May the 4th Be With You
I have a confession to make. I didn’t grow up watching Star Wars. Yeah, I was one of those kids, shocking I know. I watched them once growing up, when I was maybe five. I don’t so much remember the movies as much as I remember getting to stay up late and spend three nights sleeping on the living room floor in sleeping bags with my siblings. We had borrowed the set from a guy my dad worked with, so we made a marathon of it. It was a good time, but I didn’t really remember a whole lot about it.
When the prequels came out, I didn’t know any better. We went to see them, and as many kids did, we enjoyed them quite a bit. Until the last one, when I was old enough to know better, but you know. That was all my Star Wars knowledge with all the pop culture references tossed in there out of context. So I grew up knowing about Star Wars, but not really knowing it. That was my life until I met my husband.
I learned to fake things really well. I mean my husband knew that I hadn’t actually seen Star Wars while we were dating, but I could bluff my way through most conversations about it. My best friend’s now husband was also really into it and made this Geneva Parody called Star Wars Abridged for Film Fest our Junior year, and I was able to follow it and pick up on the important bits from him. It wasn’t until I had graduated and gotten married that I truly understood.
We searched high and low for the original theatrical releases of the original trilogy. It was very important to Logan that I watch the unedited versions. This is why it took so long for me to actually get to see them. He had to search for them everywhere, all over the internet, it was impossible. Then we discovered on movie night that our friend Brett owned some super special anniversary collection or other that had the unedited versions included. He lent them to us and now I can actually say that I have seen the original trilogy as they were meant to be seen, without CGI inserts.
I’m not going to fight anyone over Star Wars. I enjoyed it greatly, sure, it’s a fun franchise and a huge part of pop culture. But I don’t have super strong opinions on it. I liked The Force Awakens. I thought it was really well done, it included the old team without overshadowing the new one, the characters were well portrayed, I love Daisy Ridley, she was wonderful. John Boyega was also fabulous, I love that they picked these two minorities and gave them the respect and dignity they deserve. No more of that Hobbit crap with the girl thrown in there to please the masses without actually being useful or having a personality or doing anything for the film. Our main characters are both interesting and complex and proficient in different ways. I understand the complaints against it, but I’m much more willing to look past those and enjoy what the movie did right.
I will say this, I love that English has a month and day that facilitate this pun. May the 4th be with you. I can’t help it, puns make me smile. It’s a testament to how ingrained Star Wars has become in our culture that we not only picked out this pun, but chose to celebrate it as well. When I was a freshmen in college I was part of a D&D group that was always dying, but that’s beside the point. The DM for this group was a huge Star Wars geek and so for the 4th of May when we happened to have a game, he came to us with a Star Wars themed side adventure. We fought a rancor, I believed and were picked up by Han and Chewing stand-ins in the D&D world equivalent of the Millennium Falcon. I got to flirt with “Han” and run off with him for a while, leaving my companions to fight the scary parts. It was actually a lot of fun.
I haven’t actually celebrated the day since then. We were invited to a Star Wars themed dinner party tonight with the lovely Fulk Family, but seeing as this is the only day this week we don’t have anything and there’s shopping to be done before we go to Indiana, we’ll be skipping it this year. Perhaps we will find something Star Wars-y to do on our own. Perhaps it’ll just have to wait until next year. We’ll see what Logan thinks this evening. For the rest of you, I hope you hall have a very lovely Star Wars day, and of course, may the force be with you, my friends.
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