What Star Wars Means to Me
In honor of May the 4th, the nerdiest and thus bestest holiday
Return of the Jedi is the first movie I remember going to see.
My dad took me—my mom was the bigger Star Wars fan, but she must’ve stayed home with my brother, who was too little to witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station. My memories of the trip are vague and scattered, kaleidoscopes in the dark.
One clear detail surfaces. My instincts say this occurred either during the fight over the Sarlaac Pit or the battle on Endor. Basically when awesome stuff was going down.
I’m standing in front of my seat, overwhelmed with excitement. (I may have stood for the entire movie, I honestly don’t know.)
My dad sits to my right, on the edge of the aisle. I briefly look at him, to check his temperature, as if to say—Dad, are you seeing this? He sits with his long legs crossed, angled toward the aisle, calmly eating a box of Jujubes.1 He could just as easily be watching a documentary.
I’m disappointed he doesn’t love it like I do.
This disparity would become one of the enduring themes of my life. Nobody loved Star Wars like I did. My affection for the original trilogy bordered on obsessive. Before VCR and Cable TV, I had no way to rewatch the movies as much as I’d like—read: all the time, forever—so I reenacted them with my action figures. And if I’d been inside too long and my parents were afraid I’d develop albinism, I’d run around the yard, shooting imaginary Stormtroopers and hollering at Chewie to “get us out of here.”2
I moved around a lot growing up and downplayed my feelings for Star Wars while sussing out the other kids. Star Wars was never considered as fatally dorky as Dungeons & Dragons or even Star Trek, but it also wasn’t ‘normal’ to devote so much of your personality to a movie.
If there was one thing most kids worried about, it was fitting in. All we knew in those pre-internet Before Times was what we saw on TV or witnessed firsthand. And nowhere did I see anyone who thought about Star Wars like I did. At best, it was a movie trilogy someone loved. But they were movies, nothing more.
For me, Star Wars transcended the packaging. It took place on a screen, but it lived in my heart and took root in my imagination. It was part of my identity.
My first year at a new high school, one kid randomly brought a Jawa action figure to our sports journalism class. To this day, I have no idea why. That little brown toy was like seeing a flare when lost in the wilderness. I didn’t recognize anything about my new home, so very remote and rural. But I understood that Jawa.
I later and belatedly discovered one of the first good friends I made in that town was a huge Star Wars buff. We were hanging out when he grabbed a cardboard tube and recited Darth Vader’s dialogue from when he comes face-to-face with Obi-Wan on the Death Star, complete with lightsaber sounds.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master.”
I don’t even remember talking about Star Wars with him before that. Thus, I was too delightfully bewildered, and too busy laughing, to offer the customary response: “Only a master of evil, Darth.”
He would later stand up in my wedding.
There can be no overstating how important Star Wars was for the first 20ish years of my life. It was foundational. My love gradually cooled as I’ve gotten older. Part of that is due to too many missteps (The Prequels) or outright blunders (The Rise of Skywalker). But I’ve also matured.3 I’ve read amazing books and watched breathtaking movies. My perspective has changed—I’ve discovered Star Wars isn’t actually the greatest movie ever. It’s still in the conversation. The Empire Strikes Back is in my top 10, maybe even my top 5. But it’s not number 1.
No matter what happens in the future, I will always love Star Wars. I can’t not love it.
What does Star Wars mean to me? You’re better off asking what I mean to me. They’re one in the same.
What does Star Wars mean to you? Do you have a favorite Star Wars related memory? Drop it in the comments! I'd love to hear about it. 🤓
Jujubes have always been his movie snack of choice. My problem with them: It’s impossible to discern the green ones from the black ones in the dark. Few things are worse than thinking you’re about to eat some sweet candy and instead chomping down on something that tastes like the devil’s butthole.
Poor Chewbacca. He’s always getting yelled at, even though any trouble they’re in is 100% Han’s fault.
Says the guy who loves to squeeze in penile humor wherever possible.
I'm not the biggest fan of Star Wars, but it has an unavoidable presence in popular culture. Especially now that Disney has commandeered it...
There are countless occasions in the television animation programs I know and love where it has been referenced both directly and indirectly, from the odd allusion to a character, phrase or event to a virtually shot-for-shot, line-for-line comic recreation. (Looking at you, "Family Guy").
And, of course, if it didn't exist, then neither would Mel Brooks' magisterial parody of the franchise, "Spaceballs"- and that would be a shame...
I love how Star Wars quotes can immediately connect two people who didn't even realize they had something in common. It's the same with Dungeons & Dragons. There's just this shared language that connects you in this little subculture of cool and nerdy people.