..And Restore Freedom to the Galaxy
by Michele Christopher

I spent a good portion of this weekend watching Star Wars. All of them. Cinemax had a mega marathon where they just played all six episodes back to back to back to back to....what seemed like infinity.

I didn't actually sit and watch it so much as just leave it on. Let the movies play in the background, hanging out there in my living room like good company. Walk in and see Han hanging around Hoth. Get some housework done, come back in the room and there's those damn ewok. Come back later, see Jar Jar and leave the room. Come back in time to hear Anakin's NOOOOOOO!

I could watch 3, 4 and 5 endlessly. The others...not so much. I've watched them and bought them just because, well, I had to. I couldn't call myself a Star Wars geek otherwise. I suffer through Attack of the Clones mainly because I have a Boba Fett fetish. I suffer through Return of the Jedi because despite the presence of those mangy little muppets and the hokey ending, it has its moments. I don't suffer through Phantom Menance. I did my time with it. I saw it. Once. I bought it. I feel like I have done my penance with that piece of crap and I don't have to sit through it ever again, not even for continuity's sake when I'm watching a marathon. sdest.gifThere's laundry to be done while that one is playing. Gotta dye my hair. Rake the leaves. Anything but subject myself to watching little Anakin Skywalker whine his way through the movie. At least now we know where Luke got that trait from.

Someone once posed this question to me:

If you could erase your memory of any movie from your mind...just wave a wand and it's as if your brain never saw this film before...what movie would you choose to erase just for the sheer joy of seeing it again for the first time?

It's the last part that's the kicker. Sure, I'd love to erase ever having seen 3000 Miles to Graceland or Kazaam from my head. But the qualifying part of the question - to experience once again the joy of seeing it for the first time - leaves me with only one possible answers.

Star Wars. Episode IV. A New Hope.

It's not the best among the original trilogy; I reserve that honor for Empire Strikes Back. Yet I did not experience the same level of exhileration from ESB that I did from SW.

I remember sitting in the darkened theater. Words on the screen:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.....

Then the Star Wars logo.

The music kicks in. John Williams' Main Theme.

The opening crawl starts up.

It is a period of civil war....

I felt it. Knew it. I was seeing something special. Maybe it was the music. I don't know. But I felt a sudden anticipation.

And then.

The ship.

Holy shit.

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My jaw hung open the rest of the film. This was it. I was in love with a movie. I fell really fucking hard. The second it was over I wanted to see it again. And again. And again.

I still to this day get chills when I hear the opening music and see the first glimpse of that Destroyer.

Yes, I'm a geek.

I'd love to experience that again for the first time.

The only thing that has ever come close for me in a movie was, unsuprisingly, the opening sequence to Reveng of the Sith.

When the opening crawl to RoTS started and the music began I actually teared up. I swear to you, there were tears in my eyes and I almost, nearly started crying. And I'm not the only one. There was a sense of relief in the theater when the scroll came up. Like everyone sighed at once. Finally, our questions answered. The closure. The scroll and the music is the beginning of the end, and it's very bittersweet because you know that once the movie starts, you're on your way to it being over. Not just the movie being over, but the whole Star Wars saga that you spent 28 years of your life thinking about and talking about is over.

That was the closest I came to feeling that magic of watching Star Wars for the first time.

So what is it for you? What movie would you erase your memory of just to be able to experience its magic for the first time?

Michele once got busy with a life sized cardboard cutout of Boba Fett

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Comments

this may possibly be the most profound question I have ever heard.

While Star Wars is amazing I can't say that I have the fondness for it that you do.

My Movie: momento. The fist time I saw that film I stayed up until three in the morning analyzing it and trying to figure out how one's brain could make that kind of jump in story telling. It blew me away.

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Apocolypse Now

I mean yeah, it was bloody and chaotic and all that but to watch a man, not brando, realize he is failing apart by the clues left by the others

or "Anal Dolls III"

That was cool too

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I would erase Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, especially if I could watch it exactly as I watched it the first time. Holy crap, that was a mindfuck. I was 16, on a ski trip with my parents and a good buddy. We rented the flick because both of us had heard it was crazy. Started it out--and were immediately creeped out by the intro--static on a television. I don't know why it was creepy, it just was. And then, the flick just gets weirder and weirder. When it was over, we both looked at each other, creeped out like never before, and switched off the VCR. It was late, and whatever channel the TV was on was just static. But it was a weird static--kind of blue, with a weird music behind it. And then, on the screen, the words "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me." Fucking creepout to the nth degree. We found reruns of In Living Color--fast. I'd never been so happy to see Homie the Clown.

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Many Bothans died to bring you this message.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

I love that movie, but there's nothing like the first time.

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hate me if you will, but i love to get emotionally caught up in films and cry endlessly.

so, you can take my punk rock card away if you will, but philadelphia, schindler's list, ordinary people or terms of endearment.

i sat in the theatre (or at home) at the end of all of those films for at least an half an hour thinking, "what can i do to help?"

course i went ahead and chugged some beers and beat my dog after that, but for a little while i felt "compelled."

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Blade Runner - From the opening sequence as you fly high above the city, straight through to "These are my friends. I made them." and all the way up to Rutger Hauer's soliloquy on the rooftop in the rain...

Beat me bloody and call me Susan, that movie messed with me the first time I saw it. And I still like the version with Harrison Fords' voiceovers...

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have you seen the fan "re-mixes" of the first three? the "magnoliafan edit" is by far the best. It's still a pile of crap movie, but this person(s) took the movie and edited it...got rid of the crappy trade guild dialog and replaced it with gibberish with meaningful subtitles, almost completely edited out jar jar...those are the major things. It's out there in bittorrent land, searching for magnoliafan edit should get you some hits.

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1) John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix", because I'm a huge Formula One nerd.

2) Blade Runner, the Director's Cut. It was the first movie I took my future wife to see. She still married me...

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Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. No, really. Because then I wouldn't have the whole damned thing memorized because it was one of two tapes playing in the damned VCR 24/7 in an undisclosed location.

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Can I do a television series? If so, it would be Buffy. (Yeah, yeah, mock me all you want, people. It's a great show.)

Okay, a movie though. You know, I never had the whole coming to Jesus moment with Star Wars. First time I ever really saw it all the way through was the rerelease in the theater. And that was cool, granted, but the trilogy just never kicked my ass the way it did so many people.

I think that moment for me came with Fellowship of the Ring, actually. I had never read the books (still haven't, though they sit waiting on my shelf) and I don't know if that helped or not, but I was really blown away by the first movie. The others are fantastic, as well, but you know--you just can't match that first experience. And so yeah, I think it would be really cool to relive that.

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I just remembered Jurassic Park. If I could erase all memories of seeing realistic dinosaurs on screen and then rewatch Jurassic Park, regaining that feeling from the first time I saw the movie, I think that would trump Fellowship. I remember just being amazed and enthralled throughout the entire movie.

Being twelve at the time probably helped quite a bit.

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There are a lot of possibilities, but I think I might have to go with Blade Runner. It's not my all-time favorite movie, but it is supremely cool and the time and place I first saw it brings back a lot of good memories. I agree with the earlier post about Ford's voice-over - the original reason for doing the voice-over may have been a cynical studio assessment of the audience's limited intelligence, but that doesn't mean the non-narrated version is better. Life is full of odd little paradoxes like that...

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Travis nailed it-Memento. I watched the sun come up 4 hours after the movie ended, still thinking about it.

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