a Concerned Person. I was among the crowd that identified nostalgia as a villain during the political inflection point of 2016. I haven’t completely abandoned this view. But, sitting in the cinema with my kids, Revenge of the Sith glowing in gloriously high-definition, I realized that nostalgia was not merely a problem. It’s also a gift.

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Interestingly, Revenge of the Sith’s story turns on its main characters’ relationship to the past. Anakin’s conversion to the dark side happens because the memory of his murdered mother won’t allow him to accept his lack of control over his wife’s destiny. “I won’t lose you the way I lost my mother,” Anakin says early and often.

George Lucas describes his religion as “Buddhist Methodist,” and this becomes a more interesting description as you pay close attention to the Star Wars saga. Anakin’s only counsel in Revenge of the Sith comes from Yoda, who can offer nothing other than standard Eastern metaphysics: “Rejoice for those who [die],” Yoda commands him. “Mourn them not, miss them not.” Emotional unattachment is the only path to peace among the Jedi. But this cannot serve Anakin. His love for his mother and then his wife exist, and no amount of “letting go” can erase it.

This is where Lucas the Methodist shows himself. As he watches Anakin combust on the slopes of the lava planet, a heartbroken Obi-Wan confesses that, to him, they were brothers. “I loved you,” he calls. The Buddhist orthodoxy has been interrupted by the Christian story, and the interruption turns into transformation by the end of Return of the Jedi, where Anakin’s love for his son drives him to sacrifice himself for him.

It’s a redemption made necessary by a relationship to the past covered in fear (Anakin’s), and made possible by a relationship to the past covered in hope (Luke, Obi-Wan). And of course, the physical center of this hope is children. Revenge of the Sith ends with a beautiful, wordless sequence in which the infants Luke and Leia are secretly transported to their adopted homes. The Jedi’s orthodoxy fails to account for the saving power of filial love, and the redemption that’s possible in new life. Luke and Leia are not problems to be hid. Their lives are a salvation, not just for their father, but for the world. This means too that Anakin and Padme’s love was not a problem to be hid. But their children’s births complete this hope. Lucas’s Christian heritage steals the microphone from his Buddhist ideas long enough to announce, “Unto us a child is born.”

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Something clicked for me in that cinema with my kids. Twenty years ago this May, I watched Episode III as a 16 year old, captivated by Star Wars and eager to somehow live in its world. Twenty years later, I am here again, but I’m not alone. The son and daughter whose faces I could not have even tried to visualize back then are with me now, and this time, I’m not so eager to live in the world I see onscreen. I am eager for them to come with me. This story has become something for me to share. In a twenty year arc from teenage fan to father of little fans, it’s not just me that’s changed, it’s the movie itself. I watch it differently because I am not only watching it; I’m watching them.

So in this moment, nostalgia stops being paralysis. It stops being an escape from fear of the future into the certainties of the past. It becomes a gift to give to my slice of the future.

Sitting near us were a group of 30something year old guys, some of whom were dressed up. I don’t want to pick on them; it honestly seemed a great time. But something in me was sad. I thought, these guys are having a great time revisiting a beloved place. But I wish they could get the opportunity to watch a beloved person revisit it with them. In these bro’s costumes and props was a part of their heart. I hope they get to do something like that one day, as part of their heart sits in the seats next to them.

Maybe this is a good argument for more movies to be re-released rather than remade. A remake is a plea for people to miss their own past strong enough to pay money to get back inside it. With every cheaply thought out remake of a classic, the hope is that nostalgic Millennials will say, “I hope I can feel the way I felt back then.” This is nostalgia-as-death. But a re-release says something different. It’s an invitation to come back to the cinema, not trying to feel the way you felt back then, but to give someone else a chance to feel what you once felt. The joy grows in its escape.