Star Wars Episode VII: Share your saga best bits and memories!

[HannahWMumsnet]

With less than a month to go before the release of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, MNHQ are brimming with excitement! ^^

To tide us all over until the film's out on 18 December we’d like you to share your Star Wars best and worst bits, whether they're scenes or lines from the films or from your own experience of watching the movies – just what is it about the epic saga that you or your family love?

Yoda voice Post your comments below you must!

But Liam Neason is great in The Phantom Menace, the quintessential Jedi. I also love Yoda's fight with Dooku in Attack of the Clones. I use a stick and when my kids were little I used to kid them I could crank it up like Yoda if necessary, ( not that they ever fell for it).

I actually don't think Episodes 1 to 3 are that dreadful apart from the dreadful casting of Anakin and the appalling Jar Jar Binks character.

My brother won a competition in Thr Sun newspaper and we got to attend the premier in London, meet the cast and stay in a posh hotel.
My brother still has the Darth Vader mask that was part of the prize.
We were very poor so it was an amazing experience although we were only little and I slept through the film

Went with ex-DH to northern premiere of Star Wars in Gatley Manchester. While we were queuing DH went to find some food ( fish and chips) He came back with two strange parcels which were doner kebabs. Neither of us had seen one before! We loved the film and our DS grew up to be a massive Star Wars fan ( still is at age 36!)

We didn't go to the cinema often, my brother and I had loved Star Wars so much and I remember him standing in our kitchen telling me how long it would be before Empire Strikes Back made it on to the good old TV. I think it was a year away or something but it might as well have been 20 to our young minds it just felt way too long to wait.

DH & I's first date was Revenge of the Sith. DH remembers his dad taking him to see Return of the Jedi as a wee boy - his first time at the cinema. And now we are looking forward to taking our eldest DC to see it.
DH is a Star Wars mega fan, I like sci-fi in general, & both our DC are excited for the new film, but at 4, DD will be a bit young I think.

Star Wars certainly holds a very special place in my DHs heart, & he is beyond excited to share it with the children.

I was 13 in 1977, and I remember seeing the first film 7 times at the cinema! It was so different to anything else. Sci fi prior to Star Wars was all about sleek, soulless robots and protein pills. Star Wars was dirty (a scene in a trash compactor FFS!), grubby, real life (Mos Eisley - a hive of scum and villainy). Fave bits? Live spankhurst Luke gazing soulfully at the twin suns of Tatooine whist the music swells. I have passed on my love of the films to my 21 year old DS who won't part with his lego starcruiser battleship!

hudyerwheesht We did the opposite and showed DS1 (5) 4-6 and then 1-3 and told him that was how it should be done as that was how Mummy and Daddy had watched them!

1-3 are ok in places. The Pod Race is quite exciting, and some of the Jedi chases/fights. And the final bit with Anakin and Obi Wan's fight. But they are totally bogged down in shlocky dialogue, far too much incomprehensible-to-the-young governmental/politics stuff and terribly wooden 'romance'.

4-6 are just brilliant and I never tire of them, even if they are the films I've seen the most in my life apart from Dirty Dancing. I love 'Who's scruffy looking?' And 'You like me because I'm a scoundrel, there aren't enough scoundrels in your life.' The bit where the Millennium Falcon swoops in at the end of ep 4 to defend Luke and allow him to destroy the Death Star. The carbonite bit. The Emperor and Vader. So many...

Must get on with work.

The original came out just before I was born, I was born in 1979 to a teenage Mum who adored Star Wars and all things Sci Fi so came to it at an early age. My favourite film as a child was Return of the Jedi. I loved the Ewoks thinking C3PO was a God and chanting away, also loved Jabba the Hut 'At last we have the mighty Chewbacca' ...later on I noticed the Bantha trainer crying over his dead monster which was great.

I don't have a worst bit exactly - Ja Ja Binks was of course a bit random but clearly Lucas had tried to draw in a young crowd, my brother who is 15yrs my junior loved Ja Ja Binks as a kid. I think Hayden Christianson was a mistake, casting wise - a more skilled actor would have been able to draw more out of his inner conflict. I must say that they must have been THRILLED that they cast Ian McDiarmuid when he was young and made him look older in the 70s/80s because a different Emperor would have surely not been as good as he was!

is the very end of the Empire Strikes Back, when they're down but not out, gazing out to space and the departing Millennium Falcon, through the big window (I'm sure there's a more technical term) and the music swells.

At that point the trilogy takes on the air of an epic.

When they fly into the asteroid field. The music gives me goosebumps...
And Han of course...
"i'd as soon as kiss a wookie!"
"that can be arranged. He could use a good kiss!"

I was taken by older DB to see The Empire Strikes Back and wasn't a great fan.
How can you expect anybody to believe that Yoda is a great and powerful being when he speaks in the voice of GROVER from Sesame Street??!

Ah but you see him fighting in Episode 2 and finally understand why he is a great warrior. Part of Luke's incredulity in Episode 5 is because he is small, green and talks in a silly voice, messing up the conventional subject-verb-object word order.

Understand do you?

:o

I saw the original Star Wars movie when it first came out (was it 1977 or 1978???). Already a teenager.

I'm afraid I'm on the Dark Side with Darth Vader - he's the best anti-hero ever.

trionic you have a lifelong crush on a fictional murderous cyborg ?

how odd me too

I am old enough to stand up proudly and declare: THERE IS NO SUCH FILM AS "A NEW HOPE"

My best moment is - see above being old - the genuine shock at "I am your Father." At the time, best plot twist ever. Now of course parodied to death but then it was fabulous.

Stupid episodes 1-3 have ruined that moment for a generation of kids.

I love watching Star Wars now and the bit where Obi Wan tells Luke about his father, the way he hesitates and says it all in a very measured way - you can see how Alec Guinness has been told to act it as if he is lying and how he does such a very good job.

Balloonslayer- we have refused to let our children see 1-3!
That way nothing has been ruined for them. Darth Vader is DS's favourite person in the whole world!
I think Alec Guiness was a marvellous choice for Obi Wan Kenobi. He has it perfectly... But it must have been so odd for adults watching that knew him from all his other roles. We just knew him as Ben.

I did the same Holstein just started at Star Wars, then Empire Strikes Back etc and stopped there. Ds1 did ask to see the other ones and I let him of course but he saw them in the correct order in MY opinion.

I still have a VHS version with Han shooting first as well, which I won't get rid of as long as I have a video recorder.

I think it is pretty much canon to watch them 4 5 6 1 2 3.

I think Ewan McGregor does a pretty good Alec Guiness impersonation in 1 2 and 3.

Apparently Alec Guinness made an absolute fortune from Star Wars despite all the other very highbrow stuff he had done. He was such a respected actor that he was paid a percentage, and no one realised the franchise would be so wildly successful. He also said that he didn't have the foggiest what half his lines meant, but he said them so gravely and with such such gravitas that they seemed like the wisest utterances ever.

my dad told me all this so I can no way verify it.

I remember playing with Star Wars figures as a kid. I was allowed to join in with the boys in the playground so I could be Princess Leia.

My brother had an AT-AT. It would probably be worth a fortune now but he spraypainted it in camouflage greens / browns and it ended up at the tip :(

Favourite parts of the film? Pretty much all of The Empire Strikes Back. Han Solo rescuing Luke at the beginning. Han & Leia trading insults because they're really in lurve. Han being frozen in carbonite. Never being quite sure which side Lando was on. Just brilliant.

Han Solo. Everything about him. I was sixteen - my hormones didn't stand a chance .

I watched IV again with my son recently, the remastered version. DS loved the bit with the 'slug' (I think he means Jabba). I just love the bit where the storm trooper hits his head on the door, I mean they even left in the SOUND of it!

Yep Jabba was a man in the original wasn't? I think him being a man makes putting Leia in a bikini more sinister somehow.

I hate the remastered versions of the original three films...

I hate the newer episodes 1, 2, and 3 films...

I hate computer generated Yoda...

I hate Ewan McGregor as Ben Kenobi...

Arrgh, I need some more hate if I'm to become a decent dark Sith Lord like my father before me.

"I think him being a man makes putting Leia in a bikini more sinister somehow."

Well to be honest, it was either going to be Princess Leia, or C3-PO in the bikini.