Chris At The Pictures

“This’ll make you feel old…”

It’s a statement I direct at my parents quite a lot these days whenever a certain celebrity, family member or piece of media survives another decade. It’s not something I have levelled at myself very much (with the slight exception being two years back, when Toy Story – a film I consider to be the first cultural landmark of my life – turned twenty), but seeing that swish 40^th anniversary logo plastered across various hoarding and merchandise at last month’s Star Wars Celebration event in Orlando, Florida, somehow caught me off guard.

[Image: starwars.com]

Being just shy of 22 years old, I've barely witnessed half of what constitutes four decades of Star Wars’ cultural impact, but the simple fact that I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t know what Star Wars was probably speaks for itself. I wasn’t there for the original release, nor Empire, nor Jedi. Heck, I was still in nappies when the Special Edition came around! My first clear memory of Star Wars is, tellingly, my first clear memory of childhood (to any family or friends reading this who’ve heard this story a million times before, feel free to skip ahead a paragraph or two).

My Dad and I are sat in the Warner Village cinema, Cambridge (now a rather swanky VUE – other cinema chains are available, etc.), and I need the toilet. Being a four-year-old, I’ve chosen the most inconvenient possible time to announce this, and Dad rushes us both to the gents with the urgency and efficiency of a well-practiced fire drill. It’s my first visit to the pictures, (a special occasion all by itself) but, more importantly, we’re seeing a Star Wars film. Being an observant reader who’s done the math, you’ll realise by now that the Star Wars film in question was Episode I – The Phantom Menace. We make it back to our seats with moments to spare, as ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’ fades from the screen. Three seconds of total, unbelievable silence pass. Then…

WHAM! Two gigantic words emblazoned in fiery yellow and backed by a roaring orchestra fly into the vacuum. In that moment, nothing else in the world mattered. I was there. I was in the screen. I was in the film. And the rest, as they say, is history.

[Cambridge VUE, as it currently stands]

I still don’t know how to really explain that feeling. I don’t know if I ever will. It’s this…oomph in my chest that only those 8 (soon to be 9) films can create. Once again, I still can’t muster the right words to explain why it’s more than just a favourite film – everyone has a favourite film, but there’s a difference between having a favourite film and a cinematic experience that comes to form your future. The only explanation I’ve found that even comes close to what I’m trying to express is Mark Kermode’s description of his first time watching The Exorcist – “my imagination took flight, my soul did somersaults, and the physical world melted away into nothingness around me.”

Obviously, there’s a vast difference in the perceived cinematic quality of The Exorcist compared to The Phantom Menace, compared even to the Star Wars series in general. To some, it’s a dumb throwback space opera that got too big for its boots, signalling somewhat of a death knell for the serious American cinema of the seventies. To others it’s a benchmark for storytelling, reaching that perfect balance between screenplay and special effects to which many strive, but few accomplish. To me, it’s that feeling I have watching X-wings swoop into the Death Star trench, of being pinned back in my seat as podracer engines shoot across Tatooine and feeling the room vibrate as Rey and Kylo Ren’s lightsabers clash.

It’s not always had the most positive impact, mind. My obsession often drove others to bully me at school or meant I was often fixated on happenings in a galaxy far, far away when I probably should have been concentrating on schoolwork, friendships, relationships, future planning etc. Not to mention the trivia, which likely composes half of my brain. I joke in my Twitter bio that I’m not really a person but just the Wookieepedia database disguised as one, but it’s not a million miles from the truth: for instance, I can’t drive a car or tell you how the off-side rule works, but I can attempt a detailed drawing of what’s inside a lightsaber and explain the difference between the Millennium Falcon’s proximity and deflector shield alarms, respectively (in case you’re interested, one’s a ‘boo-doo-boo-doo-boo-doo’ sort of noise and the other’s more a ‘weeweeweeweeweewee’). Oh, and I once won a Chewbacca impression competition by Yoda quote tiebreaker. And by once, I mean last year. Drunk.

But for better or worse, it’s still been there for me during every stage of my life. The originals fuelled my imagination as a child. The prequels were the films I grew up with. The Clone Wars served as inspiration for the stop-motion films I made between 2008 and 2012, when I didn’t have many friends. The build-up and release of The Force Awakens was a constant source of excitement throughout university (more on that here), and the release of Rogue One came at a crucial time in my struggle with depression.

Even now, the fleeting glimpses we’ve had of The Last Jedi have stoked the fire all over again, because seeing new Star Wars isn’t like seeing other films for the first time. Other films may intrigue, entertain, confuse, annoy or astound me, but trying to take in a new Star Wars film for the first time is like making a new friend: even if I’m unsure about them at first, once they’ve made me smile and gasp and cry, they’ll always be there.

So why did that big ‘40’ make me, a recent graduate still struggling to amass the smallest amount of facial hair, feel old? Because I'm now the age of Star Wars' heroes: Luke, Anakin and Rey finally faced their destinies and confronted great challenge at the onset of their twenties. The tests I face - escaping my hellish retail job, pursuing a career I'm often told is dying out, finding a new place to call home while conquering lingering low moods and ever-present social anxiety - may seem rather minimal compared to destroying the Death Star, turning the galaxy on its head or gathering the courage to summon a legendary weapon...but not to me. 

...I kinda hope it's closer to blowing up the Death Star, though; big medal ceremony and all that jazz. Plus, if I can survive that, I get The Empire Strikes Back immediately afterwards, which is pretty great. Although it is the one where the bad guys win. This analogy's falling apart. I'm going to stop now. May the 4th be with you.

[Awkward nerd bothers droid at Star Wars Celebration, 2016]

For the longest time I debated whether to even try reviewing this film. When you’ve been anticipating something for over ten years, a certain level of personal bias is to be expected. For me (and obviously, many others around the world) this is not a film, it is an event.

Everyone who knows me knows how much I love Star Wars. It doesn’t matter if you’re a close friend, one of my Twitter followers or someone I once drunkenly encountered at a house party; it’s one of the first things anyone learns about me. Some might think that’s a bit sad, but it doesn’t bother me. Better notorious by my enthusiasm for one thing than hatred for another, right?

I’ve loved these movies for longer than I can remember, and have bored friends and family to death talking about them ever since. Heck, I even wrote my own version of Episode VII back in 2005 at age ten during my post Revenge of the Sith sugar low, convinced that no-one else ever would. This conviction remained for the next seven years through endless rumours, supposed treatment leaks, faked trailers, the works…right up until the 2012 announcement that Disney had taken control of Lucasfilm and that production on the seventh chapter was underway.

Of course, I’ve been embarrassingly excited. Of course, I’ve counted down the years, months, days, hours, even minutes until the film reached release…but not without a very specific reservation. Being a fan of all six films is not something the internet hive-mind approves of: if you see an article about The Force Awakens that doesn’t contain an opening line about how ‘let-down’ or ‘disappointed’ everyone was with the prequels, you treasure it.

Sadly, this assumed ‘truth’ that everyone dislikes a sizeable chunk of the established canon appeared to have leaked into the production: all the talk of returning to the spirit of the original trilogy, to an old-school way of film-making reeked of an attempt to appease forty year-old fanboys, and a denial of half the stories which I loved growing up. As selfish and hypocritical as it sounds, I was worried that this film was not made for me.

Even as I took a seat in the crowded IMAX screen, my best friend at my side and a palpable aura of excitement filling the room, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong: not in the modern multiplex sense of ‘What if the image is out of focus?’, but something closer to the fear of having your heart broken by someone you love.

To cut a long story short: I had a bad feeling about this.

To cut it shorter: I was wrong.

I’m not in the right frame of mind to write a more coherent review until a second viewing, because trying to piece together my thoughts right now is like trying to keep water from slipping through my fingers.

Adolescent Murmurings: The Movies That Shaped My Teenage Years

A Pause For Thought – Inception (2010, Director: Christopher Nolan)

The first film of my teenage years to really have a meaningful impact took place on a GCSE geography trip to Wales. Our teacher chose to reward us for hiking through torrential rain/enduring youth hostel food/having to do actual work with a trip to the nearest (read: 90 minutes away) cinema. While one of the teaching assistants and two students chose Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1, the rest of us piled into a packed screening of Inception, so packed in fact that my friends and I had to sit a row from the front, resulting in much neck-ache and a little motion sickness.

For those that have seen Inception (and if you haven’t, go and watch it right now!), you’ll entirely understand both of those problems: watching buildings fold in upon themselves and entire cities crumble into the sea is a marvellous spectacle, but when seen a viewing angle some might generously refer to as ‘steep’, it can become a tad overwhelming.

But that wasn’t why the experience of watching the film has stuck with me: beyond the physical ability required to watch the film without feeling ill, the mental power required to pick apart the narrative and splice it together was something my blockbuster-bred mind had never had to muster. Different dream layers, dreams within dreams and memories within memories was hard work for someone who had only recently grasped the notion of a flashback.

The group of us that left the screening two hours later were dumbfounded, some complaining that it was too confusing, others explaining to their friends what it all meant, and some just silently attempting to un-pick it piece by piece before seeing it again (which for myself would be a full year, as the first Blu-ray I ever owned). Inception was the first film to make me actually think, and taught me a lot about non-linear storytelling.

The Little Things – Brick (2005, Director: Rian Johnson)

Jump forward a year and a half: now a fresh-faced yet socially awkward sixth form student, I’d taken up a Film Studies module, mostly amongst people who took it because “It’s a doss, mate! You just get to watch films!” Those expecting to just sit and consume vast amounts of Hollywood luxury were probably a little put out when films started getting screened that were:

a) Made before 1990

b) Not in colour

c) Not in the English language

Although, you will probably have noticed that my chosen film for this era falls under none of those categories, being a 2005 colour production made in the USA. I could quite easily have chosen Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder’s exceptional noir classic) or The Long Good Friday (arguably one of the greatest films that British cinema has ever produced), but my mind landed on Brick for a very simple reason: it’s a small film. The word ‘indie’ meant little to me at the time, and to see a story essentially about three school students caught up in a drugs dispute was a little jarring.

This wasn’t star-ships soaring across space, globe-trotting super-spies saving the planet from annihilation, nor the grandiose scale games at play in Inception, this was a story that you genuinely believed could happen at a high school. The characters weren’t clear-cut morally and the budget wasn’t huge, but the stakes felt as high as any large-scale action movie.

Brick was the first time I realised that low-budget didn’t necessarily mean low-quality. A film that cost $3 million could be just as enthralling, if not more enthralling than the average $150 million flick dropped off the Hollywood production line every other week. This was a film built on a vision and a desire to tell a story, not on studio spreadsheets or focus groups.

Falling In Love – 500 Days of Summer (2009, Director: Mark Webb)

Mark Webb’s ever-popular rom-com starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who the more perceptive of you will have noticed, appears in three of the four films in this list) and Zooey Deschanel doesn’t seem like a great teacher of life-lessons or capable of anything particularly challenging, but what matters here is when I watched it, and who I watched it with.

I was seventeen, beginning my first proper relationship and sat on my girlfriend’s sofa watching 500 Days on a warm summer afternoon. As someone who (despite a widening appreciation for movies outside my usual comfort zone) was still sceptical of so-called ‘chick-flicks’, I was not entirely convinced that this would be an enjoyable experience.

How wrong I was: this was the first movie I can remember watching that brought up the issues I could relate to, at least in terms of relationships: ‘How can I avoid embarrassing myself in front of them?’, ‘When does this go from “a thing” to “a thing”?’, ‘Does it matter?’, ‘Is it supposed to be so awkward at first?’. All the questions I didn’t dare to ask were asked in a way that was light-hearted, funny and most importantly, honest. And as the credits rolled and the screen flicked back to the DVD menu, I realised for the first time that I actually loved someone this way.

500 Days involves a lot of things I’ve never experienced: I’ve never lived in New York City, never had a girlfriend who loved all the things I loved, and certainly never waltzed down the street accompanied by a fanfare celebrating sex (still one for the bucket list), but the experience of watching the film as someone going head-over-heels in love for the first time is what has stayed the course.

Reflection – Mr. Holmes (2015, Director: Bill Condon)

The last film to properly move me during my teenage years came at the very end, two weeks before I turned twenty. In the nearly three years between this film and the last, I’d experienced my first break-up, had my first job, moved to university and made a whole new set of friends. For my now weekly cinema trips, I had the choice between Entourage and Mr. Holmes, and (like any sane person would do), I chose the latter, taking a seat in a mostly empty screening to enjoy the ever-reliable Ian McKellen as an aging Sherlock Holmes.

I expected a fairly innocuous, gentle story with a hint of mystery, and at first that’s what I got. It was only upon sitting on the crowded journey back home, fighting the shuddering of the knackered bus to write up my review notes, that the film really started to have a profound effect on me. Throughout the screening, McKellen’s performance as the 93 year-old Sherlock had stirred a memory, and only as I paused for a moment did the realisation hit me. The endearing grunts, the inquisitive gestures and the gentle gait of the man created a perfect reflection of my own grandfather, who passed away in 2012.

Sat wedged between disgruntled sixth-form students and almost drowning in my own sweat, I feared I might just burst into tears. Sherlock’s fascinating stories, his willingness to listen only served to remind me how much more time I wish I’d spent with my grandfather, of how many more stories he had to tell which I will never hear. But more than anything, the lesson I learned from Mr. Holmes is to never take anything for granted, to appreciate more than ever the time we have with those who care about us, to always be ready to take a pause for breath in amongst our hectic, hap-hazard lives and enjoy their company.