day 49 - Star Wars

OK film fans, I was hoping to be able to settle in tonight and watch a new classic or perhaps one of the old guard, but I'm going to my nephew's tomorrow for his birthday party and having the energy to deal with a bunch of 9 year olds pretty much dictates I get as much sleep as possible tonight. So in honor of my nephew's birthday, and the little kid inside of all of us, I'd like to talk about a film that I saw when I was about his age.

Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977, two months before I turned 9. The first time I saw it I got into the theater a few minutes late. Struggling in the darkness to see anything, I found my seat, and amazing new worlds, as the first Star Destroyer crossed the screen in what seemed like an eternity. By the end of that summer I had seen Star Wars in the theaters exactly 9 times. I remember this number vividly because it was an important topic that summer. To the boys in my neighborhood it was a number thrown out like the number of baseball cards or comic books you had. It was a badge of honor, proudly displayed or, if the number was too low, quietly avoided. My best friends and next door neighbors, Eric and Olaf Solheim, two ridiculously competitive brothers, saw it 14 and 11 times respectively. Danny Goshorn, the tall skinny kid down the block, saw it 7 times and Dennis Crabb, the chubby kid who lived across the street from him, saw it only 5 times.

We all know the story. Simple farm boy Luke Skywalker meets Obi-Wan Kenobi while saving droids R2D2 and C3PO. In an effort to get to the bottom of a cryptic message found in R2D2's memory, they hire superpimp bad ass Han Solo (don't even get me started) and his first mate Chewbacca (in the classic cantina scene) to pilot them to find the source of the message, Princess Leia. Along the way we learn about the force, its power and its dark side. Our heroes fight as members of the Rebels against the Empire, its Emperor and the ominous enforcer Darth Vader. All paths collide in an epic battle against a moon sized Death Star.

There's a ton of topics that have been discussed to death regarding Star Wars. It's origins as a modern answer to the serialized popcorn movies of director George Lucas' youth, the subtexts of philosophy and religion that run rampant through the film and the cult of followers that built up over the years. There's the stunning fact that George Lucas, as a struggling writer/director, barely got Star Wars made by a major studio. And of course now there's the new trilogy, loved by the younger crowd (like my nephew) and hated by many of us older fans.

To be honest I could care less about all of that. The first Star Wars has always been a sentimental favorite for the way it sparked my imagination as a kid. Every light saber fight, strange alien and x-wing attack lived in my memory for years. My friends and I, as guinea pigs in a new level of film marketing, collected every possible action figure, model kit and board game (it was a few years before video games even hit the market!) we could get our hands on. Believe me when I tell you I was the big man on the block when I got the Death Star Space Station for Christmas in 1978.

But what really stirs the imagination and grabs the little kid in all of us is what George Lucas understood when he first began, all the best stories you remember as a kid are tales of a journey. In fact, many of the greatest works of literature, from The Odyssey to Huckleberry Finn are tales of a journey into the unknown. It's a big world out there and when you're a kid it's all new, the possibilities are endless and the sirens call of freedom is strong. Star Wars reminds us that with your imagination as your guide, even as a grown up, there are always new worlds to explore.

My wish for my nephew on his birthday is that he never forgets the power of the "force" called imagination. Because regardless of what it is you want out of life if you can't imagine it, you can't hope for it, plan for it or achieve it.