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Friday, May 19, 2006

SITH Happened: One year ago today...

...the Star Wars saga finally came full circle with Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

I actually saw Sith twice that day: at 12:01 AM with "Weird" Ed, Darth Larry and his wife and Phillip and a few other good crew, and then a much saner time that evening with my wife Lisa and Brian again ('cuz he and I weren't going to end that day without seeing Revenge of the Sith two and possibly three times :-P). And it just kept getting better and better.

Coming out of the theater that day was sort of bittersweet, but something of a relief as well. Knowing that there will not be anymore Star Wars movies, I felt like this series has accomplished what its creator set out to do, that it had nothing more to prove and now it got to go out on top. And now we could go on just being fans of a great saga, instead of fans so busy rabidly hanging onto whatever news trickled out about the movie that we forgot to just simply enjoy the thing. Believe me, as someone who once worked for a good while at what's still the best fan-run Star Wars site on the Internet (and here's hoping that you won the big race, Dustin :-), I've seen way too much of that to not know what I'm talking about.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that with Revenge of the Sith now behind us, I think that Star Wars fans can and finally have become what we were most supposed to be anyway. It's just hard to explain what that actually is, but I believe "respectable" is legitimately something that comes to mind :-)

And for me, on a more personal level, Revenge of the Sith and the closure it brought made me want that much more to be a father, and be able to share this beautiful story with my own children and wonder and cry and laugh right along with them as we watch it together. I really hope and pray that God will give me that opportunity someday, and not none too soon. If there had been the possibility (threat?) of more Star Wars movies, it would have taken away from that thrill. It would have become too much like Star Trek. No, this ended at just the right time, and it ended well. And it's in a good place now: on a bookshelf, waiting to be opened and shared with and appreciated by the next generations of "readers".

Well, I could go on, but that would just be adding "more" to what's probably been said a million times already. If anyone's interested, here's the review of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith I wrote the following day, and if you want a laugh there's also this now-legendary post about me and Darth Larry doing the final "Midnight Madness" of Star Wars toys... and the terrible hangover that ensued.

So happy birthday Star Wars Episode III. It was a heckuva fun ride: one for the ages, definitely :-)

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