Ben Wheatley

“The first I knew about Star Wars was when a kid came back from America with a C-3PO T-shirt. It was weird and exotic. I remember us all standing round in the park trying to work out what it meant. Then there was a colour article about Star Wars in a Sunday magazine. I remember looking at the Imperial cruisers and thinking they were real. In those days, with the staggered releases, you could feel the radiation of a big cinema event like this coming from across the Atlantic. Six months after the US release, it hit the UK. I saw Star Wars in 1978. I was five. Though I remember more clearly when it played on TV in ’82, of re-watching it on tape every morning for a whole summer until every tiny sound effect was burnt into my memory. We only had three tapes – the other two had Ladykillers and Alien on them. In the ‘70s, Buster Crabbe’s Flash Gordon was on TV in the afternoons and Star Wars films played all the time. I was mad for the Sinbad movies, anything with Harryhausen creatures, Star Trek and Doctor Who. Lucas minced all that culture up and sprinkled a bit of THX 1138 on top of it. No wonder it hit us all so hard. Star Wars has been with me since I was a child. I always go back for more. But nothing can ever top the first one. It’s like Roger Moore is my Bond and Tom Baker is my Doctor. I’m fused with these things because of first contact. Because of never knowing any different before being exposed to something so culturally strong. Did Star Wars make me want to make films? Not really. As far as I was concerned, the first time I saw Star Wars it was a documentary. I had no clue it wasn’t real. Fuck films, I wanted to be Han Solo.”