The Force and a New Generation

It’s been an unusual experience to go through the original Star Wars trilogy with my seven year old son.  It turns out that the other boys in his first grade class are also tuned into the family drama of Luke, Lea and Darth. They play games at recess reenacting scenes and my son currently intends to film a re-make casting his mother as Lea and himself as Luke (the analysts will have a field day with that one).  We have made cardboard tube light sabers and small models of x-wing fighters.  Small figurines are perched in different locals in our home.

I never expected the films’ relevancy to have this kind of staying power a generation later, but watching them again I am struck by the solid storytelling and the mythic undertones.  And they are funny in exactly the manner that Melville weaves humor into Moby Dick.  The poor Millennium Falcon is so like a Buick I once drove.

While many of the criticisms I recently looked at have tried to diminish the value of the films as pop culture, part of me is thinking it may be time to reassess that label.     Have you been entertained by the force lately?