The Circle Is Now Complete

Most people my age want to focus on the negative the last six years and three movies have provided us. Me, I want to focus on the happiness that Star Wars has provided me throughout my life, not just today but period. Sure Lucas himself is guilty of believing his own press, the last three movies weren’t very good, at least compared to the original three, and the entire phenomenon that is Star Wars has been over hyped, over merchandised, over analyzed…basically shoved down our throats since the LFL and 20^th Century Fox marketing machine started the push with the re-release in 1997. None of that matters to me, if I was a Lost Boy in Neverland Star Wars would be my happy thought (other than my lovely wife and beautiful daughter). I’m certain that armed with Star Wars as my happy thought I could soar the skies with the best of them.

A friend of mine is an artist, a pretty good one at that, and he was at Celebration III this year as a guest. I caught up with him at a show here in Charlotte in May, I hadn’t seen him for about six months or so, we were catching up on things, how is career was going, how my family was, etc. One of the things we talked about was his trip to Celebration and we were interrupted by a fan boy of his who then proceeded to bad mouth the Star Wars machine. Before said fan boy got very far he was very cut off by my friends manager/girlfriend who said she didn’t want to hear anything like that. She loves Star Wars and owes a lot of her life including what she does for a living to Star Wars. If he doesn’t like that, then too bad.

It was not up until that point that I thought about how much in my life I owed to Star Wars. It isn’t that certain things wouldn’t have worked out the same if there wasn’t a Star Wars, I would like to think they would have, but to reflect upon what in my life is Star Wars related revealed a lot. The most obvious one is my job. Most people in the gaming, comic, or any other geeky profession have Star Wars to blame in some degree to for their entry into that genre. I work in a very geeky, fan boy, related industry; I work at a toy company marketing trading card games. Most of you know that before that at worked for a company that actually made a Star Wars game. Without my interest (obsession) in SWCCG then I wouldn’t have been in position to say yes to Bojo those few years ago. What a fun ride that yes has turned out to be.

Even before that my two ‘career choices’ were indirectly related to Star Wars. I worked for seven years at the world’s largest toy store. I decided to do that job because the new Star Wars toys were out and my roommate and I thought it would be cool to be able to get those. That and it was near Christmas time and I could get overtime. I also worked at a movie theatre on and off over my earlier years. I’ve loved movies as long as I can remember and thought it would be great to be able to see them for free. I can’t point towards any definitive ‘this is because of Star Wars’ reasoning for liking movies but you don’t have to be a genius to connect the dots.

My love of movies brings me to the most important part of my life. I met my lovely wife at our mutual job, the above mentioned movie theatre. The last ten years of my life have been the happiest anyone could ask for and I owe it all to meeting my wife. I can’t imagine for a second not spending the rest of my life with her. To say I owe my life with her to Star Wars would probably be a little naïve on my part. I think we would have been together with or without my love for a galaxy far, far away. I just think that it helped me get to her a little quicker.

Who needs reflection, we live in the here and now. These movies aren’t very good, if you just remember the stuff before the prequels of course Star Wars is full of memories. One of my strongest childhood memories is being 8 or 9 and playing with two friends and our Star Wars action figures. We were sitting out my front porch, my parents used the air conditioner and his parents didn’t so some god awful reason and in south Florida that is a big deal. We played with our Star Wars toys a lot, they were much cooler than GI Joy, as cool as Snake Eyes is he doesn’t have a lightsaber, many an afternoon was spent saving the galaxy from the Empire. Some reason it had been leaked by LFL about the Anakin vs. Obi Wan fight and somehow that made its way to three 8 year olds. So we’re playing with our toys and my friend sits up and goes “It is going to be cool when Obi Wan kicks Anakin’s butt and shoves him into the volcano” or something almost identical. Well on May 19^th I finally got to see “Obi Wan kick Anakin’s butt”. The prequels were worth it right there.

There are other great prequel moments, from the midnight madness sale at the world’s largest toy store to standing in line for eight hours to get tickets (and finding out I’m going to have a little girl). From the door opening with Duel of the Fates blaring and the menacing Darth Maul standing there to Yoda just blocking Dooku’s lightning with his bare hands. Of course there is two of my favorites, breaking our agreement with LFL and opening up the trailer, putting it on a projector that was empty for a few hours, and inviting the employees to see the first Episode One trailer and then making sure that at least one of the one sheet for Episode One ended up in my hands instead of my hording boss.

My newest Star Wars memory is yesterday. My wife had to work and it was just the child and I. It was Star Wars day so I knew I was going to watch EP3 sometime yesterday, it was just a matter of when. So my daughter, all of six, comes up to me “daddy let’s watch the new Star Wars movie”. So we put it on and she sits in my lap and tries to remain interested. Fun comments such as “are you sad that this is the last one”, “I like yoda”, “he isn’t bad yet daddy, he doesn’t have a red lightsaber”, and “I didn’t like that the Queen died daddy”. Of course my favorite, “don’t be sad this is the last one, we have them all and can watch them whenever we want”. Logic from a 6 year, makes everyone smile.

I wanted to post this yesterday and I didn’t think it would be this long. Either way here it is, my thoughts on the behemoth that is Star Wars.

Happy Star Wars Day