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When did you stop caring about Star Wars?

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I sense maybe I’m asking the wrong audience this question. I don’t think there is any great love for Star Wars on the Afterword, but maybe I’m wrong.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about Star Wars. Probably just because there are adverts for it everywhere at the moment (or at least it feels that way if you have Disney Plus). I remember when Disney bought the franchise, and people did say there would be a lot more content coming out and they would milk it dry, and that now seems to be the case.

Anyway, it just makes me ponder when I stopped caring about it.

It was definitely a Big Thing in my youth. I was born in 1973, so was the perfect age for all the toys and stuff, and my generation got swept up in the whole thing. I was ten when I saw Return of the Jedi in the cinema and still remember it as a formative cinema experience. The first time I remember really engaging in something as an existing fan and having my (ten-year old) expectations totally surpassed. It was magical.

But before that, I had already worn out the first Star Wars film to death on an early video recorder. That film was my religion, and even from an adult perspective I can see its merits. The sublime soundtrack, for example, and the cutting edge special effects and set designs (that still look incredible). And it was a ripping yarn, a truly timeless tale of the Hero’s Journey and the Call to Adventure and all that, with prime examples of well-used tropes (the wise master, the boy who finds his destiny, the faceless villain, a princess to be rescued, the rogue who turns hero in the end…). It really had it all, and it really was the right thing at the right time for my generation. Lightning in a bottle and all that.

Me and my brother used to talk about the little shiver of adrenaline we would get every time Han Solo comes shooting out of the stars and the end and says, “You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and we can go home!”… I still get shivers now. And I think that moment, maybe more than any other cinematic moment, made me realise how powerful and affecting the medium of film can be. You get a great story and a believable universe, you take your audience to the edge of despair like that, and then you suddenly bring back everyone’s favourite character to save the day… absolute genius.

Passion became nostalgia as I got older, and I was of the generation who looked forward to the Phantom Menace with naive hope that it would somehow recapture the magic. Of course it didn’t. It had a good lightsabre fight which made me feel ten years old again, but on the whole it was rubbish. I think I stopped caring a couple of films later, when I just realised how bad they were getting and just how bloated and unnecessary it all was.

But still the hope remained, twinkling away, that there was something still there worth mining. Beyond all expectation, I liked Rogue One. There was maybe too much fan service in it (look, there’s IG88 walking by! There’s a jawa!) and it was probably the prime offender in starting the ugly trend for film studios to revive dead actors via CGI, but the basic story was a decent thrill ride with a surprisingly bleak ending, and it was very well executed.

But really, that’s it. I still went to see the other films at the cinema, but by the time of that last one I was just paying lip service to it and doing it out of a misplaced sense of duty. When the TV shows started I gave The Mandalorian a go, but got bored in the first episode. And now I just refuse to watch any of it.

So, in hindsight, I’m one of those purists who think the original trilogy is where it’s at, and truthfully I think it should have been left there (but there was never any real hope that would happen, is there?). I got off the boat at Phantom Menace and have never really got back on. Rogue One, as I say, I like a lot, but I believe it was a one-off fluke and I’m not really prepared to invest any time in the series any longer in the hope that fluke will be repeated.

So, Star Wars fans and ex-fans. Tell me what you think! Is it a silly thing you have grown out of? Do you still secretly try to use the Force to lift your breakfast spoon in the morning? Do you find yourself humming the theme tune to yourself at random moments?

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Comments

  1. I was never a fan boy, and I was born in 67 so would have been about 10, the perfect age, when the first came out. I’ve only ever seen the first three, and none of them since the 80s. Without wanting to piss on anyone’s light-sabre I think of them as entertaining children’s films, no more no less. I never saw the magic in them that others did then and now.

    • Same here – perfect age, liked them then, but…. rewatched the orginal three about the time Phantom Menace came about and found them… just a bit silly. The scripts are pretty terrible.

      Even when I was a kid I preferred CE3K and 2001, if we’re talking, er, space operas.

      Fanatastic theme tune though.

      • Star Wars passed me by due to lack of interest on my part. Not sure I’ve ever seen it all the way through, nor any of the sequels (except The Phantom Menace in a cinema, dubbed in Italian, not my preferred choice of film, venue or format; I just got bored). CE3K (nice abbreviation, sir!) on the other hand wowed my young self.
        In the Space + Robots genre, Silent Running also impressed me enormously, though I don’t think I’ve seen it since. (And if I did now, I’d probably have it confused with Moon and not know what’s going on.)

        • I was born in ’62, so at 15 and a big SF reader I should have been a fan – but no. Never saw any of the core films and only watched Rogue One on TV because Felicity Jones and Ben Mendelsohn were in it. It was OK.

        • The Phantom Menace dubbed? You had a lucky escape there pal. The dialogue in that one makes the script of the original look like Moliere.

          Silent Running is great, and it inspired a toe-tapping pop hit by Mike & the Mechanics (crazy name, crazy guys!!)

  2. Due to having a thirteen year old son who loves everything Star Wars, it’s become the thing we do together. With Mandalorian, Boba Fett and now Obi Wan I don’t really view those in the same way as the films. They are enjoyable though.

    I have warmed to the Phantom Menace – the pod racing scenes are exciting. I also enjoyed all the newer ones, particularly the off-cuts Rogue One and Solo. I have yet to be convinced by Mark Hammil as an actor but at least he’s consistent and it would be weird if he changed. See William Shatner in Star Trek. Or Roy North – but I digress.

    There needs to be more gags though. Kylo Ren and Rae are far too deep/intense.

      • My brother took me when I was 11 -Leicester Square! I had an expensive glossy programme from that time and a copy is now on YouTube as a treasured piece – pages gingerly turned by a man with gloves on, like he’s turning the pages of the original Shakespeare manuscripts.

        Sounds really odd for a child but I wasn’t really into toys as such. I was jealous of my friend’s Stretch Armstrong but I was OK with our small snooker table and subbuteo etc.

        Big fan of Star Wars ever since those days.

  3. When did I stop caring about Star Wars? 1977.

    I saw Star Wars (as it was then) when it opened at the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road because it was an event. I enjoyed it, but never felt like seeing another one. Still haven’t.

    • Me too.

      We’d just got our end of year exam results and were safely through to the next year of university. A few jars were imbibed. As we walked past the cinema, me and my mate decided, on a whim, to watch it. There was nobody there other than a classroom worth of kids killing time at the end of term, supervised by two disinterested teachers. The opening sequence was tl;dr. We started a popcorn fight and the teachers joined in. We fell asleep halfway through and woke up to witness the beginning again. There were slightly more viewers second time around.

      Our opinion, as grizzly teenagers, was that it’s a children’s movie. I can honestly say I have never seen a Star Wars movie all the way through.

      • With you two. Thought the first one was awful. Never knowingly watched further. Caught the opening of TESB one Christmas. Terrible sets, terrible acting. Then of course the Muppets in ROTJ. Meh.

  4. I loved the original three movies but, having watched the interminable and boring Phantom Menace, I haven’t seen anything since. I remember a good friend’s review having taken his eager boys to see it… “this film Jar-Jar Binks”

    • Spaced! Love it. Apparently Spaced technically didn’t have permission to use Star Wars references in the first series, but George Lucas loved it so much he allowed them to use Star Wars stuff in the second series (hence they were able to use that wonderful Funky Drummer/Empire March remix in one of the episodes, I think)… but in the intervening period, Phantom Menace came out, and the second series was filled with jokes about how bad it was!

      I’m about the same age as Tim in Spaced, by the way, and felt exactly the same way at the time. Totally betrayed by George Lucas!

  5. I would probably class myself as a Star Wars fan by proxy.

    I’m about the right age for the original trilogy and I certainly watched those movies a fair bit in my childhood, particularly Empire. I bought the action figures, read the extended universe novels and made the lightsaber noises. As a self identifying nerd, it was pretty much required.

    However, whatever passion I had for the IP was utterly dwarfed by that of some of my mates. I was only really ever a weekend warrior at best, whereas this lot took it all very seriously indeed. It gives a bit of perspective on one’s own fandom to visit a pal’s bedroom after school and discover that they’re recreating the Battle of Hoth with action figures, icing sugar and home made backgrounds.

    So, the years roll by and the Phantom Menace is announced. There’s considerable excitement – not only will Lucas resume the story, but the F/X will be cutting edge. I can vividly remember being sat in a park somewhere on a sunny day and one of our number sagely announcing that apparently Jurassic Park was really just a test for the tech they’d be using in Phantom Menace (chortle). Then we get a look at Darth Maul. Mother of god, is that a double ended lightsaber? I mean: this had to be the greatest movie in the history of Hollywood, right? All the elements are right there.

    Release day rolls round, and about ten of us head to Richmond Odeon, pretty well ablaze with excitement. I’m largely coasting off the buzz of others around me, but it’s still powerful. The trailers finish, the screen goes dark. Two of my oldest friends let out a gasp so audible the entire cinema hears it and laughs. It’s only an advert. Another laugh.

    The movie begins and, somewhere about 15 mins in, it becomes clear to me that it isn’t all that good. There’s a forlorn hope that Darth Maul will rescue it, but of course he’s barely in it.

    We walk home from the movie. A long, confused and bewildered walk, and it’s brilliant. Everyone is enacting a different phase of grief. Some cannot bring themselves to accept it was bad. Others are angry. Others still are convincing themselves that it’s all about the next movie, which will save the trilogy. In its own way, it’s as entertaining and exciting a conversation as if the film had been really good – all that passion was still finding expression, after all.

    Obviously, the next two films aren’t up to much either. The middle one is probably the absolute nadir, and I can recall taking a girlfriend to the third and being aghast that she slept through it. We all still love Star Wars, but an acute awareness develops that Lucas is never going to make a good follow up.

    Nowadays, I love the way the sequels have found a younger audience and are nearly as beloved as the original trilogy. I think it’s freaking awesome that kids found something cool in there – I love all the memes, and Dark Jar Jar Theory is one of the best things to ever come out of fan culture. It’s a real reminder that, ultimately, it’s very often the audience who bring the fire.

    More years go by. My mates remain staunch fans who trade trivia and devour any suggestion of new material, but the IP is dormant. Then Disney steps in and we get TFA. We go see it – the same gang from The Phantom Menace – and have an absolute ball. I’m not a huge fan of the movie, I have to admit. I think it’s incredibly competent, but a bit soulless and doesn’t really bring anything new to the party. But it’s still a joy to see those familiar characters back onscreen and my mates love every minute of it, and I’m just super happy for them. We walk home again, and this time it’s more of a float home – collective cloud nine.

    Then Rogue One comes out. Mother of god, Rogue One. Maybe, when all is said and done, my single favourite cinema trip of all time. Odeon Leicester Square. Great meal beforehand – everyone setting expectations. I tell them all that TFA is OK, but there’s a much better Star Wars movie to be made by someone who really gets quite how much fun this could all be. None of us expect it to be this movie, it’s just a gentle diversion before the main business of the trilogy resumes.

    Down we troop to the cinema to pose for photos with Storm Troopers and buy our commemorative popcorn tins. It all feels way more relaxed than previous outings – there’s so much less riding on this one now that TFA has safely stuck the landing.

    The movie begins and it’s… pretty good. Different tone to the others and obviously the characters are all new to us, but it’s cool that they’re filling the gaps around the Death Star storyline. Then, as it progresses, it becomes clear that it’s actually really good – these characters are great, the gags are landing (and there aren’t too many of them). And then – the last 20 minutes…

    If I could have any 20 minutes in a cinema back to live again, it might well be those. Sat there, next to one of my oldest mates in the world, who has LIVED this stuff since he was a tiny kid, surrounded by our equally daft mates. I don’t even need to look across, I can feel the charge coming off all of them – all those hours spent thinking about this stuff, all those hopes that didn’t work out with the previous movies. We’re sat there watching the best space battle in any Star Wars movie – Gareth Edwards has got the figurines out of the toy box and he knows what to do with them. And then the Star Destroyers collide, and there’s a gasp and a ripple runs through the audience. This is the stuff we’ve been waiting for – the stuff that’s simultaneously nostalgia, but also new, and it’s utterly fucking marvellous.

    Then there’s the Vader scene. The lightsaber firing into life and the entire audience going nuts. The movie is already a classic, but this is just the cherry on the cake. And as it unfolds we start to realise that this movie is going to plug directly into the back of A New Hope and holy crap I realise I’ve had my hand on my mate’s knee for the last 5 minutes.

    We pour out of the threatre and it’s just pure elation. I’m happy, because that’s the Star Wars movie I was hoping for, but I’m happier still because I can see what it’s done for my mates. They’re absolutely walking on sunshine. No one wants to go home, we talk about it all for ages, a totally amazing communal experience.

    Twelve months later, we go to see The Last Jedi and, in a very different way, have an equally entertaining evening. There are lots of things I like about TLJ, but it’s so obviously a total cuss to its audience, and that’s kind of funny. I can’t recall if it was the point at which Luke milks a space giraffe, or when the little aliens in the Victorian bonnets appeared, or – most likely – when Leia went full Superman, but at some stage I looked down the row at the faces of my friends and beheld an absolute portrait of disgust and confusion, and I literally had to stop myself laughing out loud. So good. In that moment I realise that I really don’t have any skin in the game. It doesn’t massively bother me if these films are good or bad, because they’ve never truly been “my” movies. If they remade Ferris Bueller I would probably want to kill myself, and I’ve still never seen Blues Brothers 2000 because I suspect it would physically pain me, but a dud Star Wars movie? It’s ok.

    After it ends we stand in Westfield and have maybe the best post movie conversation I’ve ever been involved in. These people are horrified by what they’ve just witnessed. What was the point in Po’s storyline? Did Luke really do the dirt off the shoulder? What was the milking scene all about? It makes me laugh just thinking about it, like the Phantom Menace chat on steroids.

    And that really sums it all up for me. Am I a Star Wars fan? Yeah, notionally. I mean, I go see all the movies day of release, I’m in a WhatsApp group entitled “Star Wars” and I enjoyed Rogue One far too much not to be. But really, I’m just a tourist. I go along and I catch a vibe off a lovely bunch of people who really do (next level) care about this stuff, and I enjoy doing so. Passion is good, I like being around people who are passionate about stuff and trying to share that with them. If I didn’t know these guys I would care so much less (if at all). Let’s be real: it’s three excellent movies, a handful of OK ones and a load of proper dross in getting on for half a century. It’s not like the bloom isn’t long since off the rose.

    In what really has to be a postscript, my son is now getting into Star Wars. His sister has Marvel pretty firmly locked down, so this is his thing. He’s been playing the video games (one of which I have a credit on – woohoo), watching all the movies (prefers the prequels, go figure) and we watch the new Disney+ shows together. He’s also at the point where he knows way more than I do. A couple of weeks ago I had to go wake him up for school, and as his eyes opened he looked at me, paused for a moment, and said – completely deadpan – “Dad, do you ever consider that Jango Fett actually started the entire Great Galactic War”. I had literally no idea what he meant, but it still made me happy.

      • Amen to that. I only got round to listening to the last of the YCDTOSA albums this week. How bad is that? I have 50 of his albums and I still feel a lightweight.

    • This is a great post. Like Bingo, I’m a fan by proxy as a few of my friends are big fans. And as is usually the case when I’m a fan by proxy, I become a bit of a fan myself. After all, I like the people who like the thing so why not?

      To address Arthur’s point, I suspect that people caring less about Star Wars is influenced by age, and I think one of the things driving this is that the first generation of Star Wars fans are now older than the people who are currently making Star Wars films and TV series, and the latter have different influences and opinions about topics such as diversity and inclusion.

      But the key word there is older and Disney know that the future of Star Wars lies with Bingo’s and Black Celebration’s kids rather than 50 somethings complaining about black stormtroopers.

    • Brilliant post Bingo!

      I feel you’ve summed up the Phantom Menace reaction well there. It was a really horrible, damp squib type feeling just a few minutes into the movie and it just wasn’t working.

      And although I’m maybe not as passionate about Rogue One as you are, I agree it was a late surprise and tapped into something special. Maybe Rogue One was the last gasp for the old guard fans, and it has now moved on to a younger audience?

      It was The Last Jedi I think I eventually realised my mind was wandering during the film, and (worse than being bored) I just didn’t really CARE about what was going on.

  7. Kind of a fan, liked the first 3, although Return was clearly inferior.

    Then the prequels, watched Phantom Menace in the cinema, what a mess. Didn’t bother with the others except one on TV and I fell asleep

    Then parts VII to IX, really liked the first one, 2nd one was a bit poor and the last one was absolutely awful.

    The side ones, Rogue One was really great, Solo was very average at best.

    So I probably am really done with them now if they ever make any more, but they are children’s films really, not made for grumpy 60 yr olds.

  8. Like Gatz and others, I’m the ‘right age’, and I saw at least one in a cinema at the time, maybe two, maybe all three (the fact that I can’t remember tells you where this is going) – but they were just passingly entertaining children’s films, I guess. I’m not sure I’ve even watched the first three on TV – again, I can’t remember, so maybe one or two, and certainly a long time ago. I would have had no interest in the later reboots.

  9. Even now I find myself getting uncontrollably angry at those of you who are responding “they are just kids’ movies… I was never really into them… etc” 🙂

    I’m joking (slightly) but there is a big part of me (the childhood nerd inside) who still gets annoyed at people who don’t get how great Star Wars was once! The fanboy passion, I suppose.

  10. As a child I was obsessed. Remember my mother taking my brother and me to the cinema when ‘Return Of The Jedi’ came out and they showed ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ before the new release. We literally spent the entire day in the cinema!

  12. I stopped caring about twenty minutes into the first time I saw the first one the first time it showed. IT’S A KIDS’ MOVIE. But it’s worse than just a kids’ movie (nothingwrongwiththat), it kickstarted the whole dumbing down of US (and therefore world) cinema. Overstating the case against it? Read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (if you haven’t already).

    To those who scoff at this distinction between adult (as in grown-up) movies and kids’ movies, thinking it’s elitist, I have this to say – NYER NYER NYER POOPOOPANTS. At least that’s an argument you can understand.

    • Per Biskind, Jaws kickstarted the process you’re talking about. Star Wars just accelerated it.

      It was inevitable anyway – the conditions that lead to New Hollywood were never going to last forever.

      • Jaws is a tentpole movie (@moose-the-mooche) but at least it’s a movie aimed at adults. It did nothing new, it didn’t change anybody’s mind about anything, but Star Wars, for some reason, did redefine what it was okay for adults to take seriously. Lucas is a terrible film-maker, Spielberg can be brilliant.

        As to the dumbing-down of Hollywood (the world) being inevitable – everything is in hindsight, isn’t it? Doesn’t make change necessarily for the better.

        • (Arthur laughs along, even though he doesn’t understand the joke. He finds himself doing that more and more often these days.)

          (Later that night, he watches Willow, and ponders George Lucas’ directorial career.)

          • True story – when Willow was released the trailer seemed to be in every ad break, with a gravelly voiceover repeating, ‘Val Kilmer … in Willow’ over shots of Warwick Davis. I had never heard of either man, so I got it into my head that Val Kilmer was the actor playing Willow.

            A little later I heard that Oliver Stone was making his film about The Doors, and that Val Kilmer was going to portray Jim Morrison, which I thought a bold piece of casting right up until I saw the film.

            • Ha! That made me laugh.

              Yes, today’s youngsters forget how big a deal Willow was back in the day. I remember a massive campaign, with much made of the fact that it was the latest creation by the genius behind Star Wars. Yes, it was a big deal up until the moment it was released and people actually saw it… but that’s a whole other story.

              Me? I genuinely fell for it and tried my best to convince myself it was the new Star Wars. I had the novelisation, the board game, all that stuff.

              One day I’ll start a thread on here about eighties fantasy movies. It was a big part of my childhood. Ladyhawke! Dragonslayer! Krull! The Dark Crystal! Legend!

  16. About a year ago I was discussing with much younger workmates Star Wars and how incredibly popular it was from the very start.

    I remembered two things that I hadn’t thought about in years. At the time my mum heard so much about it she asked me to accompany her to the cinema to see it as she didn’t want to go on her own. I remember being amazed that someone so old would be interested in something so modern. In all the time I knew her it was the only time she ever wanted to do something like that. She would have been in her 40’s, much younger than I am now. We went and she enjoyed it but never saw any of the sequels nor expressed any curiosity about them.

    The other thing I remembered was one of my friends telling me his sister, who would have been a teenager, had seen the flipping thing forty-two times! Back in those days there were no VCR’s if you wanted to see a film you had to go to the cinema to do so. Forty-two times! That was probably a running count so may have ended up much higher.

    Anyway the work collegues, about four of them, all born in the 80’s had all seen Star Wars and Back to the Future but none of them had ever seen The Godfather or One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest or had the slightest interest in doing so.

    • “I remember being amazed that someone so old would be interested in something so modern.” … Great point, and that really strikes a note with me. I had forgotten that “adults” didn’t really used to go for kids stuff like they do nowadays.

      My dad at the time of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 (one of the first movies I remember seeing in the cinema) was even younger than your mum: he would have been only 31!! But it never occurred to me for a minute he would ever be actually INTERESTED in Star Wars. (And he wasn’t).

  17. I was born in 1969, so the first two came at a perfect time for me. My dad took us to the first one, and enjoyed it as much as me. My little sister wasn’t too bothered. But when we came home I made her re-enact the entire film with me. I was Luke, I was Han, I was C3-P0, I was Vader. She was a Sandperson, she was a Jawa, she was Leia. I collected the Topps cards, long since lost, but we weren’t well off enough for me to get the action figures. Years later my cousin got his box of them out and I was so jealous.

    I didn’t go to see The Empire Strikes back on the opening night. My dad said it would be too busy. The queues for the cinema in those days went on forever. So by the time we went to see the film, the big plot twist was already common playground knowledge, along with knowing Adam Ant’s face make-up had given him cancer and that to become a proper punk you had to let someone spit in your mouth. I decided I would rather be a mod.

    And then a year or so after The Empire Strikes Back, my dad’s workplace accident gave him enough compensation for us to afford a video. The first night we rented Driller Killer, followed by Zombie: Flesh Eaters, Cannibal Holocaust, Dawn of the Dead, SS Experiment Camp and so on. I think I was 11 when we got the video recorder. So by the time Return of the Jedi came out, with the little teddy bears on the poster, I wasn’t bothered. I was watching Lemon Popsicle with my mates. I eventually watched it on video and my suspicions were confirmed. It was a bit rubbish.

    In the 90s they remastered the original films, tidying up the clunky special effects. For me, these were the best versions there were of the original trilogy. They made the original films look better, without adding scenes or characters. They seem to have been lost in time though.

    Then in the late 90s the messed around versions came out. I went to watch Star Wars at one of the massive cinemas there used to be in Leicester Square. It was terribly exciting to see it again at the cinema, but totally ruined by that scene when they made Greedo shoot first. It completely changed the dynamic of the scene and took some of the edge off the Star Wars universe’s best character (although the sloppy Solo did its best to totally destroy the character – my Star Wars obsessed son doesn’t even want the Blu Ray of Solo).

    Which brings us to the most anticipated film in the Star Wars universe, The Phantom Menace. Like others, the sight of Darth Maul in all the trailers and publicity photos made us think we’d got the new main villain, but he was so underused. I felt so let down by the whole thing. We tried to like it, but it was just rubbish. As was the follow up, although it was great to see one of my heroes, Christopher Lee, in the film, a couple of decades after his dear friend, and another of my heroes, Peter Cushing, starred in the first film. But if this trilogy is set 20 years or so before the original trilogy, how come we see such a sprightly, younger Yoda? If he was 900 and ready to pop his clogs in Empire/ROTJ, it makes him about 880 in the prequels. Surely that’s still quite old?

    I’m not even sure I went to watch the third prequel. But it’s funny that you brought this topic up, because when I was walking my son to his school bus this morning, out of nowhere, he told me that Revenge of the Sith is definitely his favourite Star Wars film. He knows I only think there are 4 good Star Wars Films. And after A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, the third good one is The Force Awakens.

    The build up of anticipation and excitement for the boy was infectious. I had chosen my time to first show him Star Wars. I didn’t want to do it too early and put him off, but I got it just right. He was a couple of years or so younger than I was when I first watched it, but in the mid-70s there wasn’t really anything to compare Star Wars to. The Star Trek reruns maybe, and did Space 1999 pre-date Star Wars? Either way, the film seemed to come out of nowhere. When my lad was 6 Star Wars was already everywhere, so an epic sci-fi film just wasn’t the novelty it was in 1977. The boy was hooked before the film even started. I still have a photo of him standing next to the TV, pointing at the ‘Lucasfilms’ logo, with his ‘photo smile’ face on. He’s called Lucas you see. And no, not after George Lucas! He’s not named after anyone, although there was a moment halfway through the pregnancy, when I thought I had got her to agree to calling him Dylan if he was a boy. In retrospect, I’m glad she overruled me.

    But he loved the first 6 films and watching them all with him again, I did enjoy Revenge of the Sith a bit more than when I first watched it. And what was the best thing about getting him into Star Wars? I got to buy him all the action figures that I so desperately wanted when I was little! I have a touch of the geek about me (seriously, you should see the house), and had already bought a stupid amount of Batman toys ‘for the kids’, but I couldn’t get my daughter into Star Wars. Lucas is 5 years younger, and not only did I infect him with Batmania, Star Wars was a doddle. He was such a lovely kid anyway when he was little (he still is), so replacing all his Thomas trains with Star Wars toys provided us with hours of fun. I always had to be the baddies, apart from Count Dooku. He always wanted Count Dooku. And when we weren’t playing with the action figures we were completing the Lego Star Wars Trilogy on his XBox.

    In the midst of all this fun, Rogue One came out, and whereas The Force Awakens was aimed at the boy, but with nods to my era with the old characters, Rogue One was made for me. We watched it at the IMAX in Sheffield and entire theatre heard us both gasp when ‘Peter Cushing’ turned up. Just think of the all star movies that could be made using that technology. Rogue One was awesome. I had assumed it would be another trilogy or something, until about 2/3 of the way into it when I realised it was going to lead into the first film. I didn’t think it was going to take us right up to it though. It was a perfect ending for the film, but also a little disappointing that these characters were a one-off.

    After The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi was possibly the biggest letdown of the lot. It beat Die Another Day, Star Trek 5, Batman and Robin and The Godfather Part 3 for sequel letdownability, although recast the daughter, get rid of George Hamilton and agree to Robert Duvall’s demands and Godfather 3 could have been a great film. The Last Jedi was just boring and silly, and Luke was wasted. And with the awful Solo film following, by the time the final film came out I only went to watch it because my son wanted to. It was a bit meh too. A shame, because they had kicked some life back into the Star Wars universe with The Force Awakens and Rogue One.

    So when did I stop caring about Star Wars? Well, several times really. When I saw the posters for Return of the Jedi, when Greedo shot first, when watching The Phantom Menace and when watching The Last Jedi. But every time, to misquote the aforementioned Godfather Part 3, that I think I’ve stopped caring, they pull me back in. As they have now, with Kenobi. We’re only a couple of episodes in, and besides wondering how they thought that little girl would pass as a 10 year old, we’re really enjoying it. But with Disney pulling the strings, I am sure there will be many more times when I stop caring and get pulled back in, because they are surely going to milk it for all it’s worth.

    • “If he was 900 and ready to pop his clogs in Empire/ROTJ, it makes him about 880 in the prequels. Surely that’s still quite old?” – Ah, one of about a million questions and continuity errors that sprang up with The Phantom Menace!

      “When Greedo shot first”…. you know what, I think that could be the correct answer to all this. That was truly a dire moment, worse than Han stepping on the tail of a poorly animated Jabba the Hutt, remember that?

    • The boy has just reminded me that we did indeed go to see The Rise of Skywalker. The reason I don’t remember much about it was because of the pain I was in all the way through it. We went to watch it in 4D, where we sit in these special seats that move around with the action, and when there’s a fight scene you start getting bashed about by the chair.

      The boy loved it. I, however, have a lot of medical issues. For starters, when I had my spinal cord tumour removed, they had to remove the back of several vertebrae in my neck, so any blows to the back of my neck are quite dangerous and extremely painful. I’ve been in chronic pain for 20+ years anyway, but I came out of that film black and blue, struggling to stand up, cos the blows to my neck had affected my legs. On the way in I had foolishly signed up to a year’s membership to the 4D screen. We never went back!

      • Wow, sorry to hear that.

        There is a streak of gallows humour in me that wants to now post a picture of Anakin Skywalker crawling in pain after being beaten up by Obi Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith though….

        • That is exactly what I felt like. Now if someone wants to replace all my rubbish bits and turn me into a Sith Lord that’s fine by me. I’ll need a bigger repair job than Anakin though. I think the only thing of mine you can leave in there is my liver, which is a right laugh when I think of the effort I put into trying to damage it in the 90s. And what’s more, at this time of the year, with the crazy pollen levels and my asthma, I sound like Vader before they even start.

  18. When the first films came out, there was an exhibition in one of the London museums, in that London, featuring some of the models used in filming. What struck me at the time – and what Lucas wanted – was for the craft and their universe to look lived in. The models had faded and weathered paintwork, repair patches, missing panels and this impressed me mightily (being a modeller) when I saw the ‘real’ things. 2001 was clean, as was Star Trek, Forbidden Planet and others.

  19. I was 17 when Stars Wars premiered – and as a fan of sci-fi films I was quite looking forward to it (a brief clip shown on a TV show, and a cover story for Rolling Stone were all I knew)…there were so few sci-fi movies made at the time that I’d see anything.

    And I loved it! Well, correction – I loved the special effects, the wardrobe, the production design (only Dark Star had gone for the “lived-in”look), sets, music etc. The story seemed a bit simple, but you know, for that opening shot of the Star Destroyer going overhead I’d have forgiven it an awful lot; tell youngsters there’d never been anything like it before and they just won’t believe you.

    Now people these days like to say the FX in the first one were cheesy. They are obviously too young to remember the barren wasteland that was the sci-fi film scene before then…when the FX really WERE terrible (with the odd exception). Decent films were far and few on the ground. As noted elsewhere Star Wars (or rather, its box office returns) opened the way for a slew of sci-fi films, and they were by and large crap (again with the odd exception). But I still went to see ’em all.

    By the time The Empire Strikes Back came along, I was too old for such things (in theory) but went and saw it anyway; Starburst and other magazines had me interested in the production of such films (and cinema prices were reasonable). And indeed saw the rest of them till The Force Awakens, when I really couldn’t gather sufficient interest since CGI had rendered the whole SFX thing fairly moot.

  21. To answer the OP, round about when the Ewoks won the day in the 3rd one.
    After the refreshingly bracing tone of Empire gave the yarn a little bit of heft (just a whiff of menace to offset the bickering droids etc.), it felt like a let down that a bunch of cutesy teddy bears had triumphed in the forest – a pal at the time said something like ‘ half an hour short of plot & half an hour excess of Disney’. I agreed, because although it wasn’t literally the Mouse in evidence, the saccharine choice seemed to have been made, making the eventual Disney takeover seem inevitable in retrospect.
    I still enjoy the whizzes & the bangs but it’s been a bit of a joke for a long, long time.

    • At the time I didn’t really like Empire – it was probably too dark and complex for a 7 year old. But I loved Return, and part of me is still baffled that anyone has a problem with ewoks. They are just so hard wired into my brain as being part of that film, they are almost beyond criticism.

      Anyway, they aren’t what I remember Return of the Jedi for. I think there are many strong moments in that film, especially the tense moments with Luke, Vader and the Emperor in that throne room.

  22. Good thread. As an 12-year old I was never blown away by the original, but saw all three in the cinema. I even had a Dinky toy Luke’s speeder and a figure or two. What a strange time the start of teenage is, in another three years I’d be down the front for The Jam. What sticks in my mind is how it was one of the last films where it opened first in London, then in city centres, then in suburban cinemas. I was taken by a friend’s dad to see it in the Manchester city centre Odeon which was very exciting. I also had the novelisations by Alan Dean Foster which had ten pages of glamorous colour photos in the middle. And yes, like everyone else we trooped dutifully to The Phantom Menace and were bored. I have had to continuing caring because now one of the Moles juniors has a Star Wars obsession so saw all the sequel trilogy en famille. Also hour upon hour of Lego star wars on the wii.

  23. I’m glad I bothered reading this thread. For yours I’ve worried that I’ve never watched all of Star Wars and the bits I did see didn’t grab me at all . Apparently it’s ok not to like it so I’ll relax now.

    Thanks Arthur!

  24. My boss is a Star Wars fan so we get memes and gifs several times a week. It’s OK, but think of it like the James Bond franchise. Throwaway escapist cartoon violence

  25. I worked alongside a fella who thought the original three films represented the apotheosis of modern cinema. He even loved the Phantom Menace, which was about as exciting as a 3-hour Brexit-based Zoom lecture by Noel Edmonds. Nice fella, though. Him, not Edmonds.

  26. I watched about 15 minutes of “The Empire Strikes Back” when it was on the telly one Christmas, only because my step-brother was totally into all the Star Wars stuff. That’s the only Star Wars I’ve ever seen.

  28. I recall from documentaries that the view was that the cinema was dying and the likes of Spielberg and Lucas saved it with old school family entertainment. Before that it was soft porn and art films and no one was going, but if you look at the listings of films from then there were many great movies all along, including scifi that was more than westerns in space. It was about ideas and dystopia for example. I recall ropey Brit softporn with well known name actors from TV but it was matinees. I know because I stumbled upon such a movie when entering the wrong salon, looking for some improving period drama I meant to see. Easy mistake. Another era, long gone. Probably for the best.

    • If you read the introductions to Halliwell’s Film Guides written in the late 70s – early 80s the impression he gives is that cinema is in terminal and rapid decline. Now Leslie Halliwell was very much a glass-half-empty man who believed that good films stopped being made in about 1964 and that as an artform it probably deserved to die (the latest film in his guide to get four stars is, funnily enough, A Hard Days Night) but it must have seemed to a lot of people that cinema was being destroyed by the popularity of television. Then the home video boom of the 80s came, which ironically helped to save it.

        • As in “without hope”, yes.

          I do like Halliwell’s Hundred and Halliwell’s Harvest as great guides to films from Hollywood’s golden age (30s-40s) for those of us too young for it. He’s snooty and dismissive of a lot of great films but he gives the nod to a lot of older films that I for one wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. They also serve who stand and chunter.

    • The 60s and 70s were an amazing creative period for Hollywood, kick-started by Bonnie & Clyde. Some of the best movies ever made were conceived in this period.

      Jaws changed movies forever by introducing the summer tentpole. It’s a great movie, and coincided with the studios figuring out how to market and distribute more effectively to a larger audience. It was also a glaringly commercial flick in an era of wilful artiness.

      The real legacy of Jaws is that attracted interest on the East Coast. Serious people noticed how much money could be made by movies, and the potential for more money still. Consequently, the make up of studio leadership began to move from creative types to people with more of a classic business background. Decisions began to be made with a primary eye on commerce, rather than art. Marketing departments began to gain more power.

      Star Wars really served to prove the hypothesis, and to demonstrate the additional possibilities of merchandising and licensing.

      Personally, I think these changes were inevitable. Someone was going to unlock the true possibilities of cinema as a mass medium, it just happened to be Spielberg and, latterly, Lucas. Jaws and Star Wars are great movies, in their own ways, but Hollywood is a town that’s always changing – that 60s/70s thing was never going to last forever.

      It should be clear to anyone with eyes and ears that Hollywood has delivered some unbelievable films since 1977. It’s also continued to evolve, sometimes in positive ways, sometimes negative. I don’t, personally, believe that the timeline without (say) Jaws looks all that different, although I appreciate the wilful romanticism of trying to pin point the moment it all went wrong. It didn’t go wrong. You just got older and change got scarier.

      Personally, I’m a fan of late 90s Hollywood. Some truly great movies, thriving indies and new tech delivering mind blowing new audience experiences. But then, one day some kid somewhere will end up saying something similar about 2022 and the streaming wars. So it goes…

  29. I didn’t. I still love it. No amount of shit can sully the excitement and wonder of Star Wars, which is an instant proustian wormhole to boyhood for me. The ZHHHHHHTH of a lightsaber igniting; the original and best PEW PEW; Jawas, droids, Han Solo, Vader, Luke. The almost tender seriousness on Ian McDiarmid’s face when he says “and now, young Skywalker… you will die.” (In fact, I could do a thesis on how that one dude almost rescues the prequels.)

    The shit is, of course, very shit indeed. Attack of the Clones may be the worst tentpole blockbuster ever greenlit, with Rise of Skywalker – the most cowardly kowtow to racist virgins in the history of the arts – chomping hungrily at its heels. If the four cool seconds of Revenge of the Sith didn’t exist, you could throw that after both of them, but they still don’t stop it being pony. Phantom Menace, it turns out, is only the fourth worst Star Wars film, and is actually… OK in parts. But none of that matters because the good ones exist and they still do something to me that no other film can approach.

    (In the Disney+ stakes, I think they’re mostly very creditable. Mandalorian is excellent; Boba Fett is extremely dull. Kenobi is a bit snoozy for one episode but last night’s made me shout “fucking hell!” at the telly in sheer excitement. I’d say they’re ahead.)

    • So, you have light sabres going ZHHHHHHTH. I had them up there going FVVVVV, which I now realise is mistranscribed – that’s actually the sound made by The Ponderers in Vic Reeves Big Night Out. Easy to mix the two franchises up.

    • Almost in complete agreement here but absolutely with never having fallen out of love with Star Wars.

      Back in the 70s, films seemed to arrive in Ireland after they had done the tours of church halls, primary school assemblies and oil rigs, which means that I only saw Star Wars in 1978 on a family holiday in south Dublin. And I can still remember the sight and sound of a star destroyer chasing down the Tantive IV at the start of the movie. It was simply the most exciting looking and sounding thing that I had ever seen. And I grew up in Northern Ireland of the seventies where bombs and riots were relatively commonplace.

      Two years later, I went to see the Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back double bill late in the year and, in between, had a room decorated in the wallpaper, was a member of the fan club and started buying the books. Oddly, though, I was never really into the toys as I was the perfect age for them but it was always the films and, for a long time, only the films that I loved.

      It didn’t stop at the original trilogy. For all it’s faults, The Phantom Menace gave us Darth Maul, podracing, Qui-Gon Jinn and a kickstarting of Star Wars back into cinemas and television. Everything since then has been of a greater or lesser quality. Rogue One, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were all fantastic. Rise of Skywalker and Revenge of the Sith less so. Then there are the games – the arcade games, Dark Forces, X-Wing, Rogue Squadron, Jedi Knight, Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi: Fallen Order, the Lego games and Squadrons are (mostly) all great.

      But like hedgepig says, there is just something about the sound made by the firing up of a lightsaber. Star Wars spaceships have a particular sound that isn’t replicated anywhere else in film. The transition wipes that are signify that it’s Star Wars appear nowhere else these days. It is clearly all Star Wars and, even when it’s bad, I am hopelessly drawn towards it because it makes me feel like the same six year old boy who watched as a star destroyer rumbled onto a cinema screen. And I get that same rush from Rogue One as I do from Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales, Fallen Order or Rebels.

      When I watched The Last Jedi, there wasn’t quite a tear but there was certainly a sniff in the direction of the screen when Luke Skywalker disappeared and his robe billowed with the wind. I was 46 and it struck me that Luke Skywalker was a character that I had spent 40 years watching.

      Now, with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, I find myself grinning helplessly at the television as I’m watching some of the best of Star Wars in such quantity and quality that I could only once have dreamed of. Had you told me, in a time that we got one film every three years, that The Mandalorian, (to a slightly lesser degree) Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi would all be out only months apart and available to watch any time I want, I would have dismissed your talk as lunacy. But there they are, alongside Rebels, The Bad Batch, The Clone Wars and almost everything else with a Star Wars name on it. There’s the great, the good, the bad and then there’s the Star Wars mods of Boba Fett.

      Never fallen out of love with Star Wars, never will and, if all the films and television series are playing on a loop in the retirement home in which I spend my last days, which, depending on my mental faculties as the end approaches, they might be, even if only in my own head, I’ll die a happy man. In fact, give me the whole Total Recall package and let me holiday in Star Wars.

      And, yes, I do realise how hopelessly addicted to this stuff I am…but, if anything, my love of Alien and The Evil Dead are even more all-encompassing.

  30. I’m back in the States for two months and the Son and Heir is staying with me.

    As much at my instigation as his, we’ve seen all the films, all of The Mandalorian, staying up to date with OBW, and starting inroads into TBOBF.

    I don’t “love” them all, nor do I think that they’re the best films/tv shows of all time. And I could not care any less about the microdata that the obsessed fans do – the color of the lightsabers, the helmets, the bading, the canon, the…I just enjoy them for the entertainment, and that’s it.

    ANH will always have a place in my heart though. The first “big” movie I remember seeing with Dad in the cinema.

  31. Never seen any of them. It’s for dodgers.

    Around the time of the first one, for some reason it was always considered a good idea (actually by parents – God knows why) that we should all go to the cinema once in the summer holidays, usually on the hottest day of the year… never liked this day, although, admittedly, it was always free… and one year (presumably 1977) off we all went to see Star Wars but, luckily, we couldn’t get in and so we spent the rest of the sunny afternoon/evening climbing trees and playing cricket or football – a.k.a. doing what we should have been doing in the first place.

    I can’t remember anyone in my crowd around where I live or those at school ever even mentioning Star Wars. Maybe I just got in with the right people, I certainly feel as though I “dodged” a bullet.

  32. I saw the first one in 1977 when i was a 16-year old stoner into science-fiction and thought it stank even when it was up against that low standard to impress. I liked the cantina section, and the thing in the rubbish chute. The subsequent ones are also mediocre. I sat through them with my children, and they entertain, but they don’t provoke a proper sense of wonder. I saw 2001 when I was 7 and was rapt and bored alternately, and then, as a “child of Apollo”, followed everything to do with the Moon missions. I read all the Arthur C Clarke I could, plus loads of other science fiction books. “Star Wars” was just a sword opera and fake myths with no science fiction to think of. There are no science “what ifs” in the story, which is simply “fantasy / fairy tales in space”. And not my kind of “fantasy in Space”, either.

  33. I never started caring. Haven’t seen any of them.

    I loved Close Encounters, though – so much so that I saw it two nights running, treating my Mum and brother the second night.

  35. I still love the original trilogy – although I haven’t actually rewatched them since the VHS went the way of the dodo, because I hated the new and “improved” versions by George Lucas and the original originals seems to have gone extinct on DVD.
    I was ten when the first one came out, went with my sister to see it and fell madly in love with all of it. Saw all three multiple times in cinemas but especially the next two (because I had more money to spend by then).

    Then when me and my friends started having VHS recorders available at home, we rented all of them and taped them from one machine to another in real time, again and again until all of us had a copy…which we did with every film we ever rented…
    And I must have watched my copies at least thirty times until the cassettes were packed away many years later. The only thing I changed my mind about was the ewoks. Used to love them; with each viewing the sight of those little people dressed in badly fitted bear-onesies got more and more annoying.

    I never saw any of the other films in the cinema, I was suspicious from the beginning and didn’t want the new movies to soil my fond feelings towards the originals. Tried to watch the first prequel on TV later but turned it off in horror as soon as Jar Jar Binks showed up (and I was already bored by the previous scenes). Haven’t watched any of the other, nor the TV stuff.

    I was perfectly happy with the trilogy, didn’t feel the need for anything more. I find this hunger for sequels and prequels and spin-offs and everything now having to become a bloody franchise very tiresome (it will come as no surprise then that I haven’t bothered to watch any of the Marvel and DC films since the first two Maguire Spiderman movies and the first Hellboy).

  36. I grew up a SciFi fan…Dan Dare in the 50s, Doctor Who and Star Trek and 2001 in the 60s and so on, so was incredibly excited about Star Wars as it brought the sort of stuff that I’d always hoped for to the cinema. It’s easy to forget that Science Fiction was a rare thing.

    As for ‘caring’, I never stopped, but the ups and downs and disappointments have been well documented by others above already, so I won’t go there.

    For my money, the best films and now TV series have been about new characters and which take stories in new direction – Rogue One, The Mandalorian, and also have a bit of humour. The 3 prequels failed for me because you always knew where they would end up…i.e. at Ep 4…and were far too portentious. The original films were great for many reasons, but principally you didn’t know where they were going, and were brilliantly cast.

    When they try to shoehorn a backstory into it (e.g. Solo, Boba Fett), it doesn’t work nearly so well. Obi Wan Kenobi is possibly the exception, although I’m two episodes behind, but McGregor brings a great screen presence.

    Also, the special effects in all the new TV series are something else, aren’t ’ they..?

  37. 1977. I saw it when I was 14, target age group. Thought it was rubbish even then. Like a cross between Wizard of Oz and The Dambusters. Was more impressed with Close Encounters, which like many films in the 70s made America seem like a great place to be.

  38. I’d gladly never watch Star Wars ever again. It’s basically a kids film but having said that I didn’t like it back then either.
    Same reason I swerve Marvel films. Or Harry Potter. Or Paddington. Just uninteresting to me as a grown up

    Not wanting to cast aspersions on anyone else’s enjoyment though. You like what you like!

  39. Love the first 3.
    Hated the next 3.
    Love the last 3.
    Cannot be doing with the renumbering/reordering that fans are obsessed with.

    Good fun films, decent stories, well told.

    • See, I don’t understand this. Fine, I don’t care if people don’t like Star Wars, but this is a website in which retirees talk gleefully about dropping tons of cash on vinyl re-releases of records they bought as children. That apparently isn’t ridiculous, but a couple of films which changed cinema and which lots of people still like? Ridiculous.

      Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s nice that people still get excited about the records they liked in their youth. God knows I do. If that’s ridiculous, then great – being ridiculous is terrific fun. I just don’t understand the *sneering* about a phenomenon which is objectively hard to argue as any more ridiculous than the cultural stuff beloved of the typical Afterworder. Either they’re both ridiculous and to be sneered at, or neither is.

          • The use of the word “sneering” to describe any expression of dislike (or a POV other than your own) is typical Afterword (cuh).

            Is anybody “sneering” here? Hands up! To call the Star Wars “franchise” kids’ entertainment isn’t sneering, it’s an observation. But I will allow myself a very brief sneer (actually more an eye-roll) at adults who claim to find them artistically satisfying.

            • Calling something ridiculous and using scare quotes around “cultural phenomenon” is pretty much the definition of sneering, but ok.

              By the way, you’re replying to a reply that wasn’t replying to any of the things you’re talking about in your reply. I’ve made no claims for Star Wars being “artistically satisfying”, and I haven’t claimed it’s not for kids. I’ve got no dog in the “important” fight: trying to force pop culture into a highbrow critical framework isn’t something I’m interested in. I just really like Star Wars, because it was a feature of my childhood which still makes me happy. That makes it exactly like all the other “cultural phenomena” discussed on this here. 🤷‍♂️

              • It seems I’m required to justify some sneering, when I didn’t even realise that that’s what I was doing[*].
                I found the few early SW movies that I’ve seen entertaining, but that’s all they were. Not great art, I think.
                Perhaps the nearest they are to a cultural phenomenon is the pathway they have paved into the pockets of the world’s cinema goers. The first really serious attempt to monetise a movie franchise outside of the cinema as well as inside it. [**]

                [*]An opinion. Like arse-holes we all have them. Not a sneer.
                [**] Wry observation on my part. Not a sneer.

              • People who spend more time telling you what they dislike than what they like are invariably intensely boring and probably compensating for something.

                People who try to establish their own tastes as some kind of Mount Olympus of refinement are invariably acting out their own insecurities.

                This isn’t a blog for people to translate Proust together. It’s a load of rickety old pop music that allows people to remember being young, and that lets people pretend in front of the mirror to be 70s music journalists. It’s all childish, and all the better for it.

                I am one with the blog, and the blog is one with me.

                • Indeed. I’ve never really understood why people are so keen to say they don’t like something. I assume it’s a form of re-assurance. Most of the musicians feted on here do nothing for me, but I’ve always thought that was my on me, my loss. Apart from Genesis.

                • “People who spend more time telling you what they dislike than what they like are invariably intensely boring and probably compensating for something.” …. Mmm, I don’t know… not all the time… Call me boring (“Arthur, you’re boring”) but I think I resemble that comment sometimes. And I quite like hearing people mouth off (sneer!) about things they don’t like, as long as they can back up their arguments. It can be invigorating.

                  Plus it makes me work harder when I want to praise something that is worth praising, as I know I need to fight my corner and I’m not just preaching to a bunch of yes-men.

                  On the whole I think I prefer that to a bunch of people being fluffy and accepting of everything!

            • Your eye rolling makes me want to defend them as artistically satisfying. Maybe my combative streak made me start this thread without me realising!

              I’m not talking about defending the endless sequels though. Just the first one or two films, the real stuff.

              It would be an uphill struggle to convince someone that saw them as just kids entertainment. I suppose if I were to start anywhere I would start with the music. Those of you who don’t like Star Wars, would you ever at least concede that John Williams’ soundtrack is perhaps one of the finest orchestral soundtracks ever created?

              Exhibit one, Han and Leia’s Theme. Listen to this and tell me Mahler or Ravel wouldn’t have been envious:

      • I had no intention of responding, but as you have involved me I must say I do believe there’s a case to be answered here. In proclaiming as fact the notion that the original 1936 Flash Gordon is better than Star Wars, neither of which any of us* have seen, Hubes is more or less implicitly provoking someone less mentally aware than myself to go off on an irrelevant tangent. I’ve been watching The Offer and I know how these things work. The Offer is about the Machiavellian machinations behind the making of The Godfather (indeed, it’s inspired me to watch the trilogy, which made me realise I’d never seen Part 1 all the way through nor any of Parts 2 or 3 at all. I’m half way through Part 2 at the moment. So far I prefer Part 1, but I know enough to know that Part 2 is more revered. I’m not convinced yet, but still have an open mind.) BTW, I thoroughly recommend The Offer. All the ins and outs and various palavers involved in the making of Part One from the producer’s side, including legal, political and Mafia shenanigans. It’s very interesting and Matthew Goode’s good in it as Robert Evans (first thing of his I’ve liked) and Giovanni Ribisi is good as a mafioso fella.

        * I know there are some exceptions in the comments above; I’ve “rounded up” here for sake of convenience

        • I seem to recall that it was said of Star Wars that it was Saturday morning pictures writ large.
          I was of course being tongue in cheek I have seen the whole series it was shown in the seventies on television which was only 40 years from its first showing. Star Wars is now of a similar vintage from then to now by my calculations.
          I saw the ‘upgraded’ version with added CGI I hated it.
          My Machiavellian machinations may have been a mistake, I’ve never seen The Godfather.

      • I think we should definitely do a thread on that film. I can’t imagine a kids film from the 1980s with a Queen soundtrack would attract much hate on this site.

        • I actually read your first sentence – “I think we should definitely do a thread on that film” – and thought YEESS!! … and then I read on and realised you were being sarcastic.

          I absolutely love the Flash Gordon film, I was being genuine. I loved it and accepted it absolutely at face value in my youth, and when I’ve rewatched it as a wise old man I can see the craft in it. It’s a very, very difficult thing to do, to tread a fine line between genuine kids’ entertainment, bordering on tackiness, while still crafting something of value and being campy and ironic without being kitsch. In a way it’s like Star Wars but less po-faced – with a wink to the adult audience to say “yes, this is rubbish, but isn’t it fun?”… extremely difficult to do without seeming patronising to the source material, but it’s done with love. Mike Hodges just got it, as did Brian Blessed for that matter.

          And (yes, I’m serious) the soundtrack is amazing. It sounds like the band bought a synth (was it a Prophet, is that what you call it?) and all wanted a go on it. Then the orchestral bits are arranged beautifully by Howard Blake (of The Snowman fame).

  44. The Disney stuff has killed it for me, in my eyes it’s essentially fan fiction. For all the prequel flaws, without Lucas it has as much validity in the canon as if I made something and called it Star Wars.

    Born in the early 80s, Star Wars, to me, always existed. The re-releases in the 90s kept up the excitement, and the prequels were a BIG event. Again, it took time to accept their flaws as a teenage enthusiast, but I do think they improve with each one. They have what 7-9 lack: a properly drawn story arc and actual character development. Even with the clunky scripts and wooden performances.

    7 was too close to a remake, and the making-it-up-as-they-go-along aspect of 8 and 9 was infuriating. They were a fun ride but I think flying Leia and a major character dying due to being “a bit tired” sealed the shark jump for me. Now bringing back the late Boba Fett like Harold Bishop with amnesia? Joke over.

  45. I was impressed by the original film. Didn’t bother with the next two. Enjoyed the prequels and playing the computer games with my sons. Less so the hours spent trying to find a Mace Windu figure in Toys R Us. Haven’t bothered with it since. To be honest I’d probably go with the Toy Story quadrilogy before watching Star Wars again. Looking forward to seeing Lightyear. Films, like music are intensely personal at times. Anyone who wants to dress up as a storm trooper is just fine with me. We’ve all got to have something…

    • That has about 100 times more quality than the film I imagined as a teenager. There’s a story and animatronics, special effects and everything. I thought it was more “straightforward”. By that I mean a bloke dressed as Flash Gordon does a lot of shagging and that’s about it.

  48. As above, I’d be a veteran of 1978. The old Ormond in Stillorgan, south Dublin for my 8th birthday. We’ve just revisited the main movie series in Machete Order—which goes IV, V, II—completely ignoring Phantom Menace with no ill effect— III, back to Return of the Jedi and then through the sequels in order. With my impressionable 9 year old son along for the ride as the excuse, we’ve loved everything. He’s reminded me of why it made such an impression in the first place: whistling the Imperial March, force choking his younger brother and with “hello there” as his standard salutation. We have now rolled straight into the Kenobi series on Disney, which he’s perhaps loved even more. They’re not for everyone, for sure, but if you can’t find (or relive) the magic in these films through a kid’s eyes… what’s the point?

  49. Popular post!

    18 when film released so probably too interested in other things to be grabbed.

    Prefer my science fiction to be darker or dafter (1950s cold war/drive in films. Dubbed 60s Japanese Godzilla.

    Perhaps the Cowboy and Indian space opera conceit which doesn’t chime. Generally not a fan of westerns. Or the lack of jeopardy (see Superheroes/Marvel etc).

    I do admire the artistry on the creation of other planets but not enough to draw me in.

    Give me a b&w Film Noir.

  50. Finished watching Obi-Wan Kenobi with the boy this evening. After we’d finished wondering, once again, why a 6 year old was playing a 10 year old, and how come Stormtroopers, who are supposed to be ‘precise’ with their blasters, are worse at shooting than Barnsley’s strikers, I started wondering what was the point of the stormtroopers’ armour? Every single gun just shoots straight through it, lightsabers slice through it with ease, it just doesn’t seem to offer them any protection at all. Surely it makes it more difficult for them to move about. And it can’t be cheap.

    • It’s explained by the power of the Force. Aside from having an aura that bamboozles the thicko Storm Troopers, a Jedi is capable of blocking gunfire with the light sabre and (this is a development in OWK) if it hits the light sabre, it immediately returns back to the Storm Trooper, usually killing him.

  51. Just saw the finale. For a minute there my young son and I were wondering if the mortally-wounded Reva was going to become a female Darth Vader. We thought that it would be nice for Darth to have a girlfriend that looked exactly like him (but she would have a ribbon on her helmet so that we’d know which one was which).

    This concept was extended to other characters, one by one. I suggested the Rancor ( the terrifying monster in Jabba the Hutt’s lair) could have a girlfriend who looks exactly the same but sporting a ribbon. At this point my son said that I was just being stupid and that was that.

  52. Queued all the way up to C&A on Northumberland St. to see the first one in 1977. It was alright. Good fun,superb opening shot and the big bang at the end. Quite enjoyed it.

    Had no interest at all in the second one however I loved the third one, Carrie Fisher in a gold bikini was quite affecting.

    Mrs Beezer and I were in New York when The Phantom Menace was released and were thrilled to go along to a cinema on Union Square and see it. The excitement of doing that has meant I have soft spot for that one.

    I’ve an affection for the early ones but I’m not mad about the saga.

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