On the anniversary of the premiere of the epic film Star Wars, Alex Yarde looks back on how the film started him on his own hero’s journey.
Star Wars premiered 36 years ago last weekend. Star Wars is such a demarcation line for me it’s one of the best ways to tell if someone is of my generation. If you saw the movie in the theater, you gain a certain vintage quality with me. No film before or since transported me to another time and place, or made me feel like I could aspire to be anything I chose to be, the way this movie did.
I remember being on a particularly long shopping trip with my mother at the Alexander’s on Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. We didn’t own a car so that meant slugging home with all our packages on the #1 Bus. It was always a mob scene, everyone jostling for positions. The bus stop was in front of Poe Park where Edgar Allen Poe once owned a home. That’s the Bronx—history and greatness, if one cares to scratch the surface.
I was cranky & exhausted. We hadn’t had lunch, but my mother was nothing if not determined, and she had contingencies for every occasion (Batman could have learned a thing or two from my mom about planning). She said we could have something to eat at the movies. Now I was a nerdy, artistic kid at a time and place where that wasn’t necessarily charming or endearing. I got teased a lot and threatened more than once. But this was the Bronx, New York in the late 70’s and childhood. I loved going to the movies. So this offer got me to behave quickly.
After winding our way past the myriad of discount stores and restaurants that lined Fordham Road, we found ourselves at the Historic RKO Theater. Along with the Lowes Theater on The Grand Concourse, this was one of the old-time great movie palaces. Hints of her former glory as a venue for burlesque and vaudeville still shone through, though long in disrepair. The baroque gold leaf peeling from the facade and hundreds of bulbs (some burnt out) surrounding the huge marquee still shimmered invitingly.
That day, all that was displayed out front was the now familiar yellow STAR WARS stencil on a black star-field. But by the ticket booth was the famous poster of a ripped, bare-chested Mark Hammil thrusting his lightsaber skyward with a busty Carrie Fisher wrapped around Luke’s leg, seductively holding a blaster. It looked like the cover art on the old Edgar Rice Burroughs novels of John Carter or Conan the Barbarian that I devoured.
My mom, a proper Bajan, church going lady, had her reservations. It was PG after all and she thought it would be too violent. I’m sure Leia’s cheesecake pose didn’t help matters either. I could be persuasive, however, and I reminded her that this trip to the movies was her idea. There was a show starting soon and my mom eventually relented. I bought a couple of hot dogs, popcorn and Rasinettes and found our seats. I liked to sit down front where the orchestra pit once was and the stage (long closed) rose above us. This was close to the housed speakers, which were terrifically loud and I appreciated that.
The lights dimmed and “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away” appeared. The thunderous score rattled my teeth and my mom moved back a few rows. The scroll of “Episode Four:A New Hope” disappeared in space and alone, in the dark, I saw a small ship exchanging laser fire with another impossibly long spaceship. I was hooked. For 121 minutes I was part of something great. I knew that it was a movie, but I was totally taken in. To me it was as if the filmmakers had somehow discovered a long lost chronicle from another galaxy. The imposing menace of Darth Vader terrified me. I laughed at R2 and C-3PO’s Laurel and Hardy antics, was saddened at Luke’s loss of his aunt and uncle, was thrilled by the swashbuckling rescue of Princess Leia, wept at Obi Wan’s sacrifice, and cheered at the destruction of the Death Star. I was emotionally spent by the time the lights came up.
For a year after that viewing, my room slowly converted into a Star Wars convention. Books, sheets, toys, and posters were everywhere. Certain proceeds of every purchase my parents made for me for my birthday or Christmas for awhile went to Twentieth Century Fox and George Lucas. After seeing what was then only known as Star Wars, not “a New Hope” or “Episode Four” but just “Star Wars,” I drew space battles, wrote fan fiction, played out the major scenes with my growing collection of Star Wars action figures (yes they aren’t dolls) and built models of X-Wings, Tie Fighters and the Millennium Falcon (my favorite model with running lights and working landing gear).
The skills I developed model making and painting led me to purse a career as an illustrator. But the movie did something else for me, something infinitely more important. I was inspired. I believed in Luke’s hero journey. After all, if he could rise from being a farm boy from nowhere and take on an empire, then it followed that a skinny kid from the Bronx could rise too. Star Wars helped me on my own hero’s journey. It instilled in me a new hope of my own, that I could be myself and enjoy art, music, comic books and not be pressured into being a tough guy like others around me and, when needed, summon the courage to face my own Vaders.
So I am pleased to celebrate the 36th anniversary of the film’s release. I feel the opposite of old, I feel reinvigorated. My children have yet to see the original trilogy but love the Clone Wars series. My son’s idol is Anakin Skywalker. He and his sister, who enjoys acting out episodes as Ashoka Tano, Anakin’s apprentice in the series, own several light sabres. They battle and they are fearless and they are my heroes. They are learning the ways of The Force and benefitting from the lessons I learned all those years ago in a galaxy far far away.