What Star Wars means to me
Star Wars was a massive part of my childhood and shaped my love of film. When I was six years old my grandfather took me to the cinema to see the 1997 re-release of Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope). From that first frame of the space ships (I could name them but this is geeky enough) blasting out from the top of the screen — I was hooked.
What came next was, basically an obsession, one that my long suffering parents were kind enough to indulge. I couldn’t wait to see the rest of the original trilogy at the cinema and was beside my self with excitement during the hype for Episode I in 1999.
When I first saw The Phantom Menace, I loved it (bearing in mind I was eight at the time). Basically, I was the target audience for the film and I lapped it up. My room became a shrine to the movie, complete with curtains, bedspread and way too many toys (most of which are currently languishing in boxes in my loft).
As I grew up and my taste in film matured, the prequels lost their shine. As I look back on them now…I mean we all know their pretty terrible right. Bad casting, awful dialogue and WAY too much CG, they fail to capture the spirit of the originals.
Episode III came out the same year as Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and sure enough our generation already had their new, more relevant, vastly superior franchise to cling to.
When 2008 rolled around we saw the genre defining The Dark Knight as well as the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man, and Star Wars continued to fade into the background.
So when they announced Episode VII in 2012 I had mixed feelings. On one had I was majorly excited to see NEW STAR WARS, but the cynic in me dismayed at the further dilution of one of my favourite childhood series.
Was this going to be a legitimate continuation of a story that essentially finished in 1983 or is this just a massive cash grab from an increasingly uninventive Hollywood system that has completely run out of ideas?
The age of the internet has seen an unprecedented level of speculation and scrutiny as the film went through pre-production and filming.
Writers came and went, original cast members returned, new ones were added and all under the omnipresent eye of rabid fans desperate for any news.
As it currently stands, I’m cautiously optimistic. Director JJ Abrams is a huge Star Wars fan and the series’ influence is clearly shown in his recent Star Trek films.
Lawrence Kasdan (writer of the best dialogue in the Star Wars canon in The Empire Strikes Back) has been brought in to help on the script.
The big three are back, with Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford reprising their roles.
The new cast look great, there are no distractingly big stars in the frame and very little evidence of studio pressure.
Fingers crossed this is the one we’ve been waiting for.
