The Force Awakens

In 2005 I walked straight from the theater after the credits rolled on Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith and into the bookstore across the way from it to buy Matthew Stover's novelization of the film. I went home to scrounge the internet for shreds of Star Wars: the extended universe, the many video games, the fan fiction, the merchandise, anything, everything. In one corner of an official website I found a promising, much-sought sentence: a seventh film is scheduled for release in 2015.

2015?!?! I thought, my twelve-year-old craving for this new obsession thwarted by those four numbers. That's like, forever away.

I made do. I had started watching Star Wars well before I could read or write: one of my earliest memories is watching scenes on Hoth in the basement bedroom of my aunt's bread-and-breakfast with my uncle, a timeline that puts me around two or three years old. I kept rewatching the films. I dug my way through all of the material I mentioned above. Matthew Stover's novel is one of my favorite books. I've worked my way through thirty characters and counting on Star Wars: The Old Republic. I once kept my sophomore year college roommate up until three AM to talk about all the little details that contributed to Anakin Skywalker's fall to the Dark Side. Most of all, I waited.

Today was the day, ten years later, that I sat down in the cinema -- the same one where I had gone to see Episode III, in fact -- to see Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

I won't spoil it for you. I went in blind myself, and I think that you should, too. But I will tell you that it was worth waiting ten years for, and that it was a worthy successor to the prequel and original trilogies. It was certainly worth dragging myself out of bed with a new-medication-headache. It wasn't perfect: it was a little bit corny and contrived, and no one said "Shocking" in an unamused voice and then blasted away with Force Lightning. But I can live with that.

This movie is officially recommended by Kathryn McGinty. Go see it. And then go read Matthew Stover's novelization of Episode III. But the book will be on the shelves longer than the movie will be in theaters and, you know what, just go see it. And keep an eye out in the beginning for the Storm Trooper who's a little bit shorter than the others.

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