The Executive Office periodically releases fiction submitted by Command Officers and Flag Officers of the Emperor's Hammer.

Tattooine or Bust

By Vice Admiral Kessler

Well, it finally happened.  Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace hit UK shores this month.  I’ve only been waiting 22 years to see this movie; so, as you can understand, I was a little anxious to actually get to see the damn thing.  I don’t want to talk about the movie itself; however, if you’ve already seen it you know what you thought of it, if you haven’t already seen it I’m no going to spoil it for you.  Rather, what interested me was a show called “Tattooine or Bust” which aired on National TV just before the movie opened.  Some of you may be aware of a Group called “Countdown to Star Wars”.  Basically, these people sat outside movie theatres for months waiting for the movie to open.  Now that simply displays a level of dedication to George Lucas’ baby that I simply cannot relate to.  (Well, okay, I can relate to it, but don’t tell my fiancée, she thinks I’ve got my addiction under control)  The thing that made me sit up and take notice was that these people were essentially Mr Joe Normal  like anyone else.
 You could see the TV crews trying to get some kind of “geek” angle going on these people, and okay, one or two of them were basically what any dictionary would refer to as “prime geek material”, but Darth Maul facemasks and lightsabres aside, these people were a lot like anyone else you ever met.  One of them summed it up pretty well.  When asked if he considered himself a geek for being a Star Wars fan, he replied:  “Well I’m what I like to call an “undercover geek”.  I can talk to normal people in conversation without mentioning Darth Vader, I can go to parties and talk to girls without asking if they want to see my lightsabre.  Pretty much everyone thinks I’m just another corporate wage-slave, but when I get home I put on my Darth Maul costume, open up my secret collection of Star Wars toys and walk around the house wearing a strap-on Bantha tail.”
 Quite.

 The range of different nationalities that were patiently queuing up to see the movie was pretty diverse too.   One TV crew was asking people where they came from.  Amongst the usual “Brooklyn” or “New Jersey” replies, was one guy who’d flown in from Yorkshire, England to join the rest of the faithful waiting for the movie to open; and he’d made lifelong friends amongst the crowd of people who were lined up with him.

 You’d be forgiven for thinking that these people were all jobless losers for being able to sit on a pavement outside a movie theatre for up to a month, but you’d be wrong.  One guy told of how when he’d joined his new company, he told his Boss that he had to get leave to watch the new Star Wars movie when it was released.  This was FIVE YEARS before the movie was announced.  His Boss agreed.  Another had told his Boss that he had to pick up friends from the airport and they’d be staying with him all week.  He finished by saying, “And now my Boss is watching this and I’m going to get fired, but at least I’ve seen Star Wars.”

 There were moments of humour too.  I particularly liked the guys dressed in Stormtrooper armour who’d flag down passing cop cars and say "Let me see your identification", to which one cop replied: "You don't need to see my identification".  The cops, seemed very amused by it all, I know I was.  Then there was the confrontation.  This was probably meant to be some kind of statement by the Star Trek community, but it only served to illustrate that there may very well be geeks in the sci-fi world, but most of them don’t watch Star Wars.  Here’s what happened:  A bunch of maladjusted Star Trek fans, staged a protest.  Now don’t misunderstand me, I happen to love Deep Space Nine and I think The Next Generation is pretty cool too (mostly), but you can understand how upset some members of the Star Trek community must get.  After all, every Star Trek movie ever made with an odd number in the title has sucked more than a fifteen-horsepower vacuum cleaner.  So they were understandably jealous of all the attention that Star Wars had been getting lately.  Anyway, a bunch of them show up at the line outside the movie theatre dressed in their costumes and waving imaginatively titled banners, like: “The Force is not Logical, Captain”, or the incredibly literate “Yoda sucks ass,” or “Star Wars will be assimilated.”  One guy had a puppet of Yoda on a stick; and his friend, dressed in a Borg costume, is beating the snot out of it.  Yoda, much like the Star Wars fans lined up to see the movie, couldn’t have cared less.
 The police made four arrests.  Assimilate that.

 Without wanting to provoke too much controversy, there were a bunch of sad losers who also tried to get some prime time TV by showing up waving banners that proclaimed "The Force is a Tool of Satan!"  They stood on the sidelines and berated the assembled faithful to "Start praying to Jesus right now!"  One comment kind of summed the whole sorry tirade up:  "Man, I am praying to Jesus, to give you a life."  They thought that George Lucas was the Antichrist and God had put him on earth to test their faith.  I thought God had put them on earth to test my faith, but whatever floats your boat I suppose, and at was very funny.

 An hour before the movie finally opened, the TV crew started asking people what they’d do if the movie sucked.  The replies were pretty much what you’d expect.

 “Oh man, don’t say that!  I’d just slit my wrists right there!”

 “I’d have to go see it again.”
 “Yeah, keep watching it until it didn’t suck anymore.”
 “Get a second opinion.  Yeah, definitely the way to go.”

 “It won’t suck!”
 “It could suck, dude.  We don’t know.”
 “How can you say that?  How can it possibly suck?”
 “Well have you seen Howard the Duck?”
 “Man, that wasn’t George’s doing, he was just the producer!”
 “It could still suck.”
 “Dude, stop saying that!”
I’m sure you get the general idea.
Shortly before I was due to go in to see the movie for myself at last, I was sitting in Kentucky Fried Chicken eating a Zinger and reflecting on what the movie would be like.  You have to realise that I was seven years old when I saw Star Wars in 1977.  I wasn’t quite as sophisticated a moviegoer then as I am now, so I was pretty worried that it might fall short of my expectations.  KFC is pretty heavily involved in the TPM merchandising process, so as I sat there eating my Jar Jar Burger and drinking my Darth Maul Pepsi, I heard the famous strains of John Williams’ opening credits music burst over the in-store speaker system.  A few feet away from me at another table, a small boy, probably not much older than seven, suddenly started shouting excitedly: “Daddy, it’s Star Wars, it’s Star Wars!”
His father, who was about my age, smiled and told him that yes, it was Star Wars.  I couldn’t help but smile, myself, and I realised there and then exactly why The Phantom Menace will never fail.  We jaded, hardcore fans can argue about Jar Jar Binks and Darth Maul all we like, it doesn’t matter.  Star Wars belongs to the innocent, like that little boy in KFC who’d had his eyes opened to a galaxy of wonder he’d never dreamed possible.  Like that little seven year old boy in me who saw the original movie 22 years ago, The Phantom Menace is having that same effect on this generation of children.  We older fans may like the movie, we may not.  But the children will love it.
I caught the eye of the boy’s father as his son chattered away happily about Jar Jar Binks and I like to think we recognised each other as first generation Star Wars fans.  This is the truth of the matter:  his son is the next generation of Star Wars fans, this movie is for them, not us.  And as long as we can enjoy the new movies too, that’s not such a bad thing, is it?

Vice Admiral Kyle Kessler
…Who thought TPM wasn’t bad at all, or he’d have had to slit his wrists on the spot.