SubscribeIt feels like coincidence, but it’s probably because of something in the air, but just as the new Star Wars film’s about to hit the multiplexes, I’ve re-watched the first two films (I mean episodes IV and V, of course). As a kid I was a real Star Wars fan and owned loads of toys which, despite my mother being something of a hoarder, have somehow disappeared. But then that’s what makes the surviving tat so valuable. From about ten years old to my teens, I was a real armchair astronomer who got ever so upset when his mother told her friends I was into astrology.
Looking back I was right to be offended at the association with mumbo jumbo, but I have to admit that Star Wars isn’t all it pretends to be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great fantasy adventure stuff, but there’s not science bit. I mean, landing inside an asteroid makes for a clever escape, but getting out wearing no more than a face mask to discover there’s gravity is silly. And that ice world can’t have been that cold given that Han Solo was able to take his face mask off to radio for help. And the Millennium Falcon makes all that fuss about going to light speed, when even the Death Star must travel at many multiples of the same to go from star system to star system.
Yes it’s all good fun and doesn’t really matter (though I’m surprised my younger self wasn’t more snooty), but telling the census you’re a Jedi?
