May the Forth be with you: A Star Wars Story

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It is that most sacred of days, if you use the ANSI INCITS 30-1997 date system and not the easier ISO 8601 today, which I will allow as without it we couldn’t be celebrating Star Wars Day!

This isn’t a place to complain about the franchise - as a fan since I was small I’ve heard them all and have my own very strong opinions on what it is good or bad in it - but a place to discuss what you like about the stories set A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Who knows, maybe we can put together a list of the best moments in Star Wars if enough people have the right answer!

For me, it’s the fact that after a couple of years of keeping Luke Skywalker’s father a secret from my sons, that today we’re going to sit down and watch Empire for the first time. No idea how they will react but I am hoping it will be a good one and a surprise, as keeping that quiet for so long is one of the toughest things I’ve had to do - they mention it it across so much other media that the fact they don’t know at this point is one of the high points of my parenting skills.

Somehow my youngest firmly believes Dark Vador is the hero of the story and The Imperial Death March is the true theme of Star Wars. I sense evil inside him, but after meeting him for five minutes, most people get that impression as well so no shock there.

May the Force be with you all - unless you don’t like Star Wars, then live long and prosper I guess…?

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I saw Ep 2 on a school camp and it was commented that the slick and vaguely cyberpunk vibe was dissonant with a true star wars setting by my friend.

Somehow it only took what like 20 years for the universe to go all grungey under empire rule?

That friend was eventually bought a pub by his rich dad and I suppose he endeavours to render it his very own “hive of scum and villainy”

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I have a fraught relationship with Star Wars but in the spirit of the season I will share some happy things.

I was in the Official Star Wars Fan Club when I was, let’s say 9 years old (so like, 1997). I had checked out the original trilogy tape-by-tape at the local library and had become a bit obsessed (nobody told me there were novels, and if they had, I might have never recovered). I remember reading in the fan club magazine about episode 1 and being so excited about the idea.

However, I didn’t actually see any of the prequels until I was around my mid twenties. I remember really enjoying parts of them. Anything with Obi-Wan is fun, especially when they let him go off on his own adventures.

Whenever Phantom Menace was back in theaters not too long ago, I went to see it on the big screen. I had a lot of fun with it, more than the first time. I wouldn’t necessarily argue that it’s Great Cinema, but I was more willing to forgive its faults and enjoy it.

I also just recently saw Revenge of The Sith during its return to theaters. And I thought this the first time, and I still think it now: that’s a good movie. No caveats. A greek tragedy in space with robots and laser swords. Great movie, love it. A movie from that from minute 1 is about the downfall of everything and it doesn’t stop until it’s finished. Ian McDiarmid is so good.

Palpatine and Yoda having a sword fight in the middle of the galactic senate. I don’t know if that’s what I actually think is the best moment, but it’s such a spectacle and I was grinning ear-to-ear in the theater watching them throw chairs at each other.

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I would agree that is a highlight of Revenge of the Sith and the franchise as a whole. It was very entertaining and they had a chance to let loose with two characters we never knew would fight, and really show off.

I’ve always liked that film a lot and in my list has always been near the top. It had some amazing moments and the Obi-Wan/Vader fight on Mustafar was the best lightsaber battle on screen. I do think the music helped a lot too - watching it on mute really takes a lot away from it (not recommended).

Glad you got to see it again and enjoy it as much as you did before!

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I don’t think any single thing effected my taste/interests for my entire life the way Star Wars has. As a kid (1987 birth year) I couldn’t get enough, and playing X-Wing and TIE-Fighter when they were new basically melted my brain, and the came the prequels which I adored then and adore now. I’ve had a tough time with post-Disney Star Wars but it would be impossible to deny how important Star Wars has been to me in my life

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I was extremely into Star Wars around 2nd/3rd grade, especially the droids. To show my age a little this would have been a little before Revenge of the Sith came out. It was an interest I inherited from my dad and the proximity to this film’s release was coincidental. Here are some stand-out memories:

  • My dad asking which film was my favorite / me proudly saying II (because of the droid factory!) / him being visibly disappointed (I like V these days, like everyone)
  • There was a promotional cereal with a massive image of C-3PO and R2-D2 (always been my favorite guy, still even now) on the box I had only ever seen one time when visiting a cousin. I was so fascinated with the image that they let me cut it out of the box and just kinda keep with me for the day.
  • I was building a LEGO set alone of an A-Wing starfighter when visiting my dad’s house, which was my first time building one by following the instructions completely alone. I ran up to my dad’s bedroom, proud to show him that I had completed it, but when I opened the door his girlfriend’s shirt was off (both of them otherwise still clothed) and my dad got really mad at me and told me to go back downstairs. This one is most accurately represents most of the other memories I have
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I remember seeing the original trilogy on TV at some point in the early 1990s. Never got to see the special edition in theaters, but we got the VHS tapes and I watched them a lot.

Much of my fandom was borne out in the books and games. I picked up the 1995 edition of TIE Fighter (the one with extra scenarios), and it captivated me. I loved getting to pilot TIEs and gunboats, and even at that age I could sense how brittle the idea of “restoring peace and order” was compared to the Return of the Jedi call for “freedom.” The admirals were so selfish and conceited, the various trade groups and pirates so opportunistic, that beyond the missions the story almost tells itself. That got me into the novels, from the Thrawn trilogy to stuff like Darksaber and I, Jedi. I would even read the technical manuals they put out and I collected the Star Wars CCG cards from Decipher.

I liked talking about Star Wars offline and online. I once told a girl I met online that I was like Han Solo. (I wasn’t, but 19 year old me wanted to be.) We never met, so I never disappointed her.

All of these things were pieces of Star Wars. It was characters, worlds, ships, lore. It was the endless connections I could draw between Star Wars and anything else.

I’ve watched all the films released since, and I’ve gone in and out of how much I follow the other media. I’m no longer able to tell the differences between the different kinds of Star Destroyers except in very broad strokes. But I still love watching the films. My son and I did Empire Strikes Back recently, and he was very skeptical at the reveal. “Is he lying, dad?”

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Yeah Star Wars or at least the main line movies have this particular flatness to the plot or like storytelling style where there no turnarounds or fakeouts.

It would be really cool if Vader was in fact lying and it does make sense for that to be the case since, yes, bad guys lie. They lie all the time. It is one of the Bad things that Bad guys do.

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I made this for today.

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I watched the David Lynch Dune last night. Does that count for anything?

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Thank you.

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I’m a Star Wars fan. That means I know a ton about it and complain about it all the time.

I saw the original with my dad at the 1997 rerelease when I was 6 and the rest is history. A true core memory for me, and I rightly stated that Han Solo was the coolest.

As for current output, it’s mostly pretty bad but those Jedi souls games are alright and Andor is impossibly good. If you’ve tapped out of Disney Star Wars (understandable), at least give Andor a spin. It’s so good that it will make the rest of their output look even worse!

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Update: We all watched Empire and they finally found out who Luke’s father is.

Mixed emotions - my eldest son was in a state of shock and couldn’t believe with Luke being the hero his dad could be so evil. He did then ask if he was going to turn evil but I said we have to wait until we watch the next film to find out. My youngest decided Luke was a baddie because his dad is a baddie and baddies are cool. I feel somehow when I thought I’d done good with parenting somewhere along the long I got it wrong.

Can’t wait to watch Return of the Jedi and see how they view Leia after that one.

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Sounds like we lived the same life around that age, all three of those things happened to me in 2005 :joy:

I still have a promotional R2-D2 cookie jar from mailing in cereal box receipts.

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Yo drop a pic!!

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I will try to post these throughout the month.

Here is the maquette of Anakin’s podracer, next to the screen-used cockpit.

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Star Wars was a surprisingly big part of growing up for me. As a kid we had 2 VHS players and would rent a movie from Blockbuster and record to our own VHS tape, so I would watch the homemade bootleg versions of Star Wars Special Editions. I would also emulate the snes Super Star Wars games on my dad’s work laptop during long car road trips. Those games were tough especially on a 1998 ibm thinkpad keyboard in the back of a Chevy Caprice station wagon.

The first movie in particular was a curious thing as a 6 or 7 year old because the slower, quieter ramp up of the Tattooine scenes made it really feel like something special was coming. By the time you get to the Cantina, the art direction and costumes and scale of the universe is so fantastical for kids. I still think Star Wars really excelled by making every scene escalate and build upon the next to raise the stakes higher and higher. I’ve spoken before about how the Trash Compactor scene is one of my favorites, because of how high the tension is between all of the characters, and how it gives moments of relief but then it gets cranked up even higher. I think pacing the movies this way was George Lucas’s real talent.

Empire Strikes Back does a great job of escalating immediately with Hoth. I think I might had seen the first level of Shadows of the Empire before watching the movie, but that game didn’t quite capture the perspective of what was going on in Hoth. Having Leia go from damsel to top military brass was a good way of reframing her character. Han being a cowboy out in the wilderness was cool, but I think what really made Jedi great was when they slowed down the pacing to have Luke goes to Dagobah and we learn about the force and philosophy. Yoda being an eccentric old puppet does hit differently when you’re a kid and getting exposed to the buddhist ideas behind the space samurai stuff. Meanwhile Han and Leia’s love story is also a great B-plot. I don’t think it can be understated how important Harrison Ford & Carrie Fisher’s on-screen chemistry is to making Star Wars what it is. I don’t think the reveal of Vader phased me as much as Han getting frozen and Luke losing his hand did. Having the bad guys win is great.

I think Return of the Jedi was a little confusing at the time. Luke being a confident cool guy, Han being blind, Leia being a sex slave, and Lando switching from betrayer to hero suggested a lot happened off screen that felt like you missed out on. Plus the whole CGI song and dance sequence they added into the Special Edition was very ill advised. I don’t think the movie as a whole left as much of an impact on me. Luke mastering the force and the speederbike chase on Endor were the lasting memories for me. I didn’t mind the ewoks personally, but as an adult I think the whole C3PO being their new god is a really funny way to end the series.

And then after I watched that I had no idea there would be a brand new star wars movie until the Spring of '99, when I was in my friend’s basement while playing Super Smash Bros off of a projector (for some reason). They got a case of Pepsi One (the 1 calorie cola) that had some new faces to learn about:

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Those Pepsi cans were so sick. I used to walk to the convenience store with my friends to buy soda and candy every weekend or so and we became Pepsi devotees for that summer only. We would stand there turning the cans around trying to find ones we didn’t have yet. My friend once came running down the street panting to tell me they had C-3PO cans in lol

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Now that the adventures of Episode V are done and I actually have a moment to think, plus how everyone has shared their Star Wars memories I shall do the same.

Like most of us here it is a big part of growing up, I was fortunate enough to get into them at a young age when they were still relatively new. I remember having video cassettes of it recorded off the telly and watching them till they wore out, and the my parents buying them for me long before the special editions came out.

I got to see the re-released versions in the cinema and had fever and then some when the prequels were announced, as I had the chance to see them in the cinema too. Plus Phantom Menace was the first DVD I ever bought and watched the life out it and the extras too. I bought too much merchandise for them and loved being able to go to at least one midnight showing for Attack of the Clones (in Sydney Australia no less, one of the first people in the world to see it AND within walking distance of where they filmed it). The prequels came out when I was in my 20s so I could enjoy the experience the same way people did when the original films came out.

The new trilogy I did two midnight screenings in different countries, specifically The Last Jedi was at The Rex in Paris which was incredible. Rise of Skywalker was tougher because you know, baby in the house but still saw it very close to release.

My wife loves Star Wars - we gave regular debates on what film is best. I stick by Empire, she prefers.. Well it doesn’t matter, it’s not Empire so she’s wrong! I have many friends who I have had for years and have bonded over Star Wars. Even today, on a WhatsApp group a few friends who I talk to very rarely due to life, we all wished each other Happy May the Forth.

There’s so much Star Wars media out there now I couldn’t tell you everything anymore. I know some of the books I loved are now “Legacy” so everything I knew isn’t part of the canon. What’s great is everyone has their part of Star Wars they love, even if others don’t like it and they still love it regardless. There isn’t one single thing that makes it so important to me, but a mix of so many different ones that mixed together works.

I’ve lost count the amount of nights I spent talking with people about which bit is best and why I am right and they’re wrong. But now, I’m just glad it’s still a part of my life, other people’s lives and it’ll continue on forever. It’s the media franchise that has had the biggest lasting effect on me and good or bad, I’m glad to be able to enjoy it and talk with others that do as well, plus introduce new people to it.

I love to love Star Wars!!!

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