With only thirteen days to go until Revenge of the Sith opens, I’m still considering exactly what I want to say here on Simple Tricks about the whole Star Wars phenomenon. It’s a big subject, at least it is for me, because I’ve quite literally been thinking about it my entire life. I’ve got a lot of Star Wars-related ideas that I could share — anecdotes, theories, memories, speculations, and, of course, my own highly subjective opinions. Enough material, probably, to keep me blogging non-stop for the next couple of months.

But part of me wonders if I should bother writing on this subject at all. My love for these movies is crystal clear to anyone who either knows me or has been hanging around this blog for very long, and just about everybody in their thirties can tell similar stories of what it was like to grow up with The Trilogy during the ’70s and ’80s. How many people reading this post stood in lines that stretched around the block to see the original film at a grand old theater that probably doesn’t exist anymore? Weren’t we all equally blown away as children by our first glimpse of an Imperial Star Destroyer? Or of all the monsters in the Mos Eisley cantina? Do I have anything to say about Star Wars that my loyal readers haven’t already heard, or thought, or experienced themselves? I honestly don’t know.

While I wrestle with that question, I figure you might appreciate a couple of links to follow — it is Friday, after all, and everyone needs some good ‘net-surfing material to help you kill time on those long, tedious, springtime afternoons.

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Only 19 days until Episode III.

I suppose it goes without saying that I’ll be doing some nostalgic musing on the whole Star Wars phenomenon over the next two and a half weeks. For the sake of my three loyal readers, I’ll do my best not to become tediously one-track-minded.

I may not succeed, but I will try.

And please don’t throw the “do or do not, there is no try” thing at me. That’s my schtick…

The Line is still there, in case you were wondering, and last I heard the Chinese Theatre still won’t be playing Revenge of the Sith. But that didn’t stop the on-line movie rental service Netflix from recognizing a good promotional opportunity.

Yesterday, they sent actress Bai Ling — who plays a Galactic Senator in Ep III — in a Netflix-branded Hummer to visit the line-sitters. Judging from the photos I’ve seen, Ling didn’t interact with the fans so much as mug for the cameras. But I guess that was her job, after all, and she did look awfully cute next to the stormtroopers…

It seems the uber-nerds I wrote about a week or so back continue to camp out in front of Grauman’s Chinese. They’re apparently making some kind of gesture of defiance, or holding out a slim hope that some corporate suit somewhere will bend to their whims. Or maybe they truly don’t have anything better to do than hang out under an awning on a hot sidewalk in the middle of Hollywood despite the fact that their friggin’ movie is not going to be playing at that theater.

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From the Department of Stuff That’s Really Kinda Lame But Nevertheless Amuses Me Terribly (DSTRKLBNAMT) comes news that hardcore Star Wars fans are already lining up outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the May 19th premiere of Revenge of the Sith. They have a website (naturally), a charity connection to help make it worthwhile, and, according to a report on Boing Boing, they are answering the pay phone on the corner. So if you want to talk to a geek with a lot of time on his hands, dial (323) 462-9609.

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[UPDATE: I wrote this entry in the wee hours last night and, upon reflection in the clear light of morning, decided it wasn’t quite right. What can I say? Sometimes it really is best to let something cool a bit before you publish it. I have therefore streamlined the whole thing to intensify the one point I think I was really trying to make. Sorry for the confusion… ]

Funny thing about James Lileks. I can wonder for months why I continue to read his self-important, reactionary and often paranoid post-9/11 drivel, and then one day he’ll just spew out something that makes all the grumpy-old-man-ishness worthwhile. Case in point: his comments today about the upcoming Revenge of the Sith…

The new SW movie trailer looks incredible — if they’d showed this to fans in 1979, I think most of them would have spontaneously dissolved. I have no doubt the dialogue will be horrible… I don’t care. If it looks like the trailer, I know I will sit in a movie theater on a Friday afternoon and quite possibly feel 18 again. This is no great accomplishment; art, you could say, should raise you up, not lull you back to the sloshing amniotic sea of the womb. But it’s a movie with rockets and robots and ray guns, and I’m a guy who grew up loving rockets and robots and ray guns. Hence I like to see the same once in a while, done well, without Bruce Dern moping around in a Jesus robe weeping about pine trees.

James just managed to eloquently sum up, in a sentence and a half, what I’ve so often spent hours trying to explain to my disillusioned friends who mock me for my continued loyalty to the Great Flanneled One: “it’s a movie with rockets and robots and ray guns, and I’m a guy who grew up loving rockets and robots and ray guns. Hence I like to see the same once in a while…”

Amen, man. I often think Lileks is totally up in the night with his opinions, but on that point, we are in absolute agreement. I’m looking forward to May because I’m hoping to feel, if only for a short time, like a wide-eyed boy of seven instead of a tired and wounded old man of 35…

[Ed. note: the crack about Bruce Dern in a Jesus robe refers to the 1972 film Silent Running, just in case you’re not up on your classics of dystopic science fiction. Lileks has a big problem with the cynicism common to all films of this era, science fictional and otherwise. Personally, I quite like the dark movies of the early ’70s. But then I don’t politicize every damn thing the way he does.]

How big a fanboy am I?

Big enough that I sat through an entire hour of The O.C. just so I wouldn’t miss the premiere of the new full-length Revenge of the Sith trailer.

Big enough that the hair rose up on my arms during said trailer and didn’t settle back down for a good three minutes after it was over.

Big enough that May 19th suddenly seems like an eternity away.

I’ve been fooled by trailers before. The Phantom Menace had a kick-ass trailer (“Every saga has a beginning…”); Attack of the Clones had a kick-ass trailer (“I will raise a Grand Army of the Republic…”). Both films ultimately let me down. This time… well, like I said, I’ve been fooled before. I so want the sixth and final Star Wars film to be the prequel I always dreamed of, the one that my eight-year-old imagination conjured up from the vaguest handful of ideas gleaned from a brief and fluffy magazine interview with The Great Flanneled One. I am trying to prepare myself for yet another disappointment. I am reminding myself that George Lucas isn’t the man he used to be and I am not the child I once was. I am struggling not to get carried away with enthusiasm like I did during the Dark Year, 1999. But it’s tough. I watched that trailer tonight and I found myself buying into it completely. I didn’t think one single element of it looked potentially cringe-inducing. I’m even daring to think that maybe, just maybe, Uncle George is going to redeem himself with this one.

The sight of Anakin Skywalker leading an army of clonetroopers, of Emperor Palpatine drawing a lightsaber against Jedi Master Windu, of giant starships exchanging broadsides like sea-going galleons and interior shots of explosions tearing through their gun-decks, made me pump my fist with testerone-laden glee. The glimpse of the Tantive IV‘s familiar engine-cluster arcing toward a beautiful green world and of R2 in a fighter socket and 3PO in his polished glory made me smile with fond nostalgia. And the sound of Padme’s sobs and Obi-Wan’s anguished cry, “You were the chosen one!” as his student and friend attacks him broke my heart.

(If you caught the reference to the Tantive IV, congratulations. You’re as big a fanboy as me. If you don’t know, it’s the rebel ship seen at the beginning of the original Star Wars, the one Princess Leia is “racing home” aboard. Technically, it’s the official transport of the Royal House of Alderaan.)

Going purely off this three-minute advertisement, it looks to me like this is the film George has been waiting to make all along, the true back-story that he started putting down on legal pads around 1975. Maybe Episodes I and II were weak because he had the fewest notes for them. Maybe Revenge of the Sith is the only prequel he really needed to make, the only one he really wanted to make.

Maybe I’m just a big sucker setting myself up to knocked down again, a compulsive gambler who doesn’t know better than to keep going back to the three-card-monte dealer on the corner. Maybe. We’ll see in just about two months. But I’ll tell you this much: after tonight, I’m feeling happier to call myself a Star Wars fan than I have in years.

While surfing the ‘net a week ago, I ran across the Star Wars Episode III advertising banner that you’ll soon begin seeing in movie theaters. I’ve now found the design for the film’s teaser poster. It’s a little on the bizarre side, somewhat reminiscent of the truly weird Original Trilogy posters from Eastern Europe, but I like it:

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Given the ambivalence I feel toward the first two Star Wars prequels — not to mention the sour taste left in my mouth by the Great “Original Versions on DVD” Debacle — one would think that I wouldn’t be too interested in the upcoming third prequel, Revenge of the Sith.

One would be wrong.

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