{"id":16844,"date":"2011-08-25T13:56:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-25T12:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=16844"},"modified":"2011-08-25T13:56:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T12:56:08","slug":"your-star-wars-memories-dan-swindlehurst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/blog\/your-star-wars-memories-dan-swindlehurst\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Star Wars memories: Dan Swindlehurst"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Picture: Boliyou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fourth in our incredible series of Star Wars memories, written by you as a testament to the incredible power of the saga to transcend age, genre and cynicism. If this inspires you to submit your own, check out the details <\/em><\/strong>here<\/em><\/strong><\/a>!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Star Wars<\/em> probably wasn\u2019t the first film I ever saw, but it\u2019s the first I can remember. I must have been about five or six when I first watched it one dark Christmas evening. When you\u2019re a kid Christmas is all about wonder and magic, it\u2019s about shiny toys and the promise of adventure. And Star Wars<\/em> fits this perfectly.<\/p>\n

A New Hope<\/em> is a classic tale, but a classic that\u2019s been fired deep into space, to a galaxy far far away, if you must. It\u2019s got all the staples, a young naive boy, bored of living at home who can\u2019t wait to explore the wide world outside of his backwater planet; a wise old wizard; a scurrilous rogue with a secret heart of gold; a princess with an attitude; and a superb evil villain in black armour. Oh, and it\u2019s absolutely full of toys. There are robots, Stormtroopers, TIE Fighters and X-Wings, and the iconic lightsaber. All true Christmas fayre.<\/p>\n

I think what really caused Star Wars<\/em> to embed itself into my young impressionable brain was the opening scene though.<\/p>\n

Rarely are opening scenes quite so perfect. Don\u2019t remember it? You will. A small space ship hurtles over the surface a beautiful yellow gas giant planet whilst being pursued, and casually blasted, by a vast great-white-shark-of-a\u2013spaceship. See, I told you\u2019d remember, who could ever forget that?<\/p>\n

The truly memorable aspect of the scene though is the low-angle camera shot under the Star Destroyer. The Imperial ship glides quickly over the camera, but due to its immense size, the shot lasts FOREVER. And with that one simple set-up the filmmakers tell you everything you need to know, without anyone speaking a word. The Empire is vast, mighty and domineering, whilst the fleeing rebels are desperately outmatched, and in this scene at least, it\u2019s obvious that they\u2019re doomed.<\/p>\n

Then the film cuts to the interior of the rebel ship, and we see R2D2 and C3PO, one a bright gold humanoid bumbling-English-butler of a robot, the other a street-wise beeping futuristic dust bin. For a young child, this was Christmas magic. For if Christmas is about anything, it\u2019s about robots. Especially comedy-duo robots,<\/p>\n

And then we have that oh-so-glorious first glimpse of Stormtroopers. Has there ever been a better-designed costume in any film franchise? Well, maybe Giger\u2019s Alien<\/em>, but that\u2019s not really fair. As a kid I was obsessed with Stormtroopers. They looked the height of cool in their gorgeous black and white armour, and they burst through that air lock like a force of nature, in a cloud of magnesium-white sparks, with red laser blasts flying, they looked absolutely unstoppable. The rebels, in their future-Gap karkis and silly hats didn\u2019t stand a chance. Oddly, for the rest of the franchise these crack-troops with an oh-so-deadly aim transform into the most ineffective troops in history, apart from maybe the French.<\/p>\n

And finally, the camera pans back to the smoking wreckage of the airlock, the music changes to a dark orchestral John Williams score, and the mood of the scene deepens as an ominous figure strides into the ship and the Stormtroopers snap to attention. Right away, you know this guy is someone you don\u2019t want to mess with, what could possibly scare a Stormtrooper? A seven-foot tall cyborg in equally-cool-looking black armour, that\u2019s who. As a young child Darth Vader burned himself into the neural pathways of my plastic brain, Darth Vader would forever become my symbol of Christmas, not the jolly old man in the red pyjamas and the white beard. Or Jesus.<\/p>\n

Vader was frightening but compelling, and he\u2019s great in theses opening scenes, marching all over the ship, barking orders, picking people up single-handedly and breathing menacingly. Watching this scene again as an adult though, Vader does look quite camp, the camp you get when brilliant actors are clearly having fun hamming-up the script, and Family Guy <\/em>superbly parodied this in Blue Harvest<\/em> casting Stewie in the role of a very hammy Vader.<\/p>\n

I still love Star Wars<\/em> today, despite being quite a bit older, OK, a lot older, and even after the mauling the franchise took with the release of the prequels (sorry, I\u2019m not a fan). And I\u2019ll always associate Star Wars<\/em> with Christmas, and how much fun this time of year was as a kid. I look forward to this December, when I\u2019ll be forcing my entire family to sit through two hours of me grinning inanely at the screen whilst mouthing all the lines to the film.<\/p>\n

The true meaning of Christmas. At least for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Star Wars is the true meaning of Christmas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":16849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1,140],"tags":[125,2112,354,94],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/2131786721_835116c78a_b.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}