Confessions of a Star Wars virgin
Darth who? All my life, I’d never seen a Star Wars film. Until I agreed to watch all six.
For 23 years, I’ve carried around a secret.
It’s the kind of thing that’s haunted me since youth, when a few chums found out and were left gobsmacked and carried on to my 20s, where it still managed to drop jaws.
The level of shock that washes across someone’s face made me keep pretty quiet about the fact that I somehow managed to grow up without ever seeing a
Star Wars film. Shameful, isn’t it? The first time I realized there was something patently missing from my childhood, I was elbow-deep in papier mâché, sculpting a mask at summer art camp. While I podged together something resembling a human head, the eldest camper sat across from me, moulding horns to the top of his mask and crafting crevices into its facade.
By the time it dried and we had broken out the paint, a crowd of kids had swarmed him saying, “It looks just like him.”
Was I supposed to know who him was? To me, the mask just looked like a creature whose face was blistering with blood and ornate scabs, but to everyone else it was Darth Maul, a scheming Sith lord from a series I’d never seen. My confusion had officially made me “the girl who had never seen Star Wars” and, for days, I was teased and relentlessly questioned about why.
I chalked it up to the first episode debuting 15 years before I was born and not having brothers to force me to watch the films or an interest in science fiction.
There were far more important things for a school-aged girl to worry about, such as whether Backstreet Boy Nick Carter was single.
I learned it was easy enough to fake knowing all about Star Wars, since so much of it has become ingrained in our pop culture. Commercials used John Williams’ memorable theme music, toy aisles and kids’ meals were rife with miniature Yodas and Luke Skywalkers. Even the biggest reveal, Luke’s connection to Darth Vader, was spoiled when an editor who knew my secret convinced me it was time to watch the series.
I went into the six films with high expectations. This is a blockbuster series with a cult audience that has overanalyzed just about every millisecond of George Lucas’s work.
Most told me I’d love the older episodes. Some called the prequels “terrible.” So what did I think?
After more than a dozen hours, the Force is now strong with this viewer and I’ll probably head to the theatre to watch the forthcoming seventh episode, The Force Awakens. I admit it got off to a rocky start. Audiences in 1977 must have been impressed with Lucas’s digital motion control photography, but I was watching the series in an age where computer-generated effects and digital cinema are rampant, so it took a bit more than out-of-this-world visuals to win me over.
While I found the plots of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back a bit slow, I considered myself a fan after Return of the Jedi.
And though most had suggested setting the bar low for the prequels, I found that my attention didn’t wane when a tow-haired Anakin Skywalker managed to tug on my heartstrings. That’s why I was crestfallen when Attack of the Clones turned out to be a disaster of a film, but elated when I was sitting on the edge of my seat for most of Revenge of the Sith.
By the end of that movie, when the infants Luke and Leia are being held in the arms of adoptive parents wistfully looking out into the sunset, I was disappointed I’d have to wait weeks for the next one, but relieved I’d finally shed my title as “the girl who had never seen Star Wars.”
It’s just a good thing those campers who teased me didn’t find out I’ve also never watched Star Trek.