Rebuilding Rob

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve probably noticed that pop culture continues to bring our old 80s icons out of retirement and out of mothballs for one more movie, one more TV show, one more tour.

I’ve seen this meme on social media a lot lately. For those who don’t know, it’s directed at Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm is, of course, now a branch of the Walt Disney company. As head of Lucasfilm, the success, or failure, of the Lucasfilm franchise has falls on the shoulders of Kathleen Kennedy – justified or not.

The meme is a reference to the status of Indiana Jones, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker, in the latest installment of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies, respectively.

I wrote in an earlier entry about Indiana Jones, and the fact that as children of the 80s, we tend to put these films on a pedestal; sometimes tricking ourselves to believe that they were greater than they really are. To be honest, these films were made for kids. We saw them as kids. And when we see the latest entries in our middle-age years, we set these movies to the impossibly high expectations of our youth. When the v=bar is set that high, being disappointed is inevitable

The argument, as stated clearly in the meme, is that all three characters were rendered grumpy old men in their later years. We see in of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny that Indy is estranged from his wife, Marion. In addition, his son Mutt Williams (controversially introduced in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) is nowhere to be seen. Indy is now too old and too slow to be the swashbuckling adventurer of our youth. All he seems to have left is work as a professor, and even that is ending with Indy’s impending retirement from the university.

In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we see Harrison Ford in his other iconic film role: Han Solo. When fans are reunited with the character 30 years after the end of Return of the Jedi, we learned that Han and his wife, Leia, are estranged. Their son, Ben Solo has taken on the name, Kylo Ren and turned to the Dark side. All this is revealed through the movie, but when we first see Han, he is right where left him 30 years ago – still smuggling with his lifelong friend Chewbacca.

Mark Hamill’s all-too-brief return as Luke Skywalker at the conclusion of TFA leads into the next film, the last Jedi. as TLJ unfolds, we learn that Luke Skywalker tried to train his nephew as a Jedi. Sensing evil in Ben, Luke briefly considered killing him. This moment lead Ben Solo to snap and ultimately become Kylo Ren. With his spirit, broken due to his failure with his own nephew, Luke retreats to remote, planet and shutting himself from The Force.

We want to think of our heroes as we remember them: young, strong and fearless.

Mark Hamill cause quite an uproar online when he went public with his disagreements with Rian Johnson, over the direction of Luke in TLJ. “Luke would never give up. He would go into hiding, maybe for a year, but come back with a plan“ Hammill argued. Many longtime fans agreed with Hamill. Eventually, fans started to draw similar connections to Han Solo in the previous movie; and eventually they saw the thing same things happening to Indiana Jones in TDOD.

I disagree.

Yes, these characters are portrayed as broken down, cynical, old men. That’s exactly the point. Therein lies their drama. The latest (and last?) adventures of Indiana Jones, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are their redemption arcs. All three characters have to reconnect with the heroes that they truly are. Han retakes his place as leader in The Resistance/Rebel Alliance. Furthermore, he leads a daring attack on Starkiller Base and ultimately sacrifices his life in an attempt to save his sonBen from the Dark Side of the Force.

For all the fanboys and who claim that Rian Johnson ruined their hero, Like Skywalker spends much of TLJ training Rey in the force – preparing hret for an inevitable confrontation with Kylo Ren. At the end of the movie, he uses The Force to send “a spirit” of himself across the galaxy; buying enough time for the Resistance the evade the First Order ships who are chasing them. The Force projection kills Luke; but he dies as a hero. He redeems himself going from a reluctant hermit to the hero of our collective youth.

After traveling through time, and recovering Archimedes’ dial in IJATDOD, Indiana Jones decides to stay in the past, feeling that he has nothing to return home to in the present. It is after he is convinced by his goddaughter that he can be saved in the future and he does have a life in1969 that he decides to go home. That decision turns out to be the best for Indy as he is finally reunited with his wife, Marion Ravenwood, at the movie’s end.

I get where the fanboys are coming from. We want to think of our heroes as we remember them: young, strong and fearless. The fanboys are right about one thing: these characters aren’t the same as they used to be. But they didn’t abandon us. They got old, just like we did. Or will. Yes, it’s hard to see our heroes grow old and become jaded through life experiences. But maybe that’s the last heroic story for them to tell us: Remember what makes you, you. Re- kindle that fire inside of you. Stay gold.

Sorry, fanboys. You were only half right on this meme…

• Rob’s Retro Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap (1984) – The Movie That Scaled to Eleven
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• The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship
• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
• The Moment I Walked Inside a Hallmark Movie

The article “Grumpy Old Men?” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.