SPOILERS!

If you have not seen the movie and want to see it without any pre-knowledge of the film, then don’t read this post.
Frankly, I do not think spoilers will detract from the movie’s power and beauty.

This was by far the best of the movies…it starts with Max Von Sydow speaking “This will help put things right” or something very like that…and it does…explain so much.

The surprise revelation of Solo and Chewie…the new characters and the various things they bring…

Best of all to me is that the hero is a woman, named Rey…She is indeed a Ray of light in a time when the universe is indeed dark with an ascendency of the dark side of the Force.  She is always shown in light, she is powerful and tender all at once…she is just great in her ability to take up and let go.

It was healing for me to watch her be released, and to fight the physically strong rotten to the core male antagonist.

The film dealt also with parents and children both gone bad, both failing in their roles, and that struck me to the core.  Han touches his son on the face with his dying breaths and pledges his undying love as he falls to his death…and later the son is scarred in battle exactly where he was touched.

We try to give our kids our best…only to find out that whatever our best was, it was the kids’ worst because of what it wasn’t. We endure the passage of time and the loss of our children to themselves, and to their own losing of themselves.  All we can do is cross the abyss out onto the narrow bridge where they stand in their pain and anger and angst, and extend love into the face of loss, into the face of failure, and then take whatever it is they choose to thrust into our heart:  words of forgiveness and acceptance, or fiery jagged crystal energy flamed in anger and rage.

Regardless…our heart is theirs, and what they don’t yet know is that it has been theirs since they were born.

I was touched by the weighty and obvious tribute made to the passage of nearly 40 years since the first movie came out!  This was displayed on offer right up front…and I could not help but think of friends who are huge Star Wars Nerds who had ended up dying before getting to see all of the chapters…this made me cry.

The score, the technological choices, the simplicity of an archetypal story…I loved it.

May the Force be with you, and may you find the balance