Star Wars VII – Our Trip (no spoilers)

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Saturday 19 December, 2015 by Uncle Spike

So we did it… Late Thursday we made the trek to the big city (ish) to lay rest to the decade-long wait for this next episode in the Star Wars saga.

Being the first created away from the clutches of the pioneering Mr Lucas, all eyes were on a certain J. J. Abrams to see if he would do justice to the legend, albeit under the flag of Disney – a fact considered by many to be worrisome at best.

Being a rural area of a non-western nation, the Star Wars ‘fever’ managed little more than a ‘slight cough’ here by comparison to the events seen on some news websites from the UK and the US: there were no Stormtroopers on the streets, nor large fanfares, huge queues of nerds for us to beat, or anything like that. The reality was that, instead of tickets being snapped up months in advance, we couldn’t even buy them till the morning the film was released (!), and only for the smallest theatre. There were no huge life-size character models outside the box office, or large feature-film posters, or even small wall adverts come to think of it.

When we got there, the theatre was perhaps a third full, and mostly of our lot, the nerd herd, gathered together in teenage excitement at the prospect that lay ahead 🙂

Cousin Spike Jnr, aka the kid, was thankfully able to go with us (there would’ve been a riot if not). However, that was due to the upside of being in rural Türkiye: here it is rated as a 15+ film, but wearing his Star Wars t-shirt, (plus underwear I might add), and carrying TWO light-sabres, there were no questions asked – in we went. To be frank, his knowledge of the entire character list of all six previous movies and every plot scenario from 1977 to the present day would no doubt surpass even the entire collective gathering of cinema-goers that day. He’s one heavy-duty Star Wars nerd – I mean, he scores well above average on adult nerd challenge quizzes of this genre! (and he’s still just seven).

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The film was ace by the way.

Without giving away anything that might constitute a spoiler, I can just say that it was pretty darned good. I mean, better than good. It was extremely well executed, and provided all that we could have hoped for. But if you have seen it and agree or disagree, please do not mention anything further about the film on the comments here; I know some regular readers won’t get to see it for a few days yet, so let’s be fair to them.

The final lasting memory of that day was to see strangers come up, before and after the film and ask for photos taken together with our son. Most had never before seen the light-sabres he’d saved so long and hard for, so he was kind of a celebrity nerd at least.

I may have been the oldest there, but the saga has been with me since I was a lad, and from some things, one does not, and should not, ever grow up 🙂