The first contact with Star Wars was in 1980 or 1981 already, in the age of 6 or 7. I remember a movie Magazine for Empire, that they sold at the cinemas. It was the famous Empire Poster with just Darth Vaders helmet in front of a star field, and i was fascinated by it. At least, thats what my mother has told me. I also recall a specific Image inside the Magazine, and it was a couple of guys (Special effect People i guess) Standing around a tiny At-AT model and looking at it.
The first time i saw a Star Wars movie was Return of the Jedi in 1983. Eventually they showed Empire and A New Hope, but i watched only Empire twice, because my mother didn’t had the time for A New Hope, and both movies were aired for only a week. Empire is still my favorite for all these years, first it was for the battle in the snow, but when i grew older it was the whole package.
Of course i had tons of Star Wars toys, and i still have them all. I still like how sturdy and nice they look and feel. These old Kenner toys are simply quality stuff. Then in the mid eighties the Star Wars craze started to fade and all the things in the Shops dissappeared…until 1992 when Star Wars came back slowly.
I bought the Dark Horse comics (its 781 comics in my collection) and eventually the Marvel Collections named “A Long time ago…” with all the Marvel SW Comics, republished by Dark Horse. I spend a lot of Money on Star Wars stuff, especially when Kenner started the Star Wars Toy line again.
When the Special Editions came out in 97 i watched each twice, and was looking Forward to the prequels. I watched EP 1 12 times…don’t look at me like that. 😉 I was in the german Military at that time, in a tiny town and the Cinema was the only way to get some distraction from duty. I just didn’t care to hang out with the other guys. I watched each Episode twice, and still can’t get around hating them. I can see the flaws, and the stupidity of some things (midichlorians??) but altogether i think they are still Ok to good movies with Revenge being the best. The Scene with the annihilation of the Jedis is a well made piece of cinema, but it was stuck in a Trilogie with too much mediocrity going on and therefore it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Also i have to say that John Williams made some great music for these films.
When Disney bought Star Wars i was interested in what would happen next, but i wasn’t fearful nor excited. At that time in my life, Star Wars wasn’t just super important. It was never away for me, but it was very much on the sidelines. I discovered the japanese singer Nana Mizuki (who is also a big Star Wars fan, see my avatar) in 2012, my mother died a year later, and i was unemployed the same day. However, when it turned out that Lucas wouldn’t be involved, my SW friends and i, would be joking how great Star Wars movies without ol’ Georgo L. could be. I don’t think that George Lucas is the evil wizard, many seem to think he would be, but he messed with SW just too much. All these Special Editions and Re-Edtions that add stuff, and take it away again, and some of the prequal stuff.
When they announced TFA i was pretty excited that Luke, Han and Leia would return and i thought the movie was great. Eventually i noticed all the similarities to a new hope, and that first impression faded a bit. But that thing i cringe every time is that Reichsparteitag on Starkiller Base. Its so silly and in our face, with the comical speech of General Hux (“The new Republic LIES to the galaxy!” Well, big whoop, you big baby!). The german voice actor is the same guy who did Dr Christopher Turk in Scrubs and that makes the speech even more hilarious. But the imagery was the worst. Star Wars always had tons of references to earth things, like Vaders Samurai/German helmet, Cowboy movies, Flash Gordon and 30’s Monster films, but that scene in TFA was far too close to reality, especially with those huge red banners in the background. This was done by people who didn’t understand the Star Wars concept to take things that are familiar to us, and present them in a new centext.
In December i saw finally Rogue One and i always thought that this movie could be more interesting that TFA and IMO it was. When i read somewhere that Disney wants to do movies outside the well trodden Star Wars ways with Sith and Jedi and so on, i was super excited. Those Dark Horse Comics were very often about eras, events and characters that aren’t even mentioned in the movies, and yet most of them were great, because in Star Wars, some character passing by for 3 seconds in the background look more interesting than the main actors in many other movies. Now Rogue One is on my SW movie ranking on place #3, right after Empire and ANH. I saw it three times so far and liked it each time more. Tarkin and Leia were already good at the first time, but on the second and third viewing i forgot that they were CGI altogether. When i saw Rogue One for the first time, it was right the day after Carrie Fishers passing and that made the ending especially emotional.
That was longer than i wanted it to be, but here it is.
