is upon us once again. On the train to London yesterday I was surrounded by families on their way to see it. Fortunately I was able to avoid joining them by having an excellent 4 hour lunch with two other members of the worst school football team of all time. Man we were bad. I was probably surrounded by fans of the genre on my way home too, but I was tired and emotional and had a doze after a brief but intense and cathartic argument at the ticket barrier at Marylebone. Anyway one of my old friends has just sent me this excellent plot synopsis of the Star Wars series for those of you who wish to impress children with your knowledge.
Never really got the Star Wars thing. I heard someone on the radio describe it as a soap opera in space. I went to see the original when I was eleven years old. I came out of the cinema feeling just whelmed.
Me neither. I saw the early ones like everyone else and thought there was nothing to them beyond the special effects. Like most sci fi it was a standard 'event' structure storyline and the dialogue was awful. Then took my lad to see the first of the next lot in the late nineties, the Ewan MacGregor ones, and it was truly dire, you felt sorry for the actors. At least this one has a half decent director, might make the characters more interesting. But obviously a lot of people love this stuff, which is great. And I saw the first hour or so of 2001 on the telly a few evening ago, and remembered why I have never seen it all the way through. It is stunningly boring, with incredibly stilted dialogue and no characterisation, and horrible use of music. I like slow, elegiac films (like the seventies TV versions of the George Smiley books), but this was just dull. Hard to credit that Kubrick did this and made his name from it, when Dr Strangelove was so much better. But I suppose at the time in the cinema the special effects would have been awesome, in the real sense of the word.
Complete load of bollocks. Don't get the fascination with it. Same for Star Trek, Lord of the Rings and others. Mike Bassett England Manager. That is the film of our lifetimes.
My claim to fame watched the first one in early 77 before it was officially released with Peter Grant ( Led Zep Manager) in his house on a protector screen inside a giant inglenook fireplace. No idea what it was but loved it and in the summer that year it changed people's lives. Looking back now it dated and the last three I didn't like. As entertainment goes it must be right up there? Partner's sister's brother in law ( a sparky) had been working on the falcon spaceship at Pinewood since 2013 and has been supplying my partners nephews with some crazy props. The entire MF set made i was told all actually worked … not just flashing lights, the sounds etc were all activated by real buttons … the detail and costs must have been crazy
So he was practising safe screening........ah the joys of predictive text..... I suppose in the original the special effects were cutting edge and there had been nothing previous to compare it with, nowadays the original looks like one of the old computer games that we used to play in the pub, space invaders or something similar,,,,,,,,
So being a dutiful wife who doesn't always "bugger off to the football"...I am taking hubbie ( a huge Star Wars fan) to see it tomorrow as a Christmas pressie (aren't I absolutely wonderful). I assume he will be ready, if I get him out of his Obi Wan Kenobe dressing gown (which he is in at the moment) and into one of his vast collection of Darth Vader T shirts, he will be wearing his DV underwear...he will sing "da da da de da da da" all the way there, and back. We will involve ourselves in deep plot analysis, and he will take the girls to see it as a treat in a few weeks...He is hoping they won't be in the same place at the same time, as then ...just to be fair he will have to take each one seperately. I cannot really complain QPR play 50 times a season....we only get a new Star Wars film once in a decade Think of me tomorrow, when Charlie is scoring for fun!
Brilliant Movies!! Classic good triumphing over evil when the odds are greatly stacked against good. Many successful stories have that theme - Star Wars, LOTR and Harry Potter.
No, I never thought a great deal of the Star Wars movies either. Uber Major and Uber Minor saw it today and promptly spoiled the plot for me anyway - apparently the butler droid did it - and I never bothered with the last three. I quite like Star Trek movies though, although the earlier ones (run recently on Dave or Mike or Jeff or whatever that channel calls itself) have dated considerably. It's hard to accept the technological advances of the 25th century when their computers are the size of a family hatchback. I never liked Avatar much either. I see they're doing a sequel. I thought it was a poor version of Dances With Wolves set in space.
Avatar was complete bollocks too. Just a load of pretentious ****e telling us how we need to look after the Earth and enough people got on the bandwagon because it had a big name director. If Joe Bloggs had directed that dross it wouldn't have made it to the cinema.
I remember Star Wars appearing on TV for the first time at the end of the 70s and recording it on my first video recorder, the next day WH Smith had reduced the video from £54.99 to £12.99. It never ceases to amaze me how much we paid to hire or buy videos in the crap VHS format in those early days of 'home entertainment'. Still, it could have been worse, one mate of mine had a load of the Phillips 2000 system which was vastly superior in quality and had tapes you could turn over and record on both sides, sadly, it never caught on and died the death within a few years...
