We all know that in Star Wars parlance, Episode III refers to a 2005 movie called Revenge of the Sith. We're not up to that in our viewing, and who knows, we may never get there.
But in the parlance of my family, we had our third movie-length Star Wars "episode" this past weekend on Easter, which was finally watching Return of the Jedi -- the third movie made, but Episode VI using the episode numbering that all Star Wars fans, and most other people, are familiar with.
I say "finally" because it's been an eternity since we watched The Empire Strikes Back, following a similar eternity since we had watched Star Wars. (I won't name the episode numbers for those movies, because when they first came out, they had no episode numbers, and that's the way I like it.)
Maybe "eternity" is a bit of an exaggeration. It was actually October 4, 2020 that we watched Empire, so only 18 months ago. But my hope had been that Empire would be such a hit with my kids that they would want to gobble up all the remaining Star Wars movies in short order, and that we wouldn't have another gap like we had between watching Star Wars, which we did on December 22, 2017, and Empire.
This gap was shorter, but it was still indicative of my kids' feelings on these movies in general.
However, maybe that's about to change.
"What did you think of it?" I asked my older son, who is now 11, as the credits rolled.
"Good," he said. "I finally like a Star Wars movie."
He knew there was something at stake here just as much as I did.
The younger one didn't directly answer the question, but he was making shooting noises and explosion noises in the play he uses to fill up brief moments of downtime, so that may have been answer enough.
The Book of Boba Fett was what gave me confidence to reintroduce Star Wars to these guys now. They're into "Star Wars" as a concept, having watched two seasons of The Mandalorian in addition to Boba Fett, but the movies have never worked for them -- "too old," "too slow," "looks bad" have been the sorts of complaints they've offered. They obviously don't have a geek's relationship to the material, but I had hoped that recognizing a lot of characters/locations from Boba Fett when they watched Jedi would be the kind of thing that would crystallize feelings of excitement about the show and transfer them to the movies.
I'm not sure if that really happened, or if they just liked the movie on its own terms. I didn't subject them to an extensive exit interview and was just happy with the positive reaction. But because they didn't spontaneously emit exclamations like "Hey, it's the Rancor!" or "Hey, it's a Gamorrean Guard!", I wasn't sure they actually felt that excitement of recognition I had been relying on, and wasn't sure if the movie would work for them at all.
They did seem to find the Ewoks somewhat charming, as my wife and I would sometimes produce little laughs at things Wicket W. Warrick (the original www?) would do, and they seemed to go along with that.
If I had to guess what finally clicked for my older son, I'd suggest it was the happy ending -- the repudiation of the Emperor (I won't say "death," because we now know he didn't actually die), the redemption of Darth Vader, and the survival and celebration of all the characters we love. I think the ending of Empire had left him perplexed, since there were so many open wounds, and he was unaccustomed to watching movies that ended on a down note. Jedi definitely wraps things up in a nice tight bow.
Then I suppose I also must consider the role of the scope of the movie. We watched it on the projector in our garage, which is as close to a cinematic-style projection as he's ever gotten on a Star Wars movie. We've started to watch a lot more things in our garage so it's perhaps less of a novelty, but a Star Wars movie deserves a bigger canvas, and this one finally got one.
I have to say it was not a 100% success. In the context of his positive review, my older son did mention the pacing issues and made a comment along the lines of "For about ten minutes there I was bored to death." But I guess if a movie's slow patch only lasts ten minutes, that's not too bad, and it means something came back along to stoke your excitement after that. (I don't know which ten minutes it was that bored him so much, but in my mind I imagine it's the conversation between Luke and Leia on Endor. Then again, the moment he did call back to a couple days later was when Luke elevates C3PO to prove to the Ewoks that Threepio is a god, which he obviously enjoyed and which was only a minute or two before that.)
Now the problem is, where to go from here. If their interest in Star Wars is, indeed, stoked, we could move on to one of the next two trilogies. The question is: Which one? If we went only in the order the movies were released, it would obviously be time for The Phantom Menace. But it's possible we'd have better luck with the newer (and better) movies, meaning my personal favorite of the most recent six, The Force Awakens, would be up next. That also picks up where the story left off.
The only thing is, I don't know if they're ready for the successive deaths of each of the three main characters in the next three movies they watch. If my son was perplexed by the ending of Empire, I can only imagine how he'd handle a whole movie where Luke Skywalker is irritable and glum, only belatedly redeeming himself at the end. Should Luke Skywalker be a character who requires redemption? (This is what I asked myself, and still ask myself, about The Last Jedi.)
I suppose whichever way we go, if we go, I will let my children dictate the pace this time. I've already force-fed them the three movies I really want them to see, and anything from here is a bonus. We'll watch Obi-Wan Kenobi when it comes out soon, and if they continue to enjoy that, it would make an easy transition into watching the same actor portray that role in the three prequels.
But I won't push it on them. They need to make the choice now. My indoctrinating days are over.
Part of me thinks that now that they've enjoyed Return of the Jedi, they should try Star Wars and Empire again. But I've got to just let it go.
Recreating your own childhood with your kids is an enterprise that is always doomed to failure, be it Star Wars, or the books you loved as a kid, or the sports you played. You can make suggestions and point them in directions, but they've got to take it on themselves at some point, or it can't possibly have that value to them.
At least we went 1-3 on the original trilogy, which was much better than a big fat zero.
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