Star Wars Flashback

A long time ago, in a city, far, far away …
My dad took my brother and me to a movie.
The time was 1977, to be exact. New York City, to be precise.
It was the summer. Most of our friends had already seen the film everyone else was talking about, but it was a surprise for us. My dad took my brother and me downtown, to Manhattan, in the shadow of the Empire State Building, to the Boy Scout supply store. We were soon to go to Scout camp for a week, so we needed to stock up. We spent a good part of the day there, hauled our stuff out.
We rode downtown to the store on the subway — we just loved the subway. We knew all the lines and where we needed to transfer.
When we started back uptown, back to the Bronx, we immediately knew when our dad didn't make the right transfer. He told us not to worry, so we kept going uptowm on the wrong subway line.
When we walked up the steps onto the street from the Third Avenue Station, we knew. Just down the block, on the corner of 86th Street and Third Avenue, was the Loews Orpheum. The words were on the marquee bigger than life.
Star Wars.
I've never in my life been quite so blown away by a movie experience.
I thought life in the '70s was pretty humdrum and plain. This movie was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen, but there was one particular scene that really twisted my head a little. I'd already seen blazing bolts of energy and huge spaceships.
But in the first half of the movie, the main character, clearly the hero, runs out to watch the sun set. Or, to be precise, the suns set.
There were two suns. I'd never really imagined such, but there he was, looking out at the suns set. But the look on his face suggested to me he was a bit bored. He said nothing, but the music rolling up behind that scene said this kid wanted a whole lot more than his life was giving him. He was dreaming.
In that instant, I became a bit of a dreamer myself.
John and I talked about the movie the whole way home that first time. I managed to see the movie 29 more times that summer. Movies were a buck and my Aunt Kathleen was the indulgent sort.
My brother and I wanted to ride in space ships and shoot blasters. But most of all, we wanted light sabers. We wanted them so bad that my mother and father chose not to give us the light sabers they'd bought for us for Christmas. When Mom and Dad went to wrap them, the tubes were already dented because we'd found them and started dueling.
But I wasn't content just playing. The image of the twin suns setting in my head, the sounds of that John Williams music on my worn soundtrack album, they always inspired me then to draw scenes on a sketchpad and later write down my stories.
Eventually, I started to love to write just for the joy of writing, and I didn't have to make things up.
I saw two suns setting and started dreaming. I heard that music and I guess I stopped being all kid. I was 11, but I started to want. I didn't know what I wanted, but seeing that, I wanted something more.
I was a fanatic for all the other movies that have followed. I think the first sequel, The Empire Strikes Back is the best made movie and most complete story of the series. Yet the original, Star Wars, is just hands down my favorite movie.
It gave me something.
Every subsequent movie in the series has had its merits, and I've liked them all in some way or another. But none give the charge of the original.
When I saw it originally, I wanted to know the story that I finally saw Thursday morning. How did the villain become the evil monster he was in that movie. I was shocked to learn in Empire that perhaps the villain was actually the hero's father. A little disappointed to learn it was true in Return of the Jedi. Then I had to wait a long time to get the full story.
I have greeted every Star Wars movie with such anticipation, and none have ever given me what I was really looking for.
Every time I see a Star Wars book on the shelf, a Star Wars comic on the rack, or await the next movie, my anticipation is always the same. I expect a good product and a fun time, a decent read. But it's Star Wars, and it has that something extra.
I keep thinking that this will be the film or book or story that will bring me back to 1977, to that long time ago, in that city, far, far away.
But it's never happened. As exciting as Empire was, even it failed to live up to my expectations. The special effects were better. The story was tighter.
But since that first time, every time I go to see a Star Wars film, I want to feel like I felt watching the original that first time.
Each one has had better light saber duels than the one before. The special effects improve by light years.
But no Star Wars film matches the first. None can make me feel 11 again.
I saw Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith Thursday morning, at 12:15 a.m. It was the third in the series of six, but because of the way they have been released, it is the last of the six.
I can't imagine there's anybody out there who doesn't know what happens in this movie, but you never know. I think I can say how this movie ends, and how it made me feel, without spoiling anything.
A young man and his wife hold a young boy and stand, looking out as two suns set. The movie soundtrack plays that same John Williams music again, and the movie dissolves into the credits.
This movie ends, for me, where it began, right at the place where I started dreaming, started wanting and, unfortunately, started growing up.
It's 28 years later, the movie cycle is over, and I guess I have no more excuses.
There's no going back. This movie is telling me I can't be a kid anymore.
I've got a bad feeling about this.


Originally published, in this version, in The News & Reporter in 2005. I've been writing variations on this theme since college.)