Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

It’s time I come clean. For years, I’ve denied my affliction, never wanting to be associated with those unsightly stereotypes. I’m a Star Wars fan. I wouldn’t say geek, cause a geek, as one fella said to me, would be someone who was obsessed with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and, I dunno, maybe Marvel comics.

I’m writing this just a few days before Revenge of the Sith opens. My son, Jarvis and I have tickets for a morning screening. We’re skipping work and school. Hey, it’s got animation, so it’s research, right?

I remember being excited about Star Wars long before I saw the film. All the kids at school were raving about it, but I had to make do with the scant information listed on the back of trading cards. It was months before I finally saw Star Wars at the Auto-Sky Drive-in in Ottawa’s West End. As soon as the final credits rolled that night, I was hooked. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I wanted to leave my home and go off on wild adventures, save the Princess and kill the evil Darth Vader.

When I was a kid we didn’t play cowboys and Indians, we played Star Wars. I was usually in the role of Luke. I had a plastic white lightsaber. My chum, Chris, had a cool plastic Han Solo blaster with laserfire sounds. I wanted the blaster bad, but I just wasn’t willing to play Han Solo. I wasn’t sure about him. Besides, he was too old. Luke was closer to my age.

When I wasn’t playing Star Wars outside, I was lost in my room with Star Wars action figures, vehicles, and books. I absorbed everything and anything Star Wars.

In 1980, at long last, the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was released. The film, maybe the best of the series, left us with so many questions. Han Solo was frozen, maybe dead. After slicing Luke’s hand off, Darth Vader told him that he was his father. And apparently, Luke wasn’t the last hope for the Jedi. These were stunning revelations. Everything we thought we knew was turned on its head.

Return of the Jedi answered all these questions and more. Han Solo lived. Princess Leia was actually Luke’s twin sister. Darth Vader really was Luke’s father. And, after Luke sliced his father’s hand off (“sins of the father shall be visited on the sons”), Vader rose and saved Luke’s life by killing the Emperor. Through the son came the father, and the father came the son.

Then it all passed…

… Until February 2003.

Jarvis was about 5. It was a cold winter. We were both really sick. There was nothing to do. I grabbed the Star Wars tapes.

After we watched the five films it became clear that it wasn’t so much that Jarvis was mesmerized with Star Wars (he certainly was impressed) as it was that I had re-discovered just how important the Skywalker saga was in my life. Although Jarvis never asked me to, I was almost obsessively hunting down Star Wars figures and assorted toys from the past. I guess I wanted him to feel the happiness that the world of these movies once made me feel. He didn’t need to feel any of that, though. He was, and is, quite happy with his life. He loves and is loved. Sure, the films brought us a bit closer. We now had a little bond between us, but in truth this Star Wars “rebirth” was about me trying to come to terms with my own childhood fears.

I’ll be the first to admit that these films suffer from stilted acting and lousy dialogue. In truth, the series is just a notch above the old Flash Gordon serials that George Lucas apparently adored as a kid. I’ve never cared for all the secondary characters, planets, creatures. And even though I might not have been conscious of it as a kid, Star Wars has, for me, always been a morality tale about a father and son.