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What a wonderful smell they've discovered.

Everyone has faith in something.  Belief of any sort tends to create a community, whatever it may be: a desert storm god, humanity’s ability to better itself, love; even a movie.  True believers find each other through some ineluctable natural order (why not call it a Force?) we can’t begin to fathom.  Thus is has come to pass that a sect of pop culture geeks we like to call “fanboys” has acquired a substantial bit of clout in society.  The Urban Dictionary offers dozens of definitions of “fanboy,” most of them dancing around the fact that a true fanboy treats the object of his adoration as a religious person treats his faith tradition.  Of course, there are “fangirls,” too, but they are vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts, at least as far as their vociferousness usually goes.¹

For some time, fanboys have been the subject of both documentary and fictional narratives, in films such as Trekkies or the multitude of supporting characters and main protagonists in shows and films like Freaks and Geeks or Galaxy Quest.  Fanboys is not in the slightest degree an original or groundbreaking film, but its subject matter — fanboyism of the Star Wars genus — is perfectly suited to its somewhat shabby, haphazard presentation.  I imagine that the film bears a strong resemblance to films like Left Behind or (from what I’ve gathered reading reviews) the films of Tyler Perry or Alex Kendrick, the latter of which have garnered national attention for proving the commercial viability of so-called faith-based filmmaking.

We’ve all heard stories of the die-hards who list “Jedi” as their official religion during the census.  Theatrical premieres of the Star Wars films were accompanied by moviegoers decked out in the garb of their favorite characters, often engaging in spontaneous rehearsals of memorable scenes or battles in ritualistic fashion, not unlike Christmas pageants or passion plays.  If fanboys can’t be said to have truly modeled their lives after or around the Star Wars franchise, Fanboys definitely illustrates the extent to which love of the Saga to End All Sagas has touched every aspect of their lives, from the clothes they wear to the parlance they employ in conversation.  It’s safe to say that a person who has never seen a Star Wars film would not be able to follow a single dialogue exchange in this entire movie.

Like most religious followers, the titular fanboys function in society: they have jobs, they interact with those outside their own circle, they fall in love, they are aware of politics and pop culture.  Yet Star Wars informs every aspect of their lives, from the values they adopt, to the dogmatic debates they hold on a regular basis; they are even a kind of postmodern evangelist.  Dan Fogler, whose balls of fury smote the mighty Walken, plays Hutch, the requisite manchild whose arrested development has funneled into a swaggering abrasion.  Gifted with an eye for automotive detail work, Hutch has transformed his van into a mobile altar, with a self-styled homage to the original film’s indelible poster painted on the sides, and the interior a replica (in spirit, if not in letter) of the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.  Like the Falcon before it, Hutch’s tricked-out Falconmobile won’t even start unless he bangs a fist on the upper control panel.  For him, even turning on the ignition is an act of faith.

The lives of these fanboys aren’t formally consistent; they’re a ramshackle mess ordered by the fervency of their belief.  Like the film itself, there are ups and downs and loss of direction; they’re not as witty and relevant as they think they are, much like the film.  And all this in a pre-prequel world!  The only thing these friends and comrades can agree upon — when they’re not arguing the minutiae of Star Wars — is that one of their own, Linus, must see The Phantom Menace before he dies.  Unfortunately, he is dying rapidly, and will not live to see the world premiere.  Naturally, the only solution is for the four of them to pile into Hutch’s van and punch it from the Midwest to George Lucas’s home base in California, the Skywalker Ranch, from which they will pilfer a copy of Episode One.²

At first, Linus’s terminal illness appears to be a pretext for a road trip, something to jolt these slackers out of their humdrum routine and their small, Midwestern town.  That it is.  Yet, like most worthwhile road trips, they all realize that it was always about something more, only it took them many miles to realize it.  The trip was a celebration of their friendship, forged in and cemented by a mutual love of a space opera called Star Wars.  Fanboys may be zealots, but they are unashamed of their faith tradition, and while by any objective standard, Fanboys is not a good film, it is self-aware enough to know that it is preaching to the choir, offering that choir a reassurance in the sense of community, that its faith will not go unrewarded.  Besides the celebration of friendship, it celebrates belief and its fellow followers.³

Despite the hardline fundamentalism of its protagonists, Fanboys possesses an admirable ecumenical streak.  In protestant fashion, it highlights typical fanboy insecurities.  Star Trek fans rarely go out of their way to piss on Star Wars, yet Star Wars fans are quick to champion their own franchise at the expense of the other, in what amounts to two Jedi comparing the size of their lightsabers.  Seth Rogen, in what is quickly becoming a characteristic bit of brilliance, embodies insec-nerdity, playing a dual role as a hardcore Trek fanboy and a hardcore Star Wars fanboy.  It’s a classic case study in contrast: the clean-cut Trekkie, dedicated to community service and prone to smug self-righteousness (shouting “Evasive maneuvers!” when beset by the more irascible SW disciples); the Star Wars nut is a sleazy, greasy pimp, proudly sporting a Jar-Jar Binks tattoo.  Bad teeth vs. bad ‘stache.  Progressive humanist vs. self-interested exploiter.  Dork vs. hick.  The fact that our fanboy protagonists challenge the Trekkie in martial combat, but flee one of their own in terror is a delicious irony, further multiplied when the two adherents of these franchises (who would never recognize each other as mirror images) inevitably clash in that mecca of franchised capitalism, the floor of a Las Vegas casino.

The coup de grace is the fact that J.J. Abrams couldn’t find room for William Shatner in his gazillion-dollar remake of Star Trek, but Fanboys did — giving the real James T. Kirk more props than the franchise that made him a household name.  Nerds are geeks, and geeks alike are true believers, and the fact that a couple of our Lucas acolytes flip out over meeting the Shat as much as they’d flip out over meeting Mark Hamill is quite a testament to the solidarity of the nerd community, whatever their doctrinal differences.

Shatner isn’t the only celeb to put in an appearance.  Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher play bit parts, as is proper and good, while Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes play themselves.  Ethan Suplee stands in for AICN’s Harry Knowles; Knowles might have played himself, but he probably couldn’t dislodge himself from his office chair, or the ass of whichever Hollywood player had an advance screening coming up in the near future, to which he desperately needed to finagle tickets.  Danny Trejo is a peyote-eating desert guru, and Christopher MacDonald shows up as a car salesman — and all is right with the world.

The one person who doesn’t show his face is the Allfather himself, George Lucas.  As the resident deity of the fanboy universe, this is entirely appropriate, for no mere mortal can gaze upon his face and live.  Pulling the strings from on high, Lucas reigns through intermediaries (like Danny McBride, playing himself, as usual).  The Skywalker Ranch itself is an earthbound version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, where Ray Park (a.k.a. Darth Maul) is a baton-twirling security guard, the THX-1138 Autons patrol the labyrinthine hallways, and the garbage chute empties into a full-scale replica of the Death Star’s trash compactor.

Skulking through the Ranch at night-time may be as close as these fanboys will ever get to penetrating the mind of the Lucas, but as much as they are overwhelmed by the dream-logic and geektastic furnishings of the kingdom of heaven, Fanboys establishes that even the real thing, the Holy Grail of Star Wars fandom — the prerelease final cut of Episode I — is not as important as the faith community of which they are a part.  When Lucas created Star Wars, he explicitly tried to reignite interest in religion and God, not tied to any particular tradition, but intimately influenced by the fundamental search for metaphysical reality.  In drawing heavily from Joseph Campbell, he created a meta-myth, and from this has come many para-myths, of which Fanboys is a recent example.

Indebted to the Holy Trilogy, but generating an apocryphal canon of its own, in a time before the prequels, the canon of Fanboys is the first three films.  Setting the film in the past is a time-tested tactic of asserting authority.  (“It is as it was.”)  This is a revelation of the antediluvian life of Star Wars nerds.  Sort of a Talmudic commentary on the Old Testament, while the battle over the New Testament still rages on.

In making a para-myth (a parable?  a homily?), the foremost theme of Fanboys is the extent to which a community becomes the religion.  The object of worship is experienced individually, but it is an object that all must share, even if they see it in entirely different ways.  Star Wars may underlie the lives of these people, but they remain imperfect, sloppy, heartbreaking, and disappointing lives with moments of transcendent grace.  (Like the film.)  The story of the community becomes enhanced, it grows; it is larger, more fecund, and more immediate than the sacred text can ever be; without the text, this story could not exist, but it is not the story of the text, it is a story informed and highlighted by it.  These Star Wars fans would exist, and they would have stories without Star Wars, but Star Wars is their constant, their reference point for the world, and because it belongs to all of them, they each become beacons to each other.

As flawed as the film is, it speaks to the life I’ve led, and the people I’ve known.  Linus is blessed enough to receive a vision of the next chapter, but the vision is incidental to his journey and his life, and that is his epiphany.  When his friends finally greet the opening night of Phantom Menace, months later, their lives bolstered, their dreams brought a little closer to reality by their vision quest to the Skywalker Ranch, one of them has the temerity, the clarity to wonder aloud, “What if it sucks?”  Of course it sucked, and it didn’t matter if it sucked.  Faith is stronger than religion, and these fanboys believe in each other.

May the Force be with them.  Always.

Edited by Ellen Lawrence.

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