I wouldn’t describe myself as a fanatic. At least, not compared to the guy a few doors down who drives the 1993 Subaru Legacy and has personalised ‘Star Wars’ number plates. (To be precise, I think it’s some vowel-deprived variant. Good thing he’s not a fan of ‘The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’ though.) It’s not as if I refer to ‘the Force’ in everyday conversation and I’ve never nominated ‘Jedi’ as my chosen religion on a Census form. Nor have I campaigned to have May the fourth recognised as an official public holiday. But, one way or another, Star Wars has been part of my life for almost forty years.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a fanatic. At least, not compared to the guy a few doors down who drives the 1993 Subaru Legacy and has personalised ‘Star Wars’ number plates. (To be precise, I think it’s some vowel-deprived variant. Good thing he’s not a fan of ‘The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’ though.) It’s not as if I refer to ‘the Force’ in everyday conversation and I’ve never nominated ‘Jedi’ as my chosen religion on a Census form. Nor have I campaigned to have May the fourth recognised as an official public holiday. But, one way or another, Star Wars has been part of my life for almost forty years.
I was awestruck. From the day I saw the first instalment at the Burwood Drive In through the windscreen of a Nissan E-20 (eat your heart out, Imax), I was smitten with the whole intergalactic fairytale. Never again would I be able to see a piece of cardboard tubing and not view it in terms of a potential lightsaber. Dressing gowns would forever be Jedi robes and not merely the highly flammable overlay you wore between bath time and crawling into bed. It changed the way in which my generation viewed the world.
We enjoyed them for much longer than the two hours we spent in a darkened room at the local cinema, popcorn cooling at our fingertips and stray shards of choc-top spoiling our t-shirts. Those films were fodder for countless schoolyard discussions. We recited the dialogue, imitated the voices and delighted each other by recounting huge sections of the movies. Long before video, laser disc and DVD, we kept those films alive through living room re-enactments using figurines and whatever pots, pans or shoeboxes we deemed necessary to recreate the moment. These were both acts of artful invention and slavish mimicry. That was how we kept the stories close to us.
Just glancing at my Primary School photos is enough to tell you everything you need to know about my devotion to Star Wars – throughout my formative educative years, I stuck with the classic ‘Skywalker’ haircut. Those who were first to see ‘Empire’ carried with them the weight of a cinematic secret that would remain unrivalled until ‘The Crying Game’. By the time ‘Jedi’ rolled around, it was much more than just another film but a broader cultural event. Things were in such a state of turmoil after the second movie. We, as a planet, needed closure.
But the final instalment came and went and then…nothing. The franchise whose slogan was ‘the saga continues’ had come to a semi-satisfying conclusion complete with a glow-in-the-dark Alec Guinness and a song performed by Ewoks that sounded like something one of the smaller countries might perform at Eurovision. Primary school had come to an end and so too had Star Wars. George Lucas, the visionary who had succeeded in taking the world’s imagination hostage next gave us ‘Howard the Duck’ which, in reality, was a colossal intergalactic turkey.
The next disturbance in the Force occurred sometime after I finished University, when the original films were remastered, returning to multiplexes everywhere. To watch them again was like travelling back in time. But then, in the late nineties, came news of three ‘prequels’. Better still, these new instalments were going to be filmed in Australia, leaving open the possibility that the Big Pineapple or Wobbies World might feature heavily in the battle scenes. But I didn’t go. I’d grown up and left Star Wars behind. As it happens, the reviews were less than kind. Jar Jar Binks did not so much polarise people as repel them outright; so much so that he might well have been a distant cousin of Howard the Duck. It’s safe to say that when the guy a few doors down stuck his ‘Star Wars’ plates on his 1993 Subaru Legacy, he wasn’t thinking of Jar Jar Binks.
But a funny thing happened. I watched as my nephews grew to love those early films just as I had. And whilst they too were immune to the charms of Jar Jar Binks, they were desperate to see each instalment. Eventually I succumbed, agreeing to take them to the third and final prequel as a result of a compelling review that claimed it wasn’t as bad as the other two. My eldest nephew dressed as Darth Vader for the occasion, which is a great way to ensure prompt service at kiosk. No one wants to keep the Lord of Darkness waiting for popcorn. No one.
Despite this, I was nonplussed when I heard about the most recent instalments. I attended a screening both with misgivings and my nephews, but as the lights went down, something happened. From the first strain of the main theme, I was dragged back to a world I thought I’d long left behind. Despite myself, I enjoyed it immensely. Childhood, I think, is not just something you live but something you carry. And it can be a sweet, sweet thing to be transported back if only for a few hours. It’s not too late. Maybe there’s still time to get out the dressing gown and some cardboard tubing. Perhaps even convert an empty tissue box into the Millennium Falcon. The Force Awakens in me, at least for a little while.