Growing Up With Star Wars
Jimmy TR, Samantha Maybe, Thomas Fyrehart, and SkeleTroy Blockbuster discuss, compare, and contrast their memories of growing up with Star Wars, the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, LucasArts games, the future of Lucasfilm, and, yes… Ewan MacGregor’s naughty bits.
Theme song – “Happy Ever After” by The Senseless – used with kind permission.
Okay, so I just could not listen to this without wanting to respond to everything, so I’m just going to gratuitously comment. Since this is all podcast-special-y, I feel like it’s appropriate in this case to uber-comment. I’m only 20 minutes into this thing, so I’m just gonna comment as I listen.
1) I grew up with a director for a father (he works in animated tv/film), so my relationship with Star Wars was “watch this, five-year-old Alanah, and try to understand the place it holds in film history, also noting the massive leaps in sci-fi FX. Also, yes, Han Solo grows up to be Indiana Jones one day.” I understood Yoda to be second in wisdom only to Solomon and Jesus Christ, and believed Ewok’s to be Chewbacca’s baby cousins. I was very sympathetic to Vader from day one (“He’s just sad, daddy! He just wants Luke to love him!”), and always found Obi Wan infuriating and unreasonable (“You’re hair is white and you face is weird, stop talking.”). I was beside myself when I found out about the prequels coming out – The Phantom Menace was my first midnight premiere of a film, at age 9, and it’s the only one of the prequel’s that I’ll willingly re-watch without copious amounts of alcohol at the ready (and even then, I’m belligerent about it). I actively hate Episodes 2 and 3 with a fierce, fiery passion, though not because the films themselves are so bad when you break em down, but because the acting is just so friggin terrible (and, thus, the director has failed in half of his whole job).
2) The first Star Wars “thing” I owned was a pull-over sweatshirt that said “Cal Arts” in the style of the Star Wars logo. my dad was attending college there when I was 8. Also, model x & Y wings, and many action figures. And Pogs. Lots of Star Wars pogs…
3)Sam, please never ever wear Leia buns. Ever. No. Stop that. No.
4) Jimmy – all your words please me.
Ok. So it turns out that if I pause this thing for longer than two minutes, it restarts from the beginning.
……
I hate everything.
Alanah, that’s very kind of you to say. *blushes*
No worries Alanah, my hair will be far too short for leia buns for quite a while.
Finally had time to finish listening to this thang, so comments continued!
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5) re: “green ones for Vader and red ones for Luke” = BAHAHAHAHAHAHA/no.
6) Yeah, I had heard talk about 7-8-9 being green-lit from some friends who worked at Disney about a year and a half ago, but after nothing came out in the next 8 months, I deemed it myth. AND THEN THE MOUSE PROVED ME WRONG.
7) IMO, Disney is the best thing that could happen to Star Wars at this point, because now you have access to storytelling geniuses like Lassiter and Doctor and Stanton + good relationships with directors like Abrams, Jackson, and Whedon (oh Dinsey, look at you and you’re far-reaching, Marvel-groping arms). With storytelling gurus who grew up respecting Star Wars, and directors who know how to balance spectacle with film-tegrity (ok, Abrams pushes it at times, but still), the promise of 7-8-9 can only be glad tidings of great joy to all people. /
8) Is anyone gonna bring up the brief-but-stellar Clone Wars 2D animated series? Because holy crap, crap of the holy, it was so incredible. Anyone? Bueller? *sad sigh*
(currently at 45:11)
9) Hey! I got mentioned! 😀 Yeah, my take on the obi-wan-wizard-or-not issue is on our blog, PaOH. It’s a great topic and a rich debate.
10) Fave char: In live action originals, Han Solo. In live-action prequels, R2D2. In animation, Mace Windu. In the future live-actions, I predict the male child of Han/Leia.
11) Speaking of R2D2 being bamf, please tell me you’ve seen the Beneath The Dome documentaries, where they do a biographical study of Artoo, or Reginald Dillingham as he was christened at birth, as if he’s an American droid-actor, and detail his meeting Lucas while at the University of Arizona, knocking up his girlfriend, and falling into depression and alcoholism post-RotJ. It’s truly hilarious.
12) Yes.**
13) Fantasy casting Anakin: Wes Bentley. Or, I’m actually very much with Troy on Culkin, but I’d pick Rory over his brothers Kieran or Macaulay for Anakin (he played the asthmatic son in Signs, for reference). James Franco is also a really good choice I wouldn’t have thought of, though. Tooooootally support 80’s Bean. Fantastic choice.
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**Commented mid-Ewan-cock spiel
(currently 1:31:09)