ST It Takes a Galaxy: What's your favorite holiday memory?

Hello, everyone!

This is the first thread in a new series called "It Takes a Galaxy..." (ITAG), where all of you will have the opportunity to share a little bit about yourselves with each other. Think of it as a community building exercise, where each week you'll have a new topic to discuss. We have some topics already lined up for the first few weeks, but as this progresses we'll be asking you all for suggestions and having you vote on what you'd like to talk about next. This is all about you, and in keeping with that the staff won't be nudging you to keep the conversation on topic as often as we normally would. You all control the conversation just, you know, play nice.

I'll start: my favorite Star Wars memory is also my first Star Wars memory, which is also my first memory. I've shared this story on the JCF like 87 times already, but in 1997 my dad took me to the re-release of A New Hope. I was younger than three years old at the time, but I vividly remember sitting on my dad's lap in a darkened theater, watching Darth Vader walk through the rising smoke onto the once gleaming-white hallways of the Tantive IV. From that point forward, I was hooked for life.

 

Fun idea.

Okay, I have my own "noooooo" Star Wars story.

Where I live Star Wars didn`t run in theaters upon first release and for some reason, it was never really on TV either. But when our neighbour opened a video rental at his house, my Mom rented Star Wars for us. Well, A New Hope that is. I loved science fiction and I expected a lot of space battles because hey, Star Wars. We watched the movie together and even my Mom, who is not at all into Sci-Fi, liked it. I was completely obsessed with all things Jedi and lightsaber immediately.

Now I knew there were two more sequels so I went, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to the video rental the next day to return the movie and get the other two. Only - they were already rented out. I could see immediately because the empty display cases didn`t have those little key rings under them that signaled a movie was available. I was heartbroken but returned the next day. And the day after that. And after that. And after that. For two weeks the movies were always gone when I showed up. I was too shy and timid to even ask our neighbour to please hold them for me.

Then one day I came into the store, saw the rings... and a pair of hands grabbing for them. My timid self ran over there, tears in my eyes and going "nooooo". The woman who had been about to take my movies - again - looked at me and went "oh, do you want those honey?"

I nodded vigourously and she let me have them. I hop-skipped out of the store, ran home and finally, finally got to watch Empire and Jedi back and back. I was pretty much in heaven afterwards.

 

Thank you for this! It is a great idea!

@PymParticles - my mom was the one who introduced me to Star Wars when I was a kid. I was a little older than two but I just remember being blown away by Leia. She was on the first t shirt I ever bought. I ended up starting my own daughter's love for Star Wars when she was young too. Three generations of female Star Wars fans.

@Alliyah Skywalker - I love that story!

My absolute favorite memory was the announcement of the PT. I grew up with the OT and had hoped that George would do more films to tell the story but so much time went by I didn't really think it was ever going to happen. I was an active duty Marine stationed at Quantico at the time TPM was released and worked a weird shift so I just remember the scramble and excitement of planning when to go and get tickets when the nearest theater was 20 minutes away from base. The feeling of seeing the opening crawl and hearing the opening theme for a new film was just awesome.

 

Watching Return of the Jedi for the first time in the theater in 1983. I was 10. The sheer terror I felt for Luke at the hands of Sheev was unparalleled. The increased intensity of the swordplay between Luke and Vader over the last film was amazing, as was Luke's evolution as a character from ESB to ROTJ. The clap break when Vader saved Luke was thunderous. The sadness I felt that at the time the franchise was 'done', made me realize how great and important that ending was, to me.

 

I was ten years old then too and cried at the end when Vader tells Luke he's already saved him. I still do to this day. I love the emotion in the ending of that film.

 

I think many fans from that era put a lot of focus, personal analysis and invested emotion into ROTJ in '83, because as I stated...for us it was the 'end'. Lucas said at the time there would be no more films after. At the time.

 

Yes! This is why my favorite memory is the announcement of the PT.

 

Not much of a story to it, but mine is seeing the ROTS teaser on local news. I wasn't really focused on Star Wars at the time, but that was a big deal. I loved, and still do, that connection between the OT and PT. Opening with the clip of Obi-Wan from ANH gave it that much more weight. "Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force."

 

Good thread idea!

Anyway, there are so many to choose from for me, but my favorite memory isn’t one specific moment, but sorta a time period for me. The friend that got me into Star Wars in 2006 or so also had Battlefront 2. Anyway on the weekends me and my friends would go to his house and play the campaign or instant action. It was such a blast. We always tried to beat the campaign in under 3-4 hours. Sure my friend has since then made some questionable decisions, but I will always look back to those early years as some of my best experiences.

 

I have been a fan since the beginning. I remember being at my grandoarents’ Home for Thanksgiving weekend and has been listening to radio recreation of Empire Strikes Back. I didn’t want to miss the next installment, but my grandma only used her stereo to play records, and didn’t know how to operate the radio, let alone know what channel NPR was. Found the the channel without a second to spare.

Remember laying flat on my back , behind the dining room table with my head next to one of the speakers as the music started.

 

I was born in '77, several months after this little film called, "STAR WARS" was in theaters (It was a few years later when it was retitled Episode IV: A New Hope). Obviously I was too young to see the movie at the time; and was still too young to see the two follow-up movies when they were released in the early 80s. But then in 1997, Lucas released the Special Edition of the original trilogy to theaters. We had this local theater that featured a massive screen (pre-IMAX, mind you) that showed only a single movie at a time. When ANH was being shown, there were lines literally wrapping around the entire theater parking lot to get in. I went there with my dad. The same for ESB and ROTJ. It was certainly a heck of an experience.

 

I love that "Three reasons why they build movie theaters"!!

 

I bought that poster for my home bedroom.

 

Great idea for a thread. It's about time these mods did something fun around here.

So... I can't narrow it down to one thing, so I will have to name my top three (which are in no particular order).

- Seeing ANH for the first time in the theater. I was born in '74, and my first time seeing it was during the '78 theatrical re-release.

- Living just a few houses away from Alec Guinness from '80 to '82, when my parents and I lived in England. Every now and then we'd see him and his wife out for a walk in our rural village (about an hour outside of London), and he was always happy to talk SW with me.

- Getting my son into SW.

 

I sincerely hope you took full advantage of how freaking cool that is and pressed him for Return of the Jedi spoilers

 

I don't remember if I asked, but he probably would have had a sly smile and said something like, "well, I'm still dead."

 

I watched them back in the early 80's on TV, but back then we did not have a VHS player or a Laderdisk.

So the DVD releases were the turning point to renew my fandom, and I bet this is true for a lot of people here.

/thread

WOW

 

Seeing AOTC for the first time. During the years leading up to that movie I thought I'd finally outgrown SW. TPM didn't leave a huge impression on me, the OT was starting to become just a childhood relic, and in general I was in the midst of leaving behind most of the interests I'd cultivated as a kid and young adult. Still, I saw Clones in the theater and was sucked back in. Loved how the film captured that "classic" SW feel while expanding things in interesting new directions. I registered for these forums that summer.

 

Watching ROTS constantly with a friend and trying to reanact the Anakin vs Obi-Wan duel with homemade lightsabers made from old iron pipes. Sometimes we did it in a pitch black room for the proper space feeling. Getting a lightsaber to the eye was very common

 

I have a lot of them - from watching ANH the first time to seeing TPM via my grandmother's lens (whose last movie she saw in the theaters was still in black and white) and most recently bringing a Star Wars newbie to TFA and seeing her becoming a fan.

But probably my most cherished memory is related to Vader’s scene in Return of the Jedi. That really got to me in an intense emotional level, and I think it was partly due to speaking to me personally when I watched that for the first time.

My parents divorced when I was about 6 or 7, and at that time, I didn’t understand why my father was moving to another house and no longer living with us. At first, I thought it was something to do with me.
Perhaps as a way to normalize the transition, my father developed a routine in which every weekend I spent with him we would go to a movie rental shop where I would pick one or two movies I wanted to see and we would watch them together through the weekend. All the movies I picked were based on the VHS covers, and one day I eventually bumped into a cover of one of the OT movies, and that’s how I discovered the franchise.

I remember being shocked at Vader’s reveal, but the part that really got to me was in ROTJ when Vader sacrificed his life to save his son. I remember asking my father, maybe just out of an internal need for confirmation, “Vader did it because he loved Luke, right?”, and my father said (and I still remember this so clearly): “Yes, fathers love their children, no matter what.”

And that was everything I needed to hear.

To this day I still cry at Vader’s death scene, perhaps because it was executed masterfully, perhaps because of the memories it brings to me. I still consider it one of the most powerful scenes in cinema and one of the most impactful ones for me.

 

.....that’s not fun for them?