Empire Dreams

I watched EMPIRE DREAMS, the documentary on the making of Star Wars, or how it almost didn’t get made, on The History Channel the other night. While this doesn’t make it automatic solid history per se as that channel is also notorious for playing shows on UFOs, Area 51, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and the Loch Ness Monster, nevertheless, it does lend more historical credence to the social phenomenon that was Star Wars.

Funny thing is: I know dozens of students at school, here and back down in Washington, who have never seen it and don’t even want to. So as the beginning of the program talks about it being “tough” to remember a time before Star Wars,” it’s tough for me to understand kids who don’t want to know about it at all.

Is this the lack of imagination between my generation and theirs?

Star Wars got me dreaming. It was, hands down, Star Wars that gave me a love of science fiction and simple, plain ol’ fiction. I liked stories.

Because of Star Wars, I read other books, comic books, saw other science fiction movies and shows. I even wrote some Star Wars stories and play acted with the characters among my friends. Between Empire and Jedi, we constantly tried to come up with ways to free Han Solo from the carbonite. Those figures gave us hours of new scenarios. And I branched out from there. And play acting? Do you fathom how important a skill it is to be able to play act?

Star Wars sparked my imagination. Maybe that would be a decent class to have in English. I could structure a complete English lesson around it.

Hmmmmm….