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Post #906470

Author
13las
Parent topic
An Experiment in Inducting a SW newbie.
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/906470/action/topic#906470
Date created
10-Feb-2016, 2:39 AM

My roommate is an exchange student from China who had never seen a Star Wars film.
He started working somewhere that encourages at least a basic knowledge of the franchise (we both work at Disneyland), so I’ve been putting him through the crash course.

He was already familiar with and could hum the main title theme and the imperial march as they are “a part of popular culture that everyone knows”.

We watched the latest special digital editions of the original trilogy, just because they are (sadly) the official versions of the films.

He enjoyed ANH quite a bit (was slightly disappointed in the absence of the imperial march lol) and immediately wanted to watch ESB and ROTJ, which we did.

His comments were not quite as illuminating as I would have hoped. Most often, he pointed out story elements that felt authentic to the fairy tales he enjoyed as a child in China: Yoda being a small and unlikely creature who is revealed to be a powerful sage, Luke’s internal struggle, etc.

We then saw TFA. He definitely enjoyed it a lot. Upon leaving the theatre he was energized and excited, but wasn’t sure if Rey was Luke’s daughter or not. He asked because, without subtitles, he thought he might have missed that confirmation.

He watched TPM without me (I don’t oppose watching it, I just had other things to do).
He didn’t outright hate it either. He laughed at the Nemoidians’ clearly Asian-inspired way of speaking, and really enjoyed the Lightsaber fight. His problem with the film, however, was that there was ‘no struggle’. I assume he meant an internal struggle like Luke’s in the OT that he had enjoyed so much. It’s an interesting issue, I think. Possibly a symptom of TPM’s supposed lack of a clear main character (although, I do believe it to be Jar Jar).

Since then, he hasn’t watched AOTC or ROTS. Not because TPM was offensively awful, but because it was flat.

This would also be one of the first times a newbie was introduced to the saga in the order: IV, V, VI, VII, I, II, III.

I hope this was at least a little bit of an interesting read for someone!