May the Pod Be With You!
Ancient Geeks talk Star Wars this week!
Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars…Steven and Tom re-visit the very, very first Star Wars movie. When it landed in the summer of 1977, it had an asteroid side impact on our brains, popular culture, and moviemaking. Come with us to the mall theater on opening day! Hear all the great things that practically knocked us out of your seats on that first showing! Listen to us talk about what it was like to see our friends and family follow under its spell! Gasp at how many times we saw it, and why, not to mention people who saw it even more! Cringe at the TV specials! Suit up in your home-made Han Solo costume!
Star Wars was the first epic success of geek culture in our lifetimes, even bigger than the Batman TV show and other topics we’ve covered. Journey back with us to the late Seventies to hear how this culture-defining movie changed our young geek lives…And how it conquered the world!
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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I’ll have to listen on the way home, if I can get the public WiFi to download it.
One thing, though. I’m certain in the first movie in 1977, we don’t see the Jedi use telekinesis. We see Kenobi block a blaster shot (I think) and chop off someone’s arm in the cantina. We see Luke practicing against the floating orb, we see Vader and Kenobi duel to the death (or whatever it is Kenobi did), and we see Luke use the force to guide his one in a million shot to pop the Death Star.
I bring this up because in the late 70s there was a popular fad about paranormal stuff, and telekinesis would have fed into it. Instead, we simply see Luke in the second movie, three years later, struggle to move his light sabre off the snow and into his hand, so he could escape the Yeti.
At the time I thought nothing of it. Later I wondered where that Jedi ability came from.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to listen to pods recently – I’m hoping to catch up on these this week.
Confession time. Because of my current tribulations and because at my core I’m a goblin brained idiot who can’t read, I’ve been wondering why you’ve been touting someone’s podcast about “Ancient Greeks”.
I apologize for my stupidity, but there will be more forthcoming I’m sure.
@Beth: You’ve had a lot going on!
I haven’t listened yet, but I’ll put in my bingo card: I saw it 11 times during its first release. I was 14 years old. These numbers are correlated.
Completely unrelated, the pilot ep of Battlestar Galactica was released in some countries as a movie. Not only that, but it was made with sensurround. I recall seeing it in a theater compatible with this system.
More on topic, we had nearly all the first issue Star Wars dolls (or action figures if you prefer that euphemism for plastic doll), including some cantina aliens and all the droids in that release. Of course they were thrown out eventually…
Our original Han Solo lost a leg when our dog, Fuzz, who wasn’t big on chew toys, decided to chew on it for some reason.