Heroes

Welcome to 2021! May it be more enjoyable than 2020 was. I know, that's like saying I hope that not getting kicked in the tenderloins on a daily basis is an improvement. 2020 was a rough one, wasn't it? But, the future is now, so let's look forward. And to do that, we're going to look backward for a moment.

Warning: This post will contain spoilers for Star Wars: The Mandalorian. So, if you haven't watched it, or haven't finished it yet, STOP READING. Come back after you have watched the finale of Season 2. Trust me, you don't want to be spoiled on this one.

You're done watching it? Cool. How about that ending? Were you expecting it? Nobody was, were they? Or if they were, it was in a 'wouldn't it be awesome if...' kind of a way, without any real expectations that it would actually happen. Because we never see our childhood heroes like that on TV anymore, do we? Not even close.

I confess, I did not watch the entirety of The Last Jedi. I couldn't, which was the first time I could ever say that about a Star Wars movie. I even watched The Phantom Menace multiple times, and that was some seriously crappy and disappointing Star Wars. But The Last Jedi? That was the aforementioned high-speed collision between foot and groin. Luke Skywalker had become a bitter, worthless old fool who believed his entire life was a waste, who was hiding from the entire galaxy because of his failures, a galaxy that looked pretty much as bleak as it did when he first stepped out on the Tatooine desert to buy droids from some Jawas. And he wasn't the only one; despite the heroic efforts of the Rebellion, despite destroying two Death Stars and killing the Emperor, Luke and his friends had, somehow, made absolutely no difference in the galaxy.

Say what?

Was that the message we were supposed to take from the new trilogy of Star Wars movies? That life sucks, and no matter how much you work to change things, it's still going to suck? Even worse than that, the message we got was: "The people you looked up to when you were young? They all failed. Miserably. And they all know it. And now, so do you. Your heroes suck."

And they were heroes to us. Luke Skywalker, in particular, was my favorite. A lot of people I knew were big into Han Solo. He was cocky, cool, he got the girl and the great starship, not to mention a bunch of sweet lines. And he shot first. Everyone wanted to be Han.

But not me; I wanted to be Luke, not Han. Han was Clint Eastwood, but Luke was Clark Kent. A farm boy who grew up knowing he was meant for something bigger, then finding out his true parentage and being thrust into a role that only he could perform. He was the superhero for an entire generation of kids who watched him face the biggest evil imaginable...and step away from the temptations of the Dark Side, redeeming his father's soul in the process. THAT is a hero: Noble, self-sacrificing, steadfast and true, unflinching in the most epic dangers imaginable. And that is what we were all bouncing in our seats waiting to see when the new movies came out.

The Force Awakens was bad enough; Luke appears in a silent cameo at the very end of the movie. No lines, no actions, nothing. He was just there, like that was supposed to make us happy. But the warning signs were there all through the movie: He was in hiding, he had changed...he wasn't really Luke Skywalker anymore. But we still wanted to believe in our hero.

But then The Last Jedi came out, and it was a nightmare. Even Mark Hamill admitted that he hated playing the role as the story demanded, because he knew, just as we all did, that he wasn't playing Luke Skywalker; he was playing a warped, twisted version that he derisively called 'Jake Skywalker.' I stopped watching halfway through the movie, because it was unbearable. And I never even watched a trailer for the last movie. What would have been the point? I wasn't going to watch it anyway.

And so, for two years, our hero, the hero of a generation, was gone. And make no mistake, that was the intent of the producers of those abominable movies. They wanted us to reject the heroes of our youth an embrace new 'heroes' that showed no heroic qualities whatsoever, heroes who did nothing to earn our approbation or admiration, heroes that demanded to be recognized just 'cause. And we refused.

Oh, sure, a lot of people went to see the last movie, but almost nobody went more than once. It was more a case of 'let's just finish the story and get it over with' for a lot of fans who did sit through The Rise of Skywalker. The heartbreak was real, and it felt more like a mercy-killing than a satisfactory conclusion to an epic, thrilling, generational saga.

And that was it; Star Wars was dead to a lot of people.

Fast-forward to 2019, and the Mandalorian series. I've watched most of the first season with my son now, and it's pretty good. It's got a strong Western vibe, and the Mandalorian seems like a typically good Western hero. I like it. But three weeks ago, the only thing I knew about the series was Baby Yoda. And I didn't care.

So, what changed my mind? The last fifteen minutes of the last episode, Chapter 16: The Rescue. I truly wish I hadn't seen the spoilers, because I would have dearly loved to have been surprised. But I'm doing my best to give my son the chance to feel that surprise; maybe I'll videotape it when we get to that episode.

I'm not going to break down the entire episode; I haven't actually seen it, yet. But I do know that when the story's heroes are at the bleakest point, the point of certain death...a hero arrived. THE hero, the one we'd been waiting for since 1983 and Return of the Jedi. Yes, Luke Skywalker was back. But the way it was handled...it was epic.

The heroes are trapped in a room, with several robotic Dark Troopers (one of which is almost too much for the Mandalorian and his friends to fight) punching their way through the reinforced blast doors. It's a hopeless situation, and they all know it. But then, a lone fighter, an X-wing, flies in. The heroes watch as the ship's pilot, in Jedi robes, starts cutting through the Dark Troopers like a buzzsaw. Throughout the entire battle, we never see the Jedi's face, but almost everyone watching it knew, immediately or gradually, what was happening. Finally, we do see his face, and it's him. Luke Skywalker, a Jedi Master the likes of which we had been begging to see in the new trilogy.

As I said, I haven't watched the episode, and I don't know what leads up to it, other than what I can infer. But what got me wasn't that Luke showed up; it was how people reacted to it. On my YouTube feed, I saw a few recommendations about people's reactions to the last episode of the Mandalorian, and Luke Skywalker's return. I couldn't believe it. But I checked them out, because I had to know if it was real.

Here's what I saw in every single video: Shock, disbelief, terror that it was an illusion...and then, sheer joy. Screams of rapture, and tears of pure happiness. It was incredible. The hero of an entire generation finally got the return he deserved. One of the common comments people made about that scene was that 'this is what I wanted to see in The Last Jedi.' Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master at the peak of his powers, tearing through thirty Terminator-like robots like they were little more than an inconvenience. That is the hero we needed back, especially after the year we just went through.

These reaction videos were so powerful that Mark Hamill retweeted them, thanking everyone for the love and support. Because he knew. Without a doubt, he understood exactly what we were feeling. And he felt it, too.

Because we have a primal need for heroes in our lives. Real heroes, not the manufactured ones that Hollywood pushes on us today as if to say 'heroism is what we say it is'. It isn't, and it never was. We decide who the heroes are. That's why stories of Hercules, King Arthur, Tarzan, and Superman still resonate today, because they represent what we want in our heroes. And yes, that includes the girls, too. We all want our heroes to be masculine and stalwart, not mincing and miserable. There's nothing heroic about mincing and miserable, and there never will be.

So, I'm not expecting Disney to take the right lesson from this; their history shows otherwise. But at least for the moment, we can sit back and savor this truly beautiful and epic moment that gave us back, even for just those few short minutes, the chance to believe in heroes once again.