As a child of the late seventies, I grew up with Star Wars. I collected the action figures, I role played epic space battles with my brothers, I used sticks as lightsabres and I had the obligatory Star Wars duvet cover and lunch box set. The Star Wars universe captured my imagination and the magic of George Lucas’s creation has stayed with me throughout my life, reignited at regular intervals with the release of new films that allowed me to momentarily tune out of real life and escape into the fantastical world of the Star Wars universe anew. Well, that was the case until about a year ago anyway, when I introduced my son to Episode IV and everything changed.
Introducing your children to Star Wars is a rite of passage, or so I thought. For years I had wanted to indoctrinate my eldest into this new chapter of his film-viewing life, carefully choosing the right moment to do so. Prior to this point his movie experiences had been restricted to Pixar stories of talking cars and perennially lost fish; soft, cuddly and entirely good films that were a feast for the eyes, but bereft of any decent baddies or heroic human characters that he would want to emulate in the playground. At seven, and as he was beginning to tire of Woody and Buzz, I thought that the time was right to dig out the DVD of Episode IV, close the curtains, turn up the volume and open his eyes to a whole new galaxy, far, far away.
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| "I should have got a Land Cruiser!" |
In my mind I had pictured this moment as being one where the boy sat quietly, absorbed in wonder as the saga unfolded before him and the names of Skywalker, Kenobi, Solo and Vader became implanted in his imagination as seeds of a lifelong love for the franchise. In reality, it was like watching a movie with a highly irritating waist-high robot. Question after question after question tumbled out of his mouth as he deconstructed every scene, picking holes in the characters, creatures, vehicles and spaceships, like a 70s TV detective disassembling the murder suspect’s seemingly watertight alibi. He was ruthless and unforgiving, caring not a jot for the sentiment of a movie that had meant so much to me and, worst of all, a lot of what he was saying made perfect sense.
“Why’s Luke’s speeder floating? What’s the point? Why doesn’t it just have wheels, it’s only a little bit off the ground?”
It was a valid point. Luke would have surely saved himself a few quid if he’d just got himself a Toyota Land Cruiser and made do.
“Why do the stormtroopers wear suits of armour all the time, even when they’re not in battle?”
Again, fair point. Do stromtroopers sit watching telly in full battle gear, or is there such a thing as casual wear for the Empire’s army of faithful soldiers? I’d never thought about that until now, it’s ridiculous.
“Why’s there no blood when you get hit by a laser?”
“How can R2D2 go upstairs?”
“Why’s Obi Wan Kenobi wearing a dressing gown?”
“Why’s Jabba The Hut so dangerous, he’s a big slug, you just have to run away?”
“What’s in the middle of the Death Star?”
And perhaps most unexpected of all…
“Where’s Chewbacca’s willy?”
I may well have watched the film a hundred times, but in one viewing - his first viewing - my son had seen things I had never seen before. Chewbacca is, by all accounts, naked - bar an over the shoulder number that seems to serve no purpose - but despite being tackle-out 24/7, we never see the wookie’s undercarriage, a fact that my boy spotted within 10 minutes of Chewie’s first appearance.
This incessant questioning continued throughout the film and subsequently through Episodes V and VI. However, despite turning into the grand inquisitor, he quickly developed a love for the films, ensuring that the questions continued long after the credits had rolled?
“If C3P0 is so clever, why can’t he walk better?”
“How do the houses in Cloud City stay up in the air?”
“How did the Ewoks build all their weapons so quickly?”
“Why does the Emperor want to kill everybody?”
“How does Darth Vader breathe and talk at the same time?”
It seems that while the children of today struggle to take things at face value, the magic of Star Wars can thankfully live on. Unfortunately, however, it also means that the magic of Star Wars merchandise lives on too and my penalty for introducing my seven-year-old to it all is that I’m now forever building Star Wars Lego with him. It’s a tough life. Now, where did we get to on the 7,541 piece Millenium Falcon?
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