Long, Long Ago...

So normally this space is reserved for my What Should You See This Weekend feature, but since the only wide release is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, a movie I disliked almost as much as the second one, (read my review here) and there's nothing else new worth seeing in theaters apart from Once and maybe Waitress, I decided instead to follow the herd and post a quick entry about Star Wars, which made its debut exactly thirty years ago this weekend. Now I know a lot of you out there are probably sick of movie geeks talking over and over again about Star Wars. Personally, I sometimes have to resist the urge to roll my eyes when the subject comes up as well. But for better or worse, George Lucas' original trilogy are the defining films of my generation of movie buffs and critics. In many cases, they are the first movies we remember seeing in theaters and certainly the select few that we went back to see over and over again. They were also those rare movies that became more than just movies. If you had seen Star Wars, chances are you also owned a bunch of the action figures, several posters, the John Williams score, the bedsheets and, if you were really lucky, the R2-D2 cookie jar.

I was a year too late to see the first Star Wars film in theaters. The fact that I was born overseas and didn't move back to the U.S. until 1980 meant that my first viewing would have almost certainly been on VHS. I couldn't tell you about that experience though, because the honest truth is that I don't remember it. I do, however, have a vivid memory of going to see The Empire Strikes Back at a theater close by my then-home in Springfield, Virginia and already knowing who all the characters were, so clearly I had seen the first film a couple of times before that. Much of that first viewing of Empire is a blur (I think we came in late as well) but I definitely recall being entranced during the scene where Luke first meets Yoda on Dagobah. By the time Return of the Jedi was released three years later, we were overseas again so I had to watch that one on VHS as well. Again, I couldn't tell you what my first viewing of it was like, a flaw I blame more on the film than my own memory. (It is the least memorable of the three, let's be honest.) In fact, growing up, Jedi was the only installment in the trilogy we did not have in our own personal video library. I eventually rectified that in my early teens when I ordered it through the video club I belonged to. The truth is, I was happy just to watch Star Wars and Empire over and over. If I wanted to revisit Jedi, I just read the comic-book adaptation that we owned.

By the time I got around to purchasing my VHS copy of Jedi, I had more or less gotten over my Star Wars fix. I still liked the movies, but the need to see them over and over again had faded. I moved onto other directors--Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sam Raimi etc. etc.--and other movies. In fact, I don't think I watched the first Star Wars again until 1997 when it was re-released in theaters as part of that Special Edition nonsense. I went with a bunch of college pals to see the film on its second Opening Night and you know what? I was disappointed. The first hour moved at a glacial pace and all the new bells and whistles that Lucas added hurt the magic more than helped it. I disliked the experience so much that I skipped the re-releases of Empire and Jedi so I wouldn't have to put up with additional tweaks. (I have seen the Special Editions of both titles since and stand by my initial decision.) Not long after that came The Phantom Menace, the movie that opened up a whole new can of worms about the durability of the Star Wars franchise.

But that's a whole separate discussion. Really, this weekend is all about celebrating the first film, which I've had a chance to rewatch since my disastrous '97 screening and was happy to find myself enjoying it all over again. (Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that I was coming off a double bill of Menace and Attack of the Clones.) There are still so many things to love about it: the lightsabers, the final assault on the Death Star, Darth Vader's first entrance. There's an innocence and earnestness present in that movie that's missing from a lot of today's more sophisticated, but soulless blockbuster spectacles. No wonder Star Wars continues to be a gateway drug for kids into the magic movies. It entertains and engages young viewers without talking down to them. Most of you that read this site already know this, but my wife and I are expecting our first child in a little under two weeks and I can't wait to show him Star Wars for the first time a couple of years from now. Ideally, his first viewing would be in a theater, but since the only film prints Lucasfilm leases out now are the Special Editions, it'll most likely be at home on our TV. Fortunately, I went out and purchased the two-disc DVD editions that were released late last year that contains the original theatrical versions of all three movies. That means no extra Jabba sequence in A New Hope and Sebastian Shaw is still standing next to Yoda and Alec Guinness at the end of Jedi rather than Hayden Christensen. If I can't experience it as a kid again myself, at least I can live vicariously through him.