What kind of influences does Star Wars have in your life?

Hello everybody, I am doing some research on Star Wars fans and would like your help. Now, we all love the films but how does it influence you, your politics, philosophy, values, religion? Are you a casual fan, fanatic or obsessed? How does it effect your life? What about it drives us to wait in line for hours, days, sometimes week for the midnight showing? I need your guys expertise for my research. Thanks

Well lets see. Through the years starting at age 12 I gradually became a SW Fanatic. Once the new movies came out and I got a little older I became totally obsessed. EVERYTHING I did or said I would somehow relate to StarWars. BY ACCIDENT. Around the dinner table I would be talking to my brother, "Yes, the movie you will see, but first... we must eat!" as taken from Yoda. But that's just a SMALL example of how I was. EVERTHING. I wont give all of them. LOL.
Me being a christian ofcourse, my walk with God started to grow and I realized I was making StarWars more important than God. I went through serious withdrawals.
Now I am back to being a fanatic. I still LOVE the movie. I am, in a more restricted way, still obsessed with the movies. But not to the point where I talk like Yoda, have the Jedi's wisdom applied to everything I say, and daydream about Han picking me up and taking me to Yavin 4 for my Jedi training.

Although I will still go through whatever it takes, standing in line for months on end TO SEE THE FIRST SHOWING OF STAR WARS!!! And I am still crazy about it to were I still relate sound effects in other movies to a laserblasters and droids, I still lose sleep thinking up my next fanfic, and I am still somewhat addicted to this SW message board. So yeah, I'm still a magor dork. Star Wars still wins over going to see a new movie!

It still effects most everything in my life(I even do lots of school assignments about star wars.)
but it doesn't effect my religion. God is more important.

So if I were to rate "importance" in my life, it would look somewhat like this:

1. God
2. StarWars
3. life


Woohoo! That's all.
May the Force be with you, always...

Nice thread Bounty Scum, I was also thinking of doing something on this but I guess you beat me to it.

Anyway, I'm a fanatic. Star Wars is what influenced me to want to be a filmmaker. If there was a list of 3 films (or series) that influenced me they are
1. Star Wars
2. Indiana Jones
3. Superman

I could live my life on this site, and some times I do, posting and browsing for 6-7 hours. I have backed away recently because I need to find a job. A majority of the subjects I talk in public and with friends are about Star Wars and movies. The top 3 things my friend and I talk about are
1. Star Wars
2. His relationship troubles (his freinds & family)
3. Movies & video games

Most of the short films my brother and I would make were either Star Wars films or referenced Star Wars. Most of the fanfilms I'm trying to make now are Star Wars related. Right now I'm editing my first one and it is hard but at the same time it is really exciting because I get to do Star Wars sound effects and this is my first real project I have actually spent time gathering sound effects to add. If I ever become a big time movie director, I'm sure my movies would always have a ton of Star Wars references in them.

I'm am also waiting to stand in line for ROTS, I never done this before and I figured its the last film and it means alot to me so I better.

So pretty much my life has been drastically affected by Star Wars, who knows maybe if I never was in to Star Wars I would be the popular type of person my friend is and would have a ton of hot women hanging around me all the time and would have been the star Quaterback for the school. That might sound like the life, but I actually think it would be a huge downgrade from being the Star Wars loser I am now. I know am need to get my head examined, I'll do that later after I'm done talking SW. I hope nobody got bored reading this, thatsa the last thing meesa wants.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, people say to get a life and find something to do but Star Wars is something I feel passionate about and having passion for something is enough in life but anyways it's inspired me to write comics and like Atticus I use a lot of Star Wars references.

Hello everybody, I am doing some research on Star Wars fans and would like your help. Now, we all love the films but how does it influence you, your politics, philosophy, values, religion? Are you a casual fan, fanatic or obsessed? How does it effect your life? What about it drives us to wait in line for hours, days, sometimes week for the midnight showing? I need your guys expertise for my research. Thanks

Star Wars does not really affect my philosophy, though I think at one point it probably did. I think Star Wars has some good values and some values I reject, but it's the great storytelling that makes them the best films around. I'm definitely a Star Wars fanatic. I wrote a book on The Phantom Menace that got me a literary agent and really helped my writing career, my interest in film, and my confidence. Star Wars is a very large part of why I want to become a filmmaker and why I'm going to grad school after college for film production.

So Star Wars has affected my life quite a bit as far as influencing my career path, helping me become a better writer, all kinds of things. It is always there for me when I want something to entertain me and when I want to escape to that galaxy far, far away.

I waited about 24 hours for the midnight showing of AOTC, I was first in line with my friend. It was just a great experience, lots of fun. It was obviously totally well worth it.

Star Wars is not my life, though, and it's not as big a part of my life as it once was. I think it's unhealthy if it's the central focus of your life, but if it's your central hobby and passion then it's quite understandable that it occupy a large portion of your time, thoughts, etc. I just think you have to make sure you're actively working towards your own goals, too, not just using it to escape from reality at all times. I have quite a few hobbies, some are physical and some are not, like working out, rock climbing, hiking, writing, watching movies in general, sports (I love watching sports), and Star Wars.

I owe Star Wars quite a lot, though, as far as what I've gotten out of it and how it has helped my life. I had one of my two worst years of my life before TPM came out and that was really the only thing I had to look forward to. When you're a teenager in high school if you're working 12 hour days doing school and homework (at least, I sure was, public schools are terrible though so I gather that a lot of people have no idea what I mean) and you have only a few friends who you never see because you're always too busy, you really don't have anything to look forward to. School in general is surely the most horrible period of anyone's life. The only light is that college diploma at the end of the long tunnel, and you can't think about that when you're 16. So I thought about Star Wars, every day, and talked Star Wars every day, and collected it, and it gave me something real to look forward to, it gave meaning to my days.

Star Wars definitely has served a religious role in my life over the years, although now it's not maybe quite as big of a time component as it once was. I still love it even more.

Does anybody know if there are documentaries on Star Wars fans or any published works? I would also like to interview people for this, through instant messaging or email if possible. just pm me. thanks

like kurosawa i make mad films
k i don't make films
but if i did they'd have JEDI!!!!

I am the nerd of the 90's; music comic books, star wars, and anime are all I know.

And Classic Rock.

I have 4 posters in my room. Two Star Wars, one Trigun, one The Who. Tiny star wars action figures adorn everything in my room. I keep a vampire stake and a plastic lightsaber under my bed (just in case). A common conversation at school will be like this:

"Where's that money you owe me?"

*waves finger* "You NEED no money."

"No really, give it to me"

*runs away*

Star Wars... gahhh... *chugs pan-galactic gargle blaster*

hey Bowen, Can you elaborate more on the part of the religious role that Star Wars served in you life?
Thanks

Hey,

Well, using the term "religious" to mean defining values or giving some sense of purpose and meaning to life, at one point Star Wars definitely helped me out there. I wouldn't say that it serves that role for me now, even though I still think it's quite important to me and who I've become. But in high school, I remember that Star Wars really kept me going day to day, because it gave me something I was passionate about in a very bleak time for me. High school was extremely difficult where I was, so I spent almost all of my time working, but what little time I had to myself I'd spend on Star Wars and that was my relief. In the same way that some Christians would think of God in times of trouble or something, I thought of Star Wars -- namely, in sophomore year, the coming of the first prequel. So for me it gave me hope in something better in the future.

When you're a sophomore in high school, you are not going to be able to sit there and think, "Gee, one day, maybe about six and a half years from now, I'll be done with my college degree if I don't die of some freak accident, and then all of this hard work will be worth it! Wow that really uplifts me!" No. That doesn't uplift anyone. Even the most well constituted, most optimistic people need to look to something in the more immediate future. For me, that was The Phantom Menace coming to theaters. Then my next year in high school wasn't nearly so bad, but I spent it working on my book about TPM, so that kept me going, too, even into my senior year where I finally finished it and found a literary agent.

I think we all have some type of future goals that we allow ourselves to think about now and again, but that we need smaller goals to build towards. For instance, when I started Oregon State I was recovering from a period of depression, basically, brought on by a series of unfortunate events [I am very mentally strong, but when you get rejected from the colleges you worked hard to get into (1), fail at a business venture and lose a lot of money (2), lose 4 friends and suffer a breakdown in your relationship with your best friend (3), drop out of your first college (4), total a car in a serious accident (5), and lose your hard disk to corruption without important data backed up (6), then anyone can understand the frustration/depression! lol]. At OSU, I didn't think, "Oh, gee, you know three to four years from now I'll be done with college and then maybe things will improve." To be honest in any given term it's tough to think about next term, let alone about something further ahead than that. So you entertain yourself with smaller things and find meaning in something more immediate.

Also watching the Star Wars movies has often provided a nice sense of escape where I can be in familiar territory, so to speak, and forget about whatever I'm worrying about at the time. I think that isn't always a healthy response to problems (to escape them or ignore them), but in moderation that type of relaxation is definitely nice.

I remember also once I wrote about a 10-page document of mainly quotes, all from Star Wars, about various values the movies advocate and I considered those values important to me, too. Now I am not sure if I'd say any of the values presented in Star Wars really matter to me, but certainly I've considered them philosophically and agree with some, disagree with others.

For me personally I do not believe in turning outside of yourself to a text, whether the Bible or Star Wars, to find values or give meaning to life. I believe that you have to find values yourself, by creating them yourself, and you have to give meaning to your life by what you want to achieve, i.e. your goals. Nonetheless, there was a time when I did look to Star Wars for some of those values and meanings.