The Lesson I Learned about Life When I Skipped School for a Movie 40 Years Ago Today
The most flawed of the original "Star Wars" movies, released 40 years ago today, taught me a lot about letting go and saying goodbye, because nothing special lasts forever
There are moments in your childhood that, for one reason or another, remain etched in your memory for the rest of your life. For me, there was the unassisted triple play I turned as a 6-year-old t-ball baseball player, the excitement of waking up Christmas morning to find what Santa had left under the tree, and sitting in movie theaters waiting for a “Star Wars” film to start.
Forty years ago today, my mom let me skip school to catch the first showing of “Return of the Jedi” as a 12-year-old. It had been a long three years since the cliffhanger ending of “The Empire Strikes Back,” filled with endless questions about Luke Skywalker’s genealogy and the life expectancy of carbon freezing, and I couldn’t wait even an hour longer. Plus, it was the final few weeks of my last year of elementary school, and I needed something to take my mind off the impending dread of junior high school (which would live up to my worst fears).
So I sat there in the movie theater at the now-defunct Hilltop mall in Richmond and waited with bated breath for those long-awaited words to once again appear on the screen. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”
And just like that, it was all over in a couple of hours, not just a movie, but a defining chapter of childhood for so many in my generation, where fantasy, mythology and imagination synergized on a movie screen over the course of six years and three films to transport us to a different place emotionally and even spiritually.
The cast and crew pose for the final scene of “Return of the Jedi”
Many of us who became so enamored with “Star Wars” as kids have long had a tortured, conflicted relationship with the final chapter of the original trilogy. “Return of the Jedi” could never match the pure excitement and novelty of “A New Hope” in 1977 or the narrative depth and rich storytelling of 1980’s “Empire,” which many (myself included) consider the greatest “Star Wars” film ever made. But in its own way, it made as deep an impression on us as the other films, if only because it taught us how to let go and say goodbye to something that, as children, we so wanted to last forever.
I’ll always remember the mixed emotions I had upon leaving the the theater after the final credits of “Return.” It was so different from the adrenaline rush of “A New Hope” and the sweeping pensiveness of “Empire.” In different ways, the endings of those first two movies left me as deeply satisfied as a cinematic experience could be for a pre-teen. My imagination was thoroughly captured and frozen in time.
But with “Return,” something was lost, the thrill ride had slowed to a crawl after those heart-pumping twists and turns, and we were left with dancing teddy bears (known as Ewoks), a saccharine celebratory score that George Lucas and John Williams would feel compelled to jettison for something richer a decade and a half later, and smiling stars gathered around a bonfire amid ghost-like visages that seemed to be plucked straight from “A Christmas Carol.”
Yes, it had its moments, as seen in the growing depth of the three characters we came to love: the farm boy-turned-hero, the smuggler-turned-idealist and the princess who had smashed that fairy-tale stereotype to pieces. But even seeing our heroes grow older and wiser came with its share of ambivalence. The Jedi prodigy who had been so humbled in the previous movie seemed to spend half of this one lost in self-reflection and indecision. The swashbuckling pirate suddenly had a soft side that seemed forced. Even the feisty, icy princess finally let her guard, and her hair, down and shed a tear or two. As Carrie Fisher herself said in the film’s audio commentary during the scene where Princess Leia asks Han Solo to “hold me,” “I liked it better when we were fighting.” So did we all.
But as a 12-year-old who was getting ready to leave the carefree innocence of childhood for the tumult of the teen years, and then the growing pains and insecurities of early adulthood, the timing was still perfect. Nothing stays the same, “Return of the Jedi” taught me, not even our movie heroes. As much as we may want to freeze moments of sheer joy and excitement in time, that’s not the way of things, not of “The Force” or life. Life is full of chapters, some good, some bad, many somewhere in between, but they all ultimately end and give way to something new.
“Star Wars” was a blessing for many of us who came of age during the 1970s and 1980s. Children need stories to cling to, stories that in the process of capturing our imagination through fantasy help to make a bit more sense of reality as we find our way in the world and develop our values, perspectives and goals. This was a captivating story, filled with revolutionary technical wizardry, about good and evil, hope, courage, devotion to a cause greater than ourselves, resilience, falling and getting back up, all things that we all need to learn in one way or another. But in “Return,” it was also about endings, saying goodbye, moving on, something that we all need to grapple with in various stages of life, whether it’s friendships, romances, careers, hobbies or our very physical and mental abilities.
None of us knew in 1983 that “Star Wars” would be rebooted, reborn and resurrected multiple times in the decades to come, with very mixed results. At that moment, “Return of the Jedi” seemed to be the end (and for many years it was, absent a forgettable made-for-TV “Ewoks” movie or two), and it was an end that needed to happen. George Lucas was exhausted, his marriage to a master film editor who had stitched his movies together about to unravel. Harrison Ford had already moved on to bigger and better things, and was just punching the clock until granted his “Get out of Star Wars” card. Fisher was fighting her own demons, and in the span of a year following the movie would marry and divorce Paul Simon, and later find her true calling as a brilliant writer while largely leaving acting behind. Mark Hamill would largely disappear from the fame “Star Wars” had bestowed, raising the traditional nuclear American family and finding niches of success in far different roles, including as the voice of super-villain the Joker in animated “Batman” series.
Like sports stars, they had burst onto the scene as rookies in 1977 and turned cinema upside down; had hit their peak three years later while producing a cinematic masterpiece where everything fell perfectly into place; but now they were running on fumes, unable to maintain the same level of excellence, worn down by the stresses and tensions that inevitably infect anything that seems so perfect and natural in the beginning, but inevitably starts to turn stale and laborious. If “Empire Strikes Back” was the 1927 Yankees where everything seemed as close to perfection as imaginable, “Return” was the 1969 Boston Celtics, a group of tired, cranky stars who had one more championship run in them, but just barely.
“Return of the Jedi,” was not great, but neither was it terrible, something I realized again while watching it joyously on the big screen with my daughter a few weeks ago. Like so much in life, “Return” was a mix of good and bad; special moments intermingled with cringeworthy ones; a story both flawed and poignant, scenes of comedy and drama that flowed beautifully one moment before falling flat the next, a capstone work of art struggling to reach the finish line under its own weight of impossibly high expectations.
In the end, it was a tribute to the dedication needed to see a process through, to grind out one last epic moment, even as the inspiration and imagination that once fueled it faded away. In that sense, it was the most realistic of all the “Star Wars” movies, and perhaps it gave those of us who came of age with it the most important lesson of all, even if it left us feeling a bit sad and let down. All good things ultimately come to an end, and not always with the level of satisfaction we’d prefer. Life, whether based in fantasy or reality, is a complicated thing, and true greatness is nearly always fleeting. Nothing beautiful lasts forever, and that’s OK. It just reminds us to savor that beauty all the more in that moment when it is most vivid and vibrant, and then to let it go.