Star Wars Through the Decades

Today marks 45 years since Star Wars debuted. While I didn’t see the movie opening day in 1977, by the time I did, I was hopelessly immersed in a galaxy far, far away. Not only that, but it opened up the broader world of science fiction for me, a world I’ve loved and appreciated these past decades.

I got to thinking about Star Wars and what it meant throughout the years so I did a fun little exercise: how did I perceive Star Wars every five years for the past forty-five years. 

Star Wars at 5 Years (1982)

This was a year from Return of the Jedi—was the title already announced in 1982 as Revenge of the Jedi? This was the spring of my 7th grade year. I had many, many Star Wars toys, the bulk being from the Empire Strikes Back collection. Legos were still a thing as was other science fiction properties, especially Star Trek. I was gearing up for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan debuting in June 1982. Star Wars was always on the radar but with the last movie a year out, it was probably not front and center.

Still, I was and remain a charter member of the Star Wars Generation. It changed me and helped to shape the things I enjoy watching and reading and listening to.

Star Wars at 10 (1987)

I was a senior in high school thirty-five (!) years ago this month. I was heading up to The University of Texas at Austin in August. Music, including high school band, often took center stage of my life, so much so that I tried out for and joined the Longhorn Band.

I actually have no conscious memory of Star Wars from May 1987. The Marvel Comics run had been cancelled in 1986. I still own most of that run, but can’t barely remember any of the storylines. An interesting sidenote to 1983, the year Jedi was released. I was all in on seeing the movie—even paying extra to see it the day before its premiere—and saw it multiple times throughout the summer. But I never bought any Jedi toys. I was moving on from eighth grade to high school. Things were changing for me, just like they were in May 1987. Star Wars, for all intents and purposes, was done. It was wonderful and great and a vital part of my formative years, but that was in the past.

Star Wars at 15 (1992)

Star Wars was back…at least in print. May 1992 saw the publication of Dark Force Rising, the middle book of a new trilogy by Timothy Zahn. 1991’s Heir to the Empire reignited my love of Star Wars, bringing back wondering memories of the franchise and that time of my life. I started talking about Star Wars with college friends and reminiscing.

But, after I’d read Dark Force Rising, that was about it. Batman Returns was a month away and I was eagerly anticipating it. Interestingly, my other childhood favorite thing—KISS—had released their new album, Revenge, in May 1992 and I was spinning that CD constantly. 

Star Wars at 20 (1997)

Star Wars was back…on the big screen. I owned the movies on VHS (still have them) but hadn’t seen them on a theater screen since the early 80s. Now, new special effects were being added to all three movies with the biggest expectation being the Han Solo-meets-Jabba scenes in Mos Eisley. This was awesome stuff. And I really wanted the Biggs/Luke scenes from early in the film to be in there as well. Alas, it wasn’t, and now Han shot second?

But here’s the thing: I loved seeing the old movies again, relishing in my past life, and shrugged off the weird nesses. I knew the movies backward and forward so instantly knew when changes had been made. And I realized during these viewings that this franchise, especially the first two movies, were time capsules. If I let myself just sit and watch, I could be transported back to my younger self. It was magical. 

Star Wars at 25 (2002) 

Yay, a new movie—Attack of the Clones—in the Prequel trilogy. Surely it was going to be better than The Phantom Menace, right? I mean, there’s Anakin as a teenager. Obi-Wan as a badass Jedi. Jango Fett. Samuel L. Jackson and his purple lightsaber. And Yoda as CGI?

Well, AOTC had its moments, but was it better than Phantom Menace? Not really. Looking back to 1999, it is difficult to overstate how excited I was about a new Star Wars movie. That first trailer was so good, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Could it have? Probably not, but at least we were getting new Star Wars movies, right?

I did not follow through and watch the animated series however. Not sure why. I had long since stopped trying to keep up with the novels as well. I read the big ones—especially the novelizations of the movies because they went into additional detail and made for a better story—but that was about it. Star Wars was still important, but it had become one of many things I loved.

Star Wars at 30 (2007)

Honestly, when I think of this year, no Star Wars thing pops into my mind. 2005’s Revenge of the Sith was the best of the Prequel movies. This movie’s novelization was itself the middle book of a little trilogy and I listened to all of them. A nice tidy little story, but then I didn’t read another Star Wars book until 2013’s Scoundrels.

I had finally started reading the Harry Potter books, and in May 2007, I was reading all six then-existing books leading up to the publication of the seventh book in July. Star Wars just wasn’t on my pop culture radar. It was Pixar movies (Ratatouille was in 2007) and things my young son enjoyed.

Star Wars at 35 (2012)

More of the same, to be honest. I’d pull out the soundtracks from time to time and give them a listen. The novels of the Extended Universe were still being published at a rapid rate and I was reading none of them.

I can’t remember exactly when I showed Star Wars to my son. Maybe it was in 2012. But in May 2012, The Avengers had been out a month and I was enjoying the new Marvel cinematic universe. And there was a new Batman movie coming out in July. Star Wars was just one of the things I enjoyed, and mostly not on a day-to-day basis. 

Star Wars at 40 (2017)

In May 2017, we were seven months away from the next movie in the sequel series, The Last Jedi, a movie I enjoyed immensely. The trailer had dropped in April and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker was back (and speaking!). We were about six months after Rogue One, one of the four most original Star Wars movies made to date. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was the brand-new Marvel movie and Wonder Woman would debut in June.

Had Star Wars been the only major franchise to vie for my attention, it would have earned more attention. But it was just one of many. Perhaps that was one of its lasting legacies.

Star Wars at 45 (2022)

Forty-five years ago today, it started. Ironically, just this past weekend, Colin Cantwell, the guy who designed the X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the Death Star passed away. We’re getting a hotly anticipated new TV show, Obi-Wan Kenobi, something I’m really looking forward to, not the least of which being a new theme by John Williams.

Television seems to be the place where Star Wars shines nowadays. You have the chance to see new characters, allow them to grow, and not always show the vast galaxy only from the perspective of a single family. I’m happy to follow along with every new Star Wars TV show, watching all the live-action ones (still haven’t started any of the animated series). And I might pick up a book or two along the way. But, like in the heyday of the Extended Universe, I just can’t keep up. It’s a good thing (?) that there is so much because you can drop in here and there, picking up things that interest you and letting other things rest. I know that there are folks out there who memorize every little detail like I did back in the day, but it’s so much more difficult.

Conclusion

Star Wars is special. It’s one of the pop culture cornerstones of my life. It’s a joke in my family that I can’t remember to call a plumber but can still (!) remember random facts from the first movie (like the trash compactor number). Star Wars just is. And it always will be. My interest may ebb and flow, but it never disappears. It’s a part of me, just like it’s probably a part of you, too.

So let’s celebrate Star Wars for what it *is* and not necessarily what you want it to be. It is a multimedia franchise that started forty-five years ago today. It was and remains a story about a boy, a girl, a pair of robots, an old man, a scoundrel and his best friend, and an evil dark lord who welds a mysterious force and a laser sword. It is good vs. evil, the call to adventure, the hero’s journey with a sublimely wonderful soundtrack, and the willingness to stand up to the bad guys, even when all hope is lost. Because one person can make a difference, be it a pilot in an x-wing who can guide a proton torpedo through a 2-meter-wide exhaust port or a film director who has an idea about a movie he’d like to make to recapture the spirit of the movies he himself loved as a younger boy.

It’s that spirit that is at the essence of Star Wars. May that spirit always have a spark of creativity and keep the story going, yet always remembering where it started: in movie theaters forty-five years ago today.

End of an Era: The Final Print Issue of Entertainment Weekly

It arrived every Friday, and boy, I could not wait.

I can’t say with any certainty if I purchased the debut issue of Entertainment Weekly in February 1989, but I know I began reading the magazine that year. In those pre-internet days, Entertainment Weekly featured writing like my friends and I talked. The stories were encyclopedic, the authors were folks like me (geeks if you will), and the sections became go-to sources of information.

It wasn’t long before I started subscribing as a means to avoid the vicissitudes of magazine stands and delayed delivery. I needed my entertainment fix every week.

The interviews were always in depth and interviewers mostly asked the same questions I would have asked were it me in front of a celebrity with a notepad and pen. It wasn’t long before I grew accustomed to the Top 10 Must List of the week, always cheering when a thing I loved landed on the list.

In those pre-internet days, Entertainment Weekly pretty much kept up with the times. The periodical evolved as the 1990s evolved and shaped and reshaped popular culture. I always looked forward to the big issue showcasing the fall TV shows (although those usually were double issues and I’d have a week without a new issue) or the summer blockbusters or the big music issues. When mega events like the relaunch of James Bond with Pierce Brosnan or the release of the first new Star Wars movie, I could not wait to read the content. The issues were mostly devoured in one sitting, maybe two. It was a rare weekend that ended when I hadn’t read Entertainment Weekly from cover to cover.

I moved from Austin to Denton, Texas, to Kent, Ohio, back to Denton and then back to my hometown of Houston. I carried the subscription with me everywhere I went. When my wife and I married, we discovered we both subscribed and we joined our subscriptions into one. When we moved to the Houston suburbs, Fridays were still a wonderful day when EW would arrive in the mailbox. I would usually consume the Must List between the mailbox and the front door, and, if the cover was particularly important, show my wife as I walked in the door.

A particularly great time to subscribe to EW was during the time when “Lost” was on TV. Every Wednesday, we’d get a new episode. Every Thursday, the folks at the office would hang out in the hallway and talk over what happened. But come Friday, I’d get the latest issue of EW. In it, Jeff Jenson, senior writer and “Lost” guru would recap the episode and deliver in-depth analysis of all the things in any particular scene, be it a book on a shelf or whatever might’ve been in the background. It was essential reading and I always enjoyed Mondays when I could bring Jeff’s wisdom back to the office.

Needless to say, Entertainment Weekly has been with me most of my adult life. I’ll admit I was sad when EW went from being published weekly to only coming out monthly. I’ll also admit I never understood why they didn’t just change the name to Entertainment Monthly. Why not?

But now, in April 2022, the 1,630th issue of Entertainment Weekly arrived in my mailbox, and it is the last one. The last print issue. EW.com has been a thing for I don’t know how many years, but now it’ll be the only thing. If EW could read the writing on the wall, realizing that just about everything is fast and digital and on the web, and shift to a monthly rate, then the shift to an all-digital format was also easily predicted.

Yeah, I’ll keep going to EW.com because the same content by the same writers is there. There’s even the same font for the various sections. And while I’m fully aware that my next statement will make me sound old, I’ll miss holding the printed magazine in my hands, getting the ink smeared on my fingers if I’m enjoying a cold drink while reading, and circling things with a pen to go and buy later.

The older one gets, the more one values things that have just always been there. And for 33 years, the printed version of Entertainment Weekly has been there with me, chronicling the pop culture events of my life, from my time as a college student to the middle-aged man I am today.

So long, old friend. Thanks for making the journey with me.

What Are the Famous Books of the 1990s?

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman. I’d never heard of him but the book’s cover caught my attention. Couple that with my son’s musical tastes currently residing in the 1990s and I thought why not take a chance with the new book.

It’s a fascinating read and I thoroughly enjoyed. I annotated my audible file with interesting clips and I’ve got the ebook on hold via my library to potentially re-read some passages.

Klosterman focuses on pop culture, politics, TV, music, movies as a means to explain that last decade of the century. It was only by the end that I realized something: I don’t think he mentioned any books. Which got me to thinking about an obvious question:

What are the famous books of the 1990s?

Okay, do something with me. Think about that decade and see if you can recall any titles or authors but do not use the internet. Heck, don’t even look at your bookshelves. Just see if you can come up with any famous books strictly from your memory. I’ll wait.

Okay, so how many did you remember? Truth be told, as I’m writing this, I have not yet turned to Google. I’ve not even turned my eyes to my various bookshelves. In real time, I’ve been thinking about this question, off and on, for about a day, and only in the last few minutes did I remember an author and book that emerged in the 1990s: John Grisham’s The Firm.

I struggled to even remember many books. I went through my mental Stephen King list but could only remember Bag of Bones from 1998. Grisham’s status as the premier writer of the legal thriller instantly brought his other books to my mind. And I think Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was a 1990s book. But those were all I can remember.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to Google now. I suspect I’ll have more than a few “Oh, right! That book!” forehead slaps but such is my memory.

And I’m back, and I’ve slapped my forehead more than once in the category of “How could I have forgotten that book.” Among the titles that slipped my mind are Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990), The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum (1990), Truman by David McCullough (1992; my historian cred just went down the tubes), The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller (1993), Men Are from Mars, Women are From Venus by John Gray (1993), Primary Colors by Anonymous [AKA Joe Klein] (1996), and many books by Danielle Steel and Mary Higgins Clark. I used this site to get the Top 10 books per year and not what someone thinks are the important books.

How many did you remember? More than me? That’s good. Heck, I couldn’t even remember all the Stephen King books of that decade. And how many mystery/thrillers did you recall? The presence of Clark and Ludlum tells me that our genres was at least at the table—as was Tom Clancy (more than once) and James Patterson. 

Update: reader Jeremy sent me an email to remind me that Harry Potter was released in 1997 (UK) and 1999 (US) and publishers spent the next 15 years trying to chase the next big young adult craze. He also mentioned that the first Game of Thrones book was published in 1996. That brought Snow Crash (1992) to my memory although I didn't read it until the early 2000s. Ditto for the Potter books (I read them all in 2007).

Here’s a larger question: how many of those books were influential? How many changed things? I’ll come back to the Truman biography. I was in grad school and in 1992, many of my professors grumbled at McCullough’s book because it was too popular. Like the study of history had to be impenetrable to be good. I, for one, appreciate it when a historian writes a popular enough book that it becomes a bestseller (or a Broadway musical). I saw more history books written in McCullough’s style after 1992 than before.

 

What is the Nevermind of Books?

What about fiction? Is there a Nirvana moment (there was a Before Nevermind and then there was an After Nevermind) or a Matrix moment (same concept) for books? Historically, I’m guessing something like Agatha Christie or Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) or Raymond Chandler’s work (The Big Sleep?) or Mickey Spillane (Mike Hammer’s first book) or Ian Fleming (was he the first huge spy writer?) or Tom Clancy (techno-thriller) or Grisham (legal thriller). I guess Grisham in the 1990s can count as the guy who put legal thrillers back on the map (Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason was king but I can’t think of any other ones other that Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent in the interim).

Now, I also admit that I also did a more specific search for mysteries and thrillers in the 1990s. Here is that link. This is likely not an end-all, be-all list, but something is obviously apparent if you scan the list: the large majority of top mystery books in the 1990s involve series characters. I counted twelve out of 100 that were not series related. My guess is that a respective list for the 2000s, the 2010s, the 1980s, will reveal the same thing. Series sell. It’s a testament to a certain type of writer who can publish different stories within a genre and not do a series.

This essay is a thought exercise but also a real question. Were there any truly game-changing books published in the 1990s? Did they influence pop culture? If not, when was the last time a book sat in the middle of pop culture and dominated the national conversation or, at least added to the greater conversation? (I’m mainly talking about fiction because there are certainly non-fiction books that have made their mark on society.)

Do We Have Too Much Stuff?

Note: this post uses television as an example, but the same could be said of books, movies, comics, and music.

Most Saturday mornings, I go back in time.

Saturday is the day the rest of the family sleeps in. I do, too, considering my weekday mornings I wake around 5:15 am to write. But on Saturdays, I still wake up at the latest by 7:30. The house is quiet, the coffee's made, and the dogs are fed. I run over to my favorite do-nut shop, Shipley's, a Houston institution I've known all my life, pick up a plain glaze and a cherry filled, and return home to watch Saturday morning cartoons.

Now, it's not always cartoons. I watched WandaVision on Saturday mornings. Ditto for Star Trek: Picard and The Mandalorian. Mostly it's because I have the house to myself but also it's just kind of fun to have that Saturday morning vibe like most of us did back in the day when that was the one day of the week with programming targeted directly at kids.

Another thing that's really helped this vibe is MeTV's broadcast of Saturday morning cartoons. For three hours, they show Popeye cartoons (I'm asleep for that), Tom and Jerry/MGM cartoons (I get half of that because of my wake-up time), and a Looney Tunes block. For the Looney Tunes, they even run the opener from the 1970s, a nice reminder of childhood you don't get when these shows are streamed or on DVD.

For the past few weeks, after that week's WandaVision episode, I've added in an episode from the 1977 New Adventures of Batman. This is the Filmation show featuring the return of Adam West and Burt Ward to the roles they made famous in the 1966 TV show. And yeah, this is the series with Bat-Mite. I have the entire run on DVD. 

This being the 21st Century, historical background for this show is only an Internet search away. Turns out only 16 episodes were made. They were first broadcast from 12 February to 28 May 1977. I remember being very excited about this show. I'd watch every Saturday morning with, you guessed it, Shipley's do-nuts.

The key fact of this series is the number of episodes. Sixteen. But this series ran in some combination until 1981. That's six years of reruns. Six years of wondering which episode would air and, over time, memorizing the events of each episode. Then again, when I first bought the DVD a few years ago and watched the series for the first time in thirty something years, I didn't remember much of it.

By the time Batman: The Animated Series debuted in 1992, there were a couple dozens episodes per season and, while there were some reruns, they were fewer because there were so many episodes. The likelihood of coming across any given episode was much smaller than the 1977 series. Ditto for The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Friends (although Friends almost gets a pass on this because the show is now broadcast in reruns on multiple channels and you can ingest many more episodes on any given week).

Now our television habits have evolved to streaming services. And boy are there a lot of them. Within most streaming services are smaller niches. Just Brady Bunch or just Perry Mason or just CSI shows. For example, HBO Max has a DC Comics section where you can watch The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and any number of DC-related films. It's an embarrassment of riches considering that which we had back in the day. In fact, you could mainline any one of these series and watch little else.

But there is so much stuff to watch.

We are not constrained by the sixteen episodes the network broadcast over and over again. If we wanted to watch Batman on TV back then, your options were few. If you want to watch Batman on TV in 2021, you could fill up a few weeks in a row you could fill up watching only Batman. Or Marvel. Or any number of the things we dreamed about when we were kids.

We live in a Golden Age of Television. The content we have is so broad, rich, and with depth. But there is a lot of it. A lot. It's difficult to keep up. I might even go so far as to say almost impossible given how we live our lives nowadays: work, school, family obligations, and everything else. If you're like me and you chat about TV with friends and family, how many times do you arrive at a show you both have watched?

Now, you might think that I'm just a Gen Xer complaining about modern life. I'm not. I'm happy to have all the choices available to us. It's fantastic and there's always something to watch.

But how many of us dig deep into a series like we used to?

Yes, there are some like WandaVision or The Mandalorian or Sherlock or Game of Thrones which get the deep dive. There's probably more I don't watch that have devoted fans that pore over every detail of a show. But I think the casual awareness of shows has dwindled with the rise of cable TV and streaming. With so many choices begging for our attention comes a dilution of common content. Back the day, we all were more or less aware of the exploits of Happy Days, The Simpson, Friends, Grey's Anatomy, Modern Family, and CSI. Now? Not so much, especially if the hot show is on a streaming service you don't buy.

Or maybe all of this is on me. Maybe I'm the oddball now. Maybe I'm the guy who doesn't watch and re-watch the same content all the time because there's always something more to watch. Maybe I've become my parents.

Do you reach an age in which the obsession over a property just wanes or never materializes like it used to? Perhaps, but I think it also boils down to time.

When we were kids, there was loads of time to fill and not a lot of content with which to fill it. Now, kids probably have a similar amount of time to kill but so many more choices. As for us adults, our time has now dwindled to the point where, for me, I'm down to an hour of non-news TV a day on weekdays. And when all my favorite shows are an hour--New Amsterdam, Resident Alien, Prodigal Son, Clarice, Superman and Lois--I'm down to a show a night. So when I'm actually consuming only one show a night, it's difficult to find the time to re-watch a show. Thus, I find myself in a steady stream of one-time viewings. Hard to remember lots of details that way.

I guess that's the main problem. I just don't have the time.

Unless I had a time machine.