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Waiting for the Jedi
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Help me Obi-Wan
After that first installment, the incongruously subtitled “Episode IV,” movies in general seemed to become more optimistic. When Richard Dreyfuss entered the mothership in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” I wished I could've gone with him — at other times in my life, I would’ve yelled at the screen “Don't go in there!! You're gonna get probed!!!”
But then, with “The Empire Strikes Back,” George Lucas played the dirtiest trick in the history of Hollywood, leaving us at the end of that two hours with nothing but calamity and cliffhangers. Every one of our heroes were in defeat, in peril, in captivity or in Carbonite. And we the audience were left waiting — in line, on hold, in Carbonite — three whole years for “Return of the Jedi” and the final happy ending.
Which brings us to the current day. Personally, I haven't set foot in a radio station in a decade, never wait on hold longer than two minutes and can't remember the last time I saw a computer punch card. And I haven't heard a louder ovation for a movie than the one for “Star Wars” back in ’77.
Yet there seems to be more of a proliferation of Happy Endings in the movies than at any time since the Great Depression (irony acknowledged).
If you want dark and downbeat, watch TV shows like “The Sopranos,” “Lost” or “The Shield.” Into this atmosphere, here comes “The Revenge of the Sith,” the movie everyone knows the ending to, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. As a piece of shared culture, it feels almost mandatory for someone of my generation. Yet, the experience inevitably will be melancholy at best, disappointing at worst. And the black box rooms in the 21st-century google-plexes just aren't as conducive to curtain calls as the old ornate auditoriums.
After 28 years, there’s no reason to wait any longer. But I’m definitely going to have the DVD set of the original “Star Wars” trilogy at home.
I don’t want to wait on hold for the happy ending.
Wendell Wittler is the alias of an online writer in Southern California.
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