'Star Wars' Memories: A long time ago, in a Fourplex far far away ...

http://www.parade.com/features/touchstones/070514-star-wars-memories.html
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It was a blazing day in June 1977 when my aunt and cousin came to visit. I was 10, my brother 8, our cousin 6, an awkward playgroup to start with, and to make it worse, our house in northern New Jersey was not air-conditioned.

The adults encouraged us to play outside. We made a humid and soggy attempt at wiffleball, but it was no use. We were hot. They didn’t care. We were bored. They didn’t want to hear it. We were annoying. They decided to take us to the movies.

Star Wars was released on May 25, close enough to the end of school that the details had not really come to light. But by the middle of June word had spread: Star Wars was cool. So that’s what we decided to see, although I didn’t really care. I would’ve watched Mary Poppins if it meant spending the afternoon in the frosty darkness of a movie theater.

The previous summer I was too young (and too scared) to see Jaws, but I remembered hearing about the huge lines that clogged city streets, the cultural phenomenon that became known as the summer blockbuster. But that didn’t prepare me for what I saw as we pulled into the parking lot of the Fourplex. Thousands stood in a line five or six wide that wrapped around the building and meandered across the parking lot, extending so far I could not tell where it ended.

I stepped out of the car. Squiggles of heat rose off the blacktop. I looked at my mom, hoping she wasn’t going to say what I knew she was thinking. She must have seen the desperation in my face and taken pity: Against any rational possibility, she said we should go to the front and see if the line was for ticket-buyers or ticket-holders. The masses, who stood sweating through their “K.C. and the Sunshine Band” T-shirts and their matching Adidas shoes and shorts, stared in droopy-lidded contempt.

We approached the box office, and luck (or destiny, as Obi Wan would call it) leant a hand. A manager emerged and called for everyone’s attention. My aunt, a savvy hustler from the streets of Brooklyn, took my brother by the arm and sidled up next to the velvet ropes. “Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

“I’m sorry to say,” the manager announced with a quiver of fear in his voice, “that the show is almost sold out and anyone past this point in the line is not going to get in.”

The crowd groaned and shouted. A moment of chaos seized the afternoon. My aunt lifted the velvet rope. “Now,” she said, handing my brother a $20. “Go!”

My brother skittered under the rope, through the door and right up to the ticket window. ‘Five, please.’ We were in. We were giddy. But if we thought that was an adventure, we had no idea what awaited us.

I still believe that my brother and I were just about the perfect ages for that movie: old enough to grasp the quasi-religious underpinnings of The Force and young enough to be totally jazzed by laser weapons, dog-fighting space ships and far-off planets populated by needy princesses and asthmatic incarnations of evil.

From the moment Darth Vader walked into the opening scene I was spellbound. I did not talk, I did not look away, I don’t think I blinked. I’m still amazed by the details I took away from that first viewing—from the habits of the Sand People to the variations of storm trooper uniforms. I was mesmerized. When Luke watched from a distance as Vader went Tarantino on Obi Wan, I gasped and slid forward in my seat. I didn’t want it to end.

The ride home was electric, like coming off a ride at Disney. We rushed to retell scenes, as if we hadn’t all just watched the same thing. We reveled in favorite moments. We made light sabers out of old lollypop sticks we found in the back of the car, quickly mastering the sound effect of a laser-electric sword sizzling oxygen atoms (scchhung). When we got home we ran into the woods behind our house, found sticks, and made “real” light sabers. We spent the rest of the day, the rest of the summer, playing Star Wars.

The impact was not short lived, either. Eventually, I came to read the works of Joseph Campbell, the mythologist/historian who inspired George Lucas. Star Wars, and its theme of maintaining humanity in the face of technological advancement, even worked its way into some papers I wrote in grad school.

Earlier this year, I rented the video. My 6-year-old son wanted to watch it. I had hoped to wait until he was a little older, but all his friends had seen it, and the plotlines and characters were starting to seep out. I knew it was now or never.

As we settled into my bed and Darth Vader came onscreen, I could see him being sucked right down the road I had traveled 30 years earlier. I answered his questions (he was a little young to follow it all). I fought the urge to point out my favorite scenes. I watched his face as much as I watched the movie.

When it was over I asked him what he thought. He loved it, he said. I loved it more.

Come on...be honest...how many Han Solo action figures did you go through because your mom kept finding them encased in ice in the freezer and threw them away??

At least 10 for me.

...which is about what I thought of it.

The Star Wars series is really not great science fiction. Its good science fiction that appeals to a wide audience.

Nevertheless, I thought it was good fun and the special effects were somewhere between outstanding and breathtaking. And it made me appreciate how really good “2001” was for its time (and still is).

I wasn’t really into the toys & collectibles (I was in my first year of grad school in ‘77).

But I did collect certain magazines like Time, etc. I wish I still had them, but I long ago threw them all out. Those and my Farah Fawcett poster collection!

I was in the 8th grade in ‘68 when 2001 came out.

Yes I thought it was awesome film-making, but honestly, I didn’t understand the psychedelics of the scenes of Bowman going into the atmosphere of whichever moon it was.

I thought the action and story of ANH made it a far more exciting movie than 2001. The spaceship scenes in 2001, while technically brilliant, were slow and ponderous (”Blue Danube Waltz”, anyone?). The dogfight scenes in ANH were much more fun and engaging.

No one is claiming ANH is great sci-fi — but it was awesome storytelling and movie-making, in a different way than the grand sweep of 2001, but grand in its own way.

My brother broke his leg that winter and a friend gave him the novelization - we were so raring to go when the movie came out. We drove up to Paramus (where the writer saw it), one of only two theaters in the state that had it. The movie went far beyond our expectations.

Now, it seems so hokey - we’ve been spoiled by all the special effects that Lucas pioneered. There’s so much dumb stuff mixed with marvels in the later movies that you could wish Lucas had never been let near his own films.

Mrs VS

My favorite story is when we took our kids to see TESB in 1980.

Our daughter was 7. After Yoda had been on screen for a few minutes, at a point where nothing was being said on screen, our daughter pipes up in her little girl voice that carries thru the theatre and says...

“Daddy, why does Yoda sound just like Fozzie Bear?”

The laughter went on for several minutes.

I remember it and it made sense to me. I remember Lucas saying he started where he started because it had a planet blowing up.

If I’m a film maker, and I have this massive story I don’t know if I’m going to be able to tell the whole thing, I’m going to want to start with blowing up a planet.

Of course, after Return of the Jedi, I wanted it to stop there. I hated the whole “cute puppy” things and I wasn’t too thrilled with the redemption of Darth Vader. And after suffering through the first three episodes, I don’t really think he deserves redemption. Especially not such a hokey redemption

Lucas had “cute” things in Star Wars from the very beginning: R2D2. But I agree that he started to go overboard after introducing Yoda in ESB.

The Ewoks were too much for me, and of course, Jar Jar was inexcusable. Seems like there were fewer “cute” things in Eps II and III, but by then, the damage had been done.

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