I Know It's Silly, But....

....I cry at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Every time.  When Darth Vader picks up the Emperor and throws him down that endless shaft, and then in the scene afterwards between Luke and his father where the two of them make their final peace, I tear up every single time.  I think this probably qualifies me for a special kind of geek award somewhere.

I am thinking about this because I wound up watching the first two and a half movies of the "new" trilogy today.  They were on TV, and I sort of got sucked in.  I am not such a big fan of those prequels.  To me, while they did a beautiful job of filling in the backstory that was always hinted at and imagined, they lacked something of the power the originals did.  I don't know why.  Some people have said that it's because of the actor that played Anakin in the prequels. As I rewatched today, I revised my opinion of him.  When I first saw those films, I disliked him because I thought he was hollow, an actor with something missing.  Now, though, I think he was reflecting (or at least I hope he was reflecting) that thing inside Anakin/Vader that was uncertain, hollow and missing that leads him to the darkness that eventually destroys him.  All in all, I am much more comfortable with that performance than I used to be.

After seeing those, however, I had a great desire to see the entire saga end, so after I did other things, I broke out the set I do have on DVD, the original trilogy, and popped Return of the Jedi in.  I was startled by how many plot lines end there.  The entire series is so tightly woven together.  The universe and mythos is so well-developed.

Also well-developed to me are two messages:  it is always possible to change, and family, while both vital and undeniable, does not define your future.  I won't wax overly philosophical here.  I think it's pretty easy to see how these two things are developed in the film, and certainly other things exist there.  I'm sure some enterprising soul has at some point pitched a Master's thesis on the trilogy (oh, to have been a fly on that wall...), but whether you consider the series high art or roll your eyes every time someone mentions "the Force," I don't think the quality of the storyline can be argued with.  It is, after all, basically lifted from classical mythology....

Maybe that's why it has the power to move me so much at the end.  Maybe its ties to those great stories at the base of our culture are what allow it to resonate so deeply with so many.  Somebody somewhere wiser than I will have to work out the psychology of it.  All I know is that when Luke can stand up at the end, deny the trap laid for him by the Emperor, and say, "I am a Jedi...like my father before me," I feel those bright proud tears start welling up.  And you can call me whatever you want to.  That's just fine.