And Smokey And The Bandit had a lovable smartass smuggler who evades authority and delivers his payload while falling in love with a girl from a completely different world. (No blinky lights this time, but plenty of jumped-up fast-moving vehicles.)

Hence some of my frustration with both Lucas and the apparent decisions of the sequel trilogy (of which I’ve only watched the first movie, so for the rest I’m going on plot synopsis). The text of the prequels, as well as a retrospective consideration of Obi Wan (and Yoda!) from the original trilogy, are screaming out…

Does anybody believe Lucas knew Luke was Vader’s son (or that Leia was his sister) when the first movie came out?

I was 14 when “Star Wars” was released; I skipped all-star baseball practice to see it on opening day (the coach would have crucified me had he known.) What people forget now, with all the multi-tiered religiosity that’s been affixed to the entire enterprise, is that the first movie was just a funny, goofy, exciting…

I have to add this every time:

I, and my friends who are fellow middle-aged die-hard Star Wars fans, are just baffled by the critical and YouTube reaction The Rise of Skywalker is getting.

I’m surprised Ralph McQuarrie didn’t come up in this article at all. His concept art is part of what earned Lucas his studio funding for A New Hope, and he designed what would become iconic characters (including Vader, who appears pretty much as he appeared in McQuarrie’s concepts), ships, and locations for the entire…

“Beyond Mark Hamill’s floppy Tiger Beat hair, nothing about Star Wars even looks ’70s.”

The Rise of Skywalker was incoherent? How does a “rote and cynical and joyless” experience double as “incoherent”?

Good lord that binary sunset scene is breathtaking, every single time. A moment of pure cinematic gold.

I’m just struggling to process how I reached the age of 51 before discovering that “Episode IV A New Hope” didn’t appear on screen when 8 year old me saw the original film at the cinema.

I think nostalgia definitely plays a huge part in how you view the original trilogy. I’m not saying that if you were born later that you can’t enjoy the OT, my son was born in 2002 and he loves all three of the originals. I was born in 1971, so I was 5, 8 and 11 when the OT came out, so these movies were the most new…

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re…

Some generations were defined by depression and war, some by war and social upheaval. My particular branch of Generation X was defined by seeing this fantasy set against a backdrop of war and social upheaval play out on a huge screen before our grade-school eyes.

I saw this when it was first released as a kid and I cannot overstate how much impact it had. The combination of the astonishing special effects, the great photography in live shots, and the streamlined plot were astounding.

For that matter, Star Wars fans have been ignoring Midichlorians for years, and that was straight from Lucas himself, not some EU garbage.

“Beyond Mark Hamill’s floppy Tiger Beat hair, nothing about Star Wars even looks ’70s.”

I think Tom meant “summer movie” as in “a movie about summer.”

The shark is such an abstract concept for most of the movie, it sends a jolt up your spine when you finally see it at the beginning of the third act. Brody’s grousing about shoveling chum into the water, the shark just pops up for a second in the background (out of focus to boot) but it makes you sit up and pay…

Remains my favourite film of all time. Not a single frame is wasted or out of place. A work of absolute perfection.