Star Wars:The Rise of Skywalker - adieu dear friend

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...January 1979, Sterling Cinema, Fountain, Bombay to be precise (it released in the US in May '77, but yes in those days it sometimes took a year or two for Hollywood movies to arrive on Indian shores). A young kid with his mom on his way home from enrolling in a German course in Max Mueller Bhavan stopped at the theater which was house full. Luckily got a single “extra ticket”, as it was called, from someone, so abandoned mom, walked in and into the arms of cinematic history.

Forty years from that day, I still experience that boyhood thrill when I see those pair of words appear on screen with that immortal musical flourish and recede into the starry night of space. Three trilogies, and a total of 11 movies later, the Skywalker saga has come to an end with Episode IX:Rise of Skywalker.

This is not going to be a review as I am too biased a viewer and fanboy to give a dispassionate one. Suffice it to say, there was never a moment where I had to say the one line that is in every Star Wars movie, “I have a bad feeling about this”. Like Anthony Daniels, the actor who plays the human-cyborg relations droid C3PO, and is the only actor to appear in all 11 movies, I too have been along for the ride for every single one, but I still feel like saying, “Mom, can I see it one more time please?”

December 21, 2019