You Can't Ruin Star Wars With Spoilers

One Day in 1977, somewhere shortly after May 25th my dad did something unusual. He walked in the house and said "We've got to go to the movies, there's this new movie everyone is talking about and we need to go see it." My dad liked gangster movies, he liked Mel Brooks comedies, he was not a sci-fi guy. If Star Trek was on he was likely to turn it over. So this new movie that he wanted to see was likely to be something like that.

I sat beside my dad at the Artcraft theater and drank a suicide and ate popcorn and I can remember exactly how it felt as those words scrolled up the screen, and that music burst into life from the speakers around the room. OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS was pretty much the sentiment - even from my dad.

After the movie we went to the pizza king, and I had a Mello Yello and my dad had a pitcher of beer (himself) and mom probably had a coke I can't even remember. We ate pizza and we talked about the movie the whole time, my dad and mom were as excited as I was. "How do you think they DID that?" my dad wondered about various effects we now take for granted and find primitive.

It was this amazing, happy day that I've never forgotten.

Star Wars is really just a western in space, the simplest good vs. evil story, the elements aren't that outlandish, the characters built on classics we all know, the damsel in distress, the rogue, the older mentor, the bad guy, the young man coming of age. People who don't love it well they are just soulless beasts and it's best just not to even talk about them. Let's pity them, because they don't feel the magic, they can't absorb the wonder of this simple story told so well.

You can't ruin it for me with spoilers because it's magic. I didn't even hate the first three when they came out. I can acknowledge the camp of Jar Jar and how it wasn't really a necessary part of the story. I'm not offended, I do cringe a bit. I can acknowledge that Hayden Christensen is a pretty terrible actor. But I refer you back to Star Wars and defy you to call Mark Hamill a thespian. I love him the same. He got better, Hayden Christensen did not. I don't care much.

I saw Star Wars in it's original run four or five times. At that point it didn't occur to me that seeing these movies over and over was going to be a theme, at that point to me this movie was singular and I couldn't get enough.

I saw Empire about 12 times in it's original run. I saw it so many times my mom said I'd seen it enough and told me to quit going to see it.

I saw Jedi some stupid number of times. By then I was old enough for my mom not to care. Going to see Jedi was as casual as going to get burger and fries - hey what are you doing? Wanna go see Jedi again? Ok cool. It was just understood by then, you were gonna go, and go, and go. At least in my circles it was.

You can't ruin it because Star Wars is my happy place. I have toys in the original boxes (or I did). I used to have ALL of the McDonalds glasses - damn I wonder where they are. Star Wars will turn me into a little girl again when the music starts and the words roll. We've got our tickets, and at 12:30 on Friday I'll be seated waiting for that magic to start.

So go ahead, blurt it all over the internet that Padme back and is a sith lord, or that Luke is Kilo Ren, or that C3P0 is a woman or whatever it is that's out there. My friends in Europe already know, I'm kind of jealous.

But as for me, you can't ruin it for me. You don't have the power to ruin Star Wars for me even if you told me every single spoiler in the film.

You have no power here, spoilers. These are not the droids you are looking for. Move along.

Honestly though, I'd rather have a purple lightsaber.

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