Star Wars – May the Fourth Be With You

Star Wars – May The Fourth Be With You… it’s got to be the original trilogy, right?

As the lights went down in that darkened Cinema in Scarborough back in 1977, I was one of many little kids whose entire lives would change that day.

To say that Star Wars had an immediate impact on all those that sat through their first viewing of the film is probably the biggest understatement of all time.

Prior to its release, I remember cinema being something that was either full of ‘adult’ films – so as I was just 10 years old at the time, those films were out of my reach – or Disney kids films. Up until the release of ‘Star Wars – a new hope‘ there had been very little for a growing generation of kids brought up on Saturday morning cliff-hanger TV series like Buck Rogers and Star Trek, so when it arrived it was a revelation that caused a revolution.

This was a whole new level, I remember I was simultaneously terrified and exhilarated to be in that movie theatre; every element contributed to the heart pounding, edge of the seat experience, the drama, the spectacle, the creatures, THE MUSIC, the breathless excitements of the space battles! Never before had there ever been a tale told with such beauty and clarity, and it instantly appealed to me. Never before had we seen special effects like that, or a storytelling style so brilliantly offered. The appeal was instant and global.

But it’s the storytelling that gets me every time. There is a wonderful simple innocence at its centre that appeals to the part of all of us that want truth, justice and heroism to triumph, for the bad guys to get their comeuppance and the good guys to win against all odds. And as a piece of art, it’s weathered so well, and is as relevant today as it was back then.

Star Wars, as an idea, is perhaps the greatest telling of the good versus evil moral story.

It’s also the characters, as I felt they reached far beyond the screen and into me, in a way that made me believe I could be one of them. There is no mystery why the first movie is called ‘a new hope’ because that’s what it gave me and still does, the enduring possibility that there really is good in us all and hope is the thing that keeps us alive.

Thank you George Lucas, we may never see films like this ever again and indeed despite the sequels and prequels having moments of wonderment, nothing for me beats the original trilogy and specifically the first film.

I am a lifelong fan and feel I have benefited so much from being in the generation that first saw and marvelled at these films.

Wonderful.