New hope for Star Wars Day

NOTICE: Actors and commentators Jeremy Elwood and Michele A. Court give their point of view.

Jeremy Elwood

It's easy to make fun of "Star Wars Day" – May 4 for the uninitiated, geddit? – as a slightly forced and lame excuse for people obsessed with a fictional universe of dressing, watching new movies and playing with toys. But this universe, and more broadly that of science fiction and fantasy, is a force to be reckoned with.

As Avengers: Endgame Moves to the greatest film of all time, a record it is possible for the record to hold until Star Wars Episode IX ] arrives in theaters later this year, it's time to admit it. The nerds have won.

I am one of them. I grew up on Star Wars . I think in a way that Star Wars was the first movie I've ever seen in a cinema, which is unlikely because it came out at the age of 2 years . It is more likely that I saw Return Of The Jedi but by that time, I was totally immersed in the saga. I had the toys, the bedspread, the soundtrack, the books to read. I say "I have" – ​​I still have "a lot" of this stuff, to Michele's desperation.

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These films have not only redefined the cinema, but they have also changed the face of retail. Star Wars basically invented film merchandising, and those who followed it turned it into a multi-billion dollar company, in addition to what they're earning at the box office. It is no exaggeration to say that films like this have literally saved cinemas. You can now watch everything at home, but to truly immerse yourself in a fancy blockbuster, you need the biggest screen and the loudest sound system you can access. Imax owes Disney a big bunch of Kyber crystals

Even before the start of the Avengers final Marvel had ambaded more than 18 billion US dollars. Throw yourself into the worlds Star Wars and Harry Potter and the numbers are fantastic. But they also have a real human element.

Going to the cinema, it's being surrounded by people, panting, blinking, laughing and crying in one entity. As a fan of a particular franchise, you are automatically connected to a large extended family. There are real families involved too. There are children who watch Endgame and who were not born when Iron Man was published, and the original fans of Star Wars will take their grandchildren kids at the last episode when he comes out.

We need more than ever these films. In their world, good and evil are obvious and present dangers that must be resisted, united against and conquered. In our world, the demarcation line between goods and bad is increasingly blurred, and unfortunate endings are omnipresent.

In our human world, the ability to entertain and elevate might be the greatest superpower of all.

Michele A Short

Here's how I think we're watching movies (or reading books, or listening to songs): we're looking for the person who looks like us the most – or the person we'd like to be – and we accredit it. We follow their adventures as if they were our adventures, emotionally invested in their failures and victories. We are sitting in an obscure cinema and crying or jostling the air because we are on the big screen

We do not always choose the hero of the film as our own personal hero – maybe to be that we identify ourselves with a sidekick. Some people go to Star Wars conventions disguised as Luke Skywalker, others go to Wookie, is not it? We will be attracted by the one who best represents the best version of ourselves. You are your best day to be your best self.

And maybe it evolves as you evolve. Maybe Luke – young, searching and learning – was your guy when you were a child, but decades later, you're put in Han Solo, putting him in the center of the story because you understand cynicism and pragmatism now, but underneath it all navigate the universe with a moral compbad.

If you were a boy growing up with the franchise Star Wars you had a choice. I had Princess Leia. As a unique option, she was great and Lord knew that Carrie Fisher had beaten me to give me a hero who was more than a girl in a bikini, waiting to be saved.

But it is now in my fifties that I can feel what men of my age have felt in adolescence. I do not want to talk about it, but of this scene in Wonder Woman when Diana Prince left for no man's land, it was the first time I felt the feeling of having a superhero of my own and this made an adult woman cry. The new teaser of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Rey jumping on the path of a Tie Hunter does the same. I imagine that there are people of color who have the same visceral reaction to the sight of Finn moving to the central screen.

And I have Captain Marvel who does very well the test of Bechdel (there are scenes in two women talk about something else than a man – as in real life). (Yes, I know: the low bar, but few films exceed this threshold.)

Also, I can watch a film like Wonder Woman with my granddaughter, because director Patty Jenkins He turned so that his thighs were bare. and the cuirbades are not badualized for the masculine gaze, and the violence is happening on the screen.

I'm late for the superhero party, but I'm dancing hard. May the force be with us.