# How did STAR WARS [The Movies] influence you?



## bombsaway

I think Star Wars is one of the things that binds my family together. We often disagree on values and politics and tradition. We are all geeks though and along with a few other things (LOTR, Game of Thrones, Star Trek etc) Star Wars is one of the main things we have in common. I can't remember the first time I watched Star Wars so I'm presuming I was very, very young. I can't remember life without it. We also have a house phone in the shape of a Darth Vader bust, haha!

One by-product of us being into SW so much is that I've never played real Monopoly, only the Star Wars version. I have no idea what the main streets in Monopoly are since it's a race to Coruscant.


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## Siggy

To me the series was nothing more than space westerns, which the characters/actors and lines turned into pop culture icons.

The words; A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away is meant to tap into ones imagination. taking the audience to a new place. A place that one has never seen or heard of.

anyway May the force be with you


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## SirDave

Dear Sigmund said:


> To me the series was nothing more than space westerns, which the characters/actors and lines turned into pop culture icons.
> 
> The words; A long time ago in *a galaxy far, far away* is meant to tap into ones imagination. taking the audience to a new place. A place that one has never seen or heard of.
> 
> anyway May the force be with you


You are right, and it capitalizes on a complete lack of understanding of astronomy and the surrounding universe; yet that phrase became a modifier for distance. Today would be commenters use that phrase to describe near interstellar space and even the solar system. It is a cliche.


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## Thalassa

I didn't even understand them until I was an adult in my 20s. Because sci-fi isn't really my thing, and I had to be re-introduced to them by some sci-fi friendly acquaintances.

I saw them when I was little and mostly I liked the talking robots, the Ewoks and yoda.


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## Selene

Star Wars is basically what got me interested in religion and philosophy. Those Jedi were just so awesome.


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## nevermore

Sorry, I read your opening post and realized it was also asking how we thought Star Wars had influenced pop culture as a whole, as opposed to just ourselves. In that light...



SirDave said:


> I was immediately put off by the opening lines "... in a galaxy far far away;" as if our own galaxy, an island universe in its own right, is not big enough to contain all that could ever be explored; that we need to concern ourselves with any other more distant galaxy, since all other galaxies lie millions of light years distant and events in those lose relevance to any person other than cosmologists..


I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head there, though I think you also might have misinterpreted the point of the line. It was to frame the movie(s) as a kind of romantic, archetypal fairy story set in space, as opposed to a regular science fiction film.

I think a lot of people then were uneasy about the "unweaving of the rainbow" that seemed to proceed apace with the advances of science, especially as the 20th century proceeded and people stopped seeing "progress" as something universally positive. A critical, deconstructionist world view was also reflected in many science fiction movies at the time. It was too fast for many people. They were of the mindset that if there was no spiritual component to the universe, that if you could "reduce" and explain it materialistically, there would be no meaning in it - whereas now we've mostly come to accept it and don't see understanding the mysteries of the world as depressing. A film that presented the future (because "a long time ago" classes Star Wars as a hypothetical myth of the future, as opposed to a story literally set in the distant past) as a place of magic and moral absolutes where good triumphed over evil and the untimate power in the universe was a spiritual one was exactly what a lot of people wanted to see back then. It obviously speaks to some part of the human spirit because the films are still very popular now.

If anything, its influence was negative in that this kind of bland formulaic storytelling became very common (only with none of Star Wars' charm), though movies today have less of an old fashioned sense of "good vs. evil". But love it or hate it, its influence on pop culture was certainly significant.


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## Oh_no_she_DIDNT

It inspired me to do Princess Leia hairdo's in highschool. I went crazy with braids, buns, ribbons, flowers, and different patterns of multi colored rubber-bands. Anything intricate and anything up. 

Also it was a cause for me to take my first date in high school. 1997... I went to see the Empire Strikes Back special edition opening night with my high school crush after he asked me to go. I was happily nervous and surrounded by star wars fanatics getting their fix(es)! I remember his dad drove us, and played jazz on the radio, and interviewed me with random questions. lol

And it may have added to my claustrophobia as a child because the scene with the walls closing in freaked me out when I first saw it...


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## Zombie Devil Duckie

I'm of the opinion that Star Wars helped to hasten the end of the old Soviet Union. I was a teenager in 1983 and vividly remember President Reagan talking about the Strategic Defense Initiative and the media branding it "Star Wars". I think that scared the crap out of the Soviets and started the internal discussion necessary for the two sides to end the cold war.

Calling it Star Trek and without George Lucas vision of space warfare, I think world history would have looked quite a bit different.



-ZDD


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## Swede

I thought that the first three movies were great entertainment - loved the music, the special effects (which were waaay cool back then), the relatively limited violence, the aliens, the adventures, all the different planets - the imagination behind it all, I guess. (I didn't watch them in the movie theater, though - I lived a pretty sheltered child hood.)
That said, it hasn't really influenced me much, even though I am still think that Harrison Ford is charming... And I think that the spoof offs (Family Guy, Robot Chicken and Space Balls) are hilarious.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr

Beep, beep, beep, beep...
(R2D2 fan)


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## Toru Okada

Star Wars just makes me excited. I caught glimpse of the Battle of Hoth scene when I was about 8 or so. The Imperial walkers sort of terrified me, mainly the AT-STs (because they're fast and look creepily sentient). The first rogue squadron game came out around that time, which I played nearly ad nauseum. Became obsessed with Star Wars after that. I collected the LEGO sets built a ton of ships. I also drew schematics and ships and got interested in the expanded universe to an extent. I've played some of the better SW video games, too.

I bought the Star Wars RPG saga edition in 2009 and recently I watched episode V again. Made me want to create and run a Star Wars campaign again.


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## Slider

Bought the stupid games.

Anybody have the original, pre-edited versions?

I have them on my old HD, but it's busted.


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## ENTPfemme

My brother and I were nuts about Star Wars when it hit theatres for the first time. For me it was a science fiction fairytale or sci-fi fantasy. Two great genres mixed. Did it have any influence? It did begin a harvest of collectors, fan clubs, and raked in millions in merchandise, in an unprecedented scale. It overtook youth culture by storm, everyone quoting lines from it, wearing the shirts, buying the books. All this BEFORE the internet. You could say Star Wars went viral globally without computers. It also set a new precedent for the movie business, to push harder for more advanced special effects, and with each new release the effects did get better. Indiana Jones came out just a few years later, and although a series, and although Harrison Ford was the main lead, it still didn't have near the impact of SW. 

Now my kids are diehard fans and Star Wars is woven into the cultural fabric internationally. For instance, in the 2001 United Kingdom census, some 390,000 people stated their religion as Jedi, making it the fourth largest religion surveyed. Just last month the automotive navigation systems company TomTom recently made "Star Wars" voices an option for its GPS devices. And don't forget even the medical industry has developed bionic limbs like those seen in Star Wars long before the technology could conceive it. In many different sectors, in small and large ways, it has left a footprint.


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## telepariah

Yeah, it was excellent entertainment. A nice riff on the classic Kurosawa film, The Hidden Fortress. The entire plotline, including whole scenes in Star Wars are lifted straight from the samurai classic action-adventure-comedy. It was a nice tribute with a new twist. But the first time I saw it, my roommate had a high school friend visiting and she cooked dinner at home. We drank a bunch of scotch after dinner, then smoked a huge spliff of Gold Colombian before going to see Star Wars premier in our town as a midnight show. We all fell asleep (or passed out if you will). When I saw it again I liked it as light fun entertainment that was really a samurai movie set in space. I liked all of the sequels that I saw too, though I haven't seen them all, nor have I seen any of the prequels. Reading LOTR, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Dune influenced me a whole lot more in the early 70s. That and discovering Ursula K. LeGuin a few years later. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great entertainment. But it didn't change my world. Maybe because I was already an adult when it came out.


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## Codera

I have watched all the Star Wars movies so far; I wish I 'd seen the originals in theaters since I wasn't born at the time, having been born 10 years after RotJ came out, though I obviously saw the prequels in theaters. I was about to read one of the Expanded Universe books, which had to do with Boba Fett, and I even watched The Clone Wars animated series that came out around the time RotS did (not the CGI one CN had just recently, I grew out of cartoons by then). I also played many Star Wars video games through the years, from "Rogue Squadron" for the Nintendo 64 to "The Force Unleashed" for the Wii. I am definitely very passionate about this franchise in general, since it basically shaped the way I view Science Fiction and so forth. Even though I was able to find some value in the much maligned Prequel movies, I am sincerely hoping that the next three movies to come out this decade are even stronger than what was offered a decade ago. I am interested in seeing if the moviemakers will follow some sort of story pertaining to the Expanded Universe or not, but we'll see.


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## Solitaire U

(Referring to the original 1977 movie) Heh, convinced me that I never want to be a Star Wars fanboy.


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## SirDave

Solitaire U said:


> (Referring to the original 1977 movie) Heh, convinced me that I never want to be a Star Wars fanboy.


If you care to say, how old were you when it came out?


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## Solitaire U

9 or 10. I saw it with my brother and sister at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Liked the movie, liked all of them in fact, but I very distinctly remember being somewhat put off by all the people in costumes and older kids yelling about this being their 34th time seeing the movie, etc. 

It's kind of like comic books, or anime, or Star Trek. I enjoy the media, but the fan-frenzy surrounding it isn't something I care to partake in.


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## Philosophaser Song Boy

I have always been into spacey things. Where I liked Star Trek much more than Star Wars, as any natural human being would :wink:, I remember playing with these transparent plastic Star Wars space ships as a kid. You could see the innards of the X-wing, Y-wing, A-wing, Millenium Falcon, etc... I also had smaller Star Trek plastic ships that were more fun, especially to pretend that the Christmas tree was a space station and dock the ships deep within.


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## GenXer

Peter Hartlaub | The Big Event | Page 2 | an SFGate.com blog


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## GenXer

“Star Wars” and the Coronet in 1977: An oral history | The Big Event | an SFGate.com blog


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## SirDave

Harrison Ford was injured today on the set of the next Star Wars film and is currently in the hospital receiving care, reports Variety. Ford reportedly sustained the injury while filming on Wednesday and is currently hospitalized in London; The Hollywood Reporter later noted that Ford's injury was a broken ankle. The incident isn't expected to slow the film down, however, as shooting is expected to continue while Ford recovers. 

Harrison Ford injured by Millennium Falcon door on the Star Wars set | The Verge


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## Inveniet

My father showed them to me when I was around 10 or something, I was completely captured.
They defined my games from that point on in a huge way.


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## Nordom

I bought the really obscure action figures with my allowance money. One of the dudes was a strategist (no idea who) and had some sort of white pointer you could put in his hand. I really thought it was a gun at the time.

So - I guess I wanted to stay ahead of my neighborhood friends in terms of worthless toys.

The 2nd prequel encouraged me to read movie reviews.


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## Melancholia

Star Wars made me want to become a Jedi.

Life has been a chronology of disappointment ever since.


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## ae1905

I saw them, even read a book, but wasn't otherwise interested. Never a part of my life other than momentary escape.


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## RobynC

The first Star Wars was interesting for the first few minutes, then was boring as hell for what seemed like an hour; then it got interesting later on.

I first saw it in 1977, I was 5 or 6...


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