My siblings and I grew up on Star Wars. Our cousins got us into it, and we spent much of our childhood playing in a Galaxy Far Far Away. We had the action figures, the Legos and the lightsabers. One Halloween I dressed up as Princess Leia and my brother went as Luke. There wasn't another girl character for our little sister, so we created a third sibling "Princess Molly" for her. My Dad taught us our first steps in filmmaking using Star Wars as an inspiration. We shot five minutes of multiple scales, including a miniature X-Wing flying across a black sky, with a flashlight shining through pinholes for stars.
We were estatic when the prequels came out. When the second came out, we were so excited, we convinced our mom to give us the day off and take us to the movie. When the third came out our entire family went. It was my first movie in the theatre with rear window captioning. I then went to see it twice more with friends.
In college I was able to take a class on Modern Mythmakers. This included George Lucas and we spent some time studying his influences, especially Joseph Cambell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces."
Then I nannied kids who also loved the trilogy, and had about six lightsabers between them. We spent many hours battling enemies in various personas. My favorite part? Hearing the lisping three-year-old adorably call me "Princess Weia."
Nowadays I faithfully follow Darth and Droids, which consistently provides me much amusement on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.
My first crush was on Han Solo, embeding me with a lifelong weakness for the "dashing scoundrel" character type. Princess Leia remains one of my role models to this day. My appreciation of Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor definitely dates back to their Star Wars days. And I still drool over Padme's costumes in movie #2 (and cannot get over my annoyance that she got such a lame part in movie #3).
I Love Star Wars.
May the Fourth be with you.
4 comments:
I'm so happy you posted about this! I grew up with Star Wars too, and the only other kids we knew who had see all of the movies were our cousins. So whenever they would come over we spent all our time playing Star Wars. At our house we have nine lightsabers of varying characters, lengths, and sizes and a good number of blaster guns... you can never grow out of Star Wars.
Hurrah for Star Wars uniting families! Did you guys ever have those 'build it yourself' lightsaber packs?
Lol, my four-year-old brother says "Princess Weia" too. It's so adorable!
I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE STAR WARS!!!!! I was raised on Star Wars and I still haven't outgrown them! :D :D :D :D
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