I am a man of a certain age, an age that puts me square in the Star Wars wheelhouse. I turned three the year the original film hit theaters. But I still managed to see it in the theater when I was four. That movie stayed in theaters FOREVER.

I had all the toys. The greatest Christmas of my childhood involved the Millennium Falcon that everyone wanted. My older brother patiently applied all the stickers in the right places for me. Galaxy-hopping bliss ensued.

Then in 1981 there was Empire in all its sister-kissing, father-revealing, cliff-hanger-y glory. I was 10 when Jedi came out. I managed to see that one in the theater four times. Couldn’t believe the story was over. Didn’t want to.

We all believed that there would be more movies. Me and my friends were convinced the story wasn’t over. Too popular. They would think of something. There were the rumors of VII, VIII, and IX. But years went by, empty of fresh Star Wars content (I watched the Ewok TV movies, but I am not proud of this fact), we gave up.

Then Lucas opened up the post-Jedi timeline to novelists. The books are great, the few that I’ve read anyway, particularly the original Tim Zahn trilogy. As good as they are, they suffer from a fatal flaw, an air-duct-on-a-Death-Star type flaw: they aren’t movies! Star Wars is movie-ness and movie-osity incarnate. They are perhaps the movie-est of all movies.

College. That’s when the prequels hit. It wasn’t what we all wanted, but we convinced ourselves it would be awesome. It wasn’t as awesome as most hoped, but for me, the prequels weren’t as bad as people seem to believe. I think that they were different to us mainly because we were different. Older. There’s a huge difference between exposure to stories as children than as adults. The former is formative, the latter subject to the often unkind filters of adult experience coupled with suspect childhood memories and emotions.

But when Lucas sold to Disney and announced the next trilogy, there was a huge freak out in my childhood and adult selves. Finally new content in movie form! This is right, this is good. And Lucas is only overseeing. This is good. The script writer has cred, and the movie will benefit from a director that can work with actors.

People will no doubt complain about the quality. They’ll hate the actors or directors, the script, the comic relief characters… Forget all that crap. The 10-year-old in me wants Star Wars and wants to like it. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Here’s hoping that the Star Wars brain trust pulls out all the stops. Give us another story that’s huge and intimate at the same time. Give us believable eye-candy. Gives us a kick-ass soundtrack.

Go big, or don’t bother.