I have just agreed to go on a swanky date with my ex. Even in the best of times this is what bad situation comedies are made of, but in this case my ex happens to be a $115 million blockbuster movie. This is always tricky to explain to your therapist.
The third and final “Star Wars” prequel is slinking toward a theater near you. And, like many other fans of the “Star Wars” sagas, I have been experiencing a familiar feeling of anticipatory dread, the certain knowledge that I’m about to go willingly into a painful and uncomfortable experience.
“Star Wars,” you see, is like an ex-girlfriend.
Not just any ex-girlfriend, mind you. One of the psycho ones that swings by every few years to break into your house, wreck your car, and tear out your heart. The one your friends call you about when they see her on the news.
Things were great when we met a long, long time ago, back in ’77. There was fun, there was excitement, there was galaxy-wide revolution. She filled my life even as little plastic figures filled my room. Our love was pure, and not a little obsessive.
But she changed. Things got weird. She was going through some rough times, what with the constant fighting and that whole evil genocidal father thing, and a lopped off hand here and there, but I stuck with her anyway even when she went all frigid and carbomited.
Ultimately I had to break it off. She went a little crazy, muttering about bounty hunters, brothers and sisters that weren’t before, and a forest full of obnoxious dancing stuffed animals. She changed. The magic wasn’t there anymore. There was cheating, and confusion, and plot holes. She didn’t have the same priorities or the same target demographic. I still kept a lot of her stuff – like in any good breakup, I kept the videos — but it was over.
After time had gone by she came back as a special edition and we got together for old times sake. She looked good (she’d had work done) but something was still off. She’d changed her story, told things differently than how I remembered them happening. Who approached whom, whose idea it was to break up, who shot first. I smiled and made polite noises but I left as soon as I could to go watch some more “Star Trek.”
Then, a few years ago, she popped back up in my life. She’d been pumped, gotten implants, gotten tucked and made up and Dolby digitized until I barely recognized her anymore. Millions of us, besotted with the memories of her prime, lined up to see what turned out to be bizarrely disappointing. She was raving about midichloridians and slave boy Jedis and stupid alien accents and an elected queen and other nonsense, and I figured that, like every other ex, she only came back when she was broke and desperately needed $431 million domestic. We parted uncomfortably.
And then she came back again, and again I fell for her enticing promises and her anamorphic widescreen come-ons. All of us did. She’s a heartbreaker, is “Star Wars.” She knows just how to get your hopes up no matter how many times you’ve been burned before, no matter how many times you’ve sworn “never again.” I have taken that oath, even as I got the DVD sets and watched the trailers and bought the new toys. There’s only so much of this I can take.
And yet, some part of me still wants to be fooled. Somewhere deep inside, there’s a part of me that thinks I can recapture the magic, that thinks that maybe, if we worked hard enough we could make this relationship work.
This is not, however, why I’ll be at the Ocean Walk theater tonight, helping judge a “Star Wars” costume contest. No, I’m doing that because, hey, who could pass up a chance to professionally gawk at people in funny costumes for an hour and a half?
But it is why I’ll stay for the movie. A new hope springs eternal, love makes you do crazy things, and the lava pit fight scene looks wicked cool.
Still, I’ve got a bad feeling about this…