Reflections On Star Wars

Kaine Mandaala

25-05-2007 08:22:45

Since today is the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Star Wars, I thought it'd be good to have a thread where members could share their thoughts, reflect on what the series has meant to them, and what they might be doing to honor today.

You can talk about anything relating to the Star Wars films, but:

1 - Try to focus on the first one (A New Hope). That's what today is really all about.

2 - Try not to bash the other films. Just because it's not your favorite doesn't mean it's not someone elses.

3 - Try not to bash the other posts. No flame wars on this one.

Kaine Mandaala

25-05-2007 08:43:09

On this day: May 25th

1944 - Frank Oz is born.

1977 - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (as Star Wars) opened to a limited run.

1983 - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was released.

2007 - Celebration IV (Day 2).

2007 - Universal Day of the Jedi

2007 - Official Star Wars Day of Los Angeles, California.

MERLANCE

25-05-2007 09:27:09

Ah, Star Wars. What does it mean to me? Well, lets have a look at that.

I remember being 3 or 4 and seeing ANH on TV for the first time. I only remember part of it, C-3P0 and R2-D2 wandering around the desert, but that is my earliest Star Wars memory. It's a good memory, of simpler days.

I never really watched the movies in a meaningful way until I was 10. I mean I KNEW Darth Vader was Lukes father and all, but I never bothered actually seeing the movies. Between 10-13 or so, I watched all 3 movies every 2 months or so, consistently. And then I still watched them periodically until I was 15 or so. That is where my Star Wars obsession began.

As for Star Wars games, I remember playing ESB on Atari when I was 6 or 7, and then Super Star Wars on the SNES. My REAL gaming began with Dark Forces. When we got our first computer in 1996, one of the first games we got was Dark Forces. It took me a while to beat it, as there were a few levels that I kept having to do over and over (Anoat, then the mining place where you fight the first phase 1 Dark Trooper, then the ice level, then Jabba's ship). When I beat the game, I was hungry for more, so I pre ordered Jedi Knight.

Back in those days, I used AOL, and had a profile that had Star Wars stuff in it, so one day some guy named Ackbar345 recruited me to the Knights of the Outer Rim, which was part of the Vornskr Assault Wing, which was run by our very own Mav (this was either late 96 or early 97).

Anyhow, that led to other clubs, which led me here. So what does Star Wars mean to me now? I'm not sure, I stopped reading the books mid NJO (Because they started to suck), but I at least have the memories from the X-Wing series to look back on as well as all the games I've played over the years. I suppose what Star Wars is now is people, all the people I've met. Most of which I have no feelings towards one way or another, but still plenty that I've grown to like or at least be acquainted with on good terms.

So, I think thats what Star Wars is to me now, the people it caused me to meet.

Roche

25-05-2007 09:28:42

This day means a lot to me, and I hope Star Wars will celebrate 40 years and 50 years... And the fact I can't even celebrate because I'm in Prague.. :/ makes it so damn, I don't even got a Vader mask! 40 years to Star Wars I'm going to Los Angels!

Juda

25-05-2007 13:30:03

So, I think thats what Star Wars is to me now, the people it caused me to meet.



I totally agree, my first remembrance of ANH is from when I was around five years of age have a vague memory of the Tusken Raider’s.

I actually read a few Star Wars graphic novels before I watched the films which inspired me to go out and rent them because I found ‘laser swords’ to be cool. :P

I later received the boxed trilogy on VHS and still have them and watch them frequently but what I’m really getting to is that at the age of fourteen-fifteen I would spend hours looking up character profiles in the Star Wars Databank which led me to search for random Star Wars searches, eventually I found an online club called the Bounty Hunters Guild, it was here where I met some fond friends and caused me to join the DB.

Star Wars means a lot to me because without it I would never have met some of the most funny, disturbed and interesting people I’ve ever met, so props to the big Lucas! :w00t:

nariah

25-05-2007 14:14:12

WOW ! Star Wars was the one thing my father and I had in common . I remeber sitting with my dad all day watching the movies. Now that he is gone I still hold those memories tight to my heart and hopfully I will be able to share them with my kids one day.

Kieran

25-05-2007 14:27:12

To me? Well first up is my earliest memory which was of the Hoth battle scene, every time I went to my mates I'd insist on watching it. But I wouldn't consider myself a total geek in the realm, Star Wars for me is about the people i've met. I trauled the net for a decent hobby for me to take up and stumbled upon the Bounty Hunter's Guild, since joining that in ... god knows actually I've met a bunch of great people and found a home to come back to day after day, plus it's a great escape from the horrors we face in real life.

MERLANCE

25-05-2007 14:27:34

WOW ! Star Wars was the one thing my father and I had in common . I remeber sitting with my dad all day watching the movies. Now that he is gone I still hold those memories tight to my heart and hopfully I will be able to share them with my kids one day.



Same for me, sort of. That early memory of Star Wars I mentioned is one of the few that I have of my dad, I remember sitting on the couch watching it with him. He died when I was 4 1/2. So I guess maybe Star Wars reminds me of my dad, too...

Demious

25-05-2007 16:01:29

I guess I'll be the odd one out here....cause in my early life, I didn't like Star Wars. In fact, I openly disliked it. I was just never into that sort of thing. I hadn't even watched the original trilogy- so uninterested was I. Sure, I thought Darth Maul was pretty sweet and Yoda kicked butt, but it never went farther than that.
But then, of course, I moved to a different school and met my future fiance. She was apalled that I had never seen the original trilogy, and forced me to see it - on the day it first premiered no less - May 25th. I'm not old enough to remember seeing the original in theaters, but I can appreciate it nonetheless.

Kaine Mandaala

25-05-2007 17:02:11

Star Wars was quite the phenomenon - a force that no one had ever seen, nor have we seen since. The mania that swept the world in the summer of 1977 is unparalleled. Fans are usually so devoted that they recite lines in everyday speech, make references to people, places and events as if they exist, and everyone accepts it.

What Star Wars is to me is the memory of when life was easy. It reminds me of a time when everything was really going well but I had no idea. My interest in Star Wars as a genre kind of fluctuates between hopelessly dedicated to lightly interested. Watching the films - any of them - rekindles my feeling of when I was a child, dreaming about flying X-Wings, using lightsabers and seeing creatures like Yoda.

A New Hope, in all its flawed glory, still remains among my favorite films of all time. I even liked a lot of the Special Edition changes (minus Greedo's potshot, crappy looking CGI Jabba, and the "fanboy pants wetting" appearance of Boba Fett).

Star Wars reminds me of a good friend of mine from long ago, and in some ways it is like one as well.

Xanos

25-05-2007 17:50:45

Today means the release of Sacrifice and the return of the Sith. Woo!

Today also means anger and rage at the EU release date not being for another two weeks. I want to know who dies dammit! That and Jacen's Darth name. Yes. That too.

And, yes, I'm a geek.

(Note to would-be smartasses... this post was not an invitation to tell me what happens :P Somehow I've actually managed to keep myself spoiler free for once... though chances are that isn't going to last the full two weeks :$)

Yadar Shyk

25-05-2007 18:13:54

Jacen dies! :P not really I havent read it yet either.

Daar-Kareth

25-05-2007 20:29:55

Star Wars has filled my imagination since I was 4. My earliest memory is when I went to a Sci-Fi con
with my uncle and cousins, I was 6 and a smart ass. My uncle was a huge fan of Star Wars and so were my cousins. The first thing we seen was a group of trekies fighting Boba Fett with homemade blasters and phasers. We seen costumes from just about every Sci-Fi movie, show, comic, novel etc. The most memorable part of the day was I saw a Dark Jedi that looked like he was wearing a LoTR like costume with a cloak tunic and leather belt that were all black. The Dark Jedi was fighting
a Luke Skywalker impersonator, the two had a mock lightsaber duel with their wooden homemade lightsabers. The Dark Jedi won and everybody cheered, it was the coolest thing I've ever seen back then. That single event had such a great impact on my imagination, I spent just about every day thinking about being a Jedi and flying fighters in dog fights and ripping through canyons and plains
on distant worlds with a real fast speeder.

Star Wars and gaming has given me so many opportunities to meet people, do stuff, collect books, toys, games, posters, and collectables. Star Wars even got me my first girlfriend, and helped me get laid. Not to mention gave me a whole bunch of games to play, and clubs to join.

My love for Star Wars brought me here, to a club which totaly kicks ass and also provides many in depth daydreams and fantasies about crazy adventures, beautiful women, space battles and travel, exotic worlds, and kicking ass with a lightsaber.

Star Wars pwnz!

DStephens

26-05-2007 02:03:57

Well for to properly explain my obsession with Star Wars I have to first state these things. First I was born after the original trilogy had been made (1984), so I wasnt able to experience it firsthand. However I do have the accounts of both my parents and my grandfather, and I quote. "When I first saw that spaceship enter the screen I thought, is this damned thing going to ever end?!?!?!" With that said, they were hooked. It was so bad that with my grandfather he played ANH and ESB every Christmas Eve night as we gathered at his house to open gifts.

That was how my the seed of my SW obsession was planted. For years the only realscene I could ever remember was Yoda dying in RotJ, and for years I would watch the movies sporadically and at Xmas where it peeked my interest only because it was cold outside, and there were only adults around (I was the only child/grandchild in my family). This constantly repeated itself until I turned 12. For some reason at that age the movies stuck in my head at that point and was all I wanted to watch over and over. Also at this time I was starting to read sci-fi and fiction novels. One day I went to a pharmacy with my mother and happened to see the SW book Darksaber.

I read the book 7 times. From there the seed that had been planted years before didnt just sprout. It rooted itself into my very spirit that day. As the years passed I would spend pretty much every dime I had on SW books, up until roughly 2000 when we bought our first computer. At that time I was 16 and recieved a load of cash from my grandfather for my birthday. I went to the electronics/bookstore meaning to buy one of the essential guides and noticed they had TIE Fighter for sale. I bought it and took it home. I dont think I left the computer for a week solid. After beating the game I wanted more, after doing several searches on added levels I found the EH site. I joined that and the DB, and here I am today.

Ok well this is getting long and off subject, so to make it short, Star Wars has become a very essential part of my life. It has through its story caused me to think deeply on subjects such as life and death, religion and the very happenings of our universe. While I have lead pretty much a geeks life I am happy, and in all honesty am afraid to think of what my life would be if I would not have experienced this series.

DS

RevengeX

26-05-2007 07:43:32

I remember watching Star Wars when I was three or four at my maternal grandparents' house. They had the original trilogy on video and everyday after school, they would pick me and my sister up in their old Buick and let me watch them while they cooked me lunch. I probably saw all three of them at least ten times.

When we went to New York to stay with my mother's younger sister and her husband, we saw that she had a large collection of Star Wars books (probably around forty). Then my brother got hooked and started buying the books, too. My brother and I have a collection of at least sixty Star Wars books and then, about four years ago or so, he stumbled across the DJB. Looking for what? I have no clue, but he found it and I saw him checking it out, so I joined.

I continue to buy the books and I just finished three of them: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, Allegiance, and Darth Vader: Rise of a Sith Lord.

Star Wars has been granted eternal life. :)

Timbal

19-07-2007 13:01:34

Sorry to resurrect an old thread with this long post. (Yeah, right! :P)

It's incredibly impossible to underestimate the influence of Star Wars on my life. ANH was released only a few months after I was born, so I can't say anything about it right off-hand. However, I do vaguely remember waiting in line with my mother to see ESB, seeing the movie poster hanging outside that theater and wondering what kind of strange creature was that guy riding.

The next memory I have is the Battle of Hoth, and that's pretty much it for my earliest SW memories. Actually, those two memories are the earliest memories I have of my entire life, which makes it a pretty big deal for me.

I don't really remember my reaction to ESB, but I remember playing with a die-cast metal Millennium Falcon about a year or so afterwards, and it was one of my favorite toys. Then ROTJ came out, and although I don't remember actually sitting in the theater and seeing it, I do remember that I was entranced by it.

Fast forward several years, and I remember picking up a computer gaming magazine just because they had reviewed X-Wing for the PC. I was floored by graphics, and mourned the fact that my computer at the time was a measly 8086, and this monster required at least a 386, or a 486 to run it nicely. So, I had to skip it due to that reason. However, several years later I had stopped by in a Software, Etc. in New York City, and they actually had TIE Fighter running on a PC available for anyone to play, a rarity. I only played one mission, but I was hooked on SW, and bad. I managed to scrape enough money later to buy X-Wing and run it on my-then brand spanking new Pentium I 60MHz system. Oh, the weeks that flew by in my X-Wing! As a interesting side note, I found out all about the inner workings of MS DOS 6.22 due to me trying to ensure that X-Wing ran as smooth as possible on that thing. (Getting Falcon 3.0 to run later provided me with a graduate-level course in memory management :P) It directly gave me the experience that I later needed to get my first tech job.

When TIE Fighter dropped in price enough I got that too, and that's really the defining moment for me. At that point I had 100% fallen for SW. The plot line in TIE Fighter was so amazingly awesome that I kept renting the SW movies over and over again.

Then they were re-released on VHS and I scraped up more money to buy the entire box set (No mean feat as I was like 16 at the time), and pretty much wore them out.

Eventually, once I got a bit more comfortable connecting to this new thing called the Internet on my blazing fast 28.8k modem, I eventually found the EH. I joined, and the rest just went downhill.

Needless to say, by the time the Special Edition came out, I was one of the first in line, and I purchased them on VHS too when they were released. Then I met my wife, and found out that she was a fan too, but nowhere near my level of dedication. By this time I was a serious SW novel and game collector, and by then I had met many of the people in the DB/EH that I now call my RL friends.

After I got married the amount of time that I had to dedicate to my SW fanism started to fade, but I still kept as current as I could. However, the birth of my first son (Joshua) threw what free time I had out the window, and I laid low for a while.

However, once he was about 2.5/3 years old, I had determined that my son was old enough to watch TPM and TCW with me on DVD, and possibly even be able to understand some of what was going on. Initially, his reaction was a bit disappointing, but by the time RotS was released he was a pretty hard core fan for a 3-year old. He's so into SW now that it's sometimes scary. :P Heck, every time

I expect that my youngest will also follow in the same path, but he's only 2.5 years old, and still can't quite grasp the concept of a movie quite yet, so I figure that if I give him a year or two he'll be good to go. As is now, he loves playing with Josh's lightsabres and gets a kick out of turning them off and on (With the attendant snap-hiss noise). :P

SW is something that both Josh and I have deep connections to, a common ground that I don't think will ever go away. He's 5.5 years old now, and although he struggles with tactical/strategic choices, he plays a pretty decent game of Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles with some help. And don't get me started on Star Wars Lego, he's really good at both games on his Gamecube. Since we live in the Orlando area, we have yearly visits to Disney-MGM Studios during Star Wars Weekends, which is awesome for the whole family.

Thus, SW is something that has far transcended mere fanism in my family. It's virtually a part of daily life for us, and I think that no matter what happens in the future, SW will be a common thread that we can always fall back on. That's a pretty comforting thought. :)

Furthermore, it has influenced the direction that my life has taken career-wise. Becoming a computer tech was first dictated by necessity to play X-Wing, but that blossomed into a decent paying career in the IT/Telecom industry. So you can say that because of SW, I am where I am. :P

Kaine Mandaala

19-07-2007 14:07:57

Sorry to resurrect an old thread with this long post. (Yeah, right! :P)

It's incredibly impossible to underestimate the influence of Star Wars on my life. ANH was released only a few months after I was born, so I can't say anything about it right off-hand. However, I do vaguely remember waiting in line with my mother to see ESB, seeing the movie poster hanging outside that theater and wondering what kind of strange creature was that guy riding.

The next memory I have is the Battle of Hoth, and that's pretty much it for my earliest SW memories. Actually, those two memories are the earliest memories I have of my entire life, which makes it a pretty big deal for me.

I don't really remember my reaction to ESB, but I remember playing with a die-cast metal Millennium Falcon about a year or so afterwards, and it was one of my favorite toys. Then ROTJ came out, and although I don't remember actually sitting in the theater and seeing it, I do remember that I was entranced by it.

Fast forward several years, and I remember picking up a computer gaming magazine just because they had reviewed X-Wing for the PC. I was floored by graphics, and mourned the fact that my computer at the time was a measly 8086, and this monster required at least a 386, or a 486 to run it nicely. So, I had to skip it due to that reason. However, several years later I had stopped by in a Software, Etc. in New York City, and they actually had TIE Fighter running on a PC available for anyone to play, a rarity. I only played one mission, but I was hooked on SW, and bad. I managed to scrape enough money later to buy X-Wing and run it on my-then brand spanking new Pentium I 60MHz system. Oh, the weeks that flew by in my X-Wing! As a interesting side note, I found out all about the inner workings of MS DOS 6.22 due to me trying to ensure that X-Wing ran as smooth as possible on that thing. (Getting Falcon 3.0 to run later provided me with a graduate-level course in memory management :P) It directly gave me the experience that I later needed to get my first tech job.

When TIE Fighter dropped in price enough I got that too, and that's really the defining moment for me. At that point I had 100% fallen for SW. The plot line in TIE Fighter was so amazingly awesome that I kept renting the SW movies over and over again.

Then they were re-released on VHS and I scraped up more money to buy the entire box set (No mean feat as I was like 16 at the time), and pretty much wore them out.

Eventually, once I got a bit more comfortable connecting to this new thing called the Internet on my blazing fast 28.8k modem, I eventually found the EH. I joined, and the rest just went downhill.

Needless to say, by the time the Special Edition came out, I was one of the first in line, and I purchased them on VHS too when they were released. Then I met my wife, and found out that she was a fan too, but nowhere near my level of dedication. By this time I was a serious SW novel and game collector, and by then I had met many of the people in the DB/EH that I now call my RL friends.

After I got married the amount of time that I had to dedicate to my SW fanism started to fade, but I still kept as current as I could. However, the birth of my first son (Joshua) threw what free time I had out the window, and I laid low for a while.

However, once he was about 2.5/3 years old, I had determined that my son was old enough to watch TPM and TCW with me on DVD, and possibly even be able to understand some of what was going on. Initially, his reaction was a bit disappointing, but by the time RotS was released he was a pretty hard core fan for a 3-year old. He's so into SW now that it's sometimes scary. :P Heck, every time

I expect that my youngest will also follow in the same path, but he's only 2.5 years old, and still can't quite grasp the concept of a movie quite yet, so I figure that if I give him a year or two he'll be good to go. As is now, he loves playing with Josh's lightsabres and gets a kick out of turning them off and on (With the attendant snap-hiss noise). :P

SW is something that both Josh and I have deep connections to, a common ground that I don't think will ever go away. He's 5.5 years old now, and although he struggles with tactical/strategic choices, he plays a pretty decent game of Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles with some help. And don't get me started on Star Wars Lego, he's really good at both games on his Gamecube. Since we live in the Orlando area, we have yearly visits to Disney-MGM Studios during Star Wars Weekends, which is awesome for the whole family.

Thus, SW is something that has far transcended mere fanism in my family. It's virtually a part of daily life for us, and I think that no matter what happens in the future, SW will be a common thread that we can always fall back on. That's a pretty comforting thought. :)

Furthermore, it has influenced the direction that my life has taken career-wise. Becoming a computer tech was first dictated by necessity to play X-Wing, but that blossomed into a decent paying career in the IT/Telecom industry. So you can say that because of SW, I am where I am. :P



Holy crap, Timbal, you and I had similar parts in our paths.

Rather Similar...
- X-Wing forced me to learn a lot about Windows/DOS. I became somewhat of an expert.
- TIE Fighter was a huge turning point in my dedication, despite the fact that I grew up in the hype of ESB/ROTJ and the spin-off cartoons (Droids, Ewoks).
- Both games made me really want to get into game design, but I went to college for Computer Animation. But essentially the Star Wars games shaped my future.
- EH was one of my first real interactions with other serious fans.

Things not similar...
- I'm slightly older by an approximate 3 years
- I don't have kids
- I've never met anyone IRL that I met through the EH/DB/DJB.
- I didn't actually go through with utilizing the degree in Computer Animation... yet. I'm looking into the IT path though :)

Drichar Deis

26-01-2008 09:57:43

My first memory of Star Wars has to be Princess Leia in the metal bikini! hmmm fond memories!

Severon V

21-03-2008 11:13:50

My first memory of Star Wars was the Obi-Wan/Darth Vader duel. >:)

Deatharoc

06-04-2008 13:42:14

My first memory of Star Wars was the whole "Luke, I am your father!" thing. Damn I love that scene :P .