May The 4th Be With You

What better day to write a post about Star Wars, eh?

Before the 27th December 2015, I had never seen any of the Star Wars films. Then by the 6th January 2016, I had seen them all. Well, just the main ones. I'd heard from a lot of people to watch them in order of them being released, so I listened to that advice and watched Star Wars: A New Hope, followed by Return of the Jedi, and The Empire Strikes Back. Then I didn't have enough time to watch the prequel trilogy before I had made plans to see Episode VII: The Force Awakens at the cinema. (I did ask a lot of Star Wars fans I know if I needed to see them before going to watch the new one and they said it would be fine). After I'd seen that, I watched The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and then Revenge of the Sith.

I admit, before I watched the films, I probably could have happily lived without seeing them, except for the comments I got from others; "How can you be a film student if you've never seen Star Wars?" However, now that I have seen them, I'm very glad I have. They're just really good films and I can see why it has attracted such an enormous fan base. But now that I like the films, I wouldn't call myself a hardcore fan!

This post isn't going to be a review of the Star Wars series or just me talking about how much I loved the films. This post is about spoilers.

(If you haven't seen Star Wars or don't know of the spoilers....spoiler alert!)

One of the things I realised while watching Episodes IV, V and VI was that I already knew the major spoilers of the series. I knew that Luke and Leia were siblings, I knew that Yoda and Obi Wan died. I also knew that Darth Vader was Luke's father, which is described as the biggest cinematic reveal ever.

Because these facts are pretty well-known and often parodied in various popular culture,

when it came time for the big reveal, I wasn't surprised. I can only imagine what finding that fact out must have been like for people who went to see it when it came out. But I do find it a shame that I didn't have the original intended reaction that the film makers would have wanted when they wrote in that story line.

After that realisation, I thought of another thing. In Episode VII: The Force Awakens, a lot of stuff happens, and there are some things that would be classed as spoilers. The biggest one being that Kylo Ren killed his father, Han Solo. I wondered for a long time whether or not that would become a well-known spoiler like Darth Vader and Luke's. Maybe someday it will be? Maybe it will influence parodies, or maybe it will stay fairly unknown. Only the future will tell...

(I'm not even sorry, I had to add that gif!)