... Why you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder!

Thirty years ago today, May 21, 1980, was a pivotal day in the life of every young fella born in the '70s -- the day Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back hit theatres. It's fair to say most boys (and lots of girls) of my age would never be the same. Wampas! AT-ATs! Yodas! Bobas! Landos! These were the things that buzzed around our brains for weeks and months afterwards.

Sadly, though, I can't quite remember my 9-year-old self's experience of actually SEEING "Empire" in theatres. I know I did, but for some reason, it's all tangled up in the kazillions of times I've seen "Empire Strikes Back" since then. I don't know for sure, but I suspect I've seen it more than any other movie. It's my favorite "Star Wars" movie, of course. Isn't it everybody's?

Thirty years on, "Empire" works because it's the best pure movie of the entire six-film epic. I'll always love the original "Star Wars" despite its hokier bits, and even the rather daft Ewoks don't sour me on "Return of the Jedi" (which I vividly do remember seeing in a packed cinema in 1983). And as for the "new" trilogy -- it's not as bad as all that, but it's a lot more soulless and plastic, I think.

But "Empire" -- well, many an armchair critic have already pointed out its merits. There's a scruffier side to "Empire" that the glossier other five movies lack -- it's there in Han Solo's snarky bantering with Leia, with the rogue Lando Calrissian, with sinister bounty hunter cameos, with Darth Vader's seemingly wholesale slaughter of unworthy henchmen. And "Empire" had the guts to end on an unashamed downer of a cliffhanger, with no promise things would be set right. (They would.) "Empire" had all the boy's own adventure fun of the original "Star Wars," but just coloured in with a little more intensity, a little more reality. Why that's lacking in George Lucas' later movies, I don't know.

Perhaps it was his script collaborators like Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett, or "Empire's" director Irvin Kershner. "Empire Strikes Back," from its glacial Hoth vistas to its soggy Dagobah gloom to its oh-so-'80s Cloud City disco skyline, is rich and full. It's so full that an entire generation of us kids saw a heck of a lot more to it than Lucas ever intended; we'd create worlds around it, guzzle down comics and action figures and nostalgia items for another 30 years to fill it out more. You'd see a lizard-man Bossk get about 1.4 seconds of screen time, buy the action figure and make up an entire cosmology around him. That's interactive entertainment in the pre-iPad age.

Nothing is ever quite as cool as it is when you're 9 years old, so maybe that's why nothing quite measures up to "Empire" for me. Without "Empire Strikes Back," it's hard to imagine growing up in the 1980s. So for that, George, Irvin, and everyone else, thanks for the awesomeness. (As Han Solo would say, "I know.")

The force is strong in this one

Armageddon Expo, this past weekend.

Random thoughts on Borg, Jedi and Twitti

When you start off a Monday morning with a migraine so bad you think your eyeballs are going to explode, it's never a good sign.

Ah well. Random links and short musings then:
• A nice profile appeared in the Sunday Star-Times of my father-in-law Peter Siddell and his ongoing experience with a brain tumour. I'm inclined to bag on my fellow journalists more often than not but other than a few errors this story is pretty good, I think it captures his voice well. And they managed to spell my wife's name correctly, which is always a plus.

• I have rediscovered the joy of "Star Trek" thanks to the new movie, and the swell "Fan Collective" series of DVD box sets which are perfect for the non-obsessive fan like me, offering a nice sampler of 20 or so episodes spread amongst the five series and organized by themes such as "Borg," "Time Travel" and "Klingons." I like a lot of "Trek" but freely admit even the best of series had its share of duds and am not interested in mammoth 7-season box sets, so these "Fan Collectives" are an awesome way to get my "Trek" fix without breaking the budget. Heck, I even found an episode of the hugely mediocre "Enterprise" on there that wasn't half-bad!

• ...I am sad to see that it seems like a lot of blogs I like to read have gone dark in favour of Twitter apparently. I don't want to be the grouchy old guy going on about the newfangled technology, but I have to admit I'm just not into Twitter. The forced minimalism doesn't appeal to me. Hell, I can barely keep my blog posts below 1400 words, let alone 140 characters! Anyway, although there's little reward sometimes in this bloggin', I guess I'll keep bloggin' away in the old media for a while... "Follow" me if you will! (And yeah, that's why I'll soon have Google Ads on the site.)

• So it was 10 years ago today that "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" (whew!) opened. Hard to believe, harder still that a movie went from being so hugely anticipated to so hugely maligned in just a decade. I admit it's not a great flick, although curiously 5-year-old Peter digs all the prequels (except "Episode III" which is a little intense for him). We stood in line up at Lake Tahoe to watch it on opening day and according to my journal entry of the time, "fantastic movie." I guess the disappointment took a while to set in, or perhaps it's the nature of fan obsessions to curdle a bit in the light of time. I wonder if part of the failure of the prequels to take is that they were viewed by 20- and 30-somethings who watched the originals as kids and who couldn't get into the same mindset again? But then I remember Jar Jar Binks and Jake Lloyd and pidgin-Asian speaking aliens and think again. It did have Liam Neeson and Darth Maul going for it, though, and 10 years on I still remember the thrill when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon zip on their lightsabers for the first time. Give Lucas another few years, maybe he'll release a "reimagined" "Phantom Menace" that cuts down on the flaws.

"The force is strong in this one."

At long last, we have begun indoctrinating the boy in the ways of the Jedi. Thoughts and questions of Peter, age 4 1/2, upon his first viewing of "Star Wars" ("A New Hope," of course) on an extremely rainy, blustery winter Saturday afternoon:

"Why are they having a robot garage sale?"

"Do those aliens make music all the time? Do the aliens make music while they're sleeping?"

"Does Han Solo have any superpowers?"

"Who's that slug man? I hope he [Han Solo] doesn't get eaten because did you know, that slug guy likes eating LOTS of things."

"Is [the Death Star] made out of mud? It looks kind of like it's made out of mud."

"That robot looks like a tiny mouse and I can show you my mousey voice sqeeeek squeeek squeeek."

"R2D2 turned off the radio and turned it back on and then made it LOUDER!"

"R2D2 can turn into a fire extinguisher or a screwdriver. He's a changing robot."

"There's an ocean under that garbage floor!"

Final thoughts: "I like Star Wars because it had my toy robot in it!"

And then he was off to run around the house being a TIE fighter.