Saturday morning I took the kids to see the end of something that started in 1977.
It was hard to believe that twenty eight years ago as a 10 year old boy my dad to me to see
Star Wars IV or as it was called at the time “Star Wars”, (in the UK) or “Adventures of the Starkiller: Episode 1 – The Star Wars“.
The latter being its US release name which wasn’t used that much in the UK other than to those who would later become life long fans of the film.

So twenty eight years later on I was sat with my own 10 and 9 year old sons my 5 year old daughter watching the end of an era.
All three never took their eyes off the screen from start to finish, apart from a trip to the loo for the boys. Eilis didn’t even blink she was so enthralled by it, not even when the Darth Vader we knew was “born”. Without giving the plot away of the birth of Darth Vadar, it was the only gruesome part of the movie.

 

 

I had heard many reports from people saying the special FX were great but the script let it down. Personally I didn’t think so, but only because I was sitting there putting all the pieces together as the film attempted to come full circle to where it all began. To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember hardly a line from the film so engrossed with the action and storyline was I (as Yoda would say). And talking about the little green warrior, he was at his best again when taking on the bad guys once again.

GBH

As for General Grievious who I can’t remember every hearing of before this film, he looked mostly robot, commanded a lot of the robots but was in fact a metal cage surrounding the heart of a sociapath hell bent on collecting the Light Sabers of Jedi. He also sounded like he smoked 50 Marlboror a day. (What was with the cough??)

R2D2

R2 seemed to be able to jump around a lot more than normal and the film ended with him again being taken off for a good clean up while C3P0 was going to have his flash erased once again.

Towards the end of the movie it was exactly as George Lucas intented it to be. The end of the saga, all loose ends neatly tied up. That was the only bit that was probably lost on my children with me that day. Now all I am waiting for is the DVD to be released so we can all sit down and have a Star Wars marathon and watch them in order. (And I won’t resort to downloading that dodgy copy that appeared on the web the very same day this film was released).