I entered this world in the jundland wastes of Tatooine, 1977. And do you know what my very first words were? “But I was going to Toshi station to get some power converters”.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be Luke Skywalker. In the make believe stories of my action figures, my little toys, I was Luke Skywalker. In the stories in my head, that I dreamt up as I couldn’t fall asleep or in the shower or when I just needed to escape from the world, I was Luke Skywalker.

The First Trilogy

By the time I was conscious of anything, there were already three movies. I was a child of Return of the Jedi (still my guilty favorite of them all). I loved Ewoks, I had the village and the hut. I loved the pageantry and Saturday-morning swashbuckling of the skiff over Sarlacc, of Endor Han and Vader’s turn. And I loved the original celebration in the forest as the Ewoks sang their song.

My parents were the OG fans. We had a VHS copy of Star Wars taped off CBS, with the recording strategically paused at ad breaks, but not cutting out these phenomenal fan interviews.

These were glimpses of the already vast sub-culture of late-70s Star Wars fandom. These people who were claiming to have watched Star Wars hundreds of times. These people who dressed up in character, just because. My people before I knew they were my people.

I was born in the jundland wastes and so were they.

My family moved to India in 1985, and I took that VHS, those action figures, village, hut, a road full of promise and a head full of doubt. I moved to India, and Star Wars was the piece of America that I carried with me.

A couple of years later, I met a friend at school who spoke Star Wars. He had moved to India from America (from Chicagoland too!), and he knew how to say Jedi. Not only that, he had dozens of Star Wars toys at home.

Naturally, we became best friends.

We played with Star Wars toys on alternating weekends, at his house, then my house, then his house, then my house. We did this well past the age when boys played pretend. But we continued. This was our little America, our little parallel universe where Luke Skywalker and friends went on absurd adventures and everything made sense.

One time, my mom and my best friend’s dad went to a parents teachers conference. The teachers complained that all the boys in class were getting very unruly, starting to use abusive language. On the ride home, my best friend’s dad told my mom: “I don’t think we have to worry about our kids. They’re still playing with little toys every weekend.”

The Second Trilogy

In the mid-90s, Internet access was very spotty across India. I was once visiting a friend’s house in New Delhi and was killing time on the Internet. I put in starwars.com on a whim and my mind was blown.

They were making a new movie. They were making THREE new movies. They just cast the guy from Schindler’s List. What is happening i don’t even can I haz mor internet?

I’ve written about this in some detail before, but my relationship with the early Internet is deeply intertwined with my relationship with Star Wars. Building a Star Wars web site–– this Star Wars web site–– was how I learned how the Internet works. Which is also why I have the job I have today.

In the run up to Episode I, I was running a (this!) moderately popular web site, with an international staff across three continents. Episode I was not a movie, it was an event and I was a minor player in the public relations campaign. I was narrating from the sidelines, I was feeding the beast, I was living the dream. I wrote about the rumors, the news, the things that weren’t news but were random Star Wars facts, the things that weren’t random Star Wars facts but just the time a guy on FRIENDS mentioned Star Wars and so on.

That first trailer was magic. I watched a tiny thumbnail from dial-up hell and then one day they played it on MTV in our college apartment and I ran across three rooms in time to catch the misty gungan beasts walk out.

The movie was going to come out in May in most countries, but not until October in India. OCTOBER! I went to America that summer and watched it a month late. And then I watched it over and over in the Yorktown cinemas where I could walk to from my sister’s apartment. The movie was magic. Star Wars was back and I was the greek chorus.

In retrospect, I understand why a lot of people didn’t like Episode I. I loved it. I loved it every time. I grant you it was wooden, it was stilted, Jar Jar was Jar Jar. The greek chorus abides.

By the time Episode II came out, I had moved back to America and this site was still going strong. I went to Celebration II in Indianapolis and stood in lines among my people. These were the promised people of the CBS VHS tape in the promised land of the Indy convention center. I watched Empire and Jedi with an auditorium full of us and it was the greatest movie-going experience of them all.

I stood in a line around the block for Episode II midnight show and cheered when Yoda did his acrobatics. My parents, the OG nerds, came to that one too. I could see the cracks in the prequels, but it didn’t bother me much. Sifo-dyas be damned.

When Episode III came out, I was married, had a real job. My wife and I went to the Framingham AMC a couple of hours early for the midnight show. There was nobody there. We sat in an empty theatre with a handful of other people until it gradually filled up. No lines, no pageantry. The diaspora was dissipating.

I still love Episode III, and it probably has some of the best scenes in the prequels (Palpatine at the opera), but the dream was over. I had a job and a wife and there were no more Star Wars on the horizon.

That night, I quoted Auden ( bring out the coffin, let the mourners come ) on the site in my review and went to bed. I’m still embarrassed by that review, but it really felt like something died that night. This web site chugged along on inertia, but there was no drive. For nothing now could ever come to any good.

The Third Trilogy

I was afraid when they announced the third trilogy. And gradually I became apathetic (as Yoda said, fear leads to anger, anger leads to apathy as self care, to protect form future disappointment. Disappointment is the path to the dark side.). The casting was interesting, and it was nice that we were getting the old gang back together, but this was no longer my Star Wars.

I have two daughters now. I gave them all of my old action figures, the Ewok village, the hut. We play with them together, occasionally. I own a house now, and various corners are mini-shrines to Star Wars. But my kids don’t really care for Star Wars. Maybe they will some day, but I’m not counting on it. So this was no longer my Star Wars.

That was until the first trailer. I went to watch one of the hunger games movies at the Boston AMC to catch the trailer on the big screen and JJ had me hooked. Boyega over Tatooine (I know), the speeder across the fallen destroyer, X-wings over water and the falcon. The falcon was what broke me.

When The Force Awakens dropped, I was in India on vacation. I went to watch it with my sister and an old college friend in the theatre there. It was good to see the old faces, Boyega and Isaac were fun, but it felt predictable and safe. Rey was what made the film.

If I had been born in 2009 instead of 1979, I would have entered this world in the niima outpost, Jaaku, 2015. And do you know what my first words would have been? ”That’s just Teedo.”

I would have been Rey.

The thing that had me intrigued after The Force Awakens was: where will this story go next? To a certain extent, I understood the necessity of TFA. You had to bring the old fans back and reassure them. But you had to introduce the next generation of Luke, Leia and Han as well. As you spend the next three movies knocking off the original trio, you had to build up the new one. Which made The Last Jedi more interesting to me: what would they do next?

The Last Jedi is my favorite Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi. It is tender, it is muscular, it is comforting and yet it is the most surprising mainstream movie I have seen. In the red throne room, in the middle of the movie, there is a moment when the audience literally has no idea where the trilogy will go from here. Where literally all of Star Wars will go from here. When was the last time a big budget movie had a moment like that?

Rian Johnson gave me a movie I didn’t know I needed.

(HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)

Luke Skywalker died and gave us permission to let go of the past. That the Jedi were a misguided cult, the past was flawed, Star Wars was just a movie, Rey was a nobody and that was okay. In fact, that was preferred to the alternative, because that meant anybody could be the next Luke Skywalker, anyone could be the next hero and that the masculine urge to revere the past leads only to ruin. Star Wars was not a story of hereditary super powers, but a story of the kid from a moisture farm who made it big and saved the galaxy. Star Wars was not a story about House Skywalker, but about the orphan girl from the junkyards of jakku who went up against the devil and won without compromise.

Even better, Luke Skywalker died and set Star Wars free from generations of old men who thought they owned it. That you weren’t a Star Wars fan if you couldn’t name every bounty hunter that Vader hired. That you weren’t a Star Wars fan if you hadn’t suffered before Star Wars was cool, before the dark times. That you weren’t a Star Wars fan if you didn’t meet some narrow rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc definition of the true fan.

Luke Skywalker died to set us free. The Star Wars of the future was the Star Wars of Rey, Poe, Finn, Rose and maybe Ben. House Skywalker was dead, long live House Skywalker. Now is the age of nobody. Of everybody

And then came The Rise of Skywalker. Just when we thought we could get out, JJ pulled us right back in. Even the title mocks me. House Skywalker was dead. What was this dark fiendish thing?

The Rise of Skywalker is the movie I knew I didn’t need.

A return to the old ways of House Skywalker v. House Palpatine, where everybody knows your name. And your name determines your powers. And your name determines whether you’re worthy of screentime in this increasingly small-minded universe.

TROS is a narrow, inward-gazing film with lines and set pieces that exist solely as fan service. TROS takes no time to let any emotion sit with the audience. Chewbacca died, haha just kidding no he didn’t. Here, meet this lady on planet x, oh look her planet blew up, oh look she’s still alive. Remember Rose Tico, haha, no we don’t.

But all of that is fine. I loved the prequels, so who am I to complain about all of that? The fundamental flaw of TROS is that it doesn’t love The Last Jedi. The two movies sit in opposition with each other. All the promise of a post-Skywalker (and post-Palpatine, little did I know) era was thrown away. And it breaks my heart.

And so one more time, Star Wars is over. I have no WH Auden to quote, because that’s not what I feel this time. I’m through with love, I’ll never fall again. There will be other trilogies, but they can never bring the thing that used to be.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be Luke Skywalker. But Luke Skywalker’s story is over.

Thank you, Rian Johnson.

In the beginning, nobody came. I put up a counter on the site from the-counter.com, but the number only went up when I visited the page myself.

I used to dial long distance for internet, because our town didn’t have legit dial up yet. I uploaded my site on non-graphics, telnet-style internet-access. I couldn’t see my own site, but I loved every minute.

I started visiting other Star Wars fan sites and writing entries in their guestbooks. “Hey, big fan of your site. I really like the . I have a Star Wars site too. It’s at http://members.tripod.com/devan1”

Yes, that URL still works.

This was December 1998, approaching the height of prequel mania. I had exams coming soon, but Episode I only happened once in a lifetime. My memories of the time leading up to Episode I are some of my best— the anticipation, the online camaraderie, the excitement. I almost cried the first time I saw the teaser trailer in a little 100 pixel square on my homebrew Pentium.

And I flunked my exams.

That spring, my parents sent a check for $12 to Tripod, inc. for a whopping 100MB of storage for my site. Traffic was now in the 10’s of people a week, and I had a humongous photo gallery to support. By the time Episode I came out, it was time to invest some serious money. $35 for the domain name, $20/month for hosting, and GalaxyFarAway.com was born.

The Star Wars blog wars were just heating up. For example, Aldera.net launched and their entire reason for existence seemed to be: they broke the news that Hayden Christensen was cast as Anakin and they hated TheForce.net (TFn!).

I started attracting my own followers. And more absurdly, I started accumulating a staff. Here I was a 19-year old sitting in India, and I had a teenager I didn’t know posting about action figures, a lady from Texas posting book reviews, an Australian teenager developing graphics for the site (the banner is still his) and a kid from Ohio managing the forums!

That’s when IGN came to town. IGN was a content aggregator and advertiser for gaming and genre web sites. You could apply to become part of their “network”. Once you were in, you could host their advertising and get paid for it. It was chump change, but I was a college kid. I was a chump.

I applied and became part of the IGN network. And then IGN decided to go public. Their parent company was called Snowball.com, and before they went public, they wanted to secure as many sites and page views as they could. So they sent me a contract that said that as long as I was exclusive with IGN, they would pay me a fixed amount a month. I had my dad talked to them, what with being a college kid with no sensitivity to the legal nuances of dot-com IPOs. We gave them my sister’s address in Chicago and signed the contract.

And then the links and the checks started showing up.

The links were occasional links to stories on my web site from IGN.com. The traffic would sore into the many-100s, sometimes even more.

And the checks. The checks were $250 per month, just to be part of the IGN network while they did their IPO thing.

They did their IPO thing. It was a spectacular failure. The pre-dotcom era quickly became the post-dotcom era, and took the Snowball IPO with it. The $250 checks kept coming for a little while, but then they started drying up.

But GalaxyFarAway was still fun. In fact, things were getting serious. I got interviewed by BBC radio, by Rediff and by others. Traffic kept going up, and my staff was buzzing along.

Someone once tried to sell me the script for Episode II. Not kidding. They sent me a few sample pages. I ignored them, but they got arrested later. LucasFilm found them.

In around the year 2000, a company asked me if I would be willing to move GalaxyFarAway to their site and run their Star Wars section. They called the site Fandom.com. I stalled for a while (“I’m not giving up my autonomy”) but then I told them I would do it for $1200 a month.

They said yes.

Those were an insane few days where I thought I would be gainfully employed maintaining a Star Wars web site.

A few days later they said they had picked someone else. Turned out they picked T’bone Fender of the StarWarz Universe. Tough.

I kept maintaining the site through the early 2000’s. The staff whithered away, as people grew up, got real lives, real jobs. I got busy with life.

But the site still lives on. It had great Google-juice until a few years ago and averaged about 50,000 page views a month. It’s now down to half that, even though I haven’t maintained it in forever.

Here’s to the next 20 years.

Luke and Salacious are getting along; perhaps Mr. Crumb is the only one at dinner who will laugh at Luke’s jokes.

Han and Jabba appear to have made peace, but look into Jabba’s eyes and tell me he’s not high on Tryptophan or something worse. This historian suspects death sticks.

Bib Fortuna is a loner, as is Mr. Calrissian, neither of which is a surprise. But Oola? Why will no man or woman give Oola company?

This suggests that Oola may not, in fact, be invited as a guest. She may be the help, or worse, evening entertainment. The look on her face tells a story.

Leia is going for the food with gusto, or is she? We think the true target of Leia’s fork is the Jawa sneaking out from under the table.

What was the Jawa doing? It is unlikely that the Jawa was an invited guest—in the social climate of that era, a Jawa would have been tolerated as a trading partner, but would never share a dinner table with a human. Contrary to popular opinion, while the Battle of Endor and the fall of the Empire improved relations between species and dismantled state-sponsored discrimination, fundamental prejudices remained for at least another century ABY.

If one is to fall prey to stereotypes, one would assume that the Jawa has stolen something and is making a run for it. However, based on the dire predicament of the Jawa tribes in and around Dune Sea and the abundance of food at this venue, the opinion of this author is that the Jawa is merely starving and is here to grab the crumbs off the floor. A grand theft, right under the proverbial and literal noses of the galaxy’s most powerful, is an act of such hubris that one cannot attribute it to a lone, unarmed Jawa.

In light of these findings, Leia’s motives are questionable. Popular folklore of the Endor struggle have cast Leia as a champion of downtrodden species, but this picture asks us to reconsider our beliefs.

However, the one vignette from this picture that this historian will carry is his heart forever is that of Dengar passing the carrots to Boba Fett. It is a small gesture, but in light of their long and storied history together, it is the perfect image to carry with you this Thanksgiving.

Good night, and Happy Thanksgiving.

[Image credit: Star Wars on Facebook]

In 1985, Steve Jobs left Apple. A year later, he paid George Lucas $5 million to acquire technology rights for a computer division within Lucasfilm. Steve Jobs named this division Pixar.

In 2006, after an unprecedented run of successful films, Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion dollars in an all-stock deal. Overnight, Steve Jobs was Disney’s largest individual shareholder with 7% ownership and a seat on the board. After his death in 2011, his trust holds these shares.

Today, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion making the Jobs estate the largest stakeholder in Lucasfilm’s future. And since the acquisition was partly a stock deal, it makes Lucas a fairly large shareholder in Disney.

Disney, Apple and Lucasfilm (really, Star Wars) are very similar companies. Each was shaped by the singular vision of a perfectionist. So much so that each company was synonymous with their CEO in their lifetimes. Walt Disney, Steve Jobs and George Lucas.

Jobs and Disney didn’t relinquish control until their deaths. Lucas has chosen to see his baby transition to a new home while he is still around to manage it.

For all of these reasons, I find it fascinating and reassuring, and perhaps it’s no coincidence, that Jobs (through Pixar and his estate) and Lucas are responsible for the future of Disney.

A side note on the circular nature of these things. In 1986, George Lucas produced the love-to-hate-it Marvel-owned Howard the Duck. Today Marvel and Lucasfilm are under the same Disney umbrella.

Image credit: Pixar Wars by Andrew Chesworth

Details soon, full story here.

Highlights:

• Star Wars Episode VII targeted for 2015.


• More feature films expected to continue the Star Wars saga and grow the franchise well into the future.


• George Lucas: “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.”


• The transaction value is $4.05 billion.

One Man Star Wars
Charles Ross returns to Celebration to perform his one man show, “The One Man Star Wars Trilogy”. Ross uses no props and no instruments, only his voice, to create a fun and unique take on episodes IV, V, and VI.

Troop-athon Races
Troop-athon races returns for an event that is sure to have helmets rolling! The 501st Legion Troop-athon is a friendly competition between armored fans from all over the galaxy. The competition includes Ewok tossing, a Segway race, and a list of other challenges set up to test the soldiers’ skills and ability to perform in armor!

Bounty Hunt
The Bounty Hunt is a chance for you and your friends to prove yourself to the Bounty Hunters Guild! Players are given clues to solve, with the clues increasing in difficulty as they advance. Celebration V is your hunting grounds, and marks are given varying Credit amounts on their heads depending on difficulty.

Props Strikes Back
For the first time in the United States, Stefan Cembolista and the Belgian Star Wars prop crew will be presenting their replica collection for all to see! Some of the replicas on display include a full scale wampa, a 1:6 scale AT-AT, a Speederbike in front of a life-size Endor bunker, a life-size Snowspeeder, which you can get inside, a 1:6 scale X-Wing fighter, and MUCH more! They will also have a full scale TIE Interceptor, the first of this size to be built! And yes, they are even letting fans get in the cockpit!

Echo Base Diorama
As a Celebration regular, Frank D’lorio is back at Celebration to build a giant diorama of Echo Base with the help of fans! Echo Base was chosen to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. Hasbro has made a generous donation of action figures and vehicles, and D’lorio set up an action figure donation fund for those who may not have their own action figures. Each fan gets to take home a piece of the diorama on the last day of the show!

My Star Wars Story
The Stories Project is asking fans to share their experience of Star Wars through video! They will have cameras set up so that any fan can have their 15 minutes of nostalgia and fandome videotaped for Lucasfilms.

Get Tattooed Live
The Star Wars tattoo program is back with a bold new feature! Instead of simply displaying body art, they will have almost 20 tattoo artists present, ready to give fans the ultimate memento; getting tattooed live! They will also have a display called The Empire Skates Back, a series of Star Wars themed skateboard decks, presented by Shane Turgeon, author of The Force in the Flesh. The decks will be auctioned off for the Celebration Make A Wish charity.

Last Tour of Endor
Star Tours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is powering down temporarily to make way for the new Star Wars 3-D attraction coming in 2011, and they’re sending it off with a Death Star bang! The event promises to be the largest private party held at a Celebration to date. The party takes place “after hours”, from 8 pm to 1 am, and features exclusive merch, Disney characters dressed as Star Wars characters, a stunning fireworks show, a special edition of “Hyperspace Hoopla”, and more!

These events and many, many more make for a fun filled adventure any Star Wars fan can enjoy! For more information visit http://www.starwarscelebration.com/

Very little information was given about the game, though the demo video was said to look very much like The Force Unleashed. The video showed a male Jedi fighting waves of droids and stormtroopers using a lightsaber and the Force. The Jedi deflected blaster shots, used power-slides to move, and even used the environment to his advantage before Darth Vader showed up. The video ended in a duel between the two.

Kinect uses bodily motions rather than remote motions like the Wii. The player, or “actor”, uses movements to control what the character does, using their arms, legs, and whole body. Despite the lack of hard facts thus far, the game shows a lot of promise. The game is said to be released sometime in 2011.

5. “Jedi Drinking Song” by John Ryan of the Dust Rhinos
I’m a big fan of Celtic style drinking songs, so of course this one caught my ear. Its a funny little tune about drinking a little too much and finding yourself trying to become a Jedi.
Favorite line: “I looked that puppet in the eye and said give me the test”

4. “We Didn’t Start The Star Wars” by Mikey Squirrel
This parody is as catchy as the song its tuned to. While its mostly just a list of characters, planets, and other aspects of Star Wars, there are little jokes thrown in. The rhyming is really clever, and the video is fun to watch.
Favorite line: “We didn’t start the Star Wars, no we didn’t dream them but we went and seen them”

3. “Yoda” by Weird Al Yankovic
Weird Al Yankovic is the king of parody songs, so it would be rude not to mention him here. Weird Al actually does three Star Wars songs, but I chose just one. “Yoda” makes me laugh every time I hear it. Its just so well put together, and goes so well with the original song, “Lola” by The Kinks. He also does “Livin’ La Vida Yoda” and “The Saga Begins”.
Favorite line: “The long term contract I had to sign says I’ll be making these movies till the end of time with my Yoda”

2. “Star Wars Theme Song” by Goldentusk
A creative song set to the tune of the main theme of A New Hope. A lot of work was put in to the video and the lyrics. And he does all three movies in five minutes.
Favorite line: “May the Force always be with you, if its not, you’ll end up just like Anakin”

1. “Star Wars Cantina” by Richard Cheese
This is my favorite Star Wars parody song! Richard Cheese fits this song with Barry Manillow’s “Copacabana” perfectly. It will get stuck in your head for days and days!
Favorite line: “In that galaxy far, far away Luke has had a lousy day”

1. Dantooine: Go camping on one of Dantooine’s luscious valley floors, where the rebel base is definitely not located.
   



2. Bespin: Hang out among the clouds in the planet with the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets in the galaxy.
   


3. Endor: Hike through Endor’s historical forests! (warning: do not pull hanging meat off trees)
   


4. Hoth: The galaxy’s most popular ski resort, and home of the mythical Wampa!
   


5. Ossus: Take in the epic history of the Jedi!
   


6. Yavin IV: Visit the ancient Massassi temples, and the old Rebel base!
   


7. Ando: Covered in ocean, Ando is the perfect place for swimming and fishing!
   


8. Korriban: Take the kids to visit the tombs of Sith Lords of old!
   


9. Naboo: Picnic in Naboo’s tranquil scenery and be sure to visit the Queen!
   


10. Alderaan: Uhh, nevermind.