Geeking Out

Two days. Two days until something that I have been waiting for since I still had baby teeth happens. You know what I'm talking about: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
We bought tickets for the Thursday evening show almost two whole months ago using the internet, a technology that would have seemed as futuristic as a lightsaber when Return of the Jedi was released in 1983.  There has been a lot of water under the bridge since I first saw the Imperial Star Destroyer chasing down Princess Leia's Corellian Corvette (the Tantive IV, in case you want to know).  We have now lived through the entire story arc of Annakin Skywalker who would become the menacing Sith Lord Darth Vader, who we first see striding through a smoky corridor to choke out a rebel pilot as he insists they're on a diplomatic mission.  We now know that Leia is actually Annakin/Vader's daughter, one of a pair of twins separated at birth and hidden from their father in the wake of his catastrophic turn to the dark side of the force.
To tell you the truth, we now know entirely too much about the tragedy of Annakin Skywalker.  We may have been getting a little tired of his whining and secretly rejoicing when he wheezes his way into the cyborg Vader, because bad guy or not, Vader is awesome.  Which is really the problem with with everything that happens after Luke, Lando and the gang rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, including the flashbacks that were the prequels.  Everything conspires to remove the menace of Darth Vader from the universe, not just by defeating him, but by revealing him to be human.
Grown up me has come to the conclusion that he liked Vader a lot more than he liked Annakin.
I've wrestled a long time with what exactly it is that I dislike so much about the prequels.  Part of it is that I was not eight years old when I saw them, I know I appreciate all the movies more when I watch them with my kids.  Part of it is that I was a little disgusted with the crass commercialism and marketing of it all (Star Wars episodes IV, V and VI basically invented that though so...), when I was really too old to be buying action figures and spaceships (I did anyway).  Part of it was Jar Jar Binks, but part of it goes back to the trying to live up to the encounter of a six year old boy with the spark of imagination.  Like a lot of people, when I first saw Episode IV, A New Hope, I had never seen anything like it.  The movies and the toys associated with them were a huge part of my childhood.  Darth Vader, for several very important formative years, was the definition of evil and the dark side of life.  When Vader is redeemed in Return of the Jedi (in the opinion of grown up me), we needed to move on to something new, not go back and rehash his fall.  The mythology that I had in my head was much better than the stumbling, overwrought, self indulgent storytelling of the Episodes I-III.
I knew too much about Annakin already, I knew he couldn't be trusted, I knew he was doomed, I knew that inscrutable black metal mask was his future.  I felt too much dread about what was going to happen to Padme, and was always trying to find the wisdom of old Obi Wan in the young Obi Wan, oh yeah, and I wanted Han Solo or something like him.
For Episode VII, I have put all of that to rest.  I am going to soak this one in with my kids.  I'm going to let the story be what it is, and I'm not going to expect it to rock my world the way A New Hope did, because it can't, I'm not six years old.  I am looking forward to seeing this movie, in the same way that I look forward to seeing old friends.  I have some expectations, but I also know that there is going to be some strangeness caused by the inevitable passage of time.
Forty-one year old me is a lot more comfortable with that strangeness than twenty-five year old me could have been.  After almost thirty years, I'm ready to see where this thing goes.