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(CNN) - Not long after "Star Wars" shook the world of pop culture, it was reported that writer and director George Lucas had nine movies in mind, which would be told in three separate trilogies.
Approximately half full life (or 42 years later), here we are, just hours from the end of this long film journey.
For some of us, Lucas's galaxy has been interwoven in our stories. For me it started in 1977 when I saw “Star Wars” (subsequently subtitled “Episode IV: A New Hope”) during my father's visits, in one of our scheduled night outings after my parents separated.
I can still vividly remember two boys who talked excitedly behind me in line (yes, there was a line to watch movies at the time) who had already watched the movie, excited about how it incorporated many more scenes with special effects than “2001 : Odyssey in space."
Three years later, I made plans to see "The Empire Strikes Back" with my older brother the second night he came out, because I couldn't go to the premiere for an exam. As I have written before (and, frankly, I have not yet overcome it), a classmate spoiled the great revelation of "I am your father", which did not soften its impact, or my feeling that the franchise had become something much more than the first movie had indicated.
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In 1983, I was editing the art / entertainment section at the UCLA Daily Bruin, and I saw "The Return of the Jedi" before the majority of the public in a media screening. My decidedly spoiler-free criticism generally praised the film, with some objections, while waking my appetite for making these high-profile reviews once I left university, a job that would formally elude me for almost 20 years.
Lucas took a long rest before launching into the second trilogy in 1999, the year my brother mentioned above died at age 49. Among other things, it always bothered me that I didn't live to see the next stage of the movies. Amazing reminder of mortality that has since been biting in some morbid way about "Star Wars."
Despite several complaints about these prequels (see "Binks, Jar Jar" in your "Star Wars" encyclopedia), the decade between "Revenge of the Sith" and the renewal of the films with "The Force Awakens" found me Again feeling like a teenager.
At the same time, the fact that the film was directed by JJ Abrams, whose father Gerry, a television executive and producer was someone who knew well for covering the entertainment industry, was a reminder that he was hardly yet a child. (Neither did Lucas, the only child prodigy, who had sold Lucasfilm to Disney and handed over the reins of the property).
When "The Last Jedi" premiered, I moved to CNN in a somewhat different position, giving me the opportunity to review a "Star Wars" movie for the first time in 34 years. Death once again intervened, this time in the sudden loss of actress Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, a reminder of how long and strange this trip has been.
So here we are, in Episode IX, which once looked like a number, Roman or otherwise, that most Star Wars fans could never see. And while fan excesses have become an intertwined part of this universe, that story helps explain them, if not absolve them.
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The opening of "The Rise of Skywalker" occurs amid some uncertainty, in theatrical terms, about where "Star Wars" goes from here, although the long waits, with Disney now controlling the property, are clearly over.
However, the film closes the books, symbolically, of a relationship that has touched five decades, which will make the last time the soundtrack of John Williams accompany that script moving is the beginning of the end - and this time without exaggeration - of what for many has really been the trip of a lifetime.
"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" opens on December 20 in the United States.
Star Wars Star Wars: Episode IX
