All through the summer of 1977, I remember the constant rumblings coming from the distant west, talk of a movie said to be sweeping the post-bicentennial republic that had just elected Jimmy Carter, being seen dozens of times by zillions of kids, and raking in $775m on an investment of $11m. And changing Hollywood studio film-making for ever.
We in England heard the hype and felt our expectations rise, but wouldn’t see it until Christmas. But by the time my dad took me to see it, I was already a different kind of moviegoer, possibly because in the interim I’d discovered 40 years of back issues of Sight & Sound at the school library. I remember having a good time, although I remember nothing of the movie itself. I was probably more interested in something pseudy, sexy and subtitled on Film International on BBC2 that evening, snooty little git that I was. That was my first and last contact with George Lucas’s world-conquering franchise. I mean no slur on its many fans, but Star Wars, like religion or football, just never got its hooks in me.
And thus I found myself at 14 – and not for the last time – on the wrong side of what I call the Star Wars generation gap, which I first wrote about in maybe my third or fourth column for the Guardian Guide, 20 years after seeing Star Wars that one time, and 20 years ago this week. And here I stand today, writing one last time, midway between the global success of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and fevered anticipation for Star Wars: The Last Jedi in December. Plus ça change … In between now and Christmas lies the terrain that Star Wars unwittingly made for us, the barren, abject moonscape of the big studios’ summer release schedule: franchise after tired tentpole franchise, comic-book adaptations, reboots, sequels, threequels, remakes, a high-calorie, low-nutritional, rich-in-additives monoculture. Plus c’est bientôt la même chose …
Twenty years seems like a nice round number. In the end, there comes a time when one feels like one has already seen every movie ever made, even the ones coming out next week. There is a limit to the years one can spend writing about films – whether one gives a damn about them or not – in a little room in a house in Los Angeles and still remain relevant to readers in a country 6,000 miles away that one hasn’t set foot in for more than a decade, nor lived in for a quarter-century. After becoming a US citizen last year, it finally feels like time to tilt my Stetson definitively westwards, and ride into the molten sunset. With no lightsaber.
John Patterson has written the Guide film column every week since 1997. His first column was on Cheech Marin. He will continue to contribute to Guardian Film on a regular basis.
