There’s nothing worse than people banging on about Star Wars. When I was five-years-old I went through a few weeks at school where I refused to answer to any name other than Luke, so hypnotised had I been watching the movie at the cinema, the first time I’d ever been. In hindsight my teacher should have beaten me and forced me to eat liver (actually the dinner lady did force me to eat liver, but that’s another story) or at least warned me that hero-worship of the fictional might lead to mental illness in later life, but she found the whole thing funny and indulged me.
Luke lived on a farm, I lived on a farm. I figured we were one and the same, and that hadn’t happened since I wanted to be Joanna Lumley in The New Avengers. A desire to be David Bowie in my late twenties led to all sorts of eye-watering shenanigans, though the less said about that the better. Be yourself! That should have been her message.
Anyway, I had a right to be knocked out by Star Wars. I was five. And then I grew up. The whole franchise now seems deeply conservative, with George Lucas a corporate shamen trying to convey some nebulous quasi-spiritual message in a film that looks like it was filmed in the back of a microwave. By the time I was 12 I had to suffer the disappointment of Return of the Jedi, with some hokey story about how Luke and Leia were brother and sister and the fucking Ewoks. It got worse. The Phantom Menace is the most boring movie ever committed to celluloid and the last one I was dragged along to the cinema to see, I don’t remember which, offended me. There were protests at the time that one of the computer generated characters was anti-semitic, and yet is was Natalie Portman’s meek and simpering Queen Amidala that put the woman’s movement back 30 years. And she was called Queen Amidala. For fuck’s sake, there are grown men here and they’re taking this seriously.
Back to the Future though, now that was a film. And Back to the Future II had a nice idea about travelling back in time and betting on stuff(I came out of that film and was sick in a phonebox. I think I had a tummy bug). And Back to the Future III was enjoyable though a bit artbritary, being a western. Anyway, apparently Mattel are bringing out a replica of the incredible hoverboard that makes an appearance in the movies, for the end of the year. Brilliant news I thought. On closer inspection it would seem the board doesn’t hover. You have to pre-order one in March, and then they’ll send it to you in November provided they get enough orders. And it doesn’t hover. In Back to the Future II, Marty McFly says everyone will have a hoverboard in 2015 (you would have thought so wouldn’t you?), though in 2012 only some people will have a hoverboard provided they get enough orders, and the hoverboard doesn’t hover. It makes you think.
