... it was the movie that reminded me just how powerful it can be to see yourself as the hero of a story that you love, and opened up the possibility of even more radical change to come to the “Star Wars” universe in the future.
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While I found myself annoyed on behalf of Leia and all of us who love her by Abrams’s pre-release suggestion that in his hands, “Star Wars” will no longer be just a guy thing, that thoughtfulness made a difference to me when I was watching “The Force Awakens.” Fans have always had the power to dream themselves into their favorite franchises, but there’s something undeniably special when a director makes those points of dreamy identification easier. And though Princess Leia, by virtue of being my gateway pop culture icon, gave me the great gift of teaching me to expect that in my pop culture, women would always be there saving the galaxy, I found myself touched by Rey in a way I hadn’t really believed possible. “The Force Awakens” gave me a world where women were both exceptional and the rule.
Rey’s role in “The Force Awakens” is fascinating not just because she’s a woman plunked into one of the cockpit seats of the Millenium Falcon, or a girl who happens to be handy with a (laser) gun. Her position as not just a smart, capable and potentially powerful woman, but the person at the heart of the new “Star Wars” trilogy who has great native abilities with the Force, is the only thing about the otherwise fairly conservative “Force Awakens” to tweak one of the franchise’s core concepts.
In previous “Star Wars” movies*, the Force has been not just a religious concept, but a tool for exploring masculinity. Jedi Knights and Sith Lords and the apprentices they both train have almost always been men in “Star Wars” movies. The female Jedi Knights we’ve seen have been minor characters; we haven’t learned much about their journeys or their relationships to the Force. And the boundary between the Dark Side and the Light tends to be demarcated by the moments when traits that are coded as masculinity tip over from admirable into dangerous: forcefulness become aggression, self-defense turns into violent attack, righteous conviction turns into anger and then to hate.
Figuring out how to be a Jedi Knight is proxy for figuring out how to be a good man, whether that means determining how best to stop a would-be Emperor, how to protect your wife during a fraught pregnancy, or how to confront your long-absent and difficult father.
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So what happens when a woman picks up that lightsaber and that responsibility? What is Rey’s story going to be, now that the Force isn’t a battlefield between fathers (or father figures) and their sons?
When boys find out they’re chosen ones in fiction, the news often seems to confirm something for them, a lingering sense that they were not simply different, but special. But when girls are chosen, it’s a challenge to the existing order that sees us as supporting characters, as the way some man proves his goodness or badness. Grabbing hold of the destiny that someone’s offering you requires a certain arrogance that’s cultivated in boys and crushed in girls.
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) wanted to leave Tatooine in “A New Hope,” believing he had — if not a grand destiny — a right to life on a larger scale. Rey spends much of “The Force Awakens” talking about how she wants to stay on Jakku in the hopes that whoever abandoned her there as a child will finally come back for her. She wants to be part of a family, not to be called by the universe. If Rey is to become a Jedi Knight, to save Luke from believing that, like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda before him, he might become the last of an ancient order, she’ll have to embrace not just the wider world she sees over the course of “The Force Awakens,” but her own importance.
It’s for that reason that the final scene in “The Force Awakens” left me breathless in theaters, and has made my heart quicken every time I’ve considered it since. The moment when Luke and Rey first regard each other is remarkable. It’s beautifully composed and shot, and Abrams shows tremendous trust in his actors to communicate without words and in his audience to simply watch them without the diversions of dogfights or flaring blades. And so much happens in that moment: Luke’s shock and wonder, Rey’s fear and perhaps a bit of anger.
