Until recently, the most powerful scene from a Star Wars movie hadn’t actually been in a Star Wars movie. On the contrary, it came approximately 20 minutes into Reign of Fire, a 2002 fantasy adventure about Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey fighting massive dragons in the ruins of post-apocalyptic London. The few surviving humans have huddled together in underground caves for shelter, where they raise future generations and entertain the children by re-enacting the lightsaber duel from the end of The Empire Strikes Back. The names Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader have either been forgotten or deemed unimportant; Bale’s character — playing the fearsome Sith lord — refers to himself only as “the black knight.” It doesn’t matter to the astonished kids in the crowd, who still gasp at every crackling swing of a wooden lightsaber, and completely lose their minds at the revelation that Vader is Luke’s father. It doesn’t matter that they don’t have special effects, or Christmas specials, or trading card apps. It doesn’t matter that Han shot first.
It’s a brilliant scene because it knows something about George Lucas’ space opera that Lucas himself has long since forgotten: Whether in a cave with sticks or against a massive green screen in Pinewood Studios, the story of Star Wars has always been much less important than the act of telling it. The Force Awakens has more flaws than it does product tie-ins, but it’s so special and deserving of its record-breaking success because it’s the first of the franchise’s films to understand what Reign of Fire so casually made clear: People don’t love Star Wars because it’s great — Star Wars is great because people love it.
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