Happy Star Wars Day!

May the Fourth Be With You!

As a child of the 70s, growing up in the 80s, and with a deep and abiding fascination of sci-fi stuff, Star Wars is a huge part of my cultural baggage. Here’s a random set of things about me and the Star Wars saga.

• Star Wars was the first movie I saw in the cinema. I didn’t actually see it in the first cinematic release, but they brought it back by popular demand a few months later, and my dad took me to it then. I was about 4, and it was 1978.

• There is a photo of me from Christmas of 1978 in a Darth Vader costume. No, I don’t have it in digital form, but I do have one from a couple of years later with my brother wearing a cloak based on Battlestar Galactica that he got because we collectively wore out the Darth Vader one. We were really into Battlestar Galactica, too – I wanted one of the flying motorbikes from Galactica 1980 so badly (Just to be fair, I’m going to share the embarrassment – I’m the one in the cowboy outfit)

• Naturally, I saw Empire and Jedi in the cinemas as well. More than once, in the first time around. Less surprisingly, I’ve seen all the other movies in the cinema (I mean, I was an adult when Phantom Menace came out)

• My brother and I wore out our original VHS tapes of the Star Wars saga.

• The very first widescreen TV I saw “in the wild” belonged to the dad of a friend. He had bought it to watch a cinematic-release version of Empire in widescreen. (That, and Raiders, and Die Hard)

• I saw the cinematic re-release of the original trilogy in a marathon screening a couple of years before the prequels came out.

• I like Phantom Menace. Of all the prequels, it’s the one that actually tells an internally consistent story. Attack of the Clones has more plotholes in it than you can drive a truck through. I mean, where did the military hardware the clones use come from? Or the navy? Where there secret shipyards tucked away on Camino?

• The first TV series I binged through on Netflix was The Clone Wars. I can’t wait for Rebels to come out on streaming media.

• I have a copy of the Last Jedi on Blu-Ray still in its shrink-wrap. I was saving it to watch with my wife tonight. However, life decided to make that non-viable, so she gets to escape that fate for a while.

Author: Robert Watkins

My name is Robert Watkins. I am a software developer and have been for over 20 years now. I currently work for people, but my opinions here are in no way endorsed by them (which is cool; their opinions aren’t endorsed by me either). My main professional interests are in Java development, using Agile methods, with a historical focus on building web based applications. I’m also a Mac-fan and love my iPhone, which I’m currently learning how to code for. I live and work in Brisbane, Australia, but I grew up in the Northern Territory, and still find Brisbane too cold (after 22 years here). I’m married, with two children and one cat. My politics are socialist in tendency, my religious affiliation is atheist (aka “none of the above”), my attitude is condescending and my moral standing is lying down. View all posts by Robert Watkins