A piece on Star Wars not intended to cast me as a sci-fi geek
Tomorrow night will be, for me, quite a memorable occasion. It will be my first night of babysitting our daughter, while my wife heads out with her fellow mums for a richly-deserved night of letting their collective hairs down. Aside from the obligatory baby-related activities, my myriad (but likely to be unfulfilled) plans for the evening include trying to write a few more pages of my first novel, and watching Star Wars.
Kids today, and those geekish purists, will point out that in fact there is no such film called Star Wars, that in fact there never was – it is, as the iconic scrolling intro does point out, entitled Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope. However, if you were a kid in the 1970s watching this film, you knew it as simply Star Wars. The fact that roman numerals weren’t taught in state schools until you were about ten perhaps also had something to do with it. So, as a child of the 1970s, this film will always be Star Wars to me.
Star Wars is one of those film that only really comes around once in a generation; something that fires your imagination and dominates your youth. It’s a simple story well known to most people that was so successful because it combined an unending passion for war films (there is a huge Nazi Germany overtone to everything about George Lucas’s evil Galactic Empire), sci-fi and adventure. And for kids like me, Star Wars was everywhere during our youthful years. I was born in 1976, so far too young to appreciate the first film (okay, the fourth film) when it hit the cinemas in ’77, but by the time Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980, was just the right age to get really excited about the film and all its spin-off merchandise, quickly replacing Lego as my toy of choice.
One of my earliest, and fondest, memories was going to Stratford-upon-Avon’s now-closed cinema (it became a Safeway, then council offices, then the Chicago Rock Café where Michelle and I drunkenly held our joint hen and stag do in 2001) on a Sunday to watch a double bill of Star Wars with Empire Strikes Back. It was one of only two occasions that my dad took me to the cinema (the other time was to Leamington Spa to watch the second Indiana Jones flick). Apart from being totally thrilled by the experience of actually going to the pictures and of being able to watch the latest Star Wars film, my other over-riding memory is of my dad falling asleep as the first film started, only waking up again at the very end of Empire Strikes Back.
Crikey, there are so many memories from childhood that are connected to Star Wars. The first time I watched Return Of The Jedi was on a pirate VHS on our first (top-loading, natch) video recorder, a Hitachi if my memory serves me. My dad had repossessed the equipment during the course of his work for a local electricals store, and it came with a poorly photocopied set of instructions and a ‘remote’ control which was attached to the recorder by a wire. How things have changed. The pirate film (it was my second pirate film – the first was ET at my friend Jono’s birthday party) was awful, awful quality, barely more than a guy with a primitive camcorder recording it from the back of a cinema. With my youthful imagination, I didn’t even know that pirates were illegal, and instead thought that people took their own video recorders into the cinema, plugged them into a panel underneath the screen and returned at the end of the picture to collect their equipment. How innocent. Boy, did I have a crush on Princess Leia in that bikini.
In one of the more odd merchandising angles from ROTJ, my mum bought me a duvet and pillow set which would have probably cost a fair bit back then, and would likely be worth a small fortune today. However, little boy Smith found the sight of a bloated Jabba The Hutt prominently printed at the centre of his duvet rather too distressing, and thus the bedspread was never to be seen again.
And then there was the day I met Darth Vader. That day, a very hot and sticky Stratford summer’s day, has left an indelible mark on my memory of childhood. There is a shopping centre in Stratford called Bell Court. It used to have a fake, weathered bell hanging above one of the entrances, and wooden benches ran next to a toyshop called Derek Lamb’s. Lamb was something of a Stratford toy magnate, running no less than three stores. There are no toy shops in Stratford anymore. In his store on Wood Street, my dad and I bought a small grey mouse to give to my newborn little sister, and in the store on High Street I was bought my first Dungeons and Dragons and Transformer toys. But it was in the Bell Court store that David Prowse, in full Darth Vader regalia, shook my hand and signed my copy of the book of ROTJ. (There were two editions of this book – a junior one in a light blue jacket, which he signed, and a presumably more grown-up version in a darker blue jacket). He signed it ‘Darth Vader’ with a black marker pen, and most people rightly don’t believe it was the real Vader signing the book; well, Prowse lived just outside Stratford, so it was, okay? I was petrified of the huge man standing in front of me, and was convinced that he was going to lift me off the floor by the neck like he does with that Rebel chap in the first few minutes of Star Wars. I distinctly remember that the black glove which he extended to me, which prompted me to burst into tears, was weathered and torn. I guess even evil Jedis find it hard to go to update their wardrobes.
After my fearful encounter with Vader, my mum and dad said that because I’d been so brave (I presume this was because I hadn’t wet myself perhaps as I’d hardly in my eyes shown myself to be what you could possibly consider ‘brave’), they said that I could choose a Star Wars action figure. I chose Princess Leia dressed as Bounty Hunter Bousch from Return Of The Jedi, which had a removable rubber helmet.
I maintain that as a child I was not spoilt, although the paragraph above may prompt you to disagree with me. In terms of Star Wars figures and vehicles, I had a pretty substantial collection, had an X-Wing, had a Snowspeeder and ST-AT. But I never had the Millennium Falcon or an AT-AT. These were reserved for the kids from more affluent families. In those days you could tell how well off a family was by the size of the Star Wars vehicle they had. If you had the Falcon you were rich, if you had the crappy little ‘mini-pods’ that didn’t even appear in the films then you were poor. I started selling my figures and vehicles a few years ago via the wonder of eBay and was amazed at the prices you could fetch; I now consider them my emergency fund for whenever I need to raise some extra cash, although it is with a pang of regret that I mail them off, hopefully to a good home.
***
Thus it was with a palpable sense of excitement that I put Seren down to bed, located the Star Wars DVD boxset that my parents gave me for Christmas and sat down in front of the TV. Now, to my chagrin, the versions on the boxset are the remastered editions from the 1990s which included extra CGI footage, but I hadn’t seen them before and was amazed that I could tell, with perhaps ten years having passed since I last saw the first (fourth!) film, when something looked different. (I thought the addition of a sound effect and ‘grunt’ in the much-fabled scene where the Stormtrooper hits his head on the door frame rather unnecessary, but at least they didn’t cut it out).
To be honest, I was prepared to be disappointed in a way. Recently I’ve been watching some of the films that I used to watch in my younger days, and have found them to be far from the classic movies that I previously thought them to be. Last weekend we watched Brewster’s Millions, which I absolutely loved as a child, but which now – with the exception of some great shots of New York (we call it New York Porn in our house) – seems truly rubbish. Ghostbusters was the same. Only Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back To The Future have retained any sort of greatness now that I am an adult.
But Star Wars was just as incredible as I remembered it to be. Aside from the comforting familiarity and warm fuzzy childhood feelings it evoked, it truly is a classic film. I have suggested to my wife that she should perhaps go out with her friends more frequently, ostensibly so that I can babysit Seren and get closer to my daughter; really it’s so that I can watch Empire and Return Of The Jedi and get all nostalgic once again. I can then decide whether I agree with the dialogue in Clerks that asserts, of the three movies, that Empire has the strongest – if darkest – ending.
Kids today, and those geekish purists, will point out that in fact there is no such film called Star Wars, that in fact there never was – it is, as the iconic scrolling intro does point out, entitled Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope. However, if you were a kid in the 1970s watching this film, you knew it as simply Star Wars. The fact that roman numerals weren’t taught in state schools until you were about ten perhaps also had something to do with it. So, as a child of the 1970s, this film will always be Star Wars to me.
Star Wars is one of those film that only really comes around once in a generation; something that fires your imagination and dominates your youth. It’s a simple story well known to most people that was so successful because it combined an unending passion for war films (there is a huge Nazi Germany overtone to everything about George Lucas’s evil Galactic Empire), sci-fi and adventure. And for kids like me, Star Wars was everywhere during our youthful years. I was born in 1976, so far too young to appreciate the first film (okay, the fourth film) when it hit the cinemas in ’77, but by the time Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980, was just the right age to get really excited about the film and all its spin-off merchandise, quickly replacing Lego as my toy of choice.
One of my earliest, and fondest, memories was going to Stratford-upon-Avon’s now-closed cinema (it became a Safeway, then council offices, then the Chicago Rock Café where Michelle and I drunkenly held our joint hen and stag do in 2001) on a Sunday to watch a double bill of Star Wars with Empire Strikes Back. It was one of only two occasions that my dad took me to the cinema (the other time was to Leamington Spa to watch the second Indiana Jones flick). Apart from being totally thrilled by the experience of actually going to the pictures and of being able to watch the latest Star Wars film, my other over-riding memory is of my dad falling asleep as the first film started, only waking up again at the very end of Empire Strikes Back.
Crikey, there are so many memories from childhood that are connected to Star Wars. The first time I watched Return Of The Jedi was on a pirate VHS on our first (top-loading, natch) video recorder, a Hitachi if my memory serves me. My dad had repossessed the equipment during the course of his work for a local electricals store, and it came with a poorly photocopied set of instructions and a ‘remote’ control which was attached to the recorder by a wire. How things have changed. The pirate film (it was my second pirate film – the first was ET at my friend Jono’s birthday party) was awful, awful quality, barely more than a guy with a primitive camcorder recording it from the back of a cinema. With my youthful imagination, I didn’t even know that pirates were illegal, and instead thought that people took their own video recorders into the cinema, plugged them into a panel underneath the screen and returned at the end of the picture to collect their equipment. How innocent. Boy, did I have a crush on Princess Leia in that bikini.
In one of the more odd merchandising angles from ROTJ, my mum bought me a duvet and pillow set which would have probably cost a fair bit back then, and would likely be worth a small fortune today. However, little boy Smith found the sight of a bloated Jabba The Hutt prominently printed at the centre of his duvet rather too distressing, and thus the bedspread was never to be seen again.
And then there was the day I met Darth Vader. That day, a very hot and sticky Stratford summer’s day, has left an indelible mark on my memory of childhood. There is a shopping centre in Stratford called Bell Court. It used to have a fake, weathered bell hanging above one of the entrances, and wooden benches ran next to a toyshop called Derek Lamb’s. Lamb was something of a Stratford toy magnate, running no less than three stores. There are no toy shops in Stratford anymore. In his store on Wood Street, my dad and I bought a small grey mouse to give to my newborn little sister, and in the store on High Street I was bought my first Dungeons and Dragons and Transformer toys. But it was in the Bell Court store that David Prowse, in full Darth Vader regalia, shook my hand and signed my copy of the book of ROTJ. (There were two editions of this book – a junior one in a light blue jacket, which he signed, and a presumably more grown-up version in a darker blue jacket). He signed it ‘Darth Vader’ with a black marker pen, and most people rightly don’t believe it was the real Vader signing the book; well, Prowse lived just outside Stratford, so it was, okay? I was petrified of the huge man standing in front of me, and was convinced that he was going to lift me off the floor by the neck like he does with that Rebel chap in the first few minutes of Star Wars. I distinctly remember that the black glove which he extended to me, which prompted me to burst into tears, was weathered and torn. I guess even evil Jedis find it hard to go to update their wardrobes.
After my fearful encounter with Vader, my mum and dad said that because I’d been so brave (I presume this was because I hadn’t wet myself perhaps as I’d hardly in my eyes shown myself to be what you could possibly consider ‘brave’), they said that I could choose a Star Wars action figure. I chose Princess Leia dressed as Bounty Hunter Bousch from Return Of The Jedi, which had a removable rubber helmet.
I maintain that as a child I was not spoilt, although the paragraph above may prompt you to disagree with me. In terms of Star Wars figures and vehicles, I had a pretty substantial collection, had an X-Wing, had a Snowspeeder and ST-AT. But I never had the Millennium Falcon or an AT-AT. These were reserved for the kids from more affluent families. In those days you could tell how well off a family was by the size of the Star Wars vehicle they had. If you had the Falcon you were rich, if you had the crappy little ‘mini-pods’ that didn’t even appear in the films then you were poor. I started selling my figures and vehicles a few years ago via the wonder of eBay and was amazed at the prices you could fetch; I now consider them my emergency fund for whenever I need to raise some extra cash, although it is with a pang of regret that I mail them off, hopefully to a good home.
***
Thus it was with a palpable sense of excitement that I put Seren down to bed, located the Star Wars DVD boxset that my parents gave me for Christmas and sat down in front of the TV. Now, to my chagrin, the versions on the boxset are the remastered editions from the 1990s which included extra CGI footage, but I hadn’t seen them before and was amazed that I could tell, with perhaps ten years having passed since I last saw the first (fourth!) film, when something looked different. (I thought the addition of a sound effect and ‘grunt’ in the much-fabled scene where the Stormtrooper hits his head on the door frame rather unnecessary, but at least they didn’t cut it out).
To be honest, I was prepared to be disappointed in a way. Recently I’ve been watching some of the films that I used to watch in my younger days, and have found them to be far from the classic movies that I previously thought them to be. Last weekend we watched Brewster’s Millions, which I absolutely loved as a child, but which now – with the exception of some great shots of New York (we call it New York Porn in our house) – seems truly rubbish. Ghostbusters was the same. Only Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back To The Future have retained any sort of greatness now that I am an adult.
But Star Wars was just as incredible as I remembered it to be. Aside from the comforting familiarity and warm fuzzy childhood feelings it evoked, it truly is a classic film. I have suggested to my wife that she should perhaps go out with her friends more frequently, ostensibly so that I can babysit Seren and get closer to my daughter; really it’s so that I can watch Empire and Return Of The Jedi and get all nostalgic once again. I can then decide whether I agree with the dialogue in Clerks that asserts, of the three movies, that Empire has the strongest – if darkest – ending.
posted by Mat Smith @ 10:07 am
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