Wookies, Princesses, and the Return of the Force: My Life With Star Wars

Milleniun FalconEpisode I

THE NEW DISCOVERY

Star Wars was my childhood and my childhood was Star Wars.

To know me as a child was to know my love of the galaxy far, far away.

One of my first memories (if not the very first) was of seeing the first Star Wars (Oh hell, the fourth one) in a theater. I was three and R2-D2 was on the screen. This image and moment is burned onto my retinas to the point I can almost touch it. R2 is in the Death Star and the heads of all of the other filmgoers line the bottom of the screen (and being little, they take up more then one might imagine).

My parents claim as I left the theater I could not stop talking about it, even going so far as to debate the film with some college students standing nearby us; listing in my opinion what was the best parts of the film (considering who I am as an adult, this is not at all surprising). Continue reading

Star Wars: One Fan’s Remembrances

Today, Stars Wars (or as some like to say A New Hope), turns 35… which means officially I am old.

To celebrate this cultural milestone (and personal success for seeing this day. Woohoo! Survival!), I thought I would share excerpts and links from two editorials I wrote about Star Wars over the last few months. 

The first one was my reaction to the blu-ray release of the series. To say, I was a little annoyed that the original trilogy without Lucas’ changes is not included is put it mildly (Han shoots first!). Still I decided to share my own personal memories around each of the films. It is called “Goodbye to a Galaxy Far, Far Away.” It can be found on GreenSpotBlue.com here. Here is the beginning:

Soon the Complete Star Wars Saga will be hitting on blu-ray, and for a member of Generation X, it can’t help but make me stop and take pause over this creation and its influence. For my generation, this is our Beatles, this is our man on the moon, this is our disco. We wear the t-shirts, we recite the lines at random times:  Continue reading

The Fears of a Four-Year Old Superhero

My four-year old son has four superhero capes, he is very careful to choose the right one to wear on a given day.

He has two different superhero identities. They are Super Greyson and The Grey Lightning.  Super Greyson can fly, The Grey Lightning can run fast; both fight bad guys and monsters.

And yet, for all of these capabilities, my son (like any normal four-year old) has fears. So far there has not been a concern about monsters in the closet; we’ve been avoiding Monsters, Inc. for that reason (While I love the film, Pixar you open a possibility of a can of worms with that one!), but there are others that have crept up to surprise both his mother and myself.

Bad Guys

You think a superhero would be okay with bad guys, but his fear of them seems to have really grown in the last few months. Continue reading

Why I am stuck seeing The Phantom Menace again…

They say that being a parent is all about making sacrifices. I had already understood that but I never thought it was something concrete, I thought it would mean I was like The Giving Tree, but in spirit … But because my son is four, and he is the right age for it, I’m about to make another sacrifice, one to hang on the wall of parenthood next to my broken DVD of the first The Pirates of the Caribbean and the torn cover of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles.

I am going to take him to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on Imax, 3D in February.

Godfather 3 is far too over quoted by people, but seriously, I was out! Lucas and his mad skills at getting to my checkbook has pulled me back in.

Now I grew up with Star Wars (the first movie came out when I was three which was the perfect age for warping my little mind), but after all of his changes to the original trilogy he had lost me. I was free! I didn’t buy the last set of DVDs, I didn’t buy the Blu-Rays. Oh, I held them in the store, but more to study the ugly cover art on the front (and really it is bad). Continue reading