It's Star Wars, man!

The circle is now complete. For those of us in Generation Jedi, the next few days will see the end of a story that has provided the cultural background to some of the most important events in our lives. We are a generation of thirty-somethings whose first great experience was to see Star Wars (sorry, Episode IV: A New Hope) with our dads. Then came the toys, the watches, the duvets and the life-long practice of giving our money to George. Empire Strikes Back gave us the greatest shock of our early lives, it was darker and smarter than the first movie, and had the most amazing plot twist in pre-internet days ("Luke, I'm your father"). We all shouted with Luke "NO!", and our innocence was lost. With Return of the Jedi we were old enough not to be too impressed with the Ewoks, we realised that George was fallible, and then there was the golden bikini, puberty had arrived. The following years were largely Star Wars free, but we still remembered and looked for the same thrills elsewhere.

Then the internet changed everything, we found out that there were millions of us out there, working in technology companies and fuelling the dot.com bubble. The internet came with fandom, screen savers, ASCII reproductions and computer backgrounds (mine used to be mostly Star Wars oriented). Then George realised that there was more money to be made, and he gave us the Special Editions, and started work on the Prequels. Episodes I and II came, Generation Jedi was not amused, Jar-Jar and silly love dialogue just didn't do it for us. Could it be that *GASP* we had finally grown? Were our childhood memories, well, childhood memories? Were we giving Star Wars more credit than it deserved? We doubted, George had joined the Dark Side.

Word on the internet is that George has redeemed himself with Revenge of the Sith. We can only hope.