The Second Great Awakening: A Super Fan's Spoiler-Free Reaction to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Okay.  So apparently it has been almost 2 1/2 years since I have posted something. My bad.

But part of what compels me to write is inspiration.  Not that I haven't been inspired in 30 months.  Far from it.  During that time I made my first (and second) trip to Africa.  Profoundly inspiring.  We also hired a second full-time staff member at our church.  To say that Chris Godby has inspired me leading our worship services would be an understatement.

However, those events (and many others) have not pushed me to the point of, "Okay.  You simply HAVE to sit down and write about this."  Then, I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens last Thursday night.

On May 25, 1983, my mom picked up my best friend, Ken, and me from our last day of 9th Grade, drove us straight to the theater in Beaumont, Texas, and we watched what we thought was going to be the last movie about the Star Wars universe, Return of the Jedi.  There were rumors that there might be more movies in the future, but they were just whispers in the wind.  Then, in 1993, George Lucas announced that technology had finally caught up with his imagination and that he was going to make Episodes I-III.  "Fantastic," I thought.  "More Star Wars!"

Unfortunately, any residual joy that I felt at that announcement disappeared in 1999 within the first 30 minutes of Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  Joy turned into utter disappointment.  A convoluted plot, painfully wooden dialogue, and CGI that looked more like Toy Story than Jurassic Park.  The only really good thing about Episode I was Darth Maul, and his life in the Star Wars universe was short-lived.

Episodes II and III helped a little bit, but not much.  By the end of Episode III, most true fans were just glad that the misery had ended.  I remember how I felt leaving the theater after seeing Revenge of the Sith.  I thought, "Well, I guess that's it."  Not a great feeling.  George Lucas stated definitively that he was not planning on making any more movies.  Case closed.  Star Wars ended.  Childhood in the rear view mirror.

Then...a glimmer of hope fainter than a fire in the desert of Tatooine.  The Disney Corporation bought Luscasfilm for $4.05 billion on October 30, 2012.  (Maybe.  Fingers crossed.)

Just three months later, on January 25, 2013, Disney announced that Star Wars fan and Hollywood Super Director, J.J. Abrams, would be directing Star Wars: Episode VII.  But again.  We have been down this road before and been heartbroken.

Teasers came out, followed by full trailers.  Optimism ran high, but guarded.  All the actors involved and others who have seen the finished film gush about how great it is, but don't actors and studio execs do that about every movie, even the terrible ones?

The premiere in L.A. happens on Monday, December 14.  Everyone raves, but reviews are not allowed to be released for two more days.  When they finally are published, they are beyond wonderful.  "The best Star Wars movie in 32 years."  "The Force is back!"  One report from a friend overseas on Facebook was, "Wooooowwwwww!!!!"  As much as I trust him, the skeptic in me still had a deflector shield around my heart.

Then I saw it with my own eyes.

I sat in the theater with some of my closest friends and my patient wife with tickets that I had purchased 8 weeks earlier and had the best experience watching a Star Wars movie since my parents took me in 1977 and we had to sit on the front row.  Yeah, I cried.  I'll own it.  But I laughed, too, something that was painfully absent in Episodes I-III.  (People don't want to go to the movies and hear about financial embargoes and trade blockades!)

As the final credits rolled, Heather looked at me and all I could say was, "He did it.  J.J. did it."  I still get emotional thinking about it.  Not because the movie was so good, even though it was, but because they didn't ruin it.  There were a thousand ways to get it wrong, but they got it right.

People have said, and will continue to say, "It's just a movie."  I get it, and I agree.  Star Wars IS just a movie.  But that movie changed a little 9-year old boy's life, and I know countless others like me.  It broke good and evil down into terms that I could understand and captured my imagination in a way that I cannot describe.  To put it another way, it inspired me for what (I think) was the very first time.  It inspired me in 1977, and it has re-inspired me in 2015.

I know now what I didn't know in 1983 when I thought Star Wars was over for the first time, nor in 2005 when I thought it was over for good.  The truth now is that since Disney has taken over the franchise and it is making a bazillion dollars, there will always be another Star Wars movie.  There will be another one and another one and another one long after I have joined the ghosts of Anakin, Yoda, and Obi-Wan at the Ewoks' victory party on the moon of Endor.

But I also know this:  no other Star Wars movie will affect me again like this one did.  To be given the series back when I thought it was finished, and to have it done in this way is something that will not be repeated for me.  To lie awake into the wee hours after seeing it, replaying each scene over in my head and saying to myself, "I can't believe he did it" is an experience that will not and cannot be replicated.

I will see every Star Wars movie that is released until someone has to wheel me in to see them, but I cannot imagine any of those experiences comparing to this one.  For me, it was the Second Great Awakening.