As news of a 7th Star wars movie rambled through canopies of the mighty internet forest it came abundantly clear that a new era was beginning in the franchise.
When I was a kid during the 80's my only exposure to Star Wars was a shoebox full of the old Kenner action figures at my friend's house. I remember just making up little stories and names for them calling the storm trooper "011" because that's what I thought the symbol on his back meant. To this day I still have the Admiral Ackbar or "fish lobster man" as I called him back then.
I saw the Empire Strikes Back on a grainy VHS copy and was instantly captivated and a little freaked out by it. Back then what little CGI was available to film makers was massively expensive and only used sparingly. We had something far weirder, practical effects, matte paintings and puppets most of the movies.
This was true of Star Wars, and the visceral reaction you get from watching a huge ugly animatronic puppet lurching from the darkness of poorly lit room beneath a veil of film grain was the stuff of nightmare fuel for me as a kid, and knowing that a lot of these things are gradually decaying in some film studio warehouse somewhere still gives me the creeps.
When I was a kid during the 80's my only exposure to Star Wars was a shoebox full of the old Kenner action figures at my friend's house. I remember just making up little stories and names for them calling the storm trooper "011" because that's what I thought the symbol on his back meant. To this day I still have the Admiral Ackbar or "fish lobster man" as I called him back then.
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| This was way before the internet so things were not only genuinely obscure, unless you had some kind of reference material, you were on your own. |
I saw the Empire Strikes Back on a grainy VHS copy and was instantly captivated and a little freaked out by it. Back then what little CGI was available to film makers was massively expensive and only used sparingly. We had something far weirder, practical effects, matte paintings and puppets most of the movies.
This was true of Star Wars, and the visceral reaction you get from watching a huge ugly animatronic puppet lurching from the darkness of poorly lit room beneath a veil of film grain was the stuff of nightmare fuel for me as a kid, and knowing that a lot of these things are gradually decaying in some film studio warehouse somewhere still gives me the creeps.
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