The Force is always with us

As the juggernaut "Star Wars The Force Awakens" takes aim at all time box office records this weekend, many people question its hold on the cultural zeitgeist.  After all, the first movie was described as a space opera with cartoonish characters who made a serviceable sequel, but then descended into varying levels of mediocrity during the next four pictures in the series.  Advance reviews are mostly favorable, indicating JJ Abrams has resurrected the franchise for another round.  What prompts grown men and women to dress up as storm troopers, hairy aliens and robots in homage to the movies?  In my humble opinion, George Lucas tapped into a primal need of people in the late 70s.   America was digesting the awful defeat of our empire at the hands of the Viet Cong, the Nixon Administration had proved to be a nest of liars and the energy crisis of 1973 had buffeted the economy for the first time since the Korean War.  Instead of this moral, economic and political debacle, Lucas offered us the surety of good guys triumphing over evil, even if only for a moment.  Luke Skywalker is everyman, Princess Leia is the combination of the damsel in distress and proto-feminist and Han Solo is the redemption of all our wasted youth.  Obi Wan Kenobi represented to me the enduring values our civilization is built on.   You don't have the layered intellectualism of a Kubrick or a Jean Cocteau.  It's more like an extended Saturday afternoon B movie western, but the special effects are tremendous and the story is timeless.  I'll wait til the crush at my local multiplex  lessens sometime next week, but I hope the Divine Mrs. M and I get to see the newest installment in the saga  before Christmas.