Star Wars Memories, Part 1
With the impending arrival of Star Wars (The Force Awakens), we decided at SFFWorld that we would chat about what Star Wars does (or doesn’t!) mean to us, what effect the franchise has had upon us since we first saw it and what we hope the new movie will provide.
Involved we have comments from around the world, from our SFFWorld team: Rob Bedford, Luke Brown, Mark Chitty, David Paul Hellings, Nila (N.E.) White and Mark Yon.
The article is in three parts, over three days.
1. What are your first memories of Star Wars?
Mark Yon
In 1977/78 I was 13, perhaps about the right age to see the movie for the first time (though I must admit my own kids saw it much younger.) I was a shy – what I guess we would now call geeky – kind of guy. In those days, going to the cinema was a rare treat for me, and one I had to either save up for or be taken to see as a gift. Most of my genre was either books or television – I loved Thunderbirds, Star Trek and Doctor Who, and had a few films I would never miss on TV: George Pal’s War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Many in the US may not know that Star Wars was released nearly six months after the US release in the UK – here we got it as a Christmas movie in some cinemas and a fuller release in the provinces in 1978. In my case it was actually early 1978, I think.
What this meant, of course, when it was released here was that we’d already seen the queues and heard of the reception the movie had received in America. There was actually an advertising budget, promotions in magazines and toys for us all to look at, which I understand was not the case initially in the US. Nothing like in later years, of course. And there I was, coincidentally with all this interest in SF, perhaps at that perfect age. (I thought of Star Wars as ‘SF’, though now, of course, it is often regarded as Science Fantasy.) I had bought every magazine about Star Wars I could get my hands on – including in September a relatively new arrival, the recently begun Starlog Magazine. Issue 7 had an iconic cover (see picture.) I still have it.
So what do I remember about the film? Not a lot, actually. I remember being quite excited and queuing up to see the movie in my little town, outside one of our old cinemas – the Classic Cinema (see picture below.)
This was an old fleapit, really, but much beloved (and now sadly demolished, many, many years ago.)
Though I don’t remember too much specifically, I do recall that when I saw the movie, I was amazed. I came out of the cinema stunned by the ideas and most of all by the visuals of the movie. I liked the fact that there were clear heroes and villains and the fact that this was all taking place in a galaxy far, far away. I drew pictures, wrote my own stories and revelled in science fiction generally.
I frantically saved money, took a part time job (paper round) and scraped the money together for the 7” single by Meco, the Disco version of the Star Wars theme, (click on the link at your peril!) which I did my best to wear out. More work and frenetic saving led me to buy the Star Wars soundtrack album, with the poster that went on my bedroom wall. Again, this was played over, over and over, on repeat. I was effectively hooked.
My pocket money job bought me further copies of Starlog magazine, which kept me abreast of further movies and also introduced me to more SF and Fantasy books, films and older TV series. When I was delivering newspapers on a wet, cold and even snowy dark morning, it was the thought that I was earning money so I could go to the cinema and buy books and more Starlog magazines that kept me going. I saved up and bought Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye novel (the adult version, not the ‘Young Readers Edition’ – ha!) and enjoyed it, but by then I was also reading ‘proper’ grown-up science fiction and fantasy books and magazines.
Star Wars was not the only facet but it was certainly one of the most important things that opened my mind to the amazing potential of SF and Fantasy fiction. I would not be doing this now (and loving it!) had it not been, in part, for Star Wars.
Luke Brown
One of my earliest memories, not just about Star Wars, but in life, is being a small toddler and sitting in a darkened theatre with my Old Man while the scenes of The Empire Strikes Back played across my wide eyes.
Being small, I’m not sure how much of the plot I took in.
For example, I have vague memories of my father turning to me at the end of the film and commenting immediately on the mind boggling twist: “So, Darth Vader is Luke’s father!” (Apologies for anyone who didn’t see that one coming…. Editor.)
My response, as I remember it: “He is?”
Now, again being small, I’m not sure how much of this memory is accurate, and how much I’ve elaborated on in my own minds over the intervening thirty or more years.
However, memories of my Star Wars obsession become more certain and clear as I grow older.
I know that for years I would spend countless hours building replica X-wings, TIE Fighters and Millennium Falcons from my 1980’s Space Lego.
In primary school (that’s ages eight to twelve where I grew up in Hobart), I started planning to make my own science fiction film, which, from memory, stole most of the plot points from the Star Wars films.
I used to jump around the sand dunes at the beach near my house, using them as a substitute Tatooine as I avoided the imaginary tendrils of the Mighty Sarlacc (BTW – I wanted to name my daughter ‘the Mighty Sarlacc’. My wife is a party pooper).
In High School I partnered with a talented artist and started producing an amateur comic book series set in the Star Wars universe, starring a bounty hunter very similar to Boba Fett, including a trusty jetpack. This would have been about the same time I was reading Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy.
The fact is, I can’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t conscious of Star Wars and the films have fueled my lifelong love affair with fantasy and science fiction.
Rob Bedford
Let’s see, Star Wars: A New Hope was in theatres in 1977 and I was 3 so I don’t remember that, but I would swear I had Luke Skywalker (in his X-Wing pilot gear), Han Solo, and Chewbacca action figures from Kenner ®.
I would have to say seeing The Empire Strikes Back in theaters is one of my earliest film memories. I was six years old and what I remember most is that I had to go to the bathroom so my dad took me. When we returned, my mom told me that we missed Darth Vader without his mask. You know, that great brief scene in that throne-like room where a quick glimpse of a bald, grey-skinned man is shown? So, a few weeks later we went to a local “amusement park” (Bowcraft may ring a bell for people in the NJ/NY/PA area) and decided to see Empire a second time. Remember in 1980, movies stayed in theaters for months. This time, my dad had to go to the men’s room and he missed the unhelmeted Vader, but I didn’t.
I also remember Luke Skywalker being on the Muppets.
N. E. White
Oh, gosh. My first memory of Star Wars… has to be:
I came across that image (or something very much like it) on TV.
I didn’t see the movie in the theater when it first came out in 1977. I was only 7 years old at the time and we were poor farmers living out in rural Fresno County, California (remember, there was no internet back then). Going to a movie theater was something we only did on very special occasions and no one in my family knew anything about starships and galaxies far far away. And my parents were damn sure not about to put down hard earned money on some weird fantasy movie.
But thank goodness for television! I saw tantalizing snippets of the movie(s) on TV starting sometime in the early 1980s.
Mind you, I never saw the complete movies. I didn’t have enough clout in our family to do that. You see, there are five siblings in my tribe. Getting control of the TV channel dial was won by lies, fisticuffs, and shenanigans. When I managed to beat down my brothers and sisters long enough to flip the channel, I managed to see scenes from the movie that blew my mind.
What’s that big, disgusting frog-thing doing to that princess?
Who’s the big furry guy?
Why are they chasing the golden robot?!
These questions plagued me as a teenager. Inevitably, though, I’d lose the death grip on my sister and she’d change the channel, so I never got the answers to those questions.
Mark Chitty
Okay, before I say anything I’m going to ‘fess up here: Star Trek was my main SF pleasure when I was 
growing up. Because of that I never really got into Star Wars until later in my youth.
The first two films had already been released by the time I was born, while the third was a couple of years down the line. I remember getting toys sent to me by my grandmother after the third film was out, and while I didn’t recognise them at the time, I look back and realise just how vast the merchandising machine was even back then!
As for the films – I clearly remember my mum getting my brother and me the trilogy on VHS when they got their ‘special edition’ release. We watched them quite a bit, and the celebratory scenes at the end of each film are stuck in my mind. Yoda, too, was a firm favourite, with the Dagobah swamp training Luke went through something I could only ever dream of doing…
David Paul Hellings
I won’t claim to be the world’s biggest Star Wars fan. However, when Star Wars was released, I was eleven years old, had all of the figures, bought the comics, read the novelisation, and was so excited that the film was opening in the UK. The only problem was that it was showing at the big cinema, The Gaumont in Birmingham (see below), fifteen miles away, on the evening, and that required a lift. My Mom hated driving in the dark, so that option was out, which left my Dad, who wasn’t a big cinema fan and I can’t recall him ever liking science fiction much. But, being the Dad he was, he took me. It was the only time we ever went to the cinema together (we did, however go the the football each week as well as many other great things).
The cinema was packed out, the lights went down and the film began. Everybody remembers the music and titles and how cool it was to see a story of such scale and special effects, but it was the fact that I saw it with my Dad, who went for no other reason than that of the love for his son, that will always be my favourite Star Wars memory and why the first film remains one of my favourites of any genre for all time.
And that’s it for today. Next part tomorrow!
