And another thing…

RONNIE, who started his primary education this year, will be appearing in his class’s nativity play soon.

He will not be playing Joseph. “Good!” said I to his mother. “Rubbish part. The best part is the innkeeper.”

“How so, oh wise husband of mine?” said Carolyn (okay, that’s not exactly what she said, but you get my drift).

So why does the innkeeper play such an important part in the whole First Christmas broo-haha?

Well, remember that part where the Imperial Star Destoyer captures the rebel blockade runner in its tractor beam at the very start of Episode IV? And then the droids escaped to the surface of Tatooine with the Death Star tapes in the escape pod? Well, remember the Imperial gunner who almost shoots the pod down? And then he doesn’t because “there are no life forms on board”?

Well that bloke is recognised among theologians Star Wars fans everywhere as the most crucial, pivotal character in the whole original trilogy. If he had followed his orignal instinct and blown the escape pod to bits, then the droids wouldn’t have made it to Tatooine or into the ownership of Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan would have stayed in retirement, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru wouldn’t have been slaughtered by storm troopers and Princess Leia’s execution aboard the Death Star would have gone ahead as scheduled. The Death Star’s fatal weakness would not have been uncovered and would not have been destroyed, so, eventually, would have destroyed the Rebel Alliance.

All because that gunner opened fire on the escape pod. Which he didn’t.

“Are you drunk?”

So, anyway, back to Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The innkeeper could easily have gone that extra mile for his last-minute customers, Mary and Joseph. He could have found a room somewhere. Or he could have sent them packing with a warning not to use his stable or else he’ll get the centurions onto them. Where would the Nativity have been then?

Shepherds are rarely allowed into hotel lobbies, for a start. The Wise Men (the number of whom is not specified in Scripture) would have been hard pressed to track down the actual room number. So no Frankincense, gold or myrrh – and no tradition of prezzies at this time of year!!

Theologically speaking, the Lord being born in a manger provided a powerful message about the humility of His beginnings; a Travelodge doesn’t quite have the same impact.

So, to sum up: the innkeeper’s the part you want to go for, son.

“He’s playing a king,” said Carolyn. “And I fell asleep during Star Wars.”

Right.

♫ "... and a Happy New Year!" ♫

I ALWAYS thought Princess Leia was just a tad irresponsible in the first film. Seems I’m not the only one.

TODAY, apparently, is Star Wars Day, so-called because of the date: “May the fourth be with you…” Geddit?

I’m a fan of the original trilogy, not so much of the prequels, and I haven’t seen The Clone Wars. One of my (many) favourite lines from the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, involved one of the characters refusing to watch The Clone Wars TV series before he’d seen the movie: “I prefer to be disappointed in the order George Lucas intended.”

EVERYONE remembers the day they first saw Star Wars, right?

Of course they do. For me, it was Thursday 2 February 1978. That was also the day that issue #1 of Star Wars Weekly went on sale and I grasped my copy in my hands as I waited anxiously for my dad, exhausted after a typically hard day driving his HGV, to respond to my desperate plea to drive me, my sister and my best friend, Brem, all the way to Glasgow, the only place within travelling distance where the movie phenomenon was showing.

He reluctantly relented, and the five of us – including mum – piled into our tiny yellow Nissan and headed for the big city, Brem and I barely able to contain our excitement. The local cinema in Beith, the George, was a regular and familiar experience by then, but neither of us had seen the inside of the legendary Odeon in Glasgow’s Renfield Street.

Dad quickly found a parking space. History does not record if it was legal or safe, but I don’t recall him getting a parking ticket that night. We walked the short journey to the Odeon, and were appalled to see the queue! None of us had ever seen a queue that long for anything! No way were we going to get a seat inside. But we joined it anyway. Even that bit was fun; the air of excitement was palpable, and not just among the younger members of the crowd. Buskers and beggars took advantage of their captive audience to entertain and embarrass (my dad dryly informed us that one old soul was getting no money from him because he “never gave me a song”…).

And, faster than any of us expected, we were moving towards the Odeon entrance. Would we get in, or would we be stopped just short of the prize, a “Sorry – full up” sign barring our way between us and that far, far away galaxy?

We got in. And so did a couple of hundred people behind us. A big place, the Odeon, it turned out.

The atmosphere inside was electric. And even the advertisers joined in the spirit of the occasion, having produced sci-fi-themed commercials specially to be shown before the main feature. At one point, a breathless hush descended when words resembling “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” appeared on screen, to be followed by… the Mash men (oh, come on! You must remember them: they sounded like Daleks and every advert ended with the words “then they smash them all to bits”, with the wee metal aliens collapsing in fits of giggles). And then there was the ad where a golden robot being constructed in a production line has his head fastened on back-to-front, and consoles himself with a Hamlet cigar to the sound of Air on a G String.

And then, at last, after weeks and months of hype, of listening to the disco version of the Star Wars theme by Meco, of reading every morsel of information about the movie and its stars in every magazine and newspaper (Alec Guinness, we discovered, had been in a number of films before Star Wars), the 20th Century Fox logo appeared on screen, accompanied by that famous fanfare. Followed closely by that fanfare…

Both Brem and I, and a number of our friends had already read the novelisation of Star Wars. More than once. Nothing in the plot of the movie we were about to see was going to surprise us. We knew every twist, every conflict, every argument, every fight, and every resolution. We already knew most of the dialogue, and we were able, that night, immediately to identify, to our horror, which scenes included in the novel which were not part of the finished film. That was the first time we realised that there can sometimes be differences in the content of novels and the movies on which they’re based. 

Such triflings aside, it’s far to say that that night in February more than 30 years ago, I fell in love with Star Wars. You had me at “Long ago”, as it were.

Even Dad fell for it. On the way back home along the M8, our Nissan Sunny became an X-Wing rebel fighter, darting in and out of lanes as Dad shot down the enemy TIE fighters in front of us.

So I was hooked, as were millions of kids my age – and many of different ages – throughout the planet. Star Wars helped define our childhoods. No-one had ever seen anything like it. It helped rejuvenate not only the science fiction genre, but Hollywood itself, as well as making cinema-going fashionable again after some very fallow years and spawning loads of very questionable rip-offs and “homages”.

Even then, back in 1978, my friends and I were aware of some of Luke Skywalker’s and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s back-stories; that Luke’s father, a Jedi Knight, had been been betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader who was in turn almost killed by Kenobi, who threw Vader into a volcanic pit. He had been rescued by Imperial storm troopers who had only managed to save his life by placing him in a black life-support suit. 

The movie sequels were, inevitably, keenly anticipated by us and by the rest of the world. Empire was magnificent, Return disappointing. And I still believe it was a fundamental mistake by George Lucas to make Luke and Leia brother and sister. Big mistake.

Fast forward 16 years to the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I tried to like it, I really did. I even saw it in the cinema three times before buying it on VHS and then DVD. It took me another few years and two further prequels for me to admit they were crap. The first sequel seemed to be primarily about tax reform. The second and third could have been magnificent . They were not.

My own theory is that Lucas was too close to his baby to be trusted with directing all three prequels. It’s significant that the best film of the whole series, The Empire Strikes Back, was directed by Irvin Kershner, not Lucas. Had Lucas given the basic story of Episodes I to III to another writer and director, they would, I’m sure, have produced far superior movies. Those films made perfect sense to the man who wrote them and who has lived with their development most of his life, but for the rest of us, the reaction was “Huh?”

As Simon Pegg screamed at the crying child holding the Jar-Jar Binks figurine in “Spaced”: “You don’t understand, you weren’t there!”

And that’s even before I get on to the re-issues of the original three movies in 1997 to mark series’ 20th birthday. On that subject, I will say only this: Han Solo shot Greedo first, and quite right.

Which brings me, not very neatly, to what inspired this rather lengthy post, and I should offer a hat-tip to Tom Watson for this. The People vs. George Lucas, from what I can gather, is a movie that explores some of the issues I’ve raised in this post and which have been regularly discussed by Star Wars fans for decades. It’s due for release next year and, while I accept it’s aimed at a fairly narrow audience, I have a feeling I may well be queuing at a cinema once more.

Here’s a foretaste:

I’VE DECIDED to declare this blog a politics-free zone for the weekend, what with The X-Factor tonight and whatnot. 

So let’s all put our differences aside, join in one big collective virtual hug, and enjoy this nonsense, drawn to my attention earlier this week by Wrinkled Weasel. It’s amazing how much free time some people have on their hands, isn’t it?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk5_OSsawz4]

IT’S THE September weekend here in Scotland, so my constituency office is closed and I’m at home spending too much time on the computer.

And in between doing the odd bit of tidying up, I’ve found a way of “tidying up” and staying on the computer: eBay.

Loads of old books and DVDs that I know I will never in a million years look at again – might as well see if anyone out there wants them for a small, very reasonable, cost.

So far today I’ve posted never-watched DVDs of Episodes One and Two of Star Wars. It pains me to see how the magic was murdered, so I know I’ll never want to see them again. Also a couple of American comic trade paperbacks (as they say in the trade). My aim is to post at least one item a day on eBay from now until I go back to the Commons next Monday.

What next? I’m sure I had a biography of David Cameron somewhere. Starting price 1p, free P&P…

RECENTLY I watched a repeat of BBC2’s excellent Mock The Week comedy quiz show, originally aired last summer. Subjects under “discussion” were last year’s floods and speculation that the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, might take advantage of Labour’s 10 per cent poll lead and call a snap election.

We all know what happened next. But it struck me that the current Tory opinion poll lead, though significant in terms of per centage share, is a very recent phenomenon. Yet the Tories’ confidence of winning the next election is utterly unshakeable. The very idea that Labour might yet stage a recovery is not only fanciful but unthinkable (evidenced by the comments in response to this very post).

In terms of number of seats in the Commons, the Tories are worse off than Labour in the 1983 parliament (Labour under Michael Foot won 209 seats; the Tories under Michael Howard won 198). Election victories are only secured by a large and sustained opinion poll lead, criteria which, arguably, the Tories have so far only half met.

The public aren’t yet convinced that ‘Dave’ – the man who advised Norman Lamont and who personally designed the “patient’s passport” as a means of diverting billions of pounds of NHS funding towards the private health sector – can be trusted. He’s certainly no Tony Blair, however much he’s read the instructions.

Which brings me back to the original observation about the Tories’ opinion poll lead being a relatively recent phenomenon. I can honestly say that that degree of arrogance, where defeat isn’t even considered a possibility – has rarely, if ever, afflicted the Labour Party. We’ve always been aware that election victories are hard fought for, and hard won.

For the Tories, though, opposition – even opposition when they were reduced to a rump in the commons, facing a Labour majority of 180 – was never more than a blip, a mere inconvenience on the road back to power. And power, for the Tories, was never a privilege; it is their birthright, to be handed to them on a silver platter by an electorate that has taken longer than they expected to come to its senses. Any suggestion, nearly two years before the last possible date for a general election, that it might yet elude them, is to be mocked and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

There are those in the Tory Party who share the arrogance of Grand Moff Tarkin who, when the Empire seemed on the brink of victory, dismissed the Rebellion’s fightback against the Death Star with the words: “Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances!” And we all know what happened to him.

There. I bet John Bloody Redwood never uses Star Wars references…

Well, not exactly, but when I last had a blog I put this on it because it just makes me laugh. Even if you’re not a Star Wars fan, you should find this very, very funny.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WbKQ4S4zxc&feature=related]