A Long Time Ago, In A Shophouse Far Far Away...

So. It's that time of the year again, when Summer Blockbusters start to flood the cineplexes. Me, I'm just waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, solely for the pleasure of seeing the lovely Ms. Jolie grace the screen in all her pouty glory. Must remember to bring a bib.

Mrowwl. visualises a very cold shower.

I digress. Who wouldn't at the thought of Angelina Jolie and her...ahem. Yes, the purpose of this post. It's Star Wars time again. Yawn. You mean the one from last year wasn't the third chapter? I thought Amidala had hung up her cradle-snatching gloves for good. Sigh.

C'mon, surely I'm not the only one who's disappointed with the prequels and the mind-boggling casting of a piece of wood (Yes, Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christianson, BOTH of you) in the lead role of Anakin Skywalker. Might as well have cast Pinocchio if wood was what Mr. Lucas was looking for. The biggest gripe for me is in respect of the monumental waste of Natalie Portman's talents. Her Mathilda in The Professional would have kicked Jake Lloyd's runty lil' Anakin butt across the Empire.

Bah. Anyway.

I remember the Star Wars mania of my youth in the early 80s with much fondness. My brother and I had lightsabers! True, they were rather primitive - The handle was a black chunk of Maglite-sized (i.e. the size of a teenaged python) plastic and you had to screw on the separate sabre itself - but hey, the holes near the top of the handle to created the coolest vwooong vwooong sound when swishing the sabre around! The sabre itself was a detachable 3 foot hollow tube of red plastic. I was always disappointed that the sabre was red (Darth Vader's sabre) instead of Luke Skywalker's heroic green one.

Also, it was hard to look cool given that upon a duel challenge being issued, there would be a mad scramble to see who could screw on the sabre the fastest. Only then could we make the lightsabre "on" sound, vziing, and strike a dramatic pose. Heh.

The duel begins in the arena that was the bedroom we shared with our parents.

Vziing!

Vwoong Vwooong!

Vwoong! Ker-rack!

Owwww! I tell mommy. Snif.

The problem with duelling is that it requires space. We lived in a shophouse back then, so space was a premium. One day we broke some breakable thing and mum beat us with the tube and it bent (which wasn't difficult, given the cheap plastic that it was made of). The Force was strong in that one. :)

Action figures! Dang, if only we had kept those! My favourite was my brother's Han Solo & kangaroo-like Taun Taun figurines and my Yoda-in-a-Backpack Luke Skywalker. The Han Solo was dressed in his Hoth outfit (blue parka with white fur trim. Snazzy.) and there was a hole on the top of the Taun Taun, with a spring-held flap. The saddle had fake legs, so with Han in the Taun Taun's back hole (there is just NO OTHER way to describe it, so get your mind out of the gutter), you'd get a Taun Taun-riding Han Solo. Again, I stress - it was a time of innocence. Luke Skywalker had his brown Tatooine outfit and a blue backpack into which you could insert Yoda. The original prototype for today's baby carriers, no doubt.

We also had X and Y wing fighters, Boba Fett, Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, that red cardinally looking guard, Chewbaca, Bib Fortuna and others that I can't remember. Oh yeah, Ewoks. God, and even Lando Calrissian in his blue cape. Of course he and the Princess Leia figure were always off in some nook somewhere whilst the other figures got their day in the sun.

Wonder what happened to those toys. Sigh. There was always some poor underpriviliged cousin or other who would be deemed more deserving of our toys. Bleh.

I think someone should compile a list of the world's most recognisable sounds. My nominations would be Darth Vader's preverted heavy breathing - hworrrhhh hworrrrhjjj - and the Wookie language - ngrowww.

Speaking of Wookies... back in those days my brother had a cassete tape of Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album. We played in days on end, every other minute. The only song I remember is What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas (when he already owns a comb). Ah, classic.

Sometimes, we had to use headphones (remember the old-fashioned ones that looked like Mickey Mouse ears, albeit flattened ones?), so that our parents' sanity (and hearing) would be preserved. A true vision of Princess Leia, we were. One can never look at those headphones the same again. Nor danish pastries, for that matter.

Well, what better time to hop off the nostalgia train, leaving that sight behind.

Those were the days. Long lost. Today we have the prequels, yet it's difficult to evoke the same excitement. Whilst it was a rather "man, you da," moment when Yoda went into his muppet-on-caffeine-high fight seqeunce in Episode II, the whole scene, overall, was just too ... ridiculous and sad at the same time. I'm sure that way back in the 80's of our youth, such an action sequence would have drawn breaths of awe from us (not to mention more vwoong vwoongs), but watching it as a thirty-something today, it just makes me wanna flip the channel. Or just flip.

Wither the simple innocence of youth, when two children transformed the upper floor of a cramped old shophouse into a galaxy far far away?